Cumberland Square

Duration 2 mins. 23 sec.

Recorded by Jack Armstrong and his Northumbrian Barnstormers under the auspices of the English Folk Dance and Song Society  [EFDSS]

His Master’s Voice Folk Dance Series: “North Country Dances” E.M.I. 7EG 8455: Side 1, Track 1.

[7TEA878: side 1; 7TEA879: side 2] (1959)

               This dance comes from Cumberland near the Scottish Border. Both of the tunes heard here are Scottish with the first, My love is but a lassie yet, being perhaps the primary tune used for the Cumberland Square Dance: My love is but a lassie yet and Athol Highlanders

 

My love is but a lassie yet

The usual title is My Love She’s But a Lassie Yet (2/4 Scots Measure) in Kerr’s Modern Album 19 (D); Kerr’s Caledonian Coll. 29; [omits “Yet”] Kerr’s Merry Melodies 46; (2/4 Pipe March) SGSS 137 # 240; etc.

     Tune is in Aird’s 2nd Selection (1782), under the usual title; first printed in Bremner’s Scots Reels or Country Dances (1757), 19, as Miss Farquharson’s Reel. Stenhouse says a MS. copy (post 1746) is called Lady Badinscoth’s Reel. C. K. Sharpe (Add. Illus., *303) says the old title was Put up your dagger, Jamie, the words being in Vox Borealis, 1641. Glen (ESM 134) points out that an air is neither given nor mentioned in Vox Borealis; and he gives the tune Put up thy Dagor Jennie from (a transcript of) the Blaikie MS. of 1692, which does not resemble our air at all. O’Farrell (Pocket Companion, vol. II), c. 1806, p. 114. In Raven English Country Dance Tunes (1984), 144, as The Duke of York. Yet another title is The Gordons hae the guiding o’t (Strathspey).

The best-known words are by Burns, in SMM III (1790), 234 (# 225) (+ m.), 2×8 lines; and much anthologised. The last half-stanza [“We’re a’ dry wi’ drinking o’t”] is from “Green grows the rashes” in Herd II (1776), 224. Allan’s Sc. Songs 31 (+ m.), with an inserted st. (8 lines), presumably by Hector MacNeil.

A variant of Burns’ text is mentioned in Greig FSNE lxx, 2, 4 lines; begins “Oh, sweet, but a beauty is my Jean”. The correspondent heard it sung “many years ago by a beggar man who came from Skye, and was then 103 years of age…. The old man sometimes sang the song in Gaelic…. [As to the air:] The second strain corresponds with what we find in book versions of the tune; but the first strain is considerably different.”

Another text is by James Hogg {second line “A lightsome, lovely lassie yet”), first pub. in the Edinburgh Literary Journal, and after in Songs by the Ettrick Shepherd (Edin.: Blackwood, 1831). With the music in G. F. Graham Wood’s Songs of Scotland (1850), I.116 (+ m.), etc.

Yet another, by James Morton (line 2 “She’s neither proud nor saucy yet”) in Dun & Thomson Vocal Music of Scotland II.16 (+ m.). 3×8 lines [rhyming in couplets], ends “the blink o’ Mary’s e’e.”

Athole Highlanders, The:

6/8 Quickstep

       Kerr’s Caledonian, 4; Logan’s Complete Tutor (1963), 24; 6/8 Pipe March SGSS 78 # 181 (A); Kerr’s MM III 29 (G) [Atholl Gathering] Allan’s Reels 29 (A); [Atholl Gathering] Marr 17 (A); [Duke of Atholl’s Reel] RSCDS 16, 3 (A) [s–smd/smdrmf].

  This is often called The Athole Gathering; but in the Cox MS., 164, as Duke of   Atholes Pibroach. In that MS., 9, occurs The Atholl Highlanders March (4/4), a different tune entirely. [key A, 4/4: s,/d m-d s m-d/l s-s s ms/l- s fm rd/m r-r r s etc.]

[Fiddler’s Companion:]

Musically, the tune contains a characteristic melodic cliché in Scottish music in which a figure is followed by the same or a related figure on the triad one tone below or above (Emmerson Rantin’ Pipe, 1971 [210]). The original Athole Highlanders (and the ones associated with the tune) were the old 77th Highland Regiment, raised in 1778 and commanded by Colonel James Murray. The 77th served in Ireland and was not engaged in active service, though its garrison services were apparently useful in freeing other units for the conflicts with America and France. They were disbanded in 1783 after those conflicts ended (although the disbanding may have come about because of a mutiny). The tune was later taken up as a march past by the 2nd Battalion of the Cameronians, the 90th Light Infantry, who over the years had shed their Scottish origins. However, when pipers were introduced in 1881 they recollected their Perthshire origins and chose to play “The Atholl Highlanders” (also known in pipe literature as “The Gathering of the Grahams”). The tune is associated in modern times with the dance called The Duke of Gordon’s Reel, so much so that Scottish dance musicians will sometimes call “Atholl Highlanders” by the name “Duke of Gordon’s Reel” (despite the fact that “Atholl Highlanders” is a jig). See also the early printing of the tune in Morison’s Highland Airs and Quicksteps, vol. 1 (No. 19), where it appears as “Duke of Atholl’s March”. Brody Fiddler’s Fakebook (1983), 27; Kerr Merry Melodies III, 29 (no. 265).