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Bonny Baby Livingston

[ Roud 100 ; Child 222 ; G/D 6:1264 ; Ballad Index C222 ; DT BABLIVST ; trad.]

Nigel Gatherer: Songs and Ballads of Dundee Alexander Keith: Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs James Kinsley: The Oxford Book of Ballads Emily B. Lyle: Andrew Crawfurd’s Collection of Ballads and Songs Sigrid Rieuwerts: The Ballad Repertoire of Anna Gordon, Mrs Brown of Falkland

John Strachan of Fyvie, Aberdeenshire, sang a fragment of Bonny Baby Livingston to Hamish Henderson in 1952. This recording was included in 2005 on the anthology Hamish Henderson Collects. Mike Yates noted:

It would be wrong to imagine that all the songs and ballads collected by Hamish Henderson, and other collectors for that matter, were complete versions. It just doesn’t work out like that. Here John Strachan sings a couple of important fragments, the first a version of The King’s Dochter Lady Jean, the second a part of the ballad Bonny Baby Livingston. […]

The full version of Bonny Baby Livingston tells how Barbara Livingston is carried off from Dundee by Glenlion, who holds her against her will in his Highland castle. Glenlion’s expressed love for Barbara is not reciprocated and she is eventually rescued by her lover, John Hay, who arrives at the castle with a band of armed men. According to Professor Child, “The kidnapping of women for a compulsory marriage was a practice which prevailed for hundreds of years, and down to a late date, and, of course, not only in Great Britain. The unprotected female, especially if she had any property, must have been in a state of miserable insecurity.”

Transcriptions of both songs can also be found in volume 4 of Bertrand Bronson’s The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (Princeton, 1972, pp. 465 & 502).

Lyrics

John Strachan sings Bonny Baby Livingston

There cam’ a laddie frae the north,
Wi courage frank an’ free,
An he’s fau’n in love wi a bonnie lassie,
Comin’ throu Dundee.

The Heilan’ hills, bit oh, they’re heich,
An’ oh, they’re ill tac dim,
An’ aince that I am ower them,
It’s back I winna gyang.