Scottish Songs for Guitar | Acoustic Guitar Plus

How to play 15 Scottish classics, with standard notation and tablature, complete lyrics, and background information | By Danny Carnahan CONTENTS IntroductionA Word About Scots Lyrics SONGS IN STANDARD TUNING The Rigs of Barley Both Sides the TweedRattlin’ Roarin’ WillieWill Ye Go to FlandersTae the Weavers Gin Ye Gang SONGS IN DROPPED-D TUNING Cam Ye O’er Frae FranceHughie the GrahameGlenlogieTae the Beggin’So Will We YetThe Wild Mountain ThymeNow Westlin WindsFortune Turns the WheelThe False Lover Won BackFair Flower of Northumberland INTRODUCTION In 1983, when I stepped off a train in Edinburgh, Scotland, with the rest of my traveling California theatre troupe, I had already been a lover of Celtic traditional music for 15 years, having first been made aware of Celtic music as its own distinct genre while visiting relatives in Wales in 1968 and hearing Irish songs played on pirate radio. Several trips to Ireland since then had turned me into a rabid habitué of the pub seisúns (Irish music jam sessions) on both sides of the Atlantic, and I had somehow managed to make a living for the previous half a dozen years performing on the American folk club and festival circuit. I was in Edinburgh to perform for a month at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in a production of the Spoon River Anthology, my role being the old time musicians “Fiddler Jones.” But my heart’s secret desire was to spend as much time as possible in the Scots folk clubs, soaking up beer and Scottish repertoire in equal measure. That warm, magical month changed my life. When our play finished in the evening we whipped off our costumes and our most obvious makeup, sprinting across the street to the nearest pub with music happening. We’d play till closing time; we’d follow the tipsy crowd to another pub with an extended license and play till they kicked us out. Then we’d wander down to the Turkish kebab joint that was open till four in the morning. There was nowhere to go from four till five, when the local bakery started selling buns out the back door, so we’d all sit in the park and keep playing. I remember Gerald Trimble playing cittern in a tree, and I don’t remember sleeping much. But oh, the music—and the musicians. What a glorious stroke of luck to be in Edinburgh just when that creativity grenade went off. The first seisún I joined was led by Jim Sutherland, whose driving cittern playing was otherworldly in its power. Johnnie and Phil Cunningham blew through town, as did Dick Gaughan and Brian McNeill. Within days I blissed out at the farewell concert by Jock Tamson’s Bairns—a pivotal moment in Scots trad history as guitarist Rod Paterson joined up with Jim Sutherland to form The Easy Club and fellow guitarist Tony Cuffe joined forces with Ossian. While Ossian took the tradition into a highly textured dreamworld, The Easy Club injected a swing and fire that it still hasn’t lost. And then there were the singers: Dougie MacLean, Mary Macmaster, and Patsy Seddon, among many others. All cheek by jowl, jumbled together in cramped little rooms, making such glorious music I thought my heart would explode. And they all treated us California interlopers as long-lost kin. They took us home and fed us dinner. They sat for hours teaching us songs and playing tunes and songs into our bottomless tape recorders. Dougie and his wife passed their baby around the pint-strewn pub table to the delight of all. A changed life, indeed. So, 30-odd years on I find myself putting together a set of Scottish songs, most of which I have performed over the decades, and each of which takes me back to that magical Edinburgh summer. I can never thank all my old Edinburgh friends—both denizens and fellow wanderers of the tour circuit—enough for setting me off so solidly on this path. I can only encourage you to hunt up as many recordings as you can and go back to the sources like those that first inspired me. There’s a list of recordings and other sources at the end of this book to get you started. And while Johnnie Cunningham and Tony Cuffe and a few others have joined the cosmic ceilidh, many of these great musicians are still touring. So go hear them live. And then go home, grab your guitar, and take the tradition wherever it wants to go. —Danny Carnahan A WORD ABOUT SCOTS LYRICS I am persuaded that Scottish (or