TRADITION INTO ART AND FIXED LYRIC
ART SONGS, WOMEN MAKERS AND THEIR ONE HIT SONGS

There were surely many earlier women songmakers in Scots, as in Gaelic. We know that more recently women were and are principal preservers and sharers of traditional Scots ballads and songs, although right into the 20th Century their memorialising abilities were usually only known via the publishing efforts of male collectors and publishers. I use the term ‘art songs’ here because like the songs of Robert Burns these were learned from the printed page and sung in that fixed settled text and melody, usually to piano accompaniment, rather than the fluid changes that result from oral learning.
Many of these known early women art song makers in Scots had the advantage of noble lineage. A few acknowledged public ownership of their work, others were outed only after they died. Biographical information about their work and the setting of their times given below draws on fulsome admiring detail given in The Spindleside Of Scottish Song, Jessie P Findlay, 1902.
Their songs were printed over and over, arranged with piano accompaniments for baritone or contralto voices, and sung in family settings or performed on public platforms by trained voices clad in dinner suits or ample dresses. But despite Findlay’s claims for their immortality, few of the songs made by pre-20th C women makers survived to make it into the repertoires of Scots Revival singers. Their songs learned in school music classes then became stigmatised and rejected from performance.
Indeed, online searches of Youtube and Tobar An Dualchais do not uncover performances to include links here!

Tunes made in tribute to well-born ladies as patrons have survived rather better. James Hunter collected together and published 365 fiddle tunes made in the 18th to 20th Century. 2 were named for Countesses, 3 for Honourables, 4 for Marchionesses and 4 more for Duchesses. 13 were named for Ladies, 26 for named women whose marital status was not given, 34 for unmarried women and 18 for untitled wives. 104 out of 365 tunes.

GRISELL BAILLIE THE MONEY SMUGGLER
The earliest known woman maker of Scots art song, with the most interesting tale, made a lyric that mixes disappointed love, yearning, family jealousy, humour, and a resonant 'peerless' refrain line of 'Werena ma heart licht I wad dee' - If I were not light of heart I would die for love.
Late in the 17th Century the teenage daughter of a former exiled fugitive who eventually became Earl of Marchmont 'addicted herself to verse-making '. While the family hid in Holland young Lady Grisell Baillie nee Hume kept a manuscript volume 'for jotting down snatches of song which she had composed. One perfect specimen of song and a few beautiful fragments are all that have been preserved out of the lost manuscript-books'.
This song was 'a pathetic pastoral strain, which was published in her ladyship's lifetime' in 1725. The lyric tells of a may who loved not men till young Johnnie came from sea and courted her. His sister opposed and miscalled her and her lower status, till Johnnie's mother in order to stop the wedding 'took a dwam and lay down to dee'. Now spineless Johnnie 'goes drooping about the dyke' to 'hund the tykes', but the spurned young woman is of sterner stuff, and sighs 'wow gin I were but young for thee'. Her refrain shows her conflicted feelings, her lightness of heart sustaining her from despair. 'And were na my heart licht I wad dee.'
Jessie P Findlay commented on 'the unique, almost gauche, simplicity of its phraseology and for the faithful picture it presents of the Scottish rural life of a by-gone day. The first and last verses suggest an older ballad, and one is tempted to conclude that an antique rhyme of Grisell's childhood had made an indelible impression on her through the crooning voice, perhaps, of an old nurse. It was by no means an unusual thing for Scottish songstresses to build up a new ballad from the debris of an ancient one'. Indeed, the making of a new song from old fragments, and the preservation as an adult of old songs heard in childhood, are frequently recurring themes in accounts of our makers and singers.
Grisell Hume was born at Redbraes Castle, Berwickshire in 1665 and died in London in 1746. She was the daughter of Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth who was at times hunted and imprisoned for his support of the persecuted Covenanting faction during the turbulent reigns of Charles the 2nd and James the 7th and 2nd.
Though a Covenanter her father was no Puritan, he advocated dancing and singing in his large household, Grisell was the eldest of 18 children – one wonders how many of them survived early childhood in those times of heavy infant mortality. She was called on to sing in family gatherings, but her sister Christian was held to be the better singer.
In troubled times Sir Patrick and his friend Robert Baillie of Jerviswood both endured several terms of imprisonment, and were fined large sums of money. When Grisell was eleven she made a first adventurous solo journey to Edinburgh to smuggle money to Baillie in the Tolbooth. Jessie Findlay says 'How she won past the guarded portals of the Tolbooth is a mystery. Were Grisell's manners indeed so dove-like yet so serpent-like that the grim jailer fell under their spell and hastened to let her in?'
The family escaped to Holland, and there ‘The Humes and their guests drank small beer instead of Bordeaux, ate porridge and milk in place of curious pasties, and wore threadbare plaidens and faded linen for brocade and velvet’. Once there was only one single coin in the house to give to the street beggars.
However, this was when she found time to scribble her lyrics in a book, or to join in the social singing of Scottish songs. When in 1688 Prince William and his wife Anne became the monarchs in the Glorious Revolution, Grisell was invited to become one of the Queen’s maids of honour, but preferred to return to Redbraes Castle. She was married to George aged 28, and never again wrote any songs. Most of the lyrics she wrote in Holland were left unfinished, but a few were published in the ‘Tea Table Miscellany’ where other old ballads were also refined and purged of grossness by gently-reared hands. Her daughter wrote an interesting account of her life. Robert Chambers calls Lady Grisell 'the first of a series of songwriters of aristocratic grade'. Their loftier status would surely have helped get easier acknowledgement and acceptance of their efforts.

