Muckin' In Geordie's Byer: A Song History

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"The Muckin' o' Geordie's Byre" is a comic Scots song about the messy business of cleaning out Geordie's byre, or cowshed, catalogued as Roud 2137 and found in the Greig-Duncan collection of north-east Scottish song.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index calls its history highly complex, since various poets, Burns among them, have worked on the piece over the years.[1] Notes on the song cite Stenhouse for a coarse comic ballad of about 1700, of which David Herd presumably printed a fragment, and in August 1793 Robert Burns told George Thomson that the tune was a favourite air of his and that he had tried to give it better words.[2] An older melody of that name, a 6/8 tune in D, appears in Scottish collections such as William McGibbon's and James Aird's, and Burns used a version of it for his song "Tam Glen."[3]

A woman carrying a pail through an old timbered farmyard with pigs lying on the ground

Charles-Émile Jacque, Farm Interior, etching, 1845. A French farm building with livestock, shown for the byre of the title; it has no connection to the song.

A later comic version has different words and its own tune, which the Traditional Tune Archive likens to "Bonnie Strathyre" and "Westering Home."[4] George Morris of Oldmeldrum claimed to have written it, and it was printed in Kerr's Buchan Bothy Ballads.[5] Scotland's Tobar an Dualchais archive credits Morris (1876–1958) with the song while noting that it reworks a traditional piece.[6] Morris and his brother-in-law Willie Kemp, both known as "King of the Cornkisters," each recorded it for the Beltona label.[5] Kemp's 78 made the song popular between the wars, and later singers such as Jimmy MacBeath largely followed his version.[2] The Traditional Tune Archive credits Kemp and Andy Stewart with spreading the tune's popularity.[4]

Alan Lomax and Hamish Henderson recorded MacBeath singing it at Turriff on 17 July 1951, and Ewan MacColl, who called it probably the best-known song in eastern Scotland and said its tune was adapted from a Gaelic melody, recorded it in 1956 and again in 1961; Jean Redpath, Ian Manuel and Joe Aitken are among the later singers.[2] Bing Futch includes it, spelled "Muckin' In Geordie's Byer," in Mountain Dulcimer In The Band (Book 6 - Celtic), where it is arranged in DAD tuning and comes with recordings both of Futch playing over a backing track and of the backing track alone.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Muckin' In Geordie's Byer"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Mucking o' Geordie's Byre".
  2. Mainly Norfolk: "The Muckin' o' Geordie's Byre".
  3. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Muckin' o' Geordie's Byre (1)".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Muckin' o' Geordie's Byre (2)".
  5. Springthyme Records: "The Muckin o Geordie's Byre".
  6. Tobar an Dualchais: "The Muckin o Geordie's Byre".
  7. Bing Futch: "Mountain Dulcimer In The Band (Book 6 - Celtic)".
  8. Image: Charles-Émile Jacque, Farm Interior, etching, 1845. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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