Lyr/Chords Req: I'll Lay Ye Doon Love/Lay You Down

Subject: lay you down love
From: magician
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 04:34 PM

this is a wonderfull song that Gillie and I would like to sing.^^^

Subject: RE: Lyr/Chords Req: lay you down love
From: Amergin
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 05:37 PM

Do you mean...

O I'll lay ye doon, love, I'll treat ye decent
I'll lay ye doon, love, I'll fill your can
O I'll lay ye doon, love, I'll treat ye decent
For surely he is an honest man

?

it's in the dt....

Subject: RE: Lyr/Chords Req: lay you down love
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 27 Aug 01 - 11:32 PM

Yes, it is, as I'LL LAY YE DOON, LOVE. You won't find anything under "I'll Lay You Down". One way around this is to try searching with a phrase from the song, one that you think might be unique. (I tried using "I'll fill your can", and got right to the song.)

I love this song, but I've always been puzzled by the line "he is an honest man." Who is he?

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Lyr/Chords Req: lay you down love
From: magician
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 05:01 AM

thank you all. found it and used noteworthy to bring up the dots. gillie and i will be singing it soon

daffydd

Subject: RE: Lyr/Chords Req: lay you down love
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 07:45 AM

I can understand the "honest man" bit, but how about "I'll fill your can"? Are we talking freshly-brewed decaffeinated here?

Murray (the innocent)

Subject: RE: Lyr/Chords Req: lay you down love
From: GUEST,Dita (at work)
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 11:43 AM

Some other versions of this have the last line of the verse as-

......
For Derrol, he is an honest man.

And Murray, what's on offer here is that the singer undertakes to ensure that the lassie's wame (belly) is fu' (;-))

love, john

Subject: ADD: I Will Lay You Doun
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 12:15 PM

The DT text mentioned above appears to be that recorded by Norman Kennedy; two of the verses were added by Enoch Kent, and probably written by him.  He learned the song from Jeannie Robertson, who sang:

I WILL LAY YOU DOUN

(As sung by Jeannie Robertson)

For I will lay you doun, love, I'll treat you dacent,
I will lay ye doun, love, I'll fill your can;
I will lay ye doun, love, I'll treat you dacent,
For Bolerl he is a solid man.

For as I strollt out on a summer's evening,
Down by the waters of the pleasant Bann;
And as I was walking sure I could hear them talking,
And saying, "Bolerl he's a solid man."

I will lay you doun, love, I'll treat you dacent,
I will lay ye doun, love, I'll fill your can;
I will lay ye doun, love, I'll treat you dacent,
For Bolerl he is a solid man.

Jeannie may be heard singing the above on the record, Up the Dee and doon the Don (Lismor, 1984).  The transcription is from James Porter and Herschel Gower's Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice (Tuckwell Press, 1995).  The editors continue:

"Maria Stewart [Jeannie's mother] apparently had a number of verses for this Irish-American music-hall song with the title Muldoon, the Solid Man.  Two of the stanzas she sang are in Flying Cloud and One Hundred and Fifty Other Old Time Songs and Ballads (M.C. Dean, 1922), with this refrain:

So come with me and I'll use you dacent,
I'll get you drunk and I'll fill your can;
As I walk the street each friend I meet
Says, "There goes Muldoon, he's a solid man.

The tune is the versatile Galway Shawl, which Jeannie also used for Carrbridge Castle, Susan Pyatt, and I Was Drunk Last Night.  Several recorded versions have shown influence from her singing of the lyric (which has transformed it into a frankly erotic song).  Buchan and Hall (The Scottish Folksinger, 1973) print Jeannie's first two stanzas with two added by Enoch Kent.  Jean Redpath also contributes an extra verse in her recording."

The DT transcription shows some minor divergences from Kent's new verses, but the only significant one is the mis-transcription of Inverney, which should be Inverey.

For more on the background of this song, see this previous discussion:  Muldoon, The Solid Man

Subject: RE: Lyr/Chords Req: lay you down love
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 06:14 PM

This is what Ailie Munro says in her book on the Scottish folk revival:

[1984:] The story behind this song, as far as it has been possible to unravel the story behind the skeins, illustrates both the problems and the fascination of oral transmission. Jimmy Hutchison first heard it in London in the mid-sixties, sung by Enoch Kent who said that he had it as one verse and a chorus from Jeannie Robertson. Enoch added two more verses of his own and these are in 'The Scottish Folksinger' version [...]. But the first verse and the chorus, also attributed there to Jeannie Robertson who it seems was the first to make the song known in the Revival, are different from Jeannie's original verse and chorus, (which she changed herself as time went on). In a recording in the School of Scottish Studies, made by Hamish Henderson in 1954, Jeannie sings the chorus [...] with the ending:- "... a solid man". [...] 1959, the chorus and the second half of v. 1 are similar, except that "dacent" has now become "decent", but she has added as the first half of verse 1: As I strolled out on a summer's evening Down by the waters of the pleasant Bann. It transpires that Hamish Henderson himself had thought up these two lines and suggested them to Jeannie, to complete the four lines which are needed to fit the tune. He chose the river Bann (one of the chief rivers in Northern Ireland, which features in many songs) partly because it rhymed with "man", and partly because it fitted in with his conviction that the fragment was descended from an Irish song, a nineteenth century music hall ditty called Muldoon the solid man. Irish ancestry is also suggested by the word "dacent" in Jeannie's original version. Stanley Robertson, Jeannie's nephew, sings the fourth line of v. 1 as "There goes Bold Errol, he's an honest man" [...] - another pointer to Irish origin, since Errol is an Irish name.
And finally, Muldoon the solid Man: neither the National Library of Scotland nor Trinity College Library, Dublin, could find any trace of it. However, in 1954 Hamish Henderson had recorded two travellers, both singing a single verse of this song, after being asked specifically for Muldoon the solid Man [...] Both were rollicking drinking verses, with similar words though different tunes, and "I'll fill your can" in both clearly meant the offer of a drink, with no sexual meaning. (Munro, Revival 96f)

Subject: RE: Lyr/Chords Req: lay you down love
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Aug 01 - 09:54 PM

I ought to have thought to quote that, too; thankyou for adding it, Susanne.  The thread I referred to above, dealing with Muldoon the Solid Man, mentions sheet-music at  The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music;  A more direct link should be:

MULDOON THE SOLID MAN  (Ed. Harrigan, USA, c. 1874)