WHO WROTE "ANNIE LAURