Gallowa Hills

DESCRIPTION: "I will tak my plaidie, contented to be, A wee bit kiltie abune my knee...." "For the Gallowa Hills are covered wi' broom... And we'll gang oot ower ths hills tae Gallowa." The girl will leave/sell all (distaff, reel, spinning wheel) to join her lad
AUTHOR: loosely derived from "The Braes of Galloway" by William Nicholson (source: Chris Wright)
EARLIEST DATE: 1953 (recording, Jeannie Robertson)
KEYWORDS: love travel nonballad
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Porter/Gower-Jeannie-Robertson-EmergentSingerTransformativeVoice #33, pp. 171-172, "The Gallowa' Hills" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, GALLWA
ADDITIONAL: _Sing Out_ magazine, Volume 37, #2 (1992), p, 49, "Gallowa Hills" (1 text, 1 tune, Ray Fisher's version based on the singing of Jeannie Robertson)
Chris Wright, "'Forgotten Broadsides and the Song Tradition of the Scots Travellers" -- essay found in David Atkinson and Steve Roud, Editors, _Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Tradition_, Ashgate, 2014, pp. 91-92, "The Braes of Galloway" (full text of the original poem); "The Gallowa Hills" (1 text, from Jeannie Robertson, with three verses to Nicholson's seven); "(Gallowa Hills)" (1 text, from a broadside, which Wright suggests is the intermediate form)
Roud #3358
NOTES [54 words]: "Rock and reel": a rock is a distaff or spindle for gathering unspunn wool or flax for spinning; "reel" is a larger, turning frame device for winding spun thread. The standard combination of "rock and reel" means roughly "everything." The implication here is that she'd do anything for him in order to share his adventures. - DGE
Last updated in version 5.3
File: DTGallwa

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