The Lass Of Patie's Mill: A Song History

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"The Lass Of Patie's Mill" is a Scottish song whose words are generally credited to Allan Ramsay,[1] the Scottish poet (1686–1758).[2] Ramsay printed the text in his Tea-Table Miscellany, which came out in volumes between 1724 and 1727, and referred to the song in his pastoral play The Gentle Shepherd.[1] The melody was in print by 1725 in Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius,[3] whose first edition credited it to David Rizzio, the secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots; the Traditional Tune Archive regards that attribution as doubtful, and Thomson removed it from later editions.[1] Robert Burns ranked it among Ramsay's best songs and passed on a story, told to him secondhand, that Ramsay, while staying at Loudon Castle, passed a bareheaded girl making hay at a spot on the Irvine Water called Patie's Mill; the Earl of Loudon remarked that she would make a good subject for a song, and Ramsay brought a first sketch of it to dinner.[1] Burns also observed that Sir John Sinclair's statistical volumes recorded two rival claims to the song, one from Ayrshire and one from Aberdeenshire, so its setting was disputed even in his day.[1]

Engraving of an 18th-century stage scene in a prison, Macheath in chains between two pleading women, with audience members seated at the sides.

William Blake after William Hogarth, The Beggar's Opera, Act III, etching and engraving, 1790. A scene from The Beggar's Opera, the 1728 ballad opera in which John Gay borrowed the air for Air XXXIX; the engraving shows Act III and has no direct connection to the song.

The air soon spread south of the border. John Gay borrowed it for Air XXXIX of The Beggar's Opera, where the character Lucy sings new words to it,[4] and that ballad opera, built from English, Irish, Scottish and French tunes, opened in London in 1728.[5] The Traditional Tune Archive lists more than thirty printed collections containing the melody, among them eighteenth- and nineteenth-century editions from London, Dublin and New York, and notes that under the title "Carolan's Cap" it was later credited to the Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan.[1]

It has also lived on as an instrumental piece: the Tobar an Dualchais archive holds a recording of it played on fiddle in march time,[6] and the Traditional Tune Archive lists a 1936 78 rpm disc of it by the Edinburgh Highland Reel and Strathspey Society.[1] For dulcimer players, Larry Conger offers a duet version as mountain dulcimer sheet music, published by Dulcimerican Music as a downloadable three-page PDF that may be shared with one other performer.[7]

Our book that contains the song "The Lass Of Patie's Mill"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation: Lass of Patie's Mill (The)".
  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Allan Ramsay".
  3. Project Gutenberg: "Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732), Author of The Beggar's Opera".
  4. Project Gutenberg: "John Gay, The Beggar's Opera".
  5. Encyclopaedia Britannica: "The Beggar's Opera".
  6. Tobar an Dualchais: "The Lass o Patie's Mill".
  7. Larry Conger: "The Lass Of Patie's Mill (Duet Version)".
  8. Image: William Blake after William Hogarth, The Beggar's Opera, Act III, etching and engraving, 1790. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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