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This song is about a man whose former lover is now to be wed...

Date August 1954
Track ID 41235
Part 1

Track Information

Original Track ID

SA1954.88.B1

Original Tape ID

SA1954.088

Summary

This song is about a man whose former lover is now to be wed to another. He asks her to wait as she is "false beguiled". [Apparently at the wedding] he raises a toast to the couple, saying however that she is only his old shoes when she is with her new husband. Broken-hearted, he says he will lie down for a long sleep [i.e. death], this being the only way he can forget her.

Item Notes

6 verses. Also called 'She's Only My Auld Shoes' or 'I Aince Lo'ed a Lass'. There is a version called 'It was not My Fortune to Get Her" in the National Library of Scotland broadsides collection, published at the Overgate in Dundee, c. 1880-1900.

Jeannie Robertson sings the same song on an earlier track on the same tape (SA1954.88), where she says that she heard it from her mother when she was about eight years old.

See:
'Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice' (Porter & Gower, 1995) pp. 244-245
Greig-Duncan vol. 6, pp. 310-327, no. 1198
Ord p. 175 'It wasna My Fortune to Get Her'

Recording Location

County - Aberdeenshire

Parish - Aberdeen

Village/Place - Aberdeen

Language

English, Scots

Genre

Song

Collection

SoSS

Classification

R154 GD1198

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good