Scots) is less a dialect of English than its own distinct language. There are large overlaps in syntax and vocabulary with standard English, but where the two do not overlap, Scots can start sounding pretty darn alien. And since I am not Scottish-born, I don’t wish to pass myself off as a native singer in Scots. I admit that in the days of my most youthful Celtic zeal, I tried to sing exactly the way I heard the songs on records. But a phony accent seemed to do the songs a disservice. These songs, after all, contain powerful emotional truths, tremendous narratives, great humor, and simply wonderful poetry. I’d rather let the song do its work, and—as much as possible—get out of its way. The settings of the song lyrics I’ve included in this collection are versions intended for the wider English-speaking audience. Some of the Scottish words or phrases have been altered, with as light a touch as possible, the goal being to sacrifice none of the lilt and lightness of the Scottish phrasing. Some straightforward switch-outs were possible in service of storytelling clarity. In the concluding verse of “Glenlogie,” for instance, I substituted “her dowry’s been told” for the Scots “her tocher’s doun tauld.” And the common use of “wi’” for “with” comes and goes in this collection, depending, I think, on my original source for each song. I anglicized to “with” in “The Rigs of Barley” but left it shortened in “Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie.” Go figure. “Tae the Weavers” is presented here in quite broad Scots, because it’s fun to sing that way, even though some of the lines require a bit of a context stretch to work out their meanings. The last couplet in “Tae the Weavers,” noting the result of the roll in the hay, goes like this: But what was said, or what was done, shame fa’ me gin I tellBut, oh! I fear the kintra soon will ken as weel’s mysel’ In more standard and far less poetic English, it means: “But what was said, or what was done, it would embarrass the heck out of me to admit, but I’m afraid the whole country will know soon what I know myself.” That doesn’t scan nearly as prettily, hence my retaining the Scots here. Another lovely feature of Scots is its ability to indulge in rhymes that resist massaging into standard English. “Aw” rhymes with “awa,” but if you try to standardize them to “all” and “away,” there goes your rhyme. “Braw” rhymes with “blaw” but substituting “handsome” and “blow” won’t do at all. As to when it’s a good thing to choose Scots over standard English or the other way round in arranging a traditional song, I claim neither consistency nor scientific method. So if you find you prefer to sing the original Scots, I say, “Bravo to that!” But I hope these versions will convey my love for the songs and for the tradition they grew out of. These are traditional songs, after all. They are living things, and each new singer adds a little something to the songs and the tradition. If you find you’re changing a song a little to make it your own, you’re doing something right. Experiment, explore, and may you enjoy these songs as much as I do. SONGS IN STANDARD TUNING https://vimeo.com/676033818 THE RIGS OF BARLEY No collection of Scottish songs would be complete without a happy tale of illicit rolling in the hay. And what better way to start things rolling than with a song by Robert Burns (1759–96), widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland. This tune dates back to 1783 and has been a solid hit for over 230 years. I’ve long lost track of how many versions I’ve heard, though the arrangement included here owes a fair amount to Tony Cuffe. It’s an easygoing song and one that rolls right along using the time-honored device of ending the verse and the refrain with the lyric sung on the tonic and the chord hanging up on the IV chord. And the whole song—verse and chorus—is one simple eight-bar pattern. I like to play it through instrumentally for an intro, perhaps tossing in an interlude between verses. There’s nothing particularly tricky about the technique here, other than the thumb-over low F in the final chord of the pattern. If you’re not fond of using the thumb, you can play the F an octave higher on the D string, for a lighter and entirely acceptable voicing. https://vimeo.com/677294157 BOTH SIDES THE TWEED This was written as a protest song attacking the Act of Union, the treaty that united Scotland and England as the United Kingdom in 1707. The River Tweed marks part of the Scots-English border south of Edinburgh. The continuing popularity of this song is a reminder that to this day a fair number of Scots are still unhappy with the treaty. Dick Gaughan is credited with the melody to which it is most often sung today, a tune perfectly suited to the song and the tradition. The picking pattern is regular and rolling, providing a gently propulsive waltz underpinning for the long, sustained notes of the sung melody. To play the F chord, I fret the sixth-string F with my thumb. If this is uncomfortable for you, just play the higher F, on string 4. https://vimeo.com/677299315 RATTLIN’ ROARIN’ WILLIE Here’s a song that’s been equally popular in Scotland and Ireland for at least 200 years. The first two versions I heard were Irish, recorded in the late 1960s by the Dubliners and Sweeney’s Men. It’s another Robbie Burns song, celebrating the adventures of a freewheeling, hard-drinking fiddler. This time, there’s a known protagonist: William Smellie, the Edinburgh printer who first printed Burns’ poems. The Crochallan mentioned in the last verse is the pub a few doors down, frequented by a crowd of singers intent on preserving Scots traditions. “Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie” is the only song in this collection in 9/8 slip-jig time. Think of it as a jig-and-a-half if it seems elusive at first. Note the strategic use of open strings, like the last note of bar 11, which buys you time to switch between chords. As for the lyrics, note that a ben is the inner room of a two-room cottage and a board en’ is a table end. https://vimeo.com/677304533 WILL YE GO TO FLANDERS Here’s an emotionally realistic song of war, dating perhaps back to the reign of William II in the late 17th century, when Scottish troops first marched off to fight in Flanders. There’s not much jingoism; just a sad nod to the empty glories and the pointlessness of war. The royal shilling referred to in the lyrics is the symbol of enlistment. If you accepted a shilling from the recruitment officer you were stuck in the army. This is a slow march. Tony Cuffe and Ossian recorded a particularly sad version on their 1982 album, Dove Across the Water. You’ll encounter some very Scots ornamental rhythms here in both the sung melody and the picking pattern. For the 16th-dotted-eighth pairs, play the initial 16th note as short as possible—a stylistic hat tip to the Highland pipes. https://vimeo.com/677309908 TAE THE WEAVERS GIN YE GANG No stranger to rural romantic intrigue, Robert Burns wrote this song in 1788. It’s a tale as old as time—further confirmation both that one need not be rich to win a heart and that following one’s bliss carries consequences. The setting is a mash-up of all the versions I’ve heard over the years, from those by Andy M. Stewart to the Tannahill Weavers to the grey mists of memory way back in my Renaissance Faire days. For this song, I’m sticking with the broader Scots lyrics, partly because translating them strips them of so much zing and partly because they’re just so much fun to sing this way. The picking pattern is a pretty straightforward alternating bass. Keep it peppy. SONGS IN DROPPED-D TUNING https://vimeo.com/677320062 CAM YE O’ER FRAE FRANCE The Scots are second to none in their willingness and ability to mock the gentry in song lyrics. This song dates from the time of the Jacobite Rebellion in the 18th century, when the German King George came over and founded the House of Hanover. A word about the cast of characters seems in order. Geordie Whelps is, of course, the widely reviled King George. Goosie refers to his mistress, Melusine von der Schulenburg. And Bobbing John is John Erskine, Earl of Mar, who recruited the Highland soldiers. A bright, cynical, irreverent war ditty—why am I reminded of Country Joe and the Fish? The first really popular version of this song I heard was by Steeleye Span in 1973, though everyone from Ewan MacColl to Dick Gaughan has performed it. I’ve customized the sung melody a bit, as my vocal range has shrunk. Often, the word Hoosie in bar 15 starts on a high G and if you can hit that, give it a try. You can sing it either way or customize it further—remember, this is the oral tradition. The guitar setting is spare; the time signature a stately, martial 