The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #109889   Message #2300916
Posted By: Jim Carroll
30-Mar-08 - 04:51 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Young Munro
Subject: Lyr Add: YOUNG MUNRO
This is how it appears in 'Traditional Singers and Songs from Ontario,
along with Edith Fowke's note.
Jim Carroll

YOUNG MUNRO

It was on a Tuesday evening
Just at twelve o'clock at night,
I espied a handsome fair maid
Sitting by the candle light.

CHORUS:
Young Munro be Charlie agans,
Young Munro, I do love you!
Young Munro be Charlie agans,
Handsome Charlie, young Munro.

With the candle on the table
And the basin on the stand,
With a towel around her elbow
Like an angel she did stand.

Listen, listen, I will tell you
The first time I saw Munro,
Walking o'er the plains of Italy
Viewing of his Highland Co.

His shoes were made of Turkish leather
And his stockings made of silk,
Everything so neat about him,
And his skin as white as milk.

If you see that handsome fellow
With his red coat trimmed with blue,
Tell him if he loves another
My poor heart shall break in two.

If I had an Indian treasure,
Forty million in great store,
I would give to the Forty-Second
For the sake of young Munro.

29. YOUNG MUNRO. This unusual Scottish song does not seem to have been reported before in anything like this form, although two Nova Scotia songs have the same melody and refrain. "Charlie Yackam" in the Canadian record of "The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music" tells of the singer's love for his native land. Kenneth Peacock recorded it from the singing of "big" Norman MacMillan of Marble Mountain, Cape Breton, in 1951, and Mrs. Archie Kennedy, a Gaelic singer and speaker from Cape Breton, told Walter Wiley that it was written during the first World War to help instill a sense of patriotism in Cape Breton men serving in the Canadian armed forces. Helen Creighton has also recorded a song called "Charlie Yackum" which has a similar refrain, but its stanzas are ones usually found in such songs as "The Quaker's Courtship." "Charlie Yackam" is probably "Charlie agans"- Gaelic word meaning "mine."
The words Mrs. Fraser sings suggest an old-world origin. The opening stanzas echo the familiar Irish song about "The Spanish Lady," and the stanzas describing Young Munro give a romantic picture of a Highland guardsman. The Forty-Second is an old and honored Highland regiment: in his note on "Bonnie Laddie, Highland Laddie" in The Scots Musical Museum, William Stenhouse says, "In Gow's Repository, part second, there is an air called the Original Highland Laddie, or the Quick¬step of the gallant 42nd Regiment, as performed when that regiment was reviewed by his Majesty at Ashford, 7th May, 1802" (II, 315).
References:
Records: Columbia SL 211   (MacMillan).   National Museum: Creighton 153B-1875.