CUT HIM DOWN, SUSIE
by James Boswell

Cut him down, Susie:
Haste ye wi' your gully knife -
Ye'se get him for your ain gudeman,
Gin ye contrive to save his life.

Cut him down and tak him hame
And send for folk to dance and sing,
And pit your arms about the neck
That on the gallows tree did hing.

These verses are quoted in Love, Labour and Liberty: the eighteenth-century Scottish Lyric ed. Thomas Crawford, Carcanet Press, 1976 and they come from the Boswell MSS in Yale University Library but Crawford doesn't assign any date to them. No tune is indicated, and it may be more a poem than a song although it does look very like a song.

It could possibly refer to the very difficult trial of John Reid a sheep-stealer in 1774 which Boswell, as his defence lawyer, expected to win, as he had done for him in his first criminal case in 1766. He was devastated when he lost this time, and John Reid was hanged still protesting his innocence. (See DNB entry for James Boswell.)

Matthew