Heather Down the Moor (Among the Heather; Down the Moor)

DESCRIPTION: The singer wanders "down the moor" and meets a beautiful girl. He courts her "the live-long day," and she stays with him even as her flocks wander. At the end, she leaves him. He wishes he could find her again and make her his "queen among the heather"
AUTHOR: unknown (see NOTES)
EARLIEST DATE: 1800 (Scots Musical Museum)
KEYWORDS: love courting beauty separation sheep
FOUND IN: Ireland Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Henry/Huntingdon/Herrmann-SamHenrysSongsOfThePeople H177, pp. 271-272, "O'er the Moor amang the Heather" (1 text, 1 tune)
Morton-FolksongsSungInUlster 3, "Heather on the Moor" (1 text, 1 tune)
OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads 6, "Doon the Moor" (1 text, 1 tune)
McMorland/Scott-HerdLaddieOTheGlen, pp. 79, 152, "Owre the Muir Amang the Heather" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, HTHRMOOR*
Roud #375
RECORDINGS:
Roisin White, "Among the Heather" (on IRRWhite01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Queen Among the Heather" (plot, lyrics)
cf. "The Magpie's Nest" (lyrics)
cf. "Banks of Sullane" (theme)
NOTES [376 words]: This song is very close to "Queen among the Heather" (Kennedy #141, etc.); they have similar plots and occasional common lyrics. There will be versions where it is almost impossible to tell which is which. I thought about listing them as one song. (Roud lumps them.)
But on consideration, this song has two characteristics rarely seen in "Queen among the Heather." First, this song tends to follow a complex stanza pattern:
One morn in may, when fields were gay,
Serene and pleasant was the weather.
I chanced to roam some miles from home
Among the bonnie bloomin' heather
Down the heather
O'er the moor and through the heather.
I chanced to roam some miles from home
Among the bonnie bloomin' heather
Down the moor.
"Queen among the Heather" usually has simple four-line stanzas.
"Heather down the Moor" also tends to end with the lines
But if I were a king, I would make her a queen,
The bonnie lass I met among the heather
Down the moor.
The authorship of this is a conundrum of another sort. The earliest text of this was that collected by Robert Burns and printed in the Scots Musical Museum. Burns had this from Jean Glover (1758-1811), who according to Maurice Lindsay, The Burns Encyclopedia, 1959, 1970; third edition, revised and enlarged, St. Martin's Press, 1980, p. 144, was a weaver's daughter possessed of good looks and a fine singing voice who ran off "with a sleight-of-hand performer called Richard."
Burns reported, "This song is the composition of a Jean Glover, a girl who was not only a whore, but also a thief; and in one or other character has visited most of the correction-houses in the west. She was born, I believe, in Kilmarnock: I took the song down from her singing as she was strolling the country with a slight-of-hand blackguard."
Was Burns correct in claiming that Glover wrote the song? There seems to be no evidence to the contrary. On the other hand, her version is a bit different from the one we commonly hear today. So I would regard it as at least possible that Glover did not write the song but rather took an existing song and adapted it. On the third hand, maybe the changes from the common version are the work of Burns, not Glover. On the whole, I think we just have to admit uncertainty. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: HHH177

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