3/4. And since the verse ends on the V chord (B5), you’re free to find a suitable musical dismount, other than a studio fade. https://vimeo.com/677324417 HUGHIE THE GRAHAME Here’s a historical ballad based on actual people and events. In 1560, it seems, the Bishop of Carlisle seduced the wife of Hugh Graham, a chief of the Scottish border. Graham then stole the Bishop’s favorite horse, was caught by the delightfully named Warden Scrope, was tried, and was executed, though not before delivering some threatening and/or snarky last words, depending on your version. The Child collection (see the source list at the end of this book) lists this as #191 and provides seven variants and some witty surmises on how misdeeds and questionable motives actually played out all around. I learned this version from Robin Williamson, who recorded it in 1998. His lyrics add a note of social justice to the melodrama, commenting on the oppression of the poor. Robin delivers the story with his customary twinkle in a nice, rolling 7/4, embellished with notes that linger and take their sweet time to resolve. Emphasis is always on the first and fourth beats of each bar. And while I play the low second-fret E with my thumb, you can just as easily form the indicated chord with your second and third fingers. https://vimeo.com/677339910 GLENLOGIE Here’s another ballad from the Child collection (#238), which I first learned from Dick Gaughan. The lovers in this story were likely based on real people, but by the time the ballad was first written down, in the 1820s, there were multiple variants of every name and place name in the story. Oh well. But the romantic and mercenary motivations of the cast, as well as the lovely adversarial relationship between stern dad and stubborn teenage daughter, are still fresh today. It is impossible for me to sing this without hearing Gaughan’s version running right along next to me. As Gaughan demonstrates so clearly, it’s important to maintain the pulse of the open low-D string throughout to keep things moving. The guitar plays the melody right along with the sung melody, and there’s wonderful rhythmic tension as you play with the vocal phrasing over the regularity of the guitar part. The story is divided up in pairs of lines, grouped mostly two pairs at a time, like 16-bar chapters. But the first chapter is three pairs long (as I discarded a couplet to move things along quicker), so the first eight-bar half of the melody is repeated. I like to divide up the performance of the song with an eight-bar pattern after most chapters and perhaps the whole 16 bars as a narrative tension palate-cleanser toward the end of the story. Regarding technique, the opening four bars are played with the “zen pick”—the index finger braced with the thumb, as if holding a pick—coming down on all three beats. The fingers separate to play the first beat of the fifth bar and then stay separate for the rest of the song. In bar 23, the 16th-dotted eighth Scottish ornament is important; play the 16th note as short as humanly possible. https://vimeo.com/677343868 TAE THE BEGGIN’ This jaunty little ditty has been performed by pretty much everybody. I’ve owned recordings by the Battlefield Band, Ossian, and Old Blind Dogs, for starters, and probably first heard it live in Edinburgh performed by Jock Tamson’s Bairns, with the late Tony Cuffe. The task of massaging these lyrics from very broad Scots into more widely comprehensible English was about the toughest—and most amusing—part of putting this collection together. The unadulterated Scots lyrics are utterly delightful, even if you’re not quite sure what they mean. Here are a couple of unedited verses to give you the flavor of it all: First I maun get a meal-pock made out o’ leather reedAnd it will haud twa firlots wi’ room for beef and breidSyne I’ll tak out my muckle dish and stap it fu’ o’ mealAnd say, “Guidwife, gin ye gie me bree, I winna seek you kail” This version is based largely on the Ossian setting, which has always held a lightness that seems to echo perfectly the devil-may-care quality of the lyrics. The little introductory guitar lick can be inserted after every few verses just to break things up and give you a breather. There are no tricks to the alternating-bass pattern. You might like to slide into the G on the low E string with your third finger as a grace note. To finish, just repeat