Annie Laurie: A Song History

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The words began as a love poem by William Douglas of Fingland, a Dumfriesshire soldier whose Jacobite loyalties later drove him into exile.[1][2] Its subject was Anna, known as Annie, a daughter of Sir Robert Laurie, first baronet of Maxwelton.[1][2][3] The courtship came to nothing. Douglas married Elizabeth Clerk, and Annie married the laird of Craigdarroch.[1][2] The Douglas family history traces the verses' first appearance in print to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe's ballad book of 1823.[2] Sources disagree about Douglas's birth and death dates, so none are given here.

Color lithograph song card of a young woman in a bonnet standing among flowers, illustrating the song Annie Laurie

W. Duke, Sons & Co., “Annie Laurie,” color lithograph card from the Illustrated Songs series, 1893. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The song known today is largely the work of Alicia Ann Spottiswoode (1810–1900), who became Lady John Scott after her marriage.[4][5] By her own later account, in the mid-1830s she reworked Douglas's lines, wrote a new third verse, and fitted them to an air she had first composed for another poem.[1][5][6] The song was published in 1838 without her permission, and for years it was credited to other writers. Her authorship became widely known only in the mid-1850s.[6] Not everyone accepts her claim to the melody, however. The Traditional Tune Archive points to a version of the air in Davie's Caledonian Repository (Aberdeen, 1829–30), printed several years before the date she gave.[3]

The song became a favorite of British soldiers during the Crimean War.[6][7] Once her authorship was known, Lady John Scott gave it to raise money for the widows and orphans of soldiers killed in that war.[1][6] A poem by the American writer Bayard Taylor, printed in a Greenville, South Carolina, newspaper in May 1856, describes troops in the trenches facing the Redan and the Malakoff who stop to sing "Annie Laurie," each thinking of his own sweetheart.[8] The melody also passed into instrumental music. It turns up in later tune collections such as Hamilton's Universal Tune-Book (1846), and West Virginia's Oscar and Eugene Wright recorded it for Rounder.[3] Folk singers have kept recording it, Archie Fisher among them in 2015.[7]

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Sources

  1. Wikipedia: "Annie Laurie".
  2. The Douglas Archives: "William Douglas and Annie Laurie".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Annie Laurie".
  4. Hymnary.org: "Lady John Scott".
  5. Wikipedia: "Alicia Ann Spottiswoode".
  6. EBSCO Research Starters: "Alicia Anne Scott".
  7. Mainly Norfolk: "Annie Laurie [William Douglas, Lady John Scott] (Roud 8179)".
  8. University of South Carolina Libraries, Historic Newspapers: "Southern Enterprise (Greenville, S.C.), May 22, 1856, page 1".