Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question

Subject: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: skarpi
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 07:10 AM

also known as go lassie go , so my dear friend Rósa asked me a question

is that song played and sung in funerals and when people are getting Merried and then why and is that only in Ireland or N-Ireland or in Scotland as well.

is there some one who know ?

all the best Skarpi Iceland .

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 07:21 AM

Look up threads on "Wild Mountain Thyme" and "Braes of Balquhidder".

It's a Scottish song about 250 years old. An Irish revival singer of the Fifties said he'd written it and did very well out of extorting the royalties.

It has no particular associations with weddings or funerals in Scotland. It's not as popular as it used to be.

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 07:41 AM

Whatever you think of the McPeakes I relly don't think you can call them revivalists. Francie II swore to me that his father Francie I wrote the song while singlehandedly building Belfast City Hall in the early 1900s.

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: skarpi
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 08:18 AM

Wild Mountain Thyme
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Purple Heather" redirects here. For the European plant, see Calluna. For The American plant, see Krameria erecta.
"Wild Mountain Thyme", also known as "Purple Heather" and "Will You Go Lassie, Go", is an Irish folk song, written by Francis McPeake, a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland and first recorded by McPeake in 1957.[1] It is often mistakenly believed to be a traditional song, but the copyright is held by English Folk Dance and Song Society Publications, who published it for McPeake.[2] It was first recorded by Francis McPeake in 1957, and has since been covered by numerous artists.

The song is a variant of The Braes of Balquhidder by Robert Tannahill (1774-1810), which was named after the braes, or hills, of Balquhidder near Lochearnhead. The Braes has a similar lyric which includes the lines "Let us go, lassie, go" and "And the wild mountain thyme".[3][4][5][6]
        Wikisource has original text related to this article:
The Braes of Balquhidder
[edit]


so tell me are those info wrong then ??


takk fyrir skarpi

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: GUEST,999
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 08:31 AM

I'd too am very interested in that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 08:37 AM

No, Wiki is roughly right. I was merely pointing out that the McPeakes are not revivalist musicians, having been playing the uileann pipes lond before the revival though their claim to be oroginal songwriters are slightly more dodgy. Nice Town Hall though.

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 08:57 AM

You will find better information here than on Wikipedia - search for the threads I mentioned.

This is one of those instances where commercial sleaze overrides the truth on Wikipedia. I assume somebody in the commercial Irish music industry (like the McPeakes' agents) has been editing out any comments that say where the song originally came from. I can't be arsed dealing with that shit, I just disregard Wikipedia on stuff like this - as Mark Twain said, "never start an argument with a man who buys his ink in barrels". (For a much grosser example of the same process, look up what they say about lindane).

I posted a Scottish version by John Hamilton from 1792. That predates the reasonably-well-known Tannahill version by 20 years; that in turn predates the McPeakes by 150 years; and the tune was in print 50 years before Hamilton's booklet.

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 09:44 AM

Crikey! Peter Kennedy had a job in the Irish music industry? Was that before or after he died?

Furthermore, what exactly is wrong with a trad musician reworking and existing composition c 1912? Was he the only one who did this? However when the EFDSS copyrights it some 40 years laster the waters begin to muddy.

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 10:15 AM

if my true love will not come, I will surely find another.....

You hear that! get pulling up the wild mountain thyme or you get your marching orders! Very appropriate for a wedding. take a firm line, from the very first....

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: Jim McLean
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 11:24 AM

John Hamilton's song The Braes o' Bowhether (1796) uses the same melody and most of the lyrics of Burn's song And I'll Kiss Thee Yet (1788) AKA Bonnie Peggy Alison, and the tune used is called The Braes o' Balquhidder.
The lyrics of the McPeake's song The Wild Mountain Time/Purple heather/Will ye Go, .. are obviously derived from Robert Tannahill's Braes o' Balquhidder but the melody is different from that used by JH, RB and Tannahill which goes back at least to David Young's Collection of 1740.
Tannahill originally set his lyrics to The Three Carles o' Buchanan which Hamish Henderson erroneously described as the tune to which John MacDonald, "The Singing Molecatcher of Morayshire", sang the McPeake song. MacDonald actually sang McPeake's tune as well, originally recorded on the Topic label, 1975, but reissued on Greentrax, CDTRAX 9053, 1998.

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 11:42 AM

Big Al, we had it sung at our wedding using the Jack Langstaff version of that verse:
"If my true love will not go, I will surely fine NO other..."

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 01:06 PM

Hi, Skarpi. I've heard this song in concerts and at sing-alongs. I think it's in the Judy Collins Songbook. (She's a famous American folksinger.) I believe she mentions playing it in pubs and bars, both in America and abroad.

So if your friend is concerned that it's a song for solemn occasions such as funerals and weddings, then she doesn't have to worry about that.

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: Jim McLean
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 03:36 PM

Skarpi, I think I have answered your question regarding the derivation of the song but I never commented on whether it is used for funerals or weddings. In all my experience of this song it has never been used as a funeral or wedding song in particular although some folk might like to use in that way. Tannahill's song was sung by my mother about 70 years ago but just "as a song".
Vellbekomme!(Jeg kan lidt dansk ogsa Svensk og Norsk.)

Subject: RE: Origins: Purple Heather Skarpi has a question
From: Noreen
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 05:51 PM

Hi Skarpi and Rósa, in my experience (in England) this song is often used as the last song of the evening at folk clubs/singarounds, -and as the last song of the week in the Station Inn sing at Whitby Folk Week every year.

I've not heard it sung in Ireland at all.