Volume IV, song 313, page 323 - 'The Guidwife count the lawin' - Scanned from the 1853 edition of the 'Scots Musical Museum', James Johnson and Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood & Sons, 1853)

Verse 1: 'Gane is the day and mirk's the night, But we'll ne'er stray for faute o' light, For ale and brandy's stars and moon, And blude red wine's the rysin Sun.' Chorus: 'Then guid wife count the lawin, the lawin, the lawin, Then guidwife count the lawin, and bring a coggie mair.' 'Gude wife count the lawin'' would translate from Old Scots as 'hostess count the reckoning'. 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. Both the lyrics and the melody of this piece were supplied to Johnson by Burns. Burns left a short comment in his friend Robert Riddell's copy of the 'Museum', 'the chorus is part of an old song, one stanza of which I recollect:- 'Every day my wife tells me / That ale and brandy will ruin me; / But if gude liquor be my dead, / This shall be written on my head, / O gude wife count, &c.'.' The melody is thought to have been partly based on the tune, 'The Auld Man's Mare's Dead'.

Collection

Scots Musical Museum

Inventory Number

4503509

Title

Volume IV, song 313, page 323 - 'The Guidwife count the lawin' - 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

- 132 x 211 mm