Mirk, Mirk the Midnight Hour: A Song History

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"Mirk, Mirk the Midnight Hour" takes its name from the opening line of Robert Burns's song "Lord Gregory," which the Mainly Norfolk folk song site lists under both titles.[1] Burns set out the verses of "Lord Gregory" in a letter that the Morgan Library & Museum catalogues as sent to George Thomson on 26 January 1793.[2] The scholar Thomas A. McKean, quoted on Mainly Norfolk, calls the song Burns's version of "The Lass of Roch Royal," or "Annie of Lochryan," a ballad known across the English-speaking world, and notes that it was written for Thomson's Scotish Airs.[1] The National Trust for Scotland holds a Burns manuscript of the song, catalogued as six four-line verses.[3]

Etching of a ruined castle and tower on a riverbank, with trees, small figures and a broad sky.

Jan van de Velde II, Riverscape with Ruins of a Castle, from Landscapes and Ruins, etching, ca. 1615. A ruined castle by the water, shown for the ballad's castle setting.

The older ballad is "The Lass of Roch Royal," number 76 in Francis James Child's collection, also known as "Lord Gregory" and "Annie of Lochryan."[4] In the Traditional Ballad Index's summary, Anne sets out to find Lord Gregory, his mother turns her and her son away from his castle, and by the time he goes to meet her she is dead.[4] The index gives its earliest dates as 1776 (Herd) and about 1765 (Ebsworth), and it reports David C. Fowler's observation that James Joyce cites a fragment of the ballad in his story "The Dead."[4]

Mainly Norfolk lists recordings of Burns's song by Mae McKenna on volume 6 of Linn's The Complete Songs of Robert Burns (1999), Karine Polwart on Fairest Floo'er (2007), and Stanley Robertson (2009), from whom Sam Lee learned it before recording it in 2015.[1] Janene Millen and Shawn McCurdy include "Mirk, Mirk the Midnight Hour," in DAD tuning, in From Ditties To Dirges, a book of ballads, laments and other songs, mostly from the British Isles, arranged for mountain dulcimer with tablature, standard notation and song sheets for singers.[5]

Our book that contains the song "Mirk, Mirk the Midnight Hour"

Sources

  1. Mainly Norfolk: "Mirk, Mirk Is the Midnight Hour / Lord Gregory".
  2. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Autograph letter signed, from Robert Burns to [George Thomson], 1793 January 26".
  3. National Trust for Scotland Collections: "O mirk, mirk is this midnight hour" (Lord Gregory manuscript).
  4. Traditional Ballad Index: "The Lass of Roch Royal".
  5. Janene Millen And Shawn McCurdy: "From Ditties To Dirges".
  6. Image: Jan van de Velde II, Riverscape with Ruins of a Castle, from Landscapes and Ruins, etching, ca. 1615. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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