Ball of Kirriemuir, The

DESCRIPTION: A quatrain ballad, the scores of verses to this song describe the sexual feats at the "gathering of the clans."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c.1938 (sung by Mikeen McCarthy on Voice14)
KEYWORDS: bawdy sex
FOUND IN: Australia Britain(England,Scotland) Ireland US New Zealand
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Cray-EroticMuse, pp. 95-101, "The Ball of Kirriemuir" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Bronner/Eskin-FolksongAlivePart2 58, "The Ball of Kinnie Muir" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear, pp. 168-170, "The Ball of Kirriemuir" (1 text, 1 tune)
Morgan/Green-RugbySongs, pp. 34-40, "The Ball of Kerrymuir" (1 text)
DT, KERIMUIR*
Roud #4828
RECORDINGS:
Anonymous singers, "The Ball of Kirriemuir" (on Unexp1)
John MacDonald, "The Ball O'Kerriemeer" (on Voice07)
Mikeen McCarthy, "The Ball O'Kerriemeer" (on Voice14)
SAME TUNE:
Black Billy Blues (by Joe Charles) (Les Cleveland, The Great New Zealand Songbook, p. 67)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Ball at Kerrimuir
The Gatherin' of the Clan
NOTES [177 words]: A few verses are attributed, with little evidence, to Robert Burns. - PJS
Patrick Delaforce, Monty's Highlanders: 51st Highland Division in the Second World War, 1997 (I use the 2016 Pen & Sword paperback), p. 221, reports that the 51st Highland Division sang this as they crossed the Rhine in March (?) 1945, despite the efforts of the Chaplain to get them to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the band's playing "Scotland the Brave."
Hopkins-SongsFromTheFrontAndRear reports, "Versions and variations abound for this song. In some military circles, it is reputed to be over 400 years old, and to have more verses than the Koran." Which is undoubtedly true, since the Quran is in prose, but I doubt that's what the storytellers meant. To be equally nitpicky, the subdivisions of the Surahs of the Qutan are properly called āyāt; we call them "verses" in English, but they are not really the same type of thing as the "verses" of the English Bible (which are in fact a modern creation, although the Hebrew had something similar. The Greek Bible did not.) - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: EM095

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