It has been mentioned to me that I do not give the proper designation
to Mr Gordon in the version of this ballad that I sing.
ACHNACHIE Gordon is what I sing and after recording it at the S.O.S.S. the young lady doing the recording and I had a discussion
on this apparent anomaly.
Shortly thereafter I was checking another subject when I came across
the mention of a wedding between a Miss Achnachi and a Mr Gordon
in the parish records of Knockando, the very area where the
ballad is supposed to have originated.
Oral transmittion is, in my view, vindicated by this discovery in as much as the name ACHNACHI was not unknown in those parts.
Who knows, the young lady"s father may have been Achnachi of that Ilk
and if she were his heir her husband would, by the law of Scotland,
have become Achnachi Gordon. A descendant of the marriage could have
been the Gordon of the ballad.
Joe.
Joe.