O'er the Hills and Far Away (I)

DESCRIPTION: (Jocky) the piper "learned to play when he was young," but "the a' tunes that he could play Was o'er the hills and far away." Rejected by Jenny, he laments his fate, declares "I'll never trust a woman more," and intends to spend his life playing the pipes
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1709 (_Pills to Purge Melancholy_, per Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: love courting rejection music dancing
FOUND IN: Britain Australia
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Logan-APedlarsPack, pp. 330-334, "O'er the Hills and Far Away" (1 text)
Meredith/Covell/Brown-FolkSongsOfAustraliaVol2, p. 248, "(O'er the Hills and Far Away)" (1 fragment)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 507, "Jockey was a piper's son" (1 text)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishSong, pp. 145-146, "Jocky Met Wi' Jenny" (1 text)
Winstock-SongsAndMusicOfTheRedcoats, pp. 37-39, "Over the the hills and far away" (sic.) (1 tune, apparently this based on the attribution to _Pills to Purge Melancholy_)
Dolby-OrangesAndLemons, p. 149, "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" (1 short text of "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (I)" plus a fragment of "O'er the Hills and Far Away (I)")
Delamar-ChildrensCountingOutRhymes, pp. 95-96, "Over the Hills and a Great Way Off" (1 text)
DT, OVRHILL4*
ADDITIONAL: Allan Ramsay, The Tea-Table Miscellany: or, A Collection of Scots Sangs (in three vols) (London, 1733 (ninth edition) ("Digitized by Google")), Vol. I, pp. 192-194, "O'er the Hills and Far Away" ("Jocky met with Jenny fair") (1 text)
James Johnson, Editor, _The Scots Musical Museum_ [1853 edition], volume I, #62, p. 62-63, "O'er the Hills and Far Away" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST Arn017 (Full)
Roud #8460
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Over the Hills So Far Away" (lyrics)
SAME TUNE:
The Hubble Bubble (Logan-APedlarsPack, pp. 196-198)
Indan War Song ("Over the hills with heart we go", a song of the British army that went on to suffer Braddock's Defeat, for which see "Braddock's Defeat") (Colonial-Dames-AmericanWarSongs, p. 10)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Jockey's Lamentation
NOTES [184 words]: It has been conjectured that this is descended from one or another version of "The Elfin Knight," with which it shares a few scattered lyrics and perhaps a plaintive feeling. But it is more likely that it was inspired by, rather than descended from, the older ballad, as this appears to have been originally a broadside.
Pieces with this name are common; John Gay had one in the Beggar's Opera. This version is characterized by the lines quoted in the description, which seem to show up even in the degenerate forms such as "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" (which appears to be nothing more than a dance tune; compare the Baring-Gould text). ˆ RBW
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes: "According to J.W. Ebsworth (Roxburghe Ballads) this was written by P.A. Motteux for D'Urfey's comedy, The Campaigners, 1698, but it is not in the published version of the play."
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishSong: "The song here given is, with the exception of the chorus, not properly a Scottish production, being rather a London imitation of Scottish song, brought out about the beginning of the last century...." - BS
Last updated in version 6.4
File: Arn017

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