the “Tae the Beggin’...” refrain and end on “Go.” https://vimeo.com/677352753 SO WILL WE YET This is another song I first heard sung by Jock Tamson’s Bairns. My highly lubricated memory seems to recall that it was the big finish for the evening, and every living soul in the room was singing along by the final chorus. I performed this for years with Chris Caswell and enjoyed much the same audience response. “So Will We Yet” is a true anthem, expressing a deep optimism that the world has never needed more than now. There aren’t many tricky bits here. The melody is so fluid that I never want to jump or lunge into a fingering while accompanying it. For an example of this, in bar 5, fret the high D with your first finger, sliding down to the C♯ and then grabbing the first D in the next bar with your third finger, easy as can be. There are many ways to arpeggiate what is essentially a three-chord song, so once you’ve read through the example shown here, feel free to alter and vary it. https://vimeo.com/677413406 THE WILD MOUNTAIN THYME This song dates from about 1800 and is originally credited to the Scots poet Robert Tannahill, a contemporary of Burns. Traditional tinkering changed it over the years, with the canonical version we know today first being published in 1957 and attributed to Belfast singer Francis McPeake. It’s about as joyous a pastoral anthem as ever was, and is worthy of a place on any shortlist of social sing-along tunes. This setting is one I recorded in 2002 with my friend Shira Kammen, live in a tower on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. I’m equally fond of a rocking groove version I first heard in the Dublin pubs, which stretches the lyrics to twice the number of bars they are given here. There are many great takes on this song, and any that honor its anthemic power are all right with me. In the second bar of the intro/interstitial passage I use my thumb to stop the B on the A string. I find that I can also use my first finger, though it takes a bit more care to maintain the phrase’s legato ring and it’s a bit of a stretch to get the fourth finger onto the F♯. I like to repeat the intro between the verses and finish with it after the last repeated chorus. https://vimeo.com/677417485 NOW WESTLIN WINDS Here’s yet another song by Robert Burns, with a wickedly wry opening couplet—a little realism to bring you up sharp before drifting into a pastoral elegy. This is a love song to the birds of the Scottish countryside, sung by a poet who saw, too, how man’s casual violence intrudes on the pastoral scene. My guitar setting is based on Dick Gaughan’s rich rendition. As usual when learning a song from Gaughan, I have stayed closer to the meter of the song and phrased the lyrics straighter, though you’ll notice that the downbeats played on the guitar don’t often line up with those that are sung. This is a song to take at a very leisurely pace. Enjoy every nuance. https://vimeo.com/677453150 FORTUNE TURNS THE WHEEL I first heard this sung by Robin Williamson—long past midnight and long past sobriety—in a Calgary hotel room while we were there for the 1980 Calgary Folk Festival. “Fortune Turns the Wheel” has since become one of my all-time favorite songs and one I find myself singing at memorial parties for fallen friends with sadly increasing frequency. It is simple, and the sung melody needs little in the way of instrumental propulsion, so the guitar setting is spare. Take your time with the rhythm and let it breathe. When fingering the As on the G string in bars 3 and 4, you may need to work to keep the note ringing clearly as you shift the rest of your hand from the fourth-finger-stretch G chord to the A. I have to remember to use my fourth finger on the fifth fret and not my third finger, as I more often do. https://vimeo.com/677459191 THE FALSE LOVER WON BACK Here’s yet another Child ballad, which I learned from Chris Caswell—and another star-crossed relationship, this one sporting a surprise happy ending. There are a few Scottish locutions that I have left un-Anglicized, mostly because after 35 years I can’t hear them any other way. Melodically, there are two verse forms: the short and the long. The short verse simply omits bar 9 through the 6/4 bar, jumping right to the last three bars, and finishing the same as the long verse. This is the only song in this collection where I bend a note