WERENA MY HEART LICHT
There was ance a may and she lo'd na men, she biggit her bonnie bouir doon in yon glen
But now she cries Dule, and well-a-day! Come doon the green gait, and come here-away
When bonnie young Johnnie cam ower the sea, he said he saw naething sae bonnie as me
He hecht me baith rings, and monie braw things, and werena my heart licht, I wad dee

ALISON RUTHERFORD OF FERNYLEE AND JEANNIE ELLIOT OF MINTO
Two more ladies of gentle birth each worked from the same three lines recalled of an old ballad to make their new songs. One was about local lairds financially ruined, and would have sunk from memory except for its association with another made for a bet, a lyric that became an anthemic historical lament. The makers began with lines associated with an old tune.
I’ve heard the lilting at our yowe-milking
The Flowers of the Forest are aa wede away
The district locally called the Forest was then Selkirkshire, now called Ettrick Forest, and the assumed subject of the lost ballad was the 1513 battle of Flodden, tragically lost by Scotland with the majority of the Scots army and leading nobility. The Forest had been a favoured royal hunting ground, and boasted the finest archers in all Scotland. Sir Walter Scott caught up one more fragment of the song that seemed to refer to the loss of lives.
Now I ride single on my saddle.
First Miss Alison Rutherford of Fernylee, Selkirkshire, ‘a frequent and ready writer of verses’ took the two above lines as inspiration in 1712 to make four verses referring to ‘a crisis of a monetary nature, when seven good lairds of the Forest were reduced to insolvency, in consequence of imprudent speculations’. [Chambers]. Her lines discard the old originals. She begins
I’ve seen the smiling of fortune beguiling
I’ve felt all its favours and found its decay
And ends with
Nae mair you smiles can cheer me, nae mair your frowns can fear me
For the Flowers of the Forest are withered away.

Then, years later, another young lady from Minto, a few miles north of Fernylee, was assisting her father, Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Lord Justice-clerk of Scotland, with his work. She would read his law papers to him and ‘he profited by the shrewdness of her remarks’. Jeannie’s father would occasionally write verses, and one day they were discussing Flodden Field. He offered her a bet that she could not compose a ballad on the subject. She won the bet with the only song she is known to have made. It is now known in the town of Selkirk as ‘The Liltin’, and played annually at the Selkirk Common Riding, first as a march and later as a lament.

THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST
I’ve heard the lilting at our yowe-milking, lassies a-lilting before dawn of day
But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning, the Flowers of the Forest are aa wede away
Dule and wae for the order sent our lads to the Border, the English far aince by guile won the day
The Flowers of the Forest that foucht aye the foremost, the prime o our land are cauld in the clay
We hear nae mair liltin at our yowe-milkin, women and bairns are heartless and wae
Sighin and moanin on ilka green loanin, the Flowers of the Forest are aa wede away

