Hey Bonnie Laddie, Mount and Go

DESCRIPTION: A lady asks a sailor/robber to take her with him. He had loved her before but her parents married her to an old man. He takes her on a ship. The old man sends sailors to bring her back but they are driven off. Now she is rich and the old man grieves.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1827 (Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1)
KEYWORDS: age elopement abandonment escape money sea ship sailor outlaw
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber,Bord))
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #158, p. 2, "Mount and Go" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan7 1361, "Hey Bonnie Laddie, Mount and Go" (10 texts, 9 tunes)
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 57, "Lady Beltrees" (1 fragment)
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 129, "The Beltrees Sang" (1 fragment); 146, "Ramillies" (1 text)
DT, MOUNT&GO*
ADDITIONAL: D.I. Harker, editor, Songs from the manuscript collection of John Bell (Warwickshire, 1985), pp. 341-342, "Mount and Go" ("The lady looked over the castle wal") (1 text)
Roud #3860
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Hynd Horn" (tune, per Greig/Duncan7)
cf. "Shule Agra (Shool Aroo[n], Buttermilk Hill, Johnny's Gone for a Soldier)" ("I'll sell my rod, I'd sell my reel" lyrics)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Waters Wan
My Parents Hae Married Me Owre Young
NOTES [366 words]: Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 is a fragment that does not appear in Greig or any of the Greig/Duncan7 texts. If not for the very similar first verse of the Harker text I would not have put the Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 fragment here. The Harker first verse is "The lady looked over the castle wal[l] And there she spied her marners all And there she spied them one and all Saying go an ile go with you laddie." The Harker text then continues with the usual story: "My father married me when I was young...." Harker's first verse still seems to me to be out of place, rather belonging after she describes her unsatisfying life with the old man.
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 p. xliii on the title "Lady Beltrees" which is in no text I have seen: "... Lady Beltrees ... is related by its title to the family of the Sempills of Beltrees in Lochwinnoch Parish." Harker writes, "The piece is said to be close to Ramillies attributed to one of the Sempills."
I could have lumped the Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 129 fragment with "Shule Agra." The fragment is "I'll sell my rock I'll sell my reel An' I will sell my spinnin wheel An' I will sell my fleckit cow An' follow the laddie wi the red an' blue." The fourth line is against that. Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 146 clinched it for me. The second verse there has the same - allowing for dialect -- first two lines, a "Shule Agra"-like third line ("And I'se buy thee a kep o' steill") and a fourth line of "And thou gang wi' me, laddie." The pattern, if not the exact words, are also in Greig/Duncan7 1361F, 1361I and 1361J; for example; "It's I will leave my guid peat-stack And sae will I my guid kail-yard And sae will I my guid aul' laird And I'll fly the plains wi' my laddie O." My point is that the verse in Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 fits the intent (?) of the ballad though it may have replaced lines with floaters from "Shule Agra." Stretching the point, having found the verse already in a border version of "Hey Bonnie Laddie, Mount and Go," it seems reasonable to me to assume the Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 129 fragment was originally in that ballad also. - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: GrD71361

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