Appendix

Tunes of the Ballads in the Agnes Lyle Repertoire

Here follows a full list of the ballads and what can be ascertained about the tune of each:

10—“Twa Sisters”

No clear analogues in Bronson; closest analogues in C and D groups (“Hey Edinboro”→“Hey with a gay, with a grinding O”).

14—“Babylon”

Motherwell tune 26 fits Lyle text. Could discrepancy in words be explained by unconscious conflating with J. Goldie’s text, caused by quoting from memory?

15/16—“Sheath and Knife”

Only one tune extant, from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. Motherwell did send Sharpe the Lyle text. Did he also send him this tune? Refrain very like hers, as Bronson notes.

17—“Hind Horn”

Motherwell tune has different words. The ballad has a single tune tradition, unrelated to other ballad tune traditions, though not to other Scottish folksongs.

20—“Cruel Mother”

Most tunes are related, and also related to “Geordie” and “Yarrow” tunes. Impossible to determine a tune family on basis of text family.

38—“The Wee Wee Man”

No clear tune tradition

58—“Sir Patrick Spens”

Tune has a single, Scottish tradition.

64—“Fair Janet”

Only two extant tunes, closely related, and both Scottish.

68—“Earl Richard”

Motherwell gives two tunes, and identifies the appropriate text for the first but not for the second. The Manuscript has only two full texts of “Earl Richard,” the one identified with the first tune in the appendix, and the one from Agnes Lyle. The second Minstrelsy tune, then, could be from Agnes Lyle. (Note that Emily Lyle identifies the first tune with Mary McQueen’s text. 1975, xxii.)

81—“Little Musgrave”

Motherwell tune is the earliest recorded for the ballad, but Lyle text does not fit. Quite possible that this tune is similar to Agnes Lyle’s tune. Her incipit, however, suggests that her tune may come from another tradition, the “Drumdelgie” tune family, (Bronson group B), not generally associated with Scottish texts—but the association had to come from somewhere!

89—“The Eastmure King”

“This is sung to the tune of Johnie Scot” (Motherwell 1825-1826, 341). Motherwell gives one “Johnie Scot” tune, but the fit to the Lyle text of “The Eastmure King” is not perfect. Bronson includes a tune for this ballad from the Blaikie manuscript, but that tune shows no close relationship to “Johnie Scot” and so is probably not AL’s tune.

99—“Johnie Scot”

Motherwell gives a tune for “Johnie Scot,” but not from this singer. The Lyle text is related textually to the “Mary Hamilton” tradition. For tune relations see 89 and 222.

112—“The Baffled Knight”

The Chappell and Durfey tunes (Bronson B and C) are set to texts close to Agnes Lyle’s. But it is impossible to know what tune was used with this broadside text in Southwest Scotland in the 1820s.

173—“Mary Hamilton”

Blaikie Ms has three tunes. One of them could easily be from this singer. The first two are nearly identical, and of a musical structure (ABAB) that lends itself easily to expansion into 6 lines.

200—“Gypsy Laddie”

Bronson’s B group includes several Scottish versions with a final stanza similar to Agnes Lyle’s, suggesting that her version belongs to this text-tune tradition.

204—“Jamie Douglas”

This ballad is usually sung to the tune of “Waly Waly,” and the Lyle version includes “Waly Waly” stanzas, so it seems safe to posit a variant of that tune for this ballad. Motherwell does give a maverick tune in the Minstrelsy, but the accompanying words suggest that it is not the Lyle tune.

208—“Lord Derwentwater”

Tunes are rare. Bronson includes 4, one indisputably from Agnes Lyle. Of this tune he says, “Motherwell’s tune is an excellent example of folk music. Its feeling is major, but it ends on the second, so as to make a graceful return to the beginning. Technically, therefore, it may be classed as Dorian. It has many relatives in tradition, one of the best known, possibly, being Cecil Sharp’s ‘Outlandish Knight’ [Child 4]” (3: 264).

209—“Geordie”

“Sung to a tune something similar to ‘My Nannie O’ ” (Motherwell 1825-1826, 367). Simpson gives a tune under this name (1966, no. 319, p. 507), which seems related to the tune now associated with the Irish songs “The Bantairo” and “B for Barney.” Some of the Bronson group A tunes and texts sound like what Motherwell may have been talking about.

214—“Yarrow”

Bronson identifies 5 groups. The Lyle text is most like that of the Scott 1833 text, set uniquely to the tune “Leader Haughs and Yarrow.”

222—“Bonny Baby Livingston”

Bronson gives only two tunes, a late one from Aberdeen and a Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe one. The Sharpe tune has a text very like that of Agnes Lyle, though longer, and ends on the second, like her “Lord Derwentwater.” Agnes Lyle’s incipit is like that of “Little Musgrave.” Motherwell implies that the tune is that of “Johnie Scot” (1824-1827, 162).

254—“Lord William”

“The only tune preserved for this clumsy piece is that printed by Motherwell, a plagal major which Andrew Blaikie of Paisley secured for him [from Agnes Lyle]. If it suggests any relatives, they lie among Sharp’s variations of ‘The Unquiet Grave’ (No. 78); but it is chiefly in the third phrase that the resemblances are found” (Bronson 1959-1972, 4: 62).

286—“The Golden Vanity”

Bronson gives a Blaikie tune (no. 58) that may be the one about which Motherwell wrote Sharp (see Child 5:142). This tune is 4-phrase, not 5-phrase, and set to different words from the Lyle text. But in general the Bronson Ad tunes, to which group Bronson assigns this tune, are distinctive in being Scottish tunes set to texts in which the second line is a refrain line. The text in Bronson closest to Agnes Lyle’s text is that from Allie Long Parker of Hog Scald Holler, Arkansas, collected in 1958 (No. 103). The Parker version includes the tool for use, nine holes, and hats and caps, calls the ship the Turkish Ugarlee, and even interjects the “Lowlands low” refrain after the first line, as the Lyle version also does. Sending the Lyle text to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Motherwell commented that the tune was different from two other tunes he had heard (Child 1882-1898, 5: 142). Was that tune, like the text, closer to what Allie Long Parker was later to sing?

Fragment 1: “But sixteen years of age she was” No information available about possible tunes.

Fragment 2: “The week before Easter” Tunes given in Sharp may represent the tradition.

Fragment 3: “A fair maid walking in a garden” No early tunes; tradition fairly constant today.

Fragment 4: “There were two sailors were lonely walking” All records are recent for “Basket of Eggs.”

Fragment 5: “It was in the middle of fair July” Probably sung to tune called “Two Rigs of Rye.”

Fragment 6: “As I went out on a May morning” Musical tradition quite recent, and quite jolly.