The topic of the above lyric is unusual, and it was a man who suggested it be made. Men made and ang historical songs in Scots of the violence and details of clan warfare and warfare with England. Songs by women or in women’s voices spoke of the sad effects of conflict. The other exception to this was the Jacobite lyrics of Lady Nairne, even though the families of several other known women makers were much entangled in the strife and major disruptions of Jacobite times.
Various Scottish women songmakers of the past, like Grisell Bailie the majority of them being of the minor nobility, were in their time lauded as perfect songmakers. They became remembered for one favoured song only, and the formats and language these are often based on or imitative of older ballads, and as Burns did their lyrics were set to older tunes, and employed their vocabulary and grammar knowledge of the Scots Leid.
Earlier I referred to Jessie P Findlay’s comment on the ‘jingle of uncouth sounds occurring at the end of each stanza’ in many Scots songs. She instances ‘the ridiculous yet suggestively finical refrain of the modern ballad, The Cooper o’ Fife — Nickity, nackity, noo noo noo. But such tongue-tied cadences as these are at the best grotesque and disturbing, and the finest song is that which glides in satisfying smoothness and clarity along the channels of speech.
‘Scottish song, in spite of the rugged character Of the Doric, is peculiarly rich in such perfect specimens; and the effusions of the songstresses of the nation are bright examples of combined delicacy and strength in the union of imagination and expression. Curiously enough, the majority of those daughters of song are aristocrats or, at least, well - born ladies who, being endowed with a larger share than the average of that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin, have been inspired to create or to purify the songs of the people. In this respect the songstresses differ from the balladists of the nation who were common minstrels and whose very names are unknown.’
Before Jessie Findlay, S Tytler and J L Murray had covered the same ground in 1871 in their account of ‘Songstresses of Scotland’. Sarah Tytler was the pen-name of novelist Henrietta Keddie. Their objective was ‘to bring together into one group some gifted women whose songs are known wherever the Scotch foot treads or the Scotch language lingers.’ They began with five double column pages of Scots glossary. Robert Chambers in 1890 also gave detailed credits about songmakers and information associated with songs when he could, in ‘Scottish Songs Prior To Burns’.
Of the all the supposedly eternally popular compositions by women makers named below, only ‘Nae Luck Aboot The Hoose’ and Burns’ reworkings of ‘Caa The Yowes’ and ‘O’er The Muir’ are now much recorded and performed. The other songs had gradually faded by the 1940s, and were almost totally eclipsed by the Scottish folk song revival that began in the 1950s.
Similarly, only a few of the acreage of Scottish songs made in the 18th and 19th Century by men that feature women strongly have survived in performance. ‘Willy’s Gaun Tae Melville Castle’, maker not known, tells of all the women of the castle asteer at the news of Willy’s leaving. A tragic woman laments for the death of ‘Jock O Hazeldean’, a fragmentary ballad worked up by Walter Scott.

MORE DAUGHTERS OF SONG

JEAN ADAMS (1704-1765)
Jean Adams lived in the small seaport of Crawfordsdyke just along the bay from Greenock, her father being a shipmaster there, who died young so she went into the service of a minister there. While yet a young woman she had published a book of her poems, and sang her own songs to the minister’s children. Her book sold poorly, so she shipped the surplus copies to Boston USA. Alas, no sales money ever came back to her. She ended her days in the Glasgow Poorhouse.
Her song is said to have been inspired by the pleasure expressed by Jean Campbell, a near neighbour, on hearing that the ship of her husband had been seen tacking up the Clyde, safely coming home from a long voyage.
Adams’ authorship of the song ‘Nae Luck Aboot The Hoose’ was disputed, with four pages arguing the matter in Songstresses Of Scotland, but the song was claimed for her by Cromek. Burns had contributed to the debate, writing that the song ‘came onto the streets as a street ballad about 1771-2’, ten years too early to have been made by one proposed maker.

NAE LUCK ABOOT THE HOOSE
And are ye sure the news is true? And are ye sure he's weel?
Is this a time to talk o' wark? Ye jades, fling by your wheel!
Is this a time to think o' wark, when Colin's at the door?
Gie me my cloak! I'll to the quay, and see him come ashore.
For there's nae luck about the house, there's nae luck ava';
There's little pleasure in the house when our gudeman's awa'.

