BOBBY SHAFTOE/SHAFTO [1]. English, New England; Polka, Reel or Sword Dance. England, Northumberland. C Major (Karpeles, Peacock): D Major (Brody, Raven): G Major (Miller & Perron {polka}, Raven {sword dance version}): B Flat Major (Stokoe). Standard. AB (Raven & Karpeles {sword dance versions}, Bruce & Stokoe): AAB (Brody): AABB (Miller & Perron): AABBCCDD (Raven): AABBCCDDEEFFGG (Peacock). "Bobby Shaftoe" is better known to recent generations as a nursery rhyme and jump-rope song. There is a morris dance {called "Castlering"} from Lichfield, England, which is performed to an altered version of this tune (tune and dance printed in Raven, pg. 87). The 'B' part of the tune is the same as "Lady's Breast Knot," "Bonny Breast Knot," and, in America, "Jaybird," "Skip to My Lou," and "Daddy Shot a Bear." The sword dance version is from the village of Askham Richard, England (Karpeles).
***
Bobby Shaftoe's gaen to sea, Siller buckles on his knee;
He'll come back and marry me, Bonny Boddy Shaftoe.
Bobby Shaftoe's bright and fair, Combing down his yellow hair;
He's me awn for ever mair, Bonny Bobby Shaftoe. (Northumbrian, Stokoe & Bruce)
***
Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea,
Silver buckles at his knee:
He'll come back and marry me,
Bonny Bobby Shaftoe!
***
Bobby Shaftoe's tall and slim,
Always dressed so neat and trim;
The ladies they all look at him,
Bonny Bobby Shaftoe!
***
Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea,
Silver buckles at his knee:
He'll come back and marry me,
Bonny Bobby Shaftoe! (English, Time Hart)
***
Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea,
With silver buckles on his knee;
He'll come back and marry me,
Bonny Bobby Shaftoe.
***
Bobby Shaftoe's bright and fair,
Combing down his yellow hair,
He's ma' ain for ever mair,
Bonny Bobby Shaftoe.
***
Bobby Shaftoe's getten a bairn,
For to dandle in his airm;
In his airm, and on his knee,
Bobby Shaftoe loves me. (Scottish)
***
Source for notated version - Dudley Laufman (N.H.) [Brody]. Brody (Fiddler's Fakebook), 1983; pg. 50. Bruce & Stokoe (Northumbrian Minstrelsy), 1882; pg. 115. Karpeles & Schofield (A Selection of 100 English Folk Dance Airs), 1951; pg. 32. Kennedy (Fiddlers Tune Book), Vol. 1, 1951; No. 52, pg. 26. Miller & Perron (101 Polkas), 1978; No. 100. Peacock (Peacock's Tunes), c. 1805/1980; No. 44, pg. 20. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; pg. 161, pg. 87. Front Hall 03, Dudley Laufman- "Swinging on a Gate." Front Hall 010, Fennigs All Stars- "The Hammered Dulcimer Strikes Again."
T:Bobby Shaftoe
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S: Bruce & Stokoe - Northumbrian Minstrelsy
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JOHN O'DWYER OF THE GLEN [1] (Seán Ó Duibhir a' Ghleanna). AKA and see "Sean O Duibir an Gleanna." Irish, Slow Air (3/4 time). Ireland, County Kerry. D Major or A Mixolydian. Standard. AB (Stanford/Petrie): AAB (O'Neill). O'Neill states: "Versions (of the song) are almost as numerous as the singers of this fine old air," and he says it was very popular in Munster in a variety of forms and titles. According to Flood (1906), the song commemorates the Glen of Aherlow, which hid for a time the brave Anglo-Irish lord James, Earl of Desmond, after his defeat in September, 1600, at the hands of Captain Greame and the Irish. One version of the melody can be found in Bunting's Ancient Irish Airs of 1796 (a collection of 66 airs, mostly collected from performers at the Belfast Harp Festival of 1792). A translation of the lyrics goes:
***
After Aughrim's great disaster
When our foe, in sooth, was master
It was you who first plunged in and swam
The Shannon's boiling flood
And through Sliabh Bloom's dark passes
You led your Gallowglasses
Although the hungry Saxon wolves
Were howling for your blood.
And as we crossed Tipperary
We rived the Clan O Leary
And a creacht we drove before us
As our horseman onward came
With our spears and swords we gored them
As through flood and fire we bore them
Still Seán Ó Duibhir a Ghleanna
You were worsted in the game.
***
Long, long we kept the hillside
Our couch hard by the rillside
The sturdy knotted oaken boughs
Our curtain overhead.
