Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon
Robert Burns's song of the banks of the Doon, both verses: Burns's words as James Johnson printed them (1792), to the tune as G. F. Graham printed it (1849). For 2 to 4 singers: the soprano sings the melody, the alto sings close beneath it, the tenor fills in the chord and the bass sings the bass line. Slow and tender, in a gentle 6/8.
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The first verse
Words: Robert Burns (printed 1792)Tune: "The Caledonian Hunt's Delight", by James Miller, fashioned into a tune by Stephen Clarke (printed 1792; sung here as G. F. Graham printed it in 1849)
Ye banks and braes o' bonie Doon,How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair;How can ye chant, ye little birds,And I sae weary fu' o' care!Thou'll break my heart thou warbling bird,That wantons thro' the flowering thorn:Thou minds me o' departed joys,Departed never to return.
About Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon
Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon is Robert Burns's song of a broken heart by the river Doon. Its earliest known printing is in 1792, in the fourth volume of James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, whose index credits the music to "Mr James Millar Writer in Edinr.": in Scotland, a writer was a lawyer. Burns later told how the organist Stephen Clarke, "partly by way of joke", told Miller "to keep to the black keys of the harpsichord, and preserve some kind of rhythm, and he would infallibly compose a Scots air"; Clarke shaped the result into this tune. We sing Burns's words as Johnson printed them, to the tune as G. F. Graham printed it in 1849, in the second volume of his Songs of Scotland, in G, with four parts of our own: both verses, for 2 to 4 singers, slow and tender.
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