ISOBEL PAGAN (1741-1821)
Pagan was born in 1741 in the parish of New Cumnock. She had a deformed foot, a squint, and a large tumour on her side. Unsuited for hard labour she settled in a cottage the banks of the Garpel water, where she made a living by writing verses, singing and opening her cottage as a howff. She was in the habit of satirizing in verse those who had offended her. She was noted for her sarcastic wit and was apparently an exceptional singer, often singing her own compositions to the delight of her rustic audience. During the shooting season her howff would be filled with aristocrats who were glad to enjoy a laugh at her humour and to hear her sing. Although never married she had a child by a man called Campbell, who deserted her on the eve of their marriage. She was unable to write, so local tailor Gemmell wrote out her verses. Known as Tibbie to her friends she died at the end of 1821 in her 80th year and was buried in the cemetery at Muirkirk.
Her best known work was ‘Ca' the Ewes to the Knowes’.

CA THE YOWES
Ca' the yowes to the knowes, ca' them where the heather grows,
Ca' them where the burnie rows, my bonnie dearie.
As I gaed down the water side, there I met my shepherd lad;
He row'd me sweetly in his plaid and he ca'd me his dearie.
I was bred up at nae sic school, my shepherd lad, to play the fool,
And a' the day to sit in dool, and naebody to see me.'
It was adapted and popularised in rather saccharine form by Burns.
Ca' the yowes to the knowes, ca' them where the heather grows
Ca' them where the burnie rows, my bonie dearie.
Hark! the mavis' evening sang, sounding Cluden's woods amang,
Then a-fauldin let us gang, my bonie dearie.
We'll gae down by Cluden side, thro' the hazels spreading wide,
O'er the waves that sweetly glide to the moon sae clearly.

SUSANNA BLAMIRE [1747-1794]
She was dubbed The Songstress Of Sentiment’, by Jessie Findlay. Born in Cumberland, on a visit of six years to her married sister in Aberfoyle she wrote lacrimose songs in Scots, the best known being ‘And Ye Shall Walk In Silk Attire’.
And ye shall walk in silk attire, and siller hae to spare
Gin ye’ll consent to be his bride, nor think o Donald mair
Langest life can ne’er repay the love he bears to me
And ere I’m forced to break my troth I’ll lay me doon and dee

LADY ANNE BARNARD (1750-1825)
Born in Balcarres House, Fife, her father was an earl, and she was a travel writer and artist. Aged 43 she married a younger man and got him a post at the Cape of Good Hope. ‘Auld Robin Gray’ had been written by her in 1772 and then set to music by her husband. The text was published anonymously in 1783, Lady Anne only acknowledging the authorship of the words two years before her death in a letter to Sir Walter Scott.
Robin Gray is a good old man who marries a young woman already in love with a man named Jamie. Jamie goes away to sea in order to earn money so that the couple can marry, but her parents force Robin on her. Jamie comes back, looking like a ghost. They kiss and tear themselves away, the woman decides to be a good wife.

AULD ROBIN GRAY
I hadna been his wife a week but only four, when, mournfu’ as I sat on the stane at my door,
I saw my Jamie’s ghaist, for I couldna think it he, till he said, I’ m come hame, love, to marry the
Oh, sair did we greet ' and mickle tell o ’ a ’; I gied him a kiss and bade him gang awa’;
I wish that I were dead, but I ’m no like to dee, for though my heart is broken, I ’m but young, waes me
I gang like a ghaist and I carena to spin, I daurna think on Jamie, for that would be a sin;
But I’ll do my best a gude wife aye to be for auld Robin Gray he is kind to me

MRS ANNE GRANT (1755-1838)
Mrs Anne Grant of Carron nee MacVicar (1755-1838) was a lady of letters and an essayist, born in Glasgow, the daughter of a Highland officer who served in America in the 1750s and 60s. She and her mother joined him, and later wrote about pre-revolutionary American culture. She married an army chaplain based in Fort Augustus, learned Gaelic and wrote much on Highland life and beliefs. As well as ‘Roy’s Wife’ Mrs Grant is said to have written the very popular ‘Bluebell Of Scotland’, Where tell me where is your Highland laddie gone? That ‘Highland laddie’ is named in the alternative title given by Mrs Grant – ‘The Marquis of Huntly’s Departure for the Continent with his Regiment’. English actress Dora Jordan is a rival claimant for authorship, or perhaps both were working off an earlier song?
Magnus MacLean said Anne Grant’s felicitous translations for Gaelic to English were less in quantity than some others, ‘but made a deeper impression’. No-one now lives at Aldivalloch Farm, deep in the Cabrach glen.

