JEANNIE ROBERTSON - SOCIAL BALLAD SINGER INTO FOLK DIVA

Jeannie Robertson was lauded by American song collector Alan Lomax as an 'acclaimed balladeer of Scotland’s travelling clans. One of the elect – one of the angels of folk songs that have kept the tradition alive and burning across all time’. Because of electronic advance we are not limited to reading about her and her songs in print, but can hear direct online many hours of her singing, storytelling, and telling about her life and family. The recordings show how her singing style developed from the less formal sound of the hospitable traveller housewife to the entrancing public performer.
Jeannie's repertoire held some 140 songs. She enthralled with her 'big ballads' of lords and ladies in love or battle, tales of young men out on the town being tricked out of their wages by clever lassies, laments for lost loves and for new growing life that would chain those lassies to a cradle. And she also had children's rhymes, fragments of old song, Harry Lauder songs, 'cowboy' ballads and comic music hall ditties. One favourite song not recorded by any academics but caught by visiting US enthusiast Howard Glasser was learned from a 1930s commercial recording of an English singer called Harry Torrani - 'I'm a Gay Young Gambling Darkie'. Jeannie warbles the yodelling chorus sweetly.
She was known to the public for what she called her 'big ballads'. These included 'The Battle Of Harlaw', a bloody encounter between Highland MacDonalds and North East men, 'The Gallawa Hills' in which a woman plans to sell her thread-making equipment of rock, reel and spinning-wheel and follow her lover over the hills, 'The Gypsy Laddie' who entices a noblewoman away from her lord, and 'Son David', a dramatic conversation between an alarmed mother and her son.
Oh, what's the blood that's on your sword, my son David, oh son David?
What's the blood that's on your sword, come promise, tell me true
Oh that's the blood of my grey mare, hi lady mother, ho lady mother
That's the blood of my grey mar.e, because it widnae be ruled by me
She points out that the blood is 'owre clear', he then says it is of his grey hound, she rejects that, he now says it was his huntin hawk, but at last confesses
Oh that's the blood of my Brother John, because he drew his sword tae me
He is going to sail away 'in a bottomless boat' and will never return. She nevertheless asks when he will come back. He answers 'When the sun and the moon meets in yon glen'. The eight recordings of 'Son David' held in the School Of Scottish Studies archive show how housewife Jeannie gradually developed a public performance style, becoming slower and more majestic.
Howard Glasser spent a week recording in Jeannie’s house in 1963, and wrote, 'Jeannie had a good sense of humour and was warm, kind and generous. She was a born teacher. Having been given the exposure, Jeannie kept the fires of the tradition well fuelled with her artful repertoire. She loved to talk – to sing and to relate to anyone – or any audience willing to listen.'
Until 1953, in Jeannie's house she and other traveller singers would foregather to sing socially and sociably. Then Scotland's folksong collector extraordinary Hamish Henderson came calling. In the Aberdeen Castlegate market he went through the stalls he thought were run by travellers, chatting and asking about singers. One, Bobby Hutchinson, said 'If you want a puckle o auld sangs go up to 21 Cassieend. You cannae go wrong.'
Hamish knocked on the door but Jeannie said 'I'm too tired to think aboot singin. If you like you can come back at night, maybe eight or nine'. Hamish 'resorted to ‘desperate measures’ and sang part of a ballad, and Jeannie responded, 'Come in and I’ll sing ye the right wey o it'. She 'sang to him steady till two o'clock in the morning'.
Henderson saw that this dark-eyed dark-haired heavy woman was a most important holder and communicator of her traveller people's knowledge and traditions. He began to record, not just her songs but accounts of her family and her early life.

She was born in 1908. In her early years the family travelled the spring and summer string of campsites along the rivers Dee and Don. Teenaged Jeannie walked from the parked bowhead caravan with a pack of perfume, cheap jewellery and soft goods to hawk at doors in the back glens. In later years when she was a famous singer she talked of feet that itched for the trails of Deeside, Donside and the Perthshire highlands.
At night at the campsite fire there were songs and stories to be heard and learned, and piping that in daytime was a source of busking earnings. At berry-picking time at Blairgowrie they would meet Stewart relatives. Jeannie's mother Maria was known as a singer by travellers from Aberdeen to Perth, and Maria's father Willie Stewart was also a fine singer who encouraged young Jeannie.
Willie had a second wife 'an she used to like the auld sangs too. Mony's the braw shillin the twa o them used to gie me for to sing.'
Jeannie learned songs from her mother, who 'sang a lot o sangs – three times mair than fat I can mind. Three times mair'. Jeannie was a maker of songs too, sometimes adapting lyrics to an old tune if she didn’t like the tune she had heard, or creating a new tune for a lyric found in print. Later she would tease visiting folklorists by singing ‘what she avowed was a traditional song and then would slyly admit she had composed it while washing up’.
Hamish Henderson was recording singers for the archive of the School of Scottish Studies at 27 George Square, Edinburgh. Alan Lomax had come to Scotland in 1951 to escape the political tumult of McCarthyite persecution, and began to record singers around Scotland with support and guidance from Hamish, then create thematic radio programmes, which Jeannie heard and commented 'I could gie them a good few auld sangs'.

