The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #79613   Message #1443688
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
25-Mar-05 - 02:32 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Archie of Ca'field / Archie o Cawfield
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Scottish Borders cowboy song
Number 188 in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, where several versions appear under the heading Archie O Cawfield. Scott actually published two "versions" ("... with many improvements, besides Scotticising the spelling"), apparently based on the Glenriddell MSS text; one in the original edition of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802), and an expanded form with material added "from recitation" appeared in subsequent editions.

The text above certainly isn't the second one. It seems in its turn to have been altered from the form in which Scott printed it; where did you get it? See also

Child, III, 484-496 (number 188)
Bronson, Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, III, 175-178: seven texts with tunes.

DT: Bold Archer (copied from the condensed Bronson, but with source information omitted. Taken from F M Collinson and F Dillon, Songs from the Countryside, I, 1946, p 20)

Forum: Lyr Req: Tony Rose - Bold Archer Brief discussion of a collated set recorded by Tony Rose, and link to broadside printing.