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Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O!
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Subject: Lyr Add: BONNIE ARE THE HURDIES, O! From: Metchosin Date: 25 Oct 00 - 02:18 AM BONNIE ARE THE HURDIES, O! There's naught but care on ilka han', On every hour that passes, O! An' Sawney, man, we hae nae chance To spark amang the lasses, O! Chorus: Bonnie are the hurdies, O! The German hurdy-gurdies, O! The daftest hour that ere I spent, Was dancin' wi' the hurdies, O! A warldly race that riches chase, Yet a' gangs tapselteerie, O! An' every hour we spend at e'en, Is spent without a dearie, O! Chorus Last summer we had lassies here Frae Germany-the hurdies, O! And troth I wot, as I'm a Scot, They were the bonnie hurdies, O! Chorus There was Kate and Mary, blithe and airy, And dumpy little Lizzie, O! And ane they ca'd the Kangaroo, A strappin' rattlin' hizzy, O! Chorus They danced at night in dresses light, Frae late until the early, O! But oh! their hearts were hard as flint, Which vexed the laddies sairly, O! Chorus The dollar was their only love, And that they lo'ed fu' dearly, O! They dinna care a flea for men, Let them coort hooe'er sincerely, O! Chorus They left the creek wi' lots o' gold, Danced frae oor lads sae clever, O! My blessin's on their 'sour kraut' heads, Gif they stay awa for ever, O! Notes: Bonnie Are The Hurdies O! W., SAWNEY, pp. 15-6; previously appeared in Cariboo Sentinel of July 23, 1866. A reworking of "Green Grow the Rashes, O", itself a reworking by Burns (1784) of an earlier "Rustic song", first printed 1549. M. after James C. Dick, The Songs of Robert Burns (repr. Hatboro, 1962), p. 102. From Songs of the Pacific Northwest. Ed. Philip J Thomas. Music Transcription and Notation by Shirley A. Cox. Saanichton, B.C.: Hancock House Pub (1979.) p.44-46 |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: AllisonA(Animaterra) Date: 25 Oct 00 - 08:07 AM What's a hurdie? |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: Dita Date: 25 Oct 00 - 11:37 AM Animaterra, Hurdie is the old Scots word for buttocks or hips, as used in such songs as "John Anderson my Jo". love, john. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: richardw Date: 25 Oct 00 - 08:03 PM And, the word was used, likely tongue in cheek, for the Hurdy Gurdy dancers that were in the various goldrushes around North American, including California, Oregon and British Columbia. Althought the song is sometimes credited to W. Sawney that is really a misnomer as Sawney was James Anderson, a Scots miner in the Cariboo of B.C. Also the tune should not be confused with the more common Green Grow the Rushes oh!. There is an article and links about the hurdies (the dancers that is) on our website at: http://goldrushbc.com Oh yes, and we recorded the song on our latest CD "Rough But Honest Miner" the subject of a thread started here by Joe Offer some weeks ago. Richard Wright |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: little john cameron Date: 25 Oct 00 - 08:12 PM Ah hate tae be contratictin ye,but HURDIES is a contaction o HURDIE GURDIE that is a musical instrument some thing like a big music box.Ye turn the handle an it plays tunes. ljc |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: GUEST,mousethief (at the library) Date: 25 Oct 00 - 08:14 PM Well, you turn the handle and it plays, anyway.
Alex |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: Metchosin Date: 25 Oct 00 - 08:27 PM Little John, if you visit Richard's website you will see that in the case of this song though and common usage in the west, it referred to the women. Interesting site Richard! |
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Subject: Tune Add: BONNIE ARE THE HURDIES, O! From: GUEST,Bruce O Date: 26 Oct 00 - 02:06 PM I have a copy I xeroxed from a different book, but have unfortunately lost track of the title of it. The text is the same. The song is said to come from 'Sawney's Letters, or, Cariboo Rhymes. From 1864 to 1868', which is perhaps a slightly later reprint. I don't know if the tune was given in the early publications. The tune for the copy I xeroxed is given as follows:
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There is no song of 1549 related to Burns' song. There is only the title "Cou thou to me the raschis grene" in 'The Complaynt of Scotland', 1549. The only songs that fits that title is an English one "Colle to me the Rysshys grene" given (with music) in Ritson's 'English Songs' and (without music) in 'Captain Cox, his Ballads and Books', Ballad Society, 1890. It has nothing in common with Burns' song, and is to a different tune. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: Metchosin Date: 26 Oct 00 - 02:22 PM Bruce, the notes regarding this song and the reference regarding James C, Dick, The Songs of Robert Burns(1962), Hatboro, were copied directly from the following B.C Government Website here Perhaps they can clarify. