Love And Freedom: A Song History
"Love and Freedom" is not an old anonymous ballad but the work of Mary Brooksbank (1897–1978), a Dundee jute mill worker who also wrote that city's well-known Jute Mill Song.[1] Born in an Aberdeen slum, she moved to Dundee at eight or nine, was working in the mills illegally by the age of twelve, joined the Communist Party to fight for women's rights, and was jailed several times for her campaigning.[2] The song is a courtship story in Scots: at Strathmartine Mains, in Angus, a girl meets a young piper who has no money but promises her love and freedom, and she goes away with him.[3] The Tobar an Dualchais archive notes that Brooksbank wrote it after hearing an itinerant musician play the tune, as a tribute to the free life of people on the move.[3]
Joseph Mallord William Turner, Inverary Castle and Town, Scotland, from Liber Studiorum, etching and mezzotint, January 1, 1816. A Scottish scene, shown for the setting; it is far from Dundee and has no connection to the song.
Hamish Henderson recorded Brooksbank singing the song in 1964, and it appeared in print in her own collection Sidlaw Breezes and in later Scottish songbooks by Nigel Gatherer and Sheila Douglas.[1][3] It passed into the Scottish folk revival under several names, including "Strathmartine Braes" and "Hey Donald," with recordings by Cilla Fisher and Artie Trezise in 1976, Jim Reid in 1990, and Malinky in 2000, who shifted the tune from reel time into jig time.[1]
Aubrey Atwater and Elwood Donnelly, recording as Atwater-Donnelly, included it on their 1994 album Like the Willow Tree, where it is credited to Mary Brooksbank.[4] Aubrey Atwater includes it among the songs with lyrics and chord symbols in Song By Song, Vol. I, her 132-page collection of old-time favorites for mountain dulcimer, banjo, whistle, guitar and voice.[5]
Browse more tunes like this: Old-Time & Fiddle Tunes Dulcimer Tab
Sources
- Mainly Norfolk: "Love and Freedom / Strathmartine Mains".
- Dundee Women's Trail: "Mary Brooksbank".
- Tobar an Dualchais / Kist o Riches: "Love and Freedom".
- Atwater-Donnelly: "Store" (Like the Willow Tree, 1994).
- Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. I".
- Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner, Inverary Castle and Town, Scotland, from Liber Studiorum, etching and mezzotint, January 1, 1816. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.