The lyric appears in Ford’s Vagabond Songs and Ballads in Part I, 1899 and also in the revised edition of 1904. Ford notes: “ This graphic and clever, though slightly uncouth ditty, which I have never seen in print, was common enough in all the valley of Tay about fifty years ago, and has not yet passed out of memory in that district.” Ford says the tune is Niel Gow’s “Fareweel to Whisky” – but we sing it to “Rob Roy’s March”.
The
connection with the Tay
continues with Donal Don’s
inclusion in Songs of Dundee
edited by Nigel Gatherer – who
notes the tune as “Rob Roy’s
March.”
One reason for the importance of
access to cheap alcohol and
those who made or smuggled it
after the union of 1707, was
“the appalling water supply.
Even the Church, which preached
against spirits, approved of
beer as ‘strengthening’”. Many
people felt the new tax on ale
was going towards English debts,
and smuggling of spirits became
widespread. “This made spirits
cheaper than the taxed ale”.
The lyric seems to fit into the many songs of the Lowlands poking fun at the supposed language and characteristics of the Highlander, that scary denizen of pathless places whose role in the Jacobite Rebellions and whose arrival to find work in the cities after the Clearances was not to be forgotten.
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