A melody popular with both fiddlers and
bagpipers. Highland Harry appears in
Neil Stewart's Reels (1762) and in David
Young's Gillespie Manuscript of Perth
(1768) under the title "Highlander's
Farewell to Ireland (1) (The)". It was
this melody to which poet Robert Burns
set his song "Highland Harry," which
appeared in Johnson's Scots Musical
Museum of 1790. Burns based his song on
an older one that he picked up from "an
old woman in Dumblane," although he
reworked much of the material, save for
the chorus "My Harry was gallant and
gay."
The tune appears as "Blue Bonnet
(6)"/"Am Bonaid Borm" in Glasgow piper,
pipe teacher and pipe-maker William
Gunn's Caledonian Repository of Music
Adapted for the Bagpipes (1848).
The original song describes the
affection between Harry Lunsdale, the
second son of a Highland gentleman, and
Mrs Jeanie Gordon, daughter to the Laird
of Knockespock, in Aberdeenshire. "The
lady was married to her cousin, Habichie
Gordon, a son of the Laird of Rhynie;
and sometime after her former lover
having met her and shaken her hand, her
husband drew his sword in anger, and
lopped off several of Lumsdale's
fingers, which Highland Harry took so
much to heart that he soon after died'.
Burns' reworking gives it a political
cast, and is among his 'Jacobite' songs.
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