17 Oct 05 - 04:57 PM (#1584849)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: jeannie robertson's battle of harlaw
From: Susanne (skw)
I've had a listen to the version in 'Up the Dee and Doon the Don' using Roberto's transcription. This is the result:
V. 1: I definitely hear 'Nether Ha'', with nothing in between.
(Admittedly, I also hear 'thirty thoosan'', but as 'fifty thoosan'' is mentioned further down that seems to be due to the old recording which makes some things difficult to understand.)
V. 3:
For I cam frae the hielands, man
V. 6:
It's there they met Sir James the Rose
Wi' him Sir John the Graeme (Graham?)
V. 7:
If that be true(?), said Sir James the Rose
(Very difficult to understand - like Roberto, I hear an initial 's', but the word is too long for 'so'. 'True' is more reasoned than heard.)
V. 8:
O nay, O nay, said Sir John the Graeme
Sic things we'll maunna dae
For the gallant Graemes were never beaten
We'll try what they can dae
V. 11:
They laid in us fu' sair
V. 16:
What a cry amangst the hielan'men
When they see'd their leader fa'
In that recording Jeannie sings 'cam' and 'frae' throughout. Also, it's 'maunna' - must not, and 'dae' - do ('dee' would be die).
Also, some info on the historical accuracy and age of the ballad by Hamish Henderson (who joins in singing the chorus in the recording I have):
[1959:] It has been contended by some critics [...] that the folk ballad of Harlaw is comparatively recent in origin. There are powerful arguments against this contention. It's true, certainly, that the ballad re-writes (and falsifies) history in favour of the North-east Lowlanders. But a comparative study of the balladry of war shows that it is exactly this violent and often fact-denying partisanship which is characteristic of it. The song about the battle fought on the Haughs of Cromdale was similarly re-written to make it a Jacobite victory. (Hamish Henderson, letter to Weekly Scotsman, May 14)
[1964:] In 1411, the burghers and feudal barons of the North-East fought the Highland army of Donald, Lord of the Isles, to a standstill - at Harlaw, near Inverurie, less than twenty miles from [Aberdeen]. However, at the end of the day the flower of Lowland chivalry lay dead on the field [...]
Both sides eventually claimed that they had won the day, but the Irish Annals of Loch Ce are undoubtedly right in logging the battle as a victory of the Gael over the Gall [...] The Lord of the Isles [who actually survived the battle] did not, however, follow up his victory, and Aberdeen was spared the sacking it was to receive two and a half centuries later at the hands of Montrose's Irish and Hielandmen.
In 1549, the anonymous author of 'The Complaint of Scotland' listed The Battle of Hayrlau among the songs and dances known to the peasantry of Scotland. Has this ballad survived? - or is The Battle of Harlaw, first printed by Alexander Laing in 'The Thistle of Scotland' in 1823, an eighteenth-century production? I know Alec Keith inclines to think so; he has suggested that the 'Hellenic enthusiasm' of one Robert Forbes, Gent (who wrote 'Ajax's Speech to the Grecian Knabbs', published in 1742), may have been responsible for the Homeric proportions of the battle-scene. Furthermore, the Forbeses, who play such a notable part in the folk-ballad, were not, it seems, at Harlaw at all.
However that may be - and the weight of critical opinion seems to be against the antiquity of Harlaw as we now hear it sung - there can be no doubt that when Jeannie [Robertson] sings it, it fully deserves to be styled a traditional ballad, and questions of historical accuracy are in abeyance, at any rate for the moment.
I should maybe add that my own opinion about Harlaw - my present opinion, anyway - is that there is a very old core of ballad in the stanzas which describe the onset of the battle ('ilka sword gaed clash for clash'), but that a lot of re-writing and re-shaping may well have taken place in the eighteenth century. Also, I should think that the tune, which is a wonderful pentatonic ballad-tune, could well be exceedingly old; my guess would be that it has carried this ballad, in one shape or another, for three or four centuries - and even if that is not the case, you'll agree that 1800 to the mid-twentieth century is quite a respectable length of time for a ballad to become 'traditional'. (Henderson, Alias MacAlias 39f)
|