The summer sun we laughed at
The winter snow we scoffed at
And trusted to our long bright swords
To win us daily bread.
Till the Dutchman's troops came round us
In steel and fire they bound us
They blazed the woods and mountains
Tills the very clouds were flame
Yet our sharpened swords cut through them
To their very hearts we hewed them
Still Seán Ó Duibhir a Ghleanna
You were worsted in the game.
***
Here's a health to yours and my king
The sovereign of our liking
And to Sarsfield, underneath whose flag
We'll cast once more a chance
For the morning dawn will wing us
Across the seas and bring us
To take a stand and wield a brand
Amongst the sons of France.
And as we part in sorrow
Still, Sea/n O/ Dibhir, a chara
Our prayer is "God Save Ireland"
And pour blessings on her name.
May her sons be true when needed
May they never fail, as we did
For Sea/n O/ Duibhir a Ghleanna
You were worsted in the game.
***
Sources for notated versions: "From an old Kerry MS" [Stanford/Petrie]; fiddler Michael G. Enright, a native of County Limerick [O'Neill]. O'Neill (1850), 1903/1979; No. 35, pg. 7. Stanford/Petrie (Complete Collection), 1905; No. 736, pg. 184.
MAIRI'S WEDDING. AKA and see "Lewis Bridal Song." Scottish, Scottish Measure (4/4 time). Scotland, Hebrides. G Major. Standard. AABB. The tune is from the Hebrides Islands (the alternate title refers to the Isle of Lewis) which lie off the north coast of Scotland and was first printed in Marjory Kennedy-Fraser's Songs of the Hebrides (1909), with English words (though thought to have been originally in Scots Gaelic). There is nothing that particularly distinguishes this tune as Scottish, notes Emmerson (1972), save for the "hint of Rant in the first two phrases." An article in the Glasgow Daily Record by Stephen Houston claimed that the song "Mairi's Wedding" was originally written for Mary McNiven by her friend Johnny Bannerman in Gaelic and was first played to her at the Old Highlanders Institute in Glasgow for the Mod of 1935 (where she won the prize for singing). Although unlikely, due to the printing of the song in the 1909 Songs of the Hebrides, the article states that although the song was written for her, it was not on the occasion of her wedding but rather for her birthday -- she married Skye-born sea captain John Campbell 6 years later. The article was published the day before Mary's 90th birthday.
***
Chorus:
Step it gaily, off we go
Heel for heel and toe for toe,
Arm in arm and off we go (or 'row on row')
All for Mairi's wedding.
***
Over hillways up and down
Myrtle green and bracken brown,
Past the sheiling through the town
All for sake of Mairi.
***
Plenty herring, plenty meal
Plenty peat to fill her creel,
Plenty bonny bairns as weel
That's the toast for Mairi.
***
Cheeks as bright as rowans are
Brighter far than any star,
(or Red her cheeks as rowans are
Bright her eye as any star)
Fairest o' them all by far
Is my darlin' Mairi.
***
Miller & Perron (New England Fiddler's Repertoire), 1983; No. 54. Tradition 2118, Jim MacLeod & His Band - "Scottish Dances: Jigs, Waltzes and Reels" (1979).
T:Mairi's Wedding
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OVER THE WATER TO CHARLIE. AKA - "Charley Over the Water," "Over the River to Charlie," "Over the Water." AKA and see "Ligrum Cush," "Lacrum Cosh," "The Marquis (Marquess) of Granby," "Pot Stick," "Sean Buidhe" (Yellow John) "The Shambuy," "Wishaw's Delight." Scottish (originally), English, American; Air, Jig and Morris Dance Tune (6/8 time, with an irregular measure in the 'B' part). England, Northumberland. A Major (Raven): G Major (Alewine, Kennedy, Kerr, Mallinson). Standard. AABB (x4). A Jacobite (i.e. Highland supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie) tune that was "improbably" introduced into British Guards regiments by 1764 (Winstock, 1970). That Winstock finds this improbable seems to be because the last Jacobite attempt to capture the throne of England was defeated at the Battle of Culloden in 1745, a mere nineteen years prior to the Britsih Guards introduction. However, memories of the rising appeared to have healed even more quickly in the general populace of England, as evidenced by this excerpt from a letter written by Ralph Bigland in 1749 of an entertainment on the London stage (quoted by Emmerson, 1972):
***
I have since I came here [London] been lately two or three
times at the play and what invited me most was to see a
new dance called the Scots Dance consisting of about 20
lads and lasses dress'd after the Highland fashion. The
scene represents a very romantic, rocky, or mountainous
country seemingly, at the most distant view you behold a
glorious pair (which far surpass all the other actors) sitting
among the rocks, while the rest are dancing below among
groves of trees. Some are also representing with their
wheels a spinning; all the while the music plays either
Prince Charlie's minuet or the Auld Stewarts Back Again.