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: Metchosin Date: 26 Oct 00 - 02:39 PM Don't know if it did it for others, but that link froze my computer screen, I'll try it again click here |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: richardw Date: 26 Oct 00 - 02:57 PM Well, first Little John, do a word search on hurdies and you will find several references to hurdies being buttocks or loins, including a site of Burns complete works which has a linked glossary, found at http://www.robertburns.org/works/. Also, the original version of John Anderson, my Jo, the female singer refers his flke or worried hurdies, and she ain't talking aobut dancers. Careful on your searches on the word or you will get into some old erotic powtry and I won't be responsible if you are under 18. Yes, in the context of the song, the dancers, the word is a contraction of Hurdy Gurdy the instrument that they once danced to. (I have been able to find no documentation to show the instrument was ever used in the goldfields of California, Montana or British Columbia.) But, I believe, having studied the author for some years, that James Anderson meant this as a play on words. He was very familiar and often stole lines from Burns, who did not write about the dancers. Interestingly Anderson write in negative terms about the hurdies, but speant much of his money on them and "the dirnk." He has also written enough that we can identify some of the individual dancers by name. In North American they usually danced to fiddles and whatever else happened to be in town including pianos Now, as to Sawney. Saqwney was Jamed Anderson. The tile of the booklet produced in Barkerville, B>C> in 1868 is "Sawney's Letters and Cariboo Rhymes by James Anderson. Anderson was a Scot who came to Barkerville to mine about 1863 and stayed until 1871. In his Sawney's letters, again similar to a style he may have adopted from Burns he says, after the song; "What think ye, Sawney, o' my sang? A good thing, it's no very lang; The name I've gied's "The German Lasses." The air's the same's:Green grows the Rashes,"... As to this song of Burns, which I find on page 49 of my "The Poetical Works of Robert Burns, London & Glasgow Collin' Clear Type PRess [n.d.] Anderson's work is hard to read and so has been shuffled aside in history and song as he writes in dialect. However, when we had Duncan Bell read it aloud for narrations on our CD the words leaped to life. Duncan also sings this song on the CD, with accompaniment on a 1889 pump organ that leaked so much air the keyboardist almost got leg cramps. When I sang Anderson's "Rough But Honest Miner" based on the tune CAstles in the Air, I had to write oout a "translated version". There is a lot of good historical information in his work and some interesting cultural observations that are still being uncovered. We want to produce a CD and book of his work but the market is small, miniscule, so it will have to wait. The reference to the "Rustic song" of earlier years is from Phil Thomas, a collector of songs for decades and I am sure not one to argue with him, though I do not know where he got the ref. Phil lurks on this list. Maybe he will come forth. I'll send him a note about the thread. Murray on Salt Spring also knows Phil so maybe he will join in. Enough for now. Good thread. Richard Wright |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 26 Oct 00 - 04:58 PM Metchosin, I care not what others say. I do my own research. All James Dick said in 'The Songs of Robert Burns' regarding the old song is: "Cou thou to me the raschyes green is named in the Complaynt of Scotland, c. 1549. A tune with this title, which is in a MS. in the British Museum [MS Royal 58 Appendix], is quite a different melody from that in the text [i.e., that for Burns song]; but the germ of the present air is in Straloch's MS 1627, entitled A dance: Green grow the rashes". [On the long lost Straloch Lute MS and surviving partial transcripts of it see the 'Scots tunes in MSS file' on my website.] |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: Metchosin Date: 26 Oct 00 - 08:19 PM Bruce, neither do I care, all I was doing was quoting the source of my information. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: Metchosin Date: 26 Oct 00 - 08:41 PM perhaps you should talk to Richard (above post) re his information regarding Sawney (James Anderson) as I believe he performs the song. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: richardw Date: 26 Oct 00 - 08:56 PM Good information on the song Bruce. Thanks. It seems to me most songs borrow on others so there really is no issue about the earlier version. However, I will include your info in the next edition. BTW, re the authorship, they were called Sawney's letters, not because they were written BY Sawney, but TO Sawney (Sandy) from Jeames, or James Anderson. Anderson thought all his poems and songs except "Rough But Honest Miner" were trash, written for the moment, that should have been thrown in the creek. I'm glad he didn't. Richard Wright
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 26 Oct 00 - 08:58 PM Murray on Saltspring also knows Shirly Cox. From Captain Cox, his Ballads and Songs, 1890, (with contents listings from The Complaynt of Scotland and commentary on the tales, ballads, and songs noted there). Quoted in connection with "Cou thou to me the raschis grene" title in the Complaynt is the English song, c 1530, chorus first, obviously, from BL MS Royal 58. Is this our 'rustic song'?]
Colle to me the Rysshys grene. Colle to me.
For my pastyme, on a day,
wher I saw one in gret dystresse
"wythout that thus she of hure grace,
"Soo to contynew whyle my lyff endure,
There are actually two 'tunes' for the English song "Colle to me the Rysshys grene", in BL MS Royal 58, on leaf 2 with the song, and the verso of leaf 12 with the chorus only. G. F. Graham in The Songs of Scotland, I, pp. 30-1 (giving Burns' song and its tune) rejected the notion that the above was related to the Scots tune and says of the English 'tunes':
"Airs these cannot be called, for they are altogether destitute of melody; they appear rather to be single parts of a piece intended for several voices."
