Collier's Bonnie Lassie, The

DESCRIPTION: "The collier has a daughter" of great beauty. "A laird he was that sought her, Rich baith in lands and money." (She declares that she is too young and black to love a laird, and that she will have a man "the colour o' my daddie")
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1803 (Scots Musical Museum, #47)
KEYWORDS: mining love rejection nobility
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
MacColl-ShuttleAndCage-IndustrialFolkBallads, p. 24, "The collier's bonnie lassie" (1 short text, 1 tune)
MacColl-PersonalChoice, , p. 57, "The collir's bonnie lassie" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Roud #8410
NOTES [96 words]: There are several early printed texts of this (reportedly Herd, Thomson, Johnson, etc.). Comparing the Scots Musical Museum version with MacColl's version, I have to think they are recensionally different -- the Museum version is a very flowery description of how the laird courts the girl, with no real ending; the MacColl text has her reject him.
I suspect the Museum text is one of its rewrites (not by Burns), and a weak one. But it's possible that the folk process improved a weak song.
The tunes, apart from one measure in the middle, are note-for-note identical. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.1
File: MacCS24

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