The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #85506 Message #1584285
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
16-Oct-05 - 05:44 PM
Thread Name: ADD: Battle of Harlaw (Child #163)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: jeannie robertson's battle of harlaw #16
Neither of the DT files has proper attribution, so are of limited value, though the first, as Jim says, does offer clues to some of the things you're having difficulty with.
The Rounder transcriptions have a poor reputation, sometimes seeming to have been based on completely different recordings. The transcription in James Porter and Herschel Gower's Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice (Edinburgh: Tuckwell Press and Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995) is pretty much as Jeannie sang it in 1953.
The transcription with Lismor's 1984 Up the Dee and doon the Don is also pretty good (they use "frae" instead of "fae" throughout; a judgement-call, really). I should think it's been reissued on cd since then.