He added that he had translated the two rudimentary versions of the Scots tune in the Straloch Lute MS for David Laing, who published them in 'Additional Illustrations to the Scots Musical Museum'. My reading of the title in Graham's partial transcript of the MS (NLS MS Adv. 5.2.18) is "A dance. grein greus ye rasses", and the second title is as given below. [ABC2WIN really makes a mess of displaying several notes on the same stem for these.]
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Frank Kidson copied Graham's 2nd partial transcript of the Straloch Lute MS, and Alfred Moffat copied it from Kidson. Moffat's copy, with his translations, is in the Library of Congress. Moffat's translations differ slightly from Graham's above. Timing is wrong or shaky at many places in the tablature of the MS and many pieces in it can't be translated at all. Moffat gave two variant endings to the second piece above, then wrote in a note that Graham was probably correct. However, for that last measure, that he noted as Graham's, he gave it as two half-note f's.
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: Metchosin Date: 26 Oct 00 - 09:22 PM Bruce, still don't quite get what you are trying to impart. If John Anderson, in 1868, said he wrote Bonnie are the Hurdies, O to the tune of Green Grow the Rashes, does anyone know what he might have perceived that tune to be? Ie, Did Anderson also write the music out in his letters to Sawney. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: richardw Date: 26 Oct 00 - 10:00 PM I think Bruce is pointing out that perhaps Burns did not get the tune from "an earlier 'Rustic song'" as Phil Thomas thought. Bruce looked up several songs for me while we were working on our CD. He's an amazing resource. James Anderson's song first appeared in the Cariboo Sentinel newspaer, without notes. It was written in March, 1866, in his second "Letter to Sawney". Again, he did not write out the notation. The 1868 date comes from the first time this booklet, mostly already typeset for the Sentinel, was published. A second edtion came out the following spring after the Great fire of 1868 that destroyed most of Barkerville. The next editon that I know of was 1962, a cenntennial project of the provincial government. It appears to have been retypeset and no longer has the newpaper column format and longer page of the original. This is one of the challanges of researching this era of music. Most songs are recorded in diaries, letters or the newspapers, so notation is not given. But, they had little need to. The tunes, while often obscure today, were common at the time. Like us saying it's to the air of "I walk the Line". Who would need the notes? (It happens to be playing). And, often the song is only refered to in a letter by a line, a title or a few words. |
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 26 Oct 00 - 10:22 PM Burns' song and its tune were pretty well known by 1866?. I don't know if music was given by Anderson, but the direct quotation of the first line of Burns' song and the verse and chorus form make it obvious that "Green Grow the Rashes, O" is the proper tune. John Glen, Early Scottish Melodies points out the modern form of "Green Grows the Rashes" as "John Black's Daughter" in Walsh's Caledonian Country Dances, and as "Foot's Vagaries" or "Green Grows the Rashes" in a D. Rutherford collecion of dance tunes in 1750. It's "Grant's Rant" in Bremner's Reels, 1759. So the modern form of the tune was around for quite a while before Burns' song to it was written. Burns' song and the tune for it are #77 in The Scots Musical Museum, I, 1787, "Green grows the Rashes. The words by Mr. R. Burns", and seems to the the earliest of Burns songs to appear in SMM. Burn's chorus is a variant of that in a fragment (2 verses and chorus) in Herd's 'Scots Songs', ii, p. 224, 1776, for a song Herd entitles "Green grows the Rashes". Basically, the tune "Green grow the rashes, O" has a long history in Scotland going back to the rude Straloch Lute MS versions, 1627-29, but there's no good evidence for anything earlier related to the tune. [John Glen, Early Scottish Melodies, 1900, also says there's no evidence to connect the 16th century titles with the Scots known Scots tune.]
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Subject: Lyr/Tune Add: GREEN GROWS THE RASHES From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 26 Oct 00 - 11:04 PM For reference here's the song from Herd's 'Scots Songs', 1776. Green grows the Rashes.
Green grows the rashes--O,
We're a' dry wi' drinking o't,
The down-bed, the feather-bed,
For reference, here's the way Burns' song to the tune was originally given.
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Burn's other (bawdy) version of "Green Grow the Rashes" was referenced in a letter to George Thompson in 1793, and was printed in The Merry Muses of Caledonia, 1799.
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Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Bonnie Are The Hurdies, O! From: GUEST,Bruce O. Date: 27 Oct 00 - 01:24 AM Sorry, I didn't read richardw's 10.00 PM post before mine of 10:22. Anderson didn't give the tune to "Bonnie are the Hurdies, O!" according to his information. I suspect the 'rustic song' that was meant in the original posting is actually that which I gave in my last post above (from Herd's 'Scots Songs'), but it is not from 1549, and Burns borrowed only the chorus (and that not exactly). |
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