The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #48931   Message #821599
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
08-Nov-02 - 01:18 PM
Thread Name: Tune Add: Missing DT tunes - Part NINE
Subject: RE: Tune Add: Missing DT tunes - Part NINE
DCOWPER   DONALD COWPER AND HIS MAN  The DT text is from David Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1776) and was reproduced with music in Chambers' Songs of Scotland Prior to Burns (1862). Unless someone has access to that, we are going to have to make do with the set from Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (vol.IV, 1792, song no.334), where it is printed as Donald Couper. As was common at the time, the chorus music was given first; I have (reluctantly) reversed the order of the parts to conform to the DT arrangement, but I have not fitted the tune to the DT text: I have retained the slightly different SMM lyric, which is as follows:

O Donald Cowper and his man
Held to a Highland fair, man,
And a' to seek a bonnie lass,
But fient a ane was there, man.

Chorus:
Hey Donald, how Donald,
Hey Donald Couper;
He's gane awa' to seek a wife,
And he's come hame without her.

At length he got a Carlin gray,
And she's come hirpling hame, man;
And she's fa'n o'er the buffet stool,
And brak her rumple-bane, man.

ERLKING   THE ERL-KING  This is a rather unimpressive adaptation -judging from the text- of Goethe's poem, by Steve Gillette. Whoever added it gave no indication as to which of several tunes might have been used for it; or whether, indeed, Gillette had set it to yet another of his own. Here are some options:

Erlkoenig (transcribed for piano by Franz Liszt)
Erlkönig: Johann Fr. Reichardt 1752-1814

There is also a setting by Carl Loewe, but I haven't found a midi of that. Likely enough the tune is none of those, anyway. It seems to be on more than one of Gillette's records, and some sort of notation appears in his book The Steve Gillette Songbook.

Somebody round here must have a copy of it.

GERRYOWN   GERRY OWENS (Sargent Flynn)  Although listed "missing", this one does have a midi. Well, it says it does, but BAWNOG.MID, also the tune for BRIAN OG AND MOLLY BAWN) can't be found on the server. Never mind; it can be retrieved from the new download version. The text was taken from the Max Hunter Collection, where you can also get a midi for it: be warned, though, that one's pretty ghastly...

GARYOWE2   GARY OWEN   This is exactly the same as the foregoing, except that there are a few, very minor differences in wording and the verses are in a different order. NB. Neither of these is sung to the well-known tune Garryowen.

HIDEWILL   HIDE WILLIE HIDE   A modern parody, set to the tune A. L. Lloyd used (and perhaps wrote) for his update of  THE TWO MAGICIANS, where the tune can be found. The less said about the DT text of The Two Magicians the better, perhaps; the parts that actually come from Lloyd contain several glaring mistakes, and someone has grafted on a number of rather poor home-made verses, with no information whatever as to where they came from. At the very least, there should be some indication of which are Lloyd's verses (Anglicised from the Scottish text in Child for the most part) and which are not. It has been clear in previous discussions of the song that people come across such verses tacked on to traditional material and think that they have discovered a genuine traditional variant; we really should not be confusing them in this way.