The_Banks_o'_Doon

The Banks o' Doon

The Banks o' Doon

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"The Banks o' Doon" is a Scots song written by Robert Burns in 1791,[1] sometimes known as "Ye Banks and Braes" (after the opening line of the third version). Burns set the lyrics to an air called The Caledonian Hunt's Delight.[2] Its melodic schema was also used for Phule Phule Dhole Dhole, a song by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.[3]

The song was inspired by the story of Margaret (Peggy) Kennedy (1766–1795), who was seduced and then abandoned by Andrew McDouall, the son of a wealthy family and sometime Member of Parliament for Wigtonshire. Kennedy sued for a declarator of marriage, but died prior to adjudication of the case. Although the Consistorial court found the marriage claim valid, the Court of Session decided the marriage claim failed, but found McDouall to be the father of Kennedy's daughter and ordered that he pay £3,000 to Kennedy's estate and provide for the child.[4][5] (Burns wrote a second poem about Peggy, whom he had met when she was 18 - Young Peggy Blooms.[5])

The song uses the same tune as the East Anglian variant of the English Folk song "Foggy Dew".[6]

Lyrics

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Burns wrote three versions of the song, all published in 1791.

More information First Version, Second Version ...

References

  1. [1]
    Bicket, Juliet Linden. "The Banks O' Doon (First Version)". BBC. Retrieved 19 August 2013.
  2. [2]
    "The Caledonian Hunt's Delight". Tune Arch. 12 January 2018.
  3. [3]
    Subrata Dasgupta (2007). The Bengal Renaissance: Identity and Creativity from Rammohun Roy to Rabindranath Tagore. Permanent Black. p. 220. ISBN 978-81-7824-177-7. In 1882, Tagore would compose, as part of a musical drama, a four-line song which begins with the line Phule Phule Dhole Dhole Bahe Kiba Mridu Bai (Through the Flowers, Down the Slope Blows a Gentle Breeze); this too represents an instantiation of the freedom/constraint schema in which the music of the eighteenth-century Scottish song 'Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon' served as the melodic schema.
  4. [4]
    "McDouall, Andrew (1758–1834), of Culgroat, Wigtown". The History of Parliament. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  5. [5]
    "Kennedy, Margaret or Peggy (1766–95)". The Burns Encyclopedia. Retrieved 27 April 2019.
  6. [6]
    "The Foggy Dew (Roud 558; Laws O3; G/D 7:1496)". mainlynorfolk.info. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
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