At last descends from the mountains the glorious pair
which to appearance is a prince and princess. Then all the
actors retire on each side while the royal youth and his
favourite dance so fine, in a word that the whole audience
clap their hands for joy. Then in a moment the spinning
wheels are thrown aside and every lad and lass join in the
dance and jerk it away as quick as possible while the
music briskly plays--Over the Water to Charlie, a bagpipe
being in the band. In short it was so ravishing seemingly
to the whole audience that the people to express their joy
clap their hands in a most extraordinary manner indeed.
***
Though the title stems from the Jacobite era, the tune is older and has had many names (given above as alternates--see notes for "Pot Stick" and "Sean Buide"), however, by the 1750's it was appearing in published collections with the "Over the Water" title. Bayard (1981) identifies that at some point the tune was altered and a new group of variations formed using the second half of the "Charlie" tune as the first strain and adding a different second strain. This second group is usually known as "Blow the Wind Southerly" (after song lyrics) or "Kinloch (of Kinloch)" {a title which first appeared in 1798 in John Watlen's Second Collection of Circus Tunes}. Early printings of the tune can be found in Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion (book 4, pg. 7, c. 1752), the Gillespie Manusript of Perth (1768) and Robert Bremner's 1757 collection (pg. 16). A three-verse version exists in the Scots Musical Museum (1788) and it appears in Hogg's Jacobite Relics (early 1800's).
***
"Over the Water to Charlie" was employed variously as an accompaniment to dancing in the British Isles and was imported as a dance tune to America. A morris dance version was collected in the village of Bledington, Gloucestershire, in England's Cotswolds, while country dance instructions, but not the melody, appear in the Scottish Menzies Manuscript, 1749 (contained in the Atholl Collection of the Sandeman Library, Perth). The title appears in Henry Robson's list of popular Northumbrian song and dance tunes ("The Northern Minstrel's Budget"), which he published c. 1800 and, in America, the tune appears in Giles Gibbs' MS collection made in 1777 in East Windsor, Connecticut.
***
Words to the melody can be found in several collections. The following are from the Scots national poet, Robert Burns:
Come boat me o'er, come row me o'er,
Come boat me o'er to Cherlie:
I'll gie John Ross anither bawbee
To boat me o'er to Charlie. --
***
Chorus:
We'll o'er the water, we'll o'er the sea,
We'll o'er the water to Charlie;
Come weal, come woe, we'll gather and go,
And live or die wi' Charlie. --
***
I lo'e weel my Charlie's name,
Tho' some there be abhor him:
But O, to see auld Nick gaun hame,
And Charlie's faes before him!
***
I swear and vow by moon and stars,
And sun that shines so early!
If I had twenty thousand lives,
I'd die as aft for Charlie.
***
And these from the Ettick Shepherd, James Hogg (Jacobite Relics):
Come boat me o'er, come ferry me o'er,
Come boat me o'er tae Charlie
I'd hear the call once, but never again,
Tae carry me over tae Charlie.
***
Chorus:
We'll over the water, we'll over the sea,
We'll over the water tae Charlie.
Come weel, come woe, we'll gather and go
And live or die with Charlie.
***
I swear by moon and stars sae bright,
And sun that shines sae Dearly,
I would give twenty-thousand lives
I'd given them all for Charlie.
***
Once I had sons, but now I've gat nane,
I've treated them all sae sairly.
But I would bear them all again,
And lose them all for Charlie
***
Sources for notated versions: John White (Greene County, Pa., 1930's) and Thomas Patterson (Elizabeth, Pa., 1930's) [Bayard]. Alewine (Maid that Cut Off the Chicken's Lips), 1987; pg. 28. Bacon (The Morris Ring), 1974; pg. 81. Bayard (Dance to the Fiddle), 1981; No. 556A-B, pgs. 494-495. Hall & Stafford (Charlton Memorial Tune Book), 1974; pg. 18. Kennedy (Fiddlers Tune Book), Vol. 2, 1954; pg. 38. Kerr (Merry Melodies), Vol. 1; No. 6, pg. 31. Mallinson (Mally's Cotswold Morris Book), 1988; No. 16, pg. 14. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; pg. 78 (morris version). Folk-Legacy Records FSI-42, The New Golden Ring - "Five Days Singing, Vol II."