up by a half step—from F♯ to G on the low D string. In bar 2, make sure that the release to the F♯ sounds in time. Also, in the last bar of each verse, note the strategic use of open strings, which buys you plenty of time to shift up the fretboard without having to lunge. https://vimeo.com/677461723 FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND This Child ballad (#9) dates back to at least to the 16th century. It’s quite a slice of family drama, proving that willful teenagers are nothing new and that fathers and mothers can still have very different views of adolescent rites of passage. “Fair Flower of Northumberland” is sung everywhere, though I’m indebted to Chris Caswell for adding it to my favorites list. The picking pattern for this song is unusual in that it’s a sort of 3/4 variant of Travis picking. Instead of the thumb alternating low and high notes in 4/4, here we have a consistent low-high-low, low-high-low pattern. I must confess I had no trouble with this pattern until I stopped to think long enough to write it down for this book, after which I started to stumble every time until I’d remember to stop thinking about it. Realistically, you can mix and match the high and low pedal notes as you like as long as you maintain the loping groove, but I do like the sound and feel of the low-high-low move. I occasionally play an extra two bars between verses just to catch my breath or take a moment to enjoy the plot. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Danny Carnahan has been performing and recording Celtic music for over 35 years, playing guitar, octave mandolin, fiddle, and singing. Appearing in festivals and clubs from Scotland to New Zealand, he has toured with duo partners Chris Caswell and Robin Petrie, and shared stages with Celtic artists including Johnny Moynihan, Robin Williamson, and Johnny Cunningham. His original songs are known and sung all over the Celtic world. Carnahan’s 14th and most recent CD, Deal, is the fourth release with his band Wake the Dead, the world’s first Celtic all-star Grateful Dead jam band. It follows his most recent solo CD of original songs, Sky in Your Pocket. Carnahan has penned feature articles and columns for Acoustic Guitar and Mandolin magazines. His three musical murder mysteries, A Jig Before Dying, Fortune Turns the Wheel, and With His Dying Breath, are available in trade paperback and Kindle versions. Carnahan also teaches songwriting and Celtic instrumental techniques at several California music camps. He lives in Albany, California, with his lovely wife, Saundra; irrepressible son, Teddy; and imaginary dog, Spike. For more about Danny Carnahan, visit dannycarnahan.com and wakethedead.org. RECOMMENDED RECORDINGSMany of these recordings are no longer available commercially, but the ones that are still in print are well worth snagging. Most live on as YouTube videos or in other digital forms, too, so you should be able to track them down. For “The Rigs of Barley”—Ossian, Seal Song, 1982 For “Both Sides the Tweed”—Mary Black, Collected, 1984 Dick Gaughan, Handful of Earth, 1981 For “Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie”—Sweeney’s Men, self-titled, 1968The Dubliners, Drinkin’ and Courtin’, 1968 For “Will Ye Go to Flanders”—Ossian, Dove Across the Water, 1982 For “Tae the Weavers”—Andy M. Stewart & Manus Lunny, At It Again, 1990 For “Cam Ye O’er Frae France”—Steeleye Span, Parcel of Rogues, 1973Tannahill Weavers, The Old Woman’s Dance, 1978 For “Hughie the Grahame”—Robin Williamson, A Job of Journeywork, 1998Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger, Classic Scots Ballads, 1959 (2005) For “Glenlogie” (also titled “Bonnie Jeannie of Bethelnie”)—Dick Gaughan, Live in Edinburgh, 1985Danny Carnahan, Journeys of the Heart, 1989 For “Tae the Beggin’”—Ossian, Dove Across the Water, 1982 For “So Will We Yet”—Tony Cuffe, Sae Will We Yet, 2003 For “Wild Mountain Thyme”—Shira Kammen (with Danny Carnahan), Music of Waters, 2002Bert Jansch, Heartbreak, 1982 For “Now Westlin Winds”—Dick Gaughan, Handful of Earth, 1981Jim Malcolm, Acquaintance, 2006 For “Fortune Turns the Wheel”—Ray Fisher, Willie’s Lady, 1982 For “False Lover Won Back”—Caswell Carnahan, New Leaves on an Old Tree, 1982 (1995)Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger, The Child Ballads For “Flower of Northumberland”—Dick Gaughan, No More Forever, 1972