MAC PHERSON'S FAREWELL

Fareweel ye dungeons dark and strang
Fareweel, fareweel tae ye.
Macpherson s time will no' be lang
On yonder gallows tree

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly
Sae daintily gaed he
He played a tune and he danced it round
Ablaw the gallows tree

There's some come here tae see me hang'd
And some tae buy my fiddle
But afore that I will part wi' her
I'll brak her through the middle

And he's took his fiddle in baith his hands
And brak it ower a stane

The reprieve was coming o'er the Brig o' Banff
Tae set Macpherson free
But they put the clock a quarter afore
And they hang'd him frae the tree

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly
Sae daintily gaed he
He played a tune and he danced it round
Ablaw the gallows tree.

MACPHERSON, a well-known Scottish brigand, was captured at Keith Market in 1700 and hanged at the Cross of Banff. He was also well known as a fiddle-player, and his defiant end became the subject of numerous broadsides, one of which, Robert Burns, not altogether successfully, recast. His end, at least in the song, is dramatic not only because of his virtuosity but because of the perfidy of the sheriff in moving the hands of the town clock, so that Macpherson could be turned off, as the expression was, before a reprieve arrived.

The present text, with its tune, is taken from the composite version made by Norman Buchan from the singing of two Scots Travellers, Jimmy McBeath and Davy Stewart, but adopts Burns's opening stanza.

ablaw: below
ROUD #2160

Source: Who Killed Cock Robin?: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment by Stephen Sedley and Martin Carthy, published in 2021 by Reaktion Books of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, pages 259-60

daintily: that's what it says in the Sedley/Carthy book.