The Brim Battill

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30895, 30 October 1965, Page 5

The Brim Battill

The People's Songbag

written for “The Press" by

DERRICK ROONEY.)

Frac Dunideir as 1 cam through. Doun by the hills o* Banochie, Allangst the lands o’ Garioch, Greit pity was to heir and The noys and dulesum harmonic. That ever that dreary day did dawn, Cryand the Corynoch on hie, “Alas' Alas' for the Harlaw ! ,f A number of great battles of Scotland in the early 15th century and before are commemorated in this old Scottish song, the main one being the Battle of Harlaw, on July 24, 1411, which gives it its title.

The closing lines of the first stanza set the mood for what is to follow: “Cryand the Corynoch. . . .” The Corynoch was a funeral dirge, or a lament for the dead, and by all accounts these Scottish battles left many dead. The ballad gives a fairly faithful account of the causes and the outcome of the Battle of Harlaw. Donald, the Lord of the Isles, marched on the lands of the Earl of Mar, son of the Regent of Scotland, and was met by the Earl’s

army at Harlaw, in Garioch, a district of Aberdeenshire. The Royal Army, which outnumbered the insurgents, defeated them with great slaughter, and Donald’s forces fled in disorder. Altogether 1211 died in the fighting; so the ballad concludes: Men will remember, as they may, Quhen thus the verite they know, And mony ane may mourn for ay, The brim battill of the Harlaw. The ballad was quoted in Wedderburn’s “Complainte of Scotlande,” printed in 1549. as being one of the “sweet sangis”; but as far as is known the earliest printed version appeared in Ramsay’s “Evergreen,” published in Edinburgh in 1724 from an ancient manuscript copy.

Some authorities have expressed doubts about its antiquity, for Ramsay often substituted verses of his own for the ancient poetry which he collected. But the doubts seem to have little foundation. The song bears all the hallmarks of antiquity, and in style is quite dissimilar to the productions of Percy,