Volume I, song 068, page 69 - 'The Bonny Brucket Lassie' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)

Verse 1: 'The Bonny Brucket Lassie, She's blue beneath the e'en; She was the fairest Lassie That danc'd on the green. A lad he loo'd her dearly, She did his love return; But he his vows has broken, And left her for to mourn.' 'Brucket' can mean either spotted, striped or fragile - it appears to have a multitude of meanings. 'E'en' means here is short for evening. The 'Scots Musical Museum' is the most important of the numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections of Scottish song. When the engraver James Johnson started work on the second volume of his collection in 1787, he enlisted Robert Burns as contributor and editor. Burns enthusiastically collected songs from various sources, often expanding or revising them, whilst including much of his own work. The resulting combination of innovation and antiquarianism gives the work a feel of living tradition. Burns in his notes on the lyrics he collected recorded, 'the first two lines of the song are all of it that is old. The rest was done by Mr. Tytler. .. .. He was bred a printer, I believe, and composed a great part of the Encyclopedia Britannica at half a guinea a week'. The tune is older than the lyrics, as it is recorded in the Leyden Manuscript of 1692.

Collection

Scots Musical Museum

Inventory Number

4503263

Title

Volume I, song 068, page 69 - 'The Bonny Brucket Lassie' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)

Object Type

PhysicalObject

Measurements

- 130 x 211 mm