>> > King of the Fairies English?! >> I thought it was Irish, but it's a variant of an older tune, "Gilderoy", >> which is first documented from Scotland but could equally well be English. > Hold on, Jack! Last time we had this folkband discussion, you said that > *Red-haired boy* was the same tune as Gilderoy!
"Gilderoy" gets around... there's probably no other tune in the British Isles with so many descendants. "Gilderoy" *means* "red haired boy". Its origins are pretty mystifying. The original text is in English, but written in a style that exactly mirrors a Gaelic lament genre used for other MacGregors (the McGregors specialized in very long and very vague poems in an archaic mediaeval manner). But the tune has no older Gaelic parallel. So it looks like whoever put it together was an impressively skilled bilingual scholar. There are no other examples I can think of where Gaelic content has crossed over into English or Scots folksong - generally if a Gaelic tune gets used for a Scots song, the Scots text has no relation at all to the Gaelic. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Campin * 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU, Scotland tel 0131 660 4760 * fax 0870 055 4975 * http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack/ food intolerance data & recipes, freeware Mac logic fonts, and Scottish music To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
