Highland Harry

DESCRIPTION: Highland Harry's banished and the singer mourns she'll "never see him back again!" She wishes some "villains [were] hangit high" so he could return. He had "rush'd his injur'd prince to join; But, Oh! he ne'er came back again!"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1821 (Hogg-JacobiteRelicsOfScotlandVol2)
KEYWORDS: rebellion exile nonballad Jacobites
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Hogg-JacobiteRelicsOfScotlandVol2 30, "Highland Harry" (1 text, 1 tune)
Greig/Duncan1 134, "Highland Harry" (3 texts, 3 tunes)
ADDITIONAL: James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #164,, pp. 276-277, "My Harry Was a Gallant Gay" (1 text, 1 tune, from 1787)
ADDITIONAL: James Johnson, Editor, _The Scots Musical Museum_ [1853 edition], volume III, #209, p. 218, "My Harry was a Gallant gay" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST GrD1134 (Full)
Roud #3809
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Harry Lumsdale's Courtship" (some lines) and references there
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Oh For Him Back Again
NOTES [222 words]: Hogg-JacobiteRelicsOfScotlandVol2: "This edition is taken from Mr Moir's collection. The first three verses were altered by Burns from an old song; the other two were added by Sutherland."
Burns: "The chorus I picked up from an old woman in Dunblane; the rest of the song is mine." - BS
The tune is listed as "Highlander's Lament." Which obviously fits.
Maurice Lindsay, The Burns Encyclopedia, 1959, 1970; third edition, revised and enlarged, St. Martin's Press, 1980, pp. 182-183, says that the part Burns picked up from an old woman was the stanze "My Harry was a gallant gay." Peter Buchan states that this original was about one Harry Lumsdale, and Mrs. Jean Gordon, who was married to her cousin Habichie Gordon, son of the Lord of Rhynie. When Habichie Gordon and Harry Lumsdale met, Gordon attacked Lumsdale and cut off several fingers, with Harry dying not long after. Peter Buchan being Peter Buchan, one cannot help but wish for more evidence. Nonetheless it would be no surprise if Burns put a Jacobite slant on a song which originally lacked it.
It is interesting to note that Burns's text never mentions *which* villians should be hanged high; it's perhaps worth noting that (according to my Burns editions) he wrote the song in 1787, at which time Bonnie Prince Charlie was still alive though not for much longer. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: GrD1134

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