Bonnie Doon: A Song History

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"Bonnie Doon" is the melody best known as the setting of Robert Burns's song "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," and it also circulates under the title "The Caledonian Hunt's Delight." Burns worked on the poem in 1791 and left three versions. The second, beginning "Ye flowery banks," was paired with a different tune. The last is the one sung today, and it appeared over his initial in 1792 in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum. The second version was not printed until 1808, in R. H. Cromek's Reliques of Robert Burns.[1][2][3]

Photochrom of the old stone arch bridge over the River Doon among trees, about 1890-1900

Auld Brig O’Doon, Ayr, Scotland. Photochrom print, Detroit Publishing Co., about 1890–1900. Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication. The River Doon of Burns’s song.

The tune predates the song. It was printed in 1788 as "The Caledonian Hunt's Delight" in Niel Gow's second collection of reels.[4][5] The best-known account of where it came from is Burns's own, given in a 1794 letter to his editor George Thomson. He said that James Miller, an Edinburgh writer, wanted to compose a Scots air. The organist Stephen Clarke, half in jest, advised him to stick to the harpsichord's black notes and hold to a regular beat, and afterwards polished Miller's rough attempt into the finished tune. In the same letter Burns admitted that the origins of airs are hard to pin down, and he passed on reports that this one was Irish or had come from the Isle of Man. Later writers proposed Irish or English origins as well.[4][1] Burns could still find the air awkward: in a 1795 letter to Thomson he grumbled about its peculiar rhythm while writing further stanzas for it.[6]

The melody soon crossed the Atlantic. The Free Library of Philadelphia holds a "Bonny Doon" with Burns's words, published in Boston by G. Graupner around 1806; the library's record attributes the melody to Miller.[7] The Traditional Tune Archive finds it in a 1790 manuscript from Simsbury, Connecticut, an 1814 New York flute collection, and the American Veteran Fifer of 1905.[5]

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Sources

  1. Mainly Norfolk: "The Banks o Doon".
  2. Traditional Ballad Index: "Banks o' Doon, The".
  3. Representative Poetry Online (University of Toronto Libraries): "Ye Flowery Banks (Bonie Doon)".
  4. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Caledonian Hunt's Delight (1) (The)".
  5. Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Ye Banks and Braes".
  6. The Morgan Library & Museum: Robert Burns, autograph letter to George Thomson, 3 June 1795 (MA 50.17).
  7. Free Library of Philadelphia Digital Collections: "Bonny Doon".