Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: gillymor
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 06:25 PM

Connie Dover put together verses from both songs in her arrangement and used a melody similar to the one McPeake used.

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: Dave Rado
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 04:57 PM

Thanks Allan, that's very helpful. But do you - or does anyone - have any idea whether the new tune was written by McPeake or by an anonymous Irishman? (AFAIK that tune wasn't sung in Scotland until McPeake popularised it). And also whether that tune was written specifically for Wild Mountain Thyme or whether it's a traditional air that someone set to WMT?

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 11:47 AM

As far as I have heard he was encouraged by Kennedy (the interviewer) to copyright it. As you say he doesn't even claim to have actually written the words apart from a couple of lines. The "if my true love can not come" bit. Apart from that the verses are just mixed up a bit and the words "all go together" inserted for "Braes of Balquhidder". I remember reading the McPeake website and his younger family make the claim that the words are his and purely biographical which obviously doesn't hold true at all. Re the whole thing yes I'd agree it seems to be a new tune to an existing but adapted lyric.

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: Dave Rado
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 11:38 AM

Also, if we take what he says in the interview you linked to at face value, WMT isn't a plagiarised variant of TBOB as is generally thought, but rather is a variant of of TBOB that has evolved naturally in Ireland as part of the folk process.

Does anyone else have any insights into this? Or into where the tune of WMT might have come from, given that it (if the above discussions are correct) it is too different from the original tune of TBOB to have evolved from it?

Dave

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: Dave Rado
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 11:31 AM

Hi again Allan

I've just seen your most recent post, which you posted while I was writing my previous post.

Well assuming that the tune that McKellar et al sing The Braes to is its original tune, I wonder how it evolved into The Wild Mountain Thyme?

Interestingly, although Francis McPeake is generally credited as having written WMT (albeit somewhat plagiarised from TBOB), in the interview you linked to he takes no credit at all for having written it, and says he thinks it's a traditional folk song - which begs the questions of 1) why he copyrighted it, 2) why at least one of his close relatives have posted in past mudcat threads and said that he did indeed write it, and 3) why he has apparently said in other interviews that he first heard it in Scotland and adapted it.

Many thanks again for linking to that interview - it was fascinating to hear the man.

Dave

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: Dave Rado
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 11:21 AM

Hi again Allan

I've just listened to the recording you've linked to, which is very interesting (although as I said he apparently told a different story in other interviews).

It doesn't help much, though, in getting to the bottom of which tune The The Braes o' Balquhidder was originally set to. It is supposed to have been set to the tune of "The Three Carls o' Buchanan," but I can't find that tune anywhere. Any thoughts?

Dave

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 11:19 AM

I think that you might be right in that folks nowadays realise the words to WMT are from TBOB and just then fit the words from Tannahill to the newer tune.

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: Dave Rado
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 11:06 AM

Hi Allan

In other interviews he has said that he heard a similar song while visiting Scotland as an adult (presumably The Braes o' Balquhidder) and adapted the Scottish song - so I'm not sure that his memory on this is reliable.

In any case, the tune that McKellar, Gluck, Peterson and The Tannahill Weavers all sing it to doesn't seem to me to have any relationship at all with the tune of Wild Mountain Thyme - I don't see how one could have been derived from the other.

Dave

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 11:04 AM

Scroll on the recording to 39:40 and you hear McPeake talking about the song before and after playing it


https://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Peter-Kennedy-Collection/025M-C0604X0556XX-0001V0?fbclid=IwAR2UA7cjRJ9ECD8FI000

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: GUEST,Allan Conn
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 11:00 AM

Dave on the very first recording of the song McPeake says that he learned the song as a child from an old uncle. He says he played about on the tune with the pipes. Not very clear really as to how much he changed it as I suppose we don't know what tune his uncle used before McPeake played around with it.

Subject: RE: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: Dave Rado
Date: 17 Jan 20 - 10:56 AM

By the way, another folk singer who has recorded The Braes of Balquhidder to the tune of Wild Mountain Thyme is John MacDonald, whose recording of it is on Amazon and Spotify among other places.

Also, the rampantscotland website claims here that the The Braes o' Balquhidder has the same tune as Wild Mountain Thyme.

But it seems unlikely to me that Robert Tannahill set it to that tune, given that McKellar, Gluck, Peterson and The Tannahill Weavers all sing it to the same, very different, tune (or almost the same in the case of The Tannahill Weavers) - especially as Gluck recorded it in 1910, long before Wild Mountain Thyme was written.

So I'm guessing that after Wild Mountain Thyme was written, some people started singing The Braes o' Balquhidder to the tune of Wild Mountain Thyme because of the fact that they share such similar words.

Another possibility, though, is that The Braes o' Balquhidder had acquired two different tunes even before Wild Mountain Thyme was written, and that Francis McPeake used one of those for Wild Mountain Thyme.

Can anyone clarify?

Many thanks

Dave

Subject: Origins: Wild Mountain Thyme/Braes o' Balquhidder
From: Dave Rado
Date: 16 Jan 20 - 07:12 PM

1) Although I've heard the Braes o' Balquhidder sung to a tune very similar to that of Wild Mountain Thyme (e.g. here), the tune it is is usually sung to, e.g. by Kenneth McKellar, Alma Gluck, Carl Peterson among others, is very different from the tune of Wild Mountain Thyme.

I presume this must therefore be the tune that Tannahill set his song to, although I can't find a definitive confirmation of that - according to many sources, he set it to the tune of a traditional air called "The Three Carls o' Buchanan," but I can't find any recordings of "The Three Carls o' Buchanan". So my first question is whether I'm right in thinking that the tune that McKellar, Gluck and Peterson sang it to is in fact the tune that Tannahill set it to.

2) If the answer to my first question is "yes", then whereas words of Wild Mountain Thyme are clearly derived from those of The Braes o' Balquhidder, their tunes are completely unrelated; in which case, what's the origin of Wild Mountain Thyme's tune? Did Francis McPeake compose it from scratch, or is it derived from yet another traditional tune?

I've read loads of mudcat threads about both songs but to my surprise I can't find any discussion of the origin of WMT's tune - and the Wikipedia article about Wild Mountain Thyme doesn't mention this either, despite the fact that it does discuss the origin of The Braes o' Balquhidder's tune!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dave

PS - The Tannahill Weavers also sing The Braes of Balquhidder to a tune very similar to the one that McKellar, Gluck and Peterson sang it to, but not quite the same and I don't like theirs as much.