MacPherson's Lament

DESCRIPTION: MacPherson tells how a woman betrayed him to the Laird o' Grant. He challenges all to a duel in defense of his honor. He breaks his fiddle, "the only friend I hae," rather than see it in bad hands. A rider is coming to reprieve him, so he is hanged early
AUTHOR: unknown / rewritten by Robert Burns
EARLIEST DATE: 1803 (_Scots Musical Museum_ #114); supposedly first appeared by 1710 (ee NOTES)
KEYWORDS: execution betrayal reprieve fiddle outlaw
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Nov 16, 1700 - Execution of James MacPherson at Banff
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (16 citations):
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishSong, pp. 346-347, "Macpherson's Farewell" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan3 697, "MacPherson's Rant" (6 texts, 6 tunes)
Porter/Gower-Jeannie-Robertson-EmergentSingerTransformativeVoice #15, pp. 134-135, "MacPherson's Farewell" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kennedy-FolksongsOfBritainAndIreland 348, "MacPherson's Lament" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ord-BothySongsAndBallads, pp. 443, "M'Pherson's Farewell" (1 text)
MacColl/Seeger-TravellersSongsFromEnglandAndScotland 88, "Macpherson's Farewell" (1 text, 1 tune)
MacColl-PersonalChoice, pp. 16-17, "MacPherson's Farewell" (1 text, 1 tune)
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland3, pp. 163-169, "Mary Hamilton" (2 texts plus a fragment, with the "C" fragment containing parts of "MacPherson's Lament"; 3 tunes; the tune for the "MacPherson" portion is not given)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 205, "MacPherson's Farewell" (1 text)
Ford-SongHistories, pp. 219-226, "MacPherson's Farewell" (4 texts, one being the Burns "MacPherson's Lament" and three being ancestral or related pieces, probably forms of "MacPherson's Rant")
Sedley/Carthy-WhoKilledCockRobin, pp. 259-260, "MacPherson's Farewell" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, MACPHER* MACPHER2* MCPHERST
ADDITIONAL: James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #196,, pp. 306-307, "McPherson's Farewell" (1 text, 1 tune, from 1788)
Robert Chambers, The Scottish Songs (Edinburgh, 1829), Vol I, pp. 83-85, "MacPherson's Farewell"
James Johnson, Editor, _The Scots Musical Museum_ [1853 edition], volume II, #114, p. 117 "McPherson's Farewell" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kenneth Norman MacDonald, "The Gesto Collection of Highland Music," 1895 (reprinted 1997 by Llanerch Publishers), p. 107, "MacPherson's Lament" (1 tune, presumably this)
ST K348 (Full)
Roud #2160
RECORDINGS:
Jimmy MacBeath, "MacPherson's Lament" (on Lomax43, LomaxCD1743)
Davie Stewart, "MacPherson's Rant" (on Voice08)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "MacPherson's Rant" (subject)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
MacPherson
NOTES [555 words]: Maurice Lindsay, The Burns Encyclopedia, 1959, 1970; third edition, revised and enlarged, St. Martin's Press, 1980, p. 267, James MacPherson was "A freebooter and the illegitimate son of a member of the Invereshie MacPhersons by a gipsy mother. He had great strength and was also an excellent violinist. The counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray went in fear of him and his gipsy followers, until he was seized by Duff of Braco and tried before the sheriff at Banff." He was convicted and sentenced to death.
Legends about MacPherson's death are many. The basic one has it that he played this tune before his death and offered the fiddle to anyone who could play it back for him. None could, so he broke the fiddle rather than leave it in incompetent hands. The (ruins of) the instrument are now said to be in the MacPherson clan museum in Inverness-shire.
Very little of this, except for the bare fact that James MacPherson was executed in 1700, seems to have been verified. That MacPherson was a freebooter seems almost certain -- but only spite could have hung him for his deeds; most of Scotland was the same way!
The earliest reported version of this piece seems to have been Burns's, but (given the variations), it seems certain that several traditional forms are older.
Lindsay, p. 268, thinks that the song we've indexed as "MacPherson's Rant" is MacPherson's own and that this is Burns's rewrite. The tune is the same. - RBW
Chambers: "The old ballad, for which Burns substituted the above beautiful verses, is given in continuation, from Herd's Collection of Scottish Songs [1776]."
If there's an argument to be made for lumping "MacPherson's Lament" and "MacPherson's Rant" it might be Greig/Duncan3 697A and 697B, which mix verses of both. I think splitting them is the way to go.
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishSong is Burns's "Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong" which Dick has from Scots Musical Museum, 1788, No. 114 (James C Dick, The Songs of Robert Burns (London: Henry Frowde, 1903 ("Digitized by Microsoft")), #311 pp. 292-293). - BS
[Regarding the Earliest Date: Porter/Gower-Jeannie-Robertson-EmergentSingerTransformativeVoice mention] a "first appearance in the Margaret Sinkler MS (1710, "McFarsances testment," sic)]. Also they note that a "broadside text composed in 1705 (McPherson's Rant; or the Last Words of James McPherson, Murderer, To Its Own Tune) found its way in part into Herd's Collection of 1776, but was published in full only by Maidment 1859...." since MacPherson was executed in 1700, for my money I'd go for the 1705. They say Rabbie Burns' reworking appeared in 1788. But your mileage might vary :-). - DGE
Incidentally, this trick of hanging someone before a reprieve arrived did not originate with MacPherson. Ronald Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 210-211, tells of a minor rebellion against Charles II in the north of England in the early 1660s: "Twenty-six men were condemned to death and all but two were executed, most being politically unimportant as Charles offered a pardon to leaders who turned King's Evidence. The gentry of Westmorland succeeded in delaying his messenger carrying a reprieve for the agitator of the local rebels, just long enough to hang the man along with his dupes" - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: K348

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