Cuttie's Wedding/Macaphee

Original Track ID

SA1980.53.3

Original Tape ID

SA1980.053

Summary

Everyone is invited to dress up and go to Cuttie's wedding. Macaphee is urged to turn the cattle as they are in the corn.

Item Notes

2 verses with chorus, 1 verse and chorus. Wedding song. Macaronic nonsense song.

Supposed to have been composed by a fiddler named Smith who had some involvement in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 (Jeannie Robertson recalled hearing that he had in fact been Bonnie Prince Charlie's own fiddler). Peter Buchan (1790-1854) gives the location for the song's penny wedding (a wedding where the guests provide the food and drink for the wedding reception) as Drumlithie, in the parish of St Fergus, taking place around 1770. The bridegroom in the song, 'Cuttie' as he is called (a Scots word meaning 'shorty'), was a local fisherman.

The village in question was actually called Drumlinie, located beside the Cuttie Burn on St Fergus Links; it has long since disappeared.

See:
Greig-Duncan vol. 3, p. 467
'101 Scottish Songs' (N. Buchan, 1962) p. 122
'Book of Scottish Song' (A. Whitelaw, 1845) p. 311
'Ancient Ballads and Songs' vol. 1 (P. Buchan, 1828) pp. 250-251
'The Place-names of Aberdeenshire' (William McCombie Alexander, 1952) p. 50
'Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice' (J. Porter & H. Gower, 1995) pp. 211-212

Item Location

Language

English, Scots

Genre

Song

Collection

SoSS

Classification

R3357 R20741

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good