The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #58285 Message #2391525
Posted By: Jay777
17-Jul-08 - 01:05 PM
Thread Name: Origins: O the Shearing's Not For You
Subject: RE: Origins: O the Shearing's Not For You
Still a newbie, so apologies for resurrecting old threads- they're new to me!
My late father collated hundreds of song lyrics, many from the 1940s, most handwritten or typed by him from listening to the radio. However, his copy of The Shearing's Not for You (lyrics and music), appears to be a photocopy of pages 104 & 105 of a book- but I don't know which book!
The notes at the end say:
This song, with its fine melody, was rewritten early last century {the 1800s, presumably} by Thomas Lyle as a highflown song beginning "Let us haste to Kelvingrove, bonnie lassie o", and since then it has been widely known as Kelvingrove. The present text contains probably the greater part of the original song collated from two early 19th-century York broadsides (both of which are, however, garbled in places); but the first stanza may have been added by the printer, since there are indications that the song began with the title-line originally. The tune is a modified version of the one published in Smith's Scottish Minstral with Lyle's rewrite.
Incidentally, it has "Your back it winna bow" (not bou as in some versions I've seen): bow as in bend, but dad always pronounced it boo when he sang it. I can provide all the lyrics of this published version, if anyone's interested.