Tibbie Fowler (I)

DESCRIPTION: "Tibbie Fowler o the glen, There's o'er mony wooin' at her... Wooin' at her, pu'in at her, Courtin' at her, cannae get her, Silly elf, it's for her pelf (money) That a' the lads are wooin' at her." She has few charms, but the lads come seeking her money
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1803 (Scots Musical Museum)
KEYWORDS: courting money rejection
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland) US(Ap)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Ford-SongHistories, pp. 248-251, "Tibbie Fowler" (1 text)
Wolfe/Boswell-FolkSongsOfMiddleTennessee 10, p. 22, "Tibby Fowler" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #5504
NOTES [592 words]: Whitelaw, writing about the Herd/Chambers text: "In the Tea Table Miscellany, Ramsay has a song 'to the tune of Tibble fowler in the Glen,' which proves that the air, at least is old.... The authorship has been ascribed to a 'Rev. Dr. Strachan late minister of Carnwath; but David Laing says that there has been no minister of Carnevath of that name for at least the last three hundred years" (source: Whitelaw-BookOfScottishSong, pp. 61-62, "Tibbie Fowler") - BS
This is repeated almost verbatim in Ford-SongHistories, p. 248, which adds, "There is some reason for believing that 'Tibbie' was a real personage, and tradition at Leith points to the person in a certain Isobel Fowler, who was married to a son of Logan of Restalrig, the conspirator, in the seventeenth century. A house which is believed to have belonged to the pair, having the date 1636, is pointed out in the Sheriffbrae in Leith."
The "conspiracy" referred to is the Gowrie Conspiracy of 1600, in which an attempt was allegedly made by John Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, and his brother Alexander the Master of Gowrie to trap, and probably kill (hold hostage? assassinate? overthrow? demand the roughly £80,000 they were owed by?) King James VI of Scotland.
Wagner, p. 126: "A strong Presybyterian like his father and grandfather, Gowrie was 22 in 1600 when he traveled from Italy to England, where he was well received by Queen Elizabeth. After returning to Scotland, Gowrie made himself conspicuous for opposing the king's demand for money in the current parliament."
The details of the conspiracy are murky, especially since the Ruthven brothers ended up dead and were convicted posthumously of treason; we have only James's side. Every source I checked agrees that we don't really know what happened. Willson, p. 126, puts it most explicitly: "the King was involved in that strange mystery known as the Gowrie Plot. Over many episodes in his life James drew a veil of judicious uncertainty, but the Gowrie Plot was his masterpiece, for here the mystery remains inscrutable to the present day."
It was mysterious at the time, too. Stewart, pp. 150-153) gives the account of what James claimed happened (Gowrie claimed to have found a treasure, convinced James to come alone to see it, whereupon Gowrie attacked the unarmed king -- yet somehow James survived). There was supposedly a witness present, yet within a week, four different people were identified as the witness! (Stewart, p. 154). Ultimately, it was little more than the king's word against a dead body which could not give its side.
It worked out amazingly well for James, though: he called on the clergy to tell his side of the story from the pulpit, and when some resisted, he forced them to obedience, thus increasing his control over the church (Stewart, pp. 254-157).
If the details of what happened are uncertain, the connection of Robert Logan of Restalrig with all this is even more murky. He died in 1606 with no shadow on his name. But in 1609 his body was exhumed and put on trial (something that the Scots were in the habit of doing, e.g. they did it to the corpse of the Earl of Huntly in the reign of Mary Queen of Scots). It being difficult for a dead man to defend himself, the corpse was convicted and its properties seized. Given the nature of the evidence, one is inclined to suspect that the government simply wanted the money of a man who had committed no crime. But it might explain why Logan would be especially interested in marrying for money, given that his family fortune had been impounded. - RBW
Bibliography

Willson: D[avid] Harris Willson, King James VI and I, Holt, 1956?
Stewart: Alan Stewart, The Cradle King: The Life of James VI & I, the First Monarch of a United Great Britain, St. Martin's Press, 2003
Wagner: John A. Wagner, Historical Dictionary of the Elizabethan World, Britain, Ireland, Europe, and America, Onyx Press, 1999

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File: FoSo248

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