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Lady Mary Anne

Date 04 May 1970
Track ID 66463
Part 1

Track Information

Original Track ID

SA1970.69

Original Tape ID

SA1970.069

Summary

In this song, a young woman loves a much younger boy. She decides to send him to school for another two years with a blue ribbon around his cap to let the ladies know that he's growing. The singer compares Mary Ann's beauty to a flower. Her sweetheart is described as the offspring of an oak who will grow to become the boast of the forest.

Lizzie Higgins learned the lyrics of this song from her grandmother, and worked with her father to find a pipe tune in his repertoire that was an appropriate melody for the song; they eventually settled on 'MacDonald of Dunacht' by John McColl of Oban, a famous piper of the nineteenth century.

Item Notes

5 verses of 4 lines. Lizzie Higgins' version is very close to Robert Burns' 'Lady Mary Ann', which is his adaptation of the traditional ballad known as 'The College Boy'.

On tape SA1973.151 there is an account of how Lizzie Higgins had help from her father (Donald Higgins) in adapting a pipe tune to fit this song: she got the words of 'Lady Mary Anne' from an old aunt of her father's, but the air was not good. Her father suggested (part of) '(Mrs) MacDonald of Dunacht', which fitted the words perfectly. He told her that this tune had been composed by J. R. MacColl of Oban, who lived about a hundred and thirty years before.

See:
Greig-Duncan vol. 6, pp. 410-412, no. 1222
'Scotland Sings' (E. MacColl, 1953) pp. 78-79
'Bothy Songs & Ballads' (J. Ord, 1930) p. 112
'Singing Island' (E. MacColl & P. Seeger, 1960) p. 19
'Scottish Ballad Book' (N. Buchan, 1973) pp. 133-134
'The Scotish (sic) Minstrel' vol. 4 (R. A. Smith, 1824) p. 14
'Ballads of Scotland' vol. 2 (W. E. Aytoun, 1858) p. 117
'The Scottish Folksinger' (N. Buchan & P. Hall, 1973) p. 71
'Vagabond Songs & Ballads' vol. 2 (R. Ford, 1901) pp. 183-184
'Songs from David Herd's Manuscripts' (H. Hecht, 1904) p. 145
'Minstrelsy Ancient & Modern' (W. Motherwell, 1827) pp. 86-87
'Folksongs of Britain & Ireland' (P. Kennedy, 1975) pp. 473-474
'Traditional Ballad Airs' vol. 2 (W. Christie, 1881) pp. 212-213
'Everyman's Book of English Country Songs' (R. Palmer, 1979) pp. 178-180
'The Works of Robert Burns' (R. Burns ed. A. Cunningham, 1845 edn) pp. 410-411
'The Scots Musical Museum' vol. 4 (J. Johnson & R. Burns, 1853) p. 390, no.377
'Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland' (E. MacColl & P. Seeger, 1977) pp. 117-118

Recording Location

County - Midlothian

Parish - Edinburgh

Village/Place - Edinburgh

Language

Scots

Collection

SoSS

Classification

R31 GD1910 LO35 R5404 GD1222

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good