Wild Mountain Thyme: A Song History

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The Traditional Ballad Index catalogues this song as "Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go" and notes that the Roud index groups it with "The Braes o' Balquither."[1] Mainly Norfolk files it alongside "The Braes o' Balquhidder," a song by the Paisley poet Robert Tannahill (1774–1810).[2] Tannahill was a weaver as well as a poet, and many of his songs were set to music by his friend Robert Archibald Smith, a leading church musician.[3] According to the Traditional Tune Archive, Smith's Scottish Minstrel (1821–1824) printed Tannahill's song twice, with a variant air the second time, and the tune was already in the Bodleian Manuscript of Scottish country dances dated 1740.[4]

Watercolor of tall trees beside a rocky stream in a hilly Scottish landscape

John Glover, Early morning near Loch Katrine in the Trossachs, Scotland, watercolor over graphite, with gum arabic, before 1831. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its Highland scenery; it has no connection to the song.

Francis McPeake, born in Belfast in 1885,[5] reworked this older material into the song now known as "Wild Mountain Thyme."[2][4] Peter Kennedy first recorded the McPeakes in their Belfast home in 1952,[5] and Mainly Norfolk dates a BBC recording of the song by McPeake and his son to 7 July 1952, later issued on the 1955 HMV anthology Folk Song Today.[2] The Ballad Index, by contrast, gives 1957 as its earliest date, so the sources consulted here differ on when the song is first documented.[1] Who made it is also disputed: McPeake recalled hearing an old uncle sing it many years earlier, and the Ballad Index calls a McPeake authorship plausible but unproven.[1] Mainly Norfolk reports the view that McPeake's tune is entirely his own while noting the uncertainty over the uncle,[2] whereas the Traditional Tune Archive gives a third account: when the family threatened a copyright suit over the melody's use in an Irish television advertisement, discussion in the press and some research concluded that the McPeakes had written neither words nor music.[4]

The family recorded the song again for their 1961 Riverside album The McPeake Family of Belfast and made it the title track of a 1963 Topic EP, by which time Sandy Paton (1959) and Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor (1962) had also recorded it.[2] Topic Records counts it among the best-known songs of the 1950s folk revival, with covers by Fotheringay, The Byrds, Mark Knopfler and Rod Stewart among many others.[6]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go".
  2. Mainly Norfolk: "The Braes o' Balquhidder / Wild Mountain Thyme / Will You Go Lassie, Go?".
  3. University of Glasgow, Georgian Glasgow: "Robert Tannahill (1774-1810)".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Braes of Balquidder (The)".
  5. Folktrax Archive (Peter Kennedy Collection): "FTX-071 - The Jug of Punch".
  6. Topic Records: "The McPeake Family – Wild Mountain Thyme".