Corn Rigs

Corn Rigs, played here by Jack Armstrong’s Band (not stated buy presumably The Northumbrian Barnstormers). The tune has been uploaded from the Columbia LP “World Library of Folk and Primitive Music” series [Vol. III, AKL 4943 “England” (Side One, track 14)] which is part of the Society’s ‘Kenneth C. Savory Collection’.

Duration: 2 min. 34 sec.

Reel:  Allan’s Reels 19 (D); Kerr’s Reels 16 (D); RSCDS 4, 12 (C); [Corn Rigs are Bonny] (PM) SGSS 13 # 18; Robertson Athole Coll. (1884), 148 (G).

In A. Munro’s Recueil des Meilleurs Airs Ecossois..., Paris, 1732. Also [“Corn Riggs are Bonny”] in the John Campbell MS. (1713; in Glasgow Univ. Lib.). [… are Bonny] Cox MS., 104.

The tune’s first title (as published) is Sawney Will Never Be My Love Again, taking its name from the refrain of a song written by D’Urfey for his comedy The Virtuous Wife (performed 1679, pub. 1680). The song (beginning “Sawney was tall and of noble race”) was printed with the music in Playford, Choice Ayres and Songs, 3rd Book (1681), p. 9, called “A Northern Song” [facs. in C.L. Day, The Songs of Thomas D’Urfey, p. 103; see Simpson, 633]. Since Thomas Farmer wrote other music for the play, Chappell (PMOT II, 618) suggested he composed this too. Also: 180 Loyal Songs (1685) [Sawney will never, etc.]; Apollo’s Banquet (1687) [Sawney]; words and music in Wit and Mirth (1698), I.133; PPM (1719), I.316. The song was popular, appearing in several places, as well as being parodied. Gay selected it for a song in Polly (1729): “Should I not be bold” etc. In some ballad operas (Mitchell’s The Highland Fair, 1731 [46, no. xxix], etc.) the tune is called Corn riggs are bonny, from Allan Ramsay’s popular song (begins “My Patie is a lover gay”) from his ballad opera The Gentle Shepherd (1729), later in TTM 1733 (II.144).

Craig’s Scots Tunes (1730), 42 [Corn Rigs is Bonny] [whence Dick Songs (1903), 6]; McGibbon Scots Tunes (1742), 20; Bremner Scots Songs (1757), 21, etc. Words and music in Orpheus Caledonius (1733), II, no. 18; Calliope, or English Harmony (1739-46), I.41; Universal Harmony (1745), p. 43; Alex. Smith’s Musical Miscellany (1786); SMM (1787) I.94 (no. 93); and several single-sheet edd. [While a tune New Cornrigges is in the Blaikie MS. (1692 or so), this does not necessarily mean that there was an earlier “Cornrigges” tune extant; and Simpson points out (contra Dick, in Notes, p. 90) that much of the MS. is 18c, despite the date on the MS.] Verdict: not proven; but I think it was originally Scots. See Glen ESM, 50-51, who argues against English origin. See Simpson, BBBM, p. 633, for English history.

Ramsay’s song is the first published, but probably not the first written. A fragment of Burns’s time is in Cromek Reliques of R.B. (1808), 231

(O, corn rigs, and rye rigs
And c.r. are bonnie,
And gin ye meet a bonnie lass,
Prin up her cockernony).

Burns’s own version is well anthologised (“It was upon a Lammas night”). An obscene parody of Ramsay’s song (“My Patie is a lover gay,/ He’s always very funny”) is a bit later, in Merry Muses (1830); and other words by the 19th-century anthologist Chas. Mackay are in Scottish Songs (1877), I.214.