From 1953 Henderson then Lomax recorded her, and Hamish organised ceilidhs and performances, introducing her to an amazed audience of folksong enthusiasts in the 1953 Edinburgh People’s Festival Ceilidh. The first commercial recording by her, 'Songs Of A Scots Tinker Lady’, was issued by American record label Riverside. It was recorded and edited by Kenneth Goldstein in Glasgow. The recording session was problematic. Goldstein thought that guitar accompaniment would improve record sales, but this made Jeannie very uncomfortable. The solution found was to banish well known Scottish singer Josh MacRae and his guitar to a hall cupboard, equip him with headphones and a microphone, and have him attempt to interject guitar phrases when he could.
In 1958 and 1959, several 7 inch 45rpm discs were issued, then 12 inch LPs began to appear, with modest titles like ‘The Great Scots Traditional Singer’, ‘The World’s Greatest Folksinger’ and ‘What A Voice’. These were devoted to Jeannie’s singing, but her voice also featured on several thematic LPs of traditional singers across Britain. In the 1960s the Scottish Folk Revival began to gather pace, and Jeannie invited young Revival singers Ray Fisher and Andy Hunter to stay with the family so she could coach them in developing their singing skills.
She was an honoured guest in the folk clubs springing up across the country, and later the folk festivals. She was invited to go to sing in Russia, but demurred in part because the Soviet Union sponsors wanted her and Donald for up to a year, and she said she feared she was being asked to ‘denounce’ her Catholic religion. Once, in London, she and two distinguished Scots visited an Irish pub, where she was invited to sing, and when eventually the other two wished to leave, her Irish audience refused to let her go, and ‘stole’ her coat to keep her there, while the other two beckoned from the door and then left.
As well as songs and accounts of her life, Henderson began to record Jeannie telling traditional tales. Lomax had recorded her in London over several days in 1953, and she told him much about her experiences of ‘second sight’ of past events or anticipation of future events, and he recorded her using playing cards to tell his own fortune.
One of the key instigators of the Folk Song Revival, Norman Buchan, became a Labour MP and in 1967 was a minister in the Scottish Office, and received nominations for Honours. The only nomination he responded positively to recommend the award of an MBE to Jeannie for her 'services to Scottish folksong', the first member of the travelling clans to be decorated by a reigning monarch.
As the title Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice shows, her by biography by Porter and Gower documents her development from a singer celebrated in her local traveller community to become ‘a monumental figure in 20th Century folksong’ [Alan Lomax]
Jeannie died in 1975. The traditions of her family continued to be celebrated by her daughter Lizzie Higgins, who also had an exceptional singing voice and repertoire, and by her nephew Stanley Robertson, a singer, storyteller and author of several books of tales.
The only commercial recording of her singing that was issued more recently than 1985 is 'Jeannie Robertson, Queen Among The Heather', issued in 1998 on the American label Rounder Records from Alan Lomax's 1953 recordings. However the ACE Lomax and Tobar An Dualchais online archives hold so much more, many hours of song and narrative interview.

The title of this website, 'They Sang Bonny', comes from one Scottish version of an old ballad known under sundry titles and with wildly varying lyrics all across the British Isles and further afield – ‘The Raggle-Taggle Gypsies’, ‘Johnny Faa’, and ‘Gypsy Davie’ who came 'ridin through the woods' in Oklahoma.
Young Scottish singers in the 1960s Folk Song Revival learned and performed as a fixed text the version shared and recorded by Jeannie Robertson, who called her version 'The Gypsy Laddie', but there is more to the tale, the narratives vary - abduction or seduction, bewitchment or seizing freedom?

Three gypsies cam tae oor ha door, an oh but they sang bonny oh
They sang sae sweet and too complete that they stole the hert o our lady oh

The lady of the castle comes downstairs to hear them, preceded by her maids, they cast a spell over her and she goes off with them, pursued by her lord,
ut she refuses to return home. Some versions end there, in others the gypsies, numbering from 3 to 7, 11 to 16 brothers, are hanged. Appreciation of other versions of the ballad is enriched by additional narrative elements or felicitous phrasings.
Jeannie Robertson sings of her 'weel-faured face' and the throwing of the gypsies' spells over her. Sometimes the enchantment involves the theft of a gold ring from the lady's hand, other times as in the version of Elizabeth Stewart of Fetterangus it is a gift from the lady, whose appearance is described.
Wi her auburn hair and her bonny broon een she made the gypsies winder o
She took a ring fae aff her hand and she placed it on the gypsy's finger oh
In 1960 a Mrs Sangster was recorded by organiser and collector Arthur Argo. She sang him rich verses.
She cam trippin doon the stair, wi her maids aa aroon her oh
An she brought a glass of the red cauld wine for tae treat the three gypsy laddies oh
She treated them tae the red cauld wine with a little ginger oh
An one of them stepped up behind and stole the gold ring off her finger oh
She's taken off her silken gown, pit on her tartan plaidie oh
An she's gaun oot into the road an awa with the three gypsy laddies oh

