Will Ye Go Lassie Go?

There’s no fool like an old fool, they say, so what happens when a bunch of oul’ coots gather together to make music? The next batch of posts may enlighten you as to the question just posed and may also, perhaps, enrage or entertain. Anything’s better than a yawn, I guess. And everything that is not that bloody virus is a plus. At the moment we can’t meet as a group, as we are in lockdown, so I have set out a version of songs that are in our repertoire but which have not yet been recorded. With any luck (and, as three of us are north of 70, we’ll need it!) we will be able to resume our normal practice of meeting weekly and playing tunes, singing songs and generally enjoying the crack.

Will Ye Go Lassie Go? is an Irish/Scottish folk song. The lyrics and melody are a variant of the song “The Braes of Balquhither” by Scottish poet Robert Tannahill (1774–1810) and Scottish composer Robert Archibald Smith (1780–1829), but were adapted by Belfast musician Francis McPeake (1885–1971) into “Wild Mountain Thyme” and first recorded by his family in the 1950s.

McPeake is said to have dedicated the song to his first wife, but his son wrote an additional verse in order to celebrate his father’s remarriage. “Wild Mountain Thyme” was first recorded by McPeake’s nephew, also named Francis McPeake, in 1957 for the BBC series As I Roved Out

While Francis McPeake holds the copyright to the song, it is generally believed that rather than writing the song, he arranged an existing travelling folk version and popularised the song as his father’s.(source, Wikipedia)

And there it is! Again! Once more! The perennial tug-of-war about authorship among a varying number of contenders. Something similar goes on with Ewan McColl’s songs which are derivative also of sources that did not originate solely within his brain. Another folk colossus who used various sources for his songs is Dominic Behan. My nephew, Joe, pointed out that songs such as McAlpine’s Fusiliers would not exist were it not for Behan’s genius at putting together words and melody. To say nothing of his constant touring and promulgating of his oeuvre.

The same may be said for the song posted here- were it not for Francie McPeake sitting down at his kitchen table at 5 Springfield Road, Belfast sometime in the mid-1950s, and writing the song out- it would not exist. Care for a little thought experiment? Suppose that McPeake had never set this song down. It’s conceivable that someone else may have been able to put together the pieces and come up with something analogous- but would it have been this song? The what-might-have-been industry, churns out a substantial range of poems, novels, plays and songs to satisfy the appetite for such things among its various niche audiences.

And what about me? (Could this work as part of a song-lyric?) I do take an interest in identifying sources and I do take pains to acknowledge anything I use that is the product of someone else’s industry. But the final determinant of whether I spend any time on a song and its sources is simple- does it appeal? If it does, then I care not a jot whether it is purebred or mongrel- or even if it is neither fish nor fowl…

This lockdown version uses the Band-in-a-Box/RealBand combo with mastering by n-Track 9 featuring as a 160 bpm waltz-time rhythm section comprising Nashville drums, acoustic bass, a brace of guitars: fingerpicked and strummed, fiddle and harp (cliché, I know, but still…) with an organ added on choruses, with doubled vocal. We were, as the band Banter, developing this song with Sam the Man as main vocal, but SARS-CoV-2, shuttered him in at his place and ushered in an opportunity for… moi!