Road to Dundee, The

DESCRIPTION: "Cauld wind was howling o'er moor and o'er mountain" when the singer meets a girl asking her way to Dundee. He says he can't easily tell her, but will show her the way. As they approach the town, they exchange tokens and part. And no, they *don't* marry
AUTHOR: see NOTES
EARLIEST DATE: 1906 (Greig/Duncan5)
KEYWORDS: travel courting
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber)) Ireland Canada(Newf,Ont)
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #51, p. 2, "The Road to Dundee" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan5 971, "The Road to Dundee" (7 texts plus a fragmentary text from Greig on p. 600, 4 tunes)
Ord-BothySongsAndBallads, pp. 152-153, "The Road to Dundee" (1 text, 1 tune)
Gatherer-SongsAndBalladsOfDundee 63, "The Road tae Dundee" (1 text, 2 tunes)
OLochlainn-IrishStreetBallads 95, "Sweet Carnloch Bay" (1 text, 1 tune)
Bennett/Downey-JeromeJustOneMoreSong 7, pp. 83-85, "The Road to Dundee" (1 text)
Fowke-TraditionalSingersAndSongsFromOntario 52, "The Road to Dundee" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, ROADDUND* RDUND2
ADDITIONAL: 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. 93-98, "The Road and the Miles to Dundee" (copy of a broadside print); "Road to Dundee" (copy of a broadside print); "(The Road to Dundee)"; "Grim WInter (1811)"; "Grim Winter (1841)" (3 texts plus the broadside prints)
Roud #2300
RECORDINGS:
Jerome Downey, "The Road to Dundee" (on NFJDowney01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Lass o' Glenshee" (tune, per Greig)
NOTES [58 words]: OLochlainn-IrishStreetBallads lists the author of this as "Mackay," but Chris Wright says that Charles Gray of Anstruther published his earliest text of "Grim Winter" in 1811. Wright observes that Gray's song -- clearly an art song -- was very flowery, so someone (maybe even someone named Mackay) might have pruned the shrubbery along the way. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.5
File: Ord152

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