Search

Courtin Ma Love

Date 1960
Track ID 53345
Part 1

Track Information

Original Track ID

SA1960.243.A2

Original Tape ID

SA1960.243

Summary

This comic song details the exploits of a couple trying to meet each other in secret by employing a ladder to reach the girl's bedroom window. The man falls and cuts his bottom, and the girl wheels him home in a wheelbarrow. He is taken to the doctor, and the man giggles with embarrassment at his injury. The couple plan to marry, and the townspeople laugh and shout at him as he walks through the town bandaged up.

Sandy Scott learned the song from a man who worked with his father as a shepherd from the age of fourteen and died of thrombosis at the age of 34. This song and the Northumbrian 'Blaydon Races' were the man's two favourite songs.

Item Notes

4 verses with chorus after each. Verse 1 has two extra lines, and all choruses start in place of the last word in the line of the verse to disguise the word 'bum', a 'censored rhyme' technique, except for the last verse which does complete. Sounds like a comic music-hall song.

Item Subject/Person

Rigmaram, Mary; Green, Johnny

Recording Location

County - Fife

Parish - Dunfermline

Village/Place - Dunfermline

Item Location

County - Fife

Parish - Dunfermline

Village/Place - Dunfermline

Language

Scots

Collection

SoSS

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good