ROY’S WIFE OF ALDIVALLOCH
Roy’s wife of Aldivalloch, Roy’s wife of Aldivalloch,
Wat ye how she cheated me, as I cam’ o’er the braes of Balloch?
She vow’d, she swore she wad be mine, she said she lo’ed me best o’ onie;
But ah! the fickle, faithless quean, she’s ta’en the carle, and left her Johnnie!
O, she was a cantie quean, weel could she dance the Highland walloch,
How happy I, had she been mine, or I been Roy of Aldivalloch

JEAN GLOVER (1758-1801)
Little is known of her. Findlay disapproved of Burns’ description of Jean, ‘in language particularly coarse and uncharitable’. While preserving her song, Burns at the same time stamped her character with an indelible brand of notoriety, and wrote ‘I took the song down from her own singing, as she was strolling through the country with a slight-of-hand blackguard.’
Jean was born in Kilmarnock, the daughter of a weaver. In 1790 she met her blackguard, a strolling player and juggler called Richard or Ritchie, leader of a wandering troupe which she joined. She was ‘sprightly and beautiful – in a dusky gypsy fashion’ and a good singer, A woman who recalled seeing her performing ‘gaudily attired and playing on a tambourine’, said she was ‘the brawest woman that ever stepped in leather shoon’. She died in Letterkenny in Ireland.

OWER THE MUIR aka ‘COMIN THROUGH THE CRAIGS O KYLE
Comin through the Craigs o Kyle, amang the bonnie blooming heather
There I met a bonnie lassie, keepin aa her ewes thegither
Ower the muir amang the heather, ower the muir amang the heather
There I met a bonnie lassie, keepin aa her ewes thegither
Says I, my dear, where is your hame, in muir or dale, pray tell me whether?
She said, I tent the fleecy flocks that feed amang the blooming heather.

ELIZABETH HAMILTON (1758-1816)
She was born in Belfast of ‘Scottish descent and rearing'. She grew up into a staid and somewhat priggish maiden and, from being much in the society of older people than herself, she developed an “old fashioned and pedantic style of speech that was very amusing to visitors’. Her novel 'The Cottagers of Glenburnie' tells the story of a retired servant, Mrs Mason, who seeks to improve the lives and morals of her distant relatives, the MacClartys, in the Scottish Highlands. This results in a number of comic moments, but the novel also had the more serious aim of highlighting the need for improvement in the Highlands at this time.
The song she was honoured and remembered for is ‘My Ain Fireside’. Findlay says ‘No Scottish heart fails to thrill at the memories of home which her song evokes. Scottish dwellers in lands of ice or in lands of fire ; emigrants toiling in the wild valleys of Klondyke, in the Australian bush, in the malarial swamps of Africa; sailors tossing on the sea and soldiers bivouacked on distant battle-fields, hail with swelling hearts the words of their country woman’s song of the hearth.’

MY AIN FIRESIDE
Oh, I hae seen great ance and sat in famed ha’s,
’Mong lords and ’mong ladies a’ covered wi braws
At feasts made for princes, wi princes I ve been,
Where the grand shine o’ Splendour has dazzled my een
But a sight so delightfu’ I trow I ne’er spied,
As the bonnie, blythe blink o’ my ain fireside,
O’ my ain fireside, o’ my ain fireside!
Oh, cheery’ s the blink o’ my ain fireside!

JOANNA BAILIE (1762-1851)
A poet and successful dramatist, she was a minister’s daughter born in Bothwell. Findlay dubbed her ‘The Blue-Stocking Songstress'. She had learned to accompany herself on the guitar. In the song for which she was best known, one that would fit well in a singer’s present day repertoire, the daughter attractively beseeches her father to employ a good-looking young man. Bailie’s lyric is a reworking of a traditional lyric given by Herd in 1776.

FEE HIM FAITHER, FEE HIM
Fee him, faither, fee him! quo’ she, fee him, faither, fee him!
A’ the wark aboot the hoose gangs wi’ me when I see him
And though ye pay some merks o’ gear
Hoot! ye winna rue it quo’ she, na! ye winna rue it
Yestreen about the gloamin’ time, I chanced to see him comin’
Whistling merrily the tune that I am aa day hummin
Fee him, faither, fee him, quo’ she, fee him, faither, fee him
A’ the wark aboot the hoose gangs wi’ me when I see him
He’ll hand the plough, thrash i’ the barn, and crack wi’ me at e’en