In six of the seven Aberdeenshire texts of the ballad found by Gavin Greig in the early 20th Century northern Aberdeenshire the gypsies had ordered her to cast off the silk and don their tartan plaidie. The lord of the castle comes home, selects which is the fastest horse to be saddled for him, the 'bonny bonny black' or the 'broun', and chases after her. In Jeannie's version he meets and gets information from an old man. Meanwhile the lady comments rather than laments about her warm feet wading in the cold river water. She shows us her high social status by mentioning the dukes that had attended her the last time she crossed there, then emphasises this by referring to the goose feather bed she slept in the previous night. In Mrs Sanger's version she is taken into a gypsy camp, where she sleeps on the cold ground surrounded by no less than 16 gypsies.
But when the lord catches the group up and indignantly asks how she can abandon her fine home, her baby and her 'wedded lord', sometimes they are even 'new wedded', she rejects him to stay with the gypsies.
Abruptly the story ends in most versions, with the gypsies being hanged en masse for the 'theft'.

Many ballads migrated to the USA, sometimes preserving archaic elements, sometimes being remade. In Oklahoman Woody Guthrie's version the lord becomes the boss, he mounts his buckskin horse on a hundred dollar saddle, follows the gypsy's wagon tracks and finds the couple by the sound of the gypsy's big guitar. The lady weeps at the thought of her baby, yet 'I'll go my way from day to day, and sing with the Gypsy Davie'.
To return to Jeannie Robertson's version of the ballad, though known as a wondrous preserver of old ballads, Jeannie had changed from the tune she had first learned for the ballad to one she preferred. She heard a tape of 'The Rovin Ploughboy' sung by bothy ballad singer, John MacDonald 'The Singing Mole Catcher' of Pitgaveny, Elgin. She recognised one verse as a link to her version of the gypsies’ ballad and thereafter used MacDonald's tune. His verse was

Last night I lay on a fine feather bed, sheets and blankets sae cosy oh
Tonight I maun lie in a cauld barn shed, row'd in the arms o my ploughboy oh

Here is Jeannie's version of the ballad.

Three gypsies cam tae oor haa door, an oh but they sang bonny oh
They sang so sweet and so complete that they stole the hairt o oor lady oh
For she com trippin doon the stair, her maidens two before her oh
And when they saw her weel-faured face they throwed their spells oot ower her oh

When her good lord cam hame that night he was askin for his lady oh
The answer the servants gave to him, 'She's awa wi the gypsy laddies oh'
'Gae saddle tae me my bonny bonny black, the broon it's ne'er sae speedy oh
That I may go ridin this long summer day in search of my true lady oh'

For he rode east and he rode west and he rode through Strathbogie oh
An there he met a gey aul man that wis comin through Strathbogie oh
'For it's did ye come east or did ye come west, or did ye come through Strathbogie oh?
An did ye see a gey lady, she wis follyin three gypsy laddies oh'

'For it's I've come east and I've come west an I've come through Strathbogie oh
An the bonniest lady that ere I saw, she was follyin three gypsy laddies oh'
'For the very last night I crossed this river I had dukes and lords to attend me oh
But this night I must put in my warm feet an wyde, an the gypsies wydin before me oh'

'Last night I lay in a good feather bed, and my ain weddit lord beside me oh
But this night I must lie in a caald corn-byre, an the gypsies lyin aroond me oh'

For it's will you give up your houses and your land, and will you give up your baby oh?
An will you give up your own weddit lord and keep follyin the gypsy laddies oh?'
'For it's I'll give up my houses and my land, and I'll give up my baby oh
An I'll give up my own weddit lord and keep follyin the gypsy laddies oh'

For there are seven brothers of us all, we are wondrous bonny oh
And this very night we all shall be hanged for the stealin of the earl's lady oh'

In contrast to the way 'The Gypsy Laddie' versions shift and change, the very well-known ballad 'The Bonny Lass Of Fyvie' has come from quiet obscurity to loud popularity in a settled unchanging form – in Scotland anyway. When sung by Fyvie farmer John Strachan at the 1951 Edinburgh People's Festival Ceilidh the song was hardly known, but soon it was taken up by young singers, and eventually performed bouncily by tartaned popular entertainers.

This song too had crossed the Atlantic, as ‘Pretty Peggy of Fennario’, probably in the 19th Century, and a 1961 recording by George and Gerry Armstrong of 'Peggy-o' was heard, learned and recorded by Bob Dylan [on his first album when he was still a folk singer].