The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5)
General
The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5)
Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts
2^3. She’s tied them about.
#D.#
_Not divided into stanzas in the MS._
#E.#
_Variations in Christie_, I, 66:
2^{1–3}. ye’ll.
6^1. O Willie’s.
7^3. And there were mair than threescore and ten.
14^4. at Gamery.
15^2. Where she had ribbons.
15^3. And tore them a’ and let.
15^4. And syne she ran.
16^4. ’Twas there.
17^1. She straiked back.
17^4. We’ll baith sleep.
#G.#
6^1. _Originally_ But out.
#H.#
2^2. bound the bridgestyle.
APPENDIX
ANNAN WATER
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1833, III, 282; 1802, II, 138.
The first edition lacks stanzas 5, 6, 8, 9. Two of these were inserted
“from another copy of the ballad in which the conclusion proves
fortunate.”
“The ballad,” says Scott, “is given from tradition,” for which a more
precise expression would perhaps be “oral repetition.” It is asserted in
the Minstrelsy to be “the original words of the tune of ‘Allan Water,’
by which name the song is mentioned in Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany”
(‘Allan Water, or, My love Annie’s very bonny,’ T. T. M., vol. i, p.
105, of the Dublin edition of 1729). This assertion is not justified by
any reasons, nor does it seem pertinent, if the Allan was originally the
river of the ballad, to add, as the editor does, that “the Annan and the
Frith of Solway, into which it falls, are the frequent scenes of
tragical accidents.”
A song which may pass for the original Allan Water until an earlier is
produced is among the Laing broadsides (now in the possession of Lord
Rosebery), No 59. There is no date or place, but it is thought to have
been printed toward the end of the seventeenth century, or the beginning
of the eighteenth, and probably at Edinburgh.
The title is: ‘Allan Water, or, A Lover in Captivity.[111] A new song,
sung with a pleasant new air.’ There are three eight-line stanzas, and
it begins:
Allan Water’s wide and deep,
and my dear Anny’s very bonny;
Wide’s the straith that lyes above ‘t,
if ‘t were mine, I’de give it all for Anny.
Allan Cunningham says of the ballad, Songs of Scotland, II, 102: “I have
heard it sung on the banks of the Annan. Like all traditional verses,
there are many variations.” And he cites as “from an old fragment” these
couplets:
O Annan water’s wading deep, [_i.e._ wide and]
Yet I am loth to weet my feet;
But if ye’ll consent to marry me,
I’ll hire a horse to carry thee.[112]
It is my conviction that ‘Anna Water,’ in Ramsay’s language, is one of
the “Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before” 1800.
“By the Gatehope Slack,” says Sir Walter Scott, “is perhaps meant the
Gate Slack, a pass in Annandale.”
1
‘Annan water’s wading deep,
And my love Annie’s wondrous bonny,
And I am laith she suld weet her feet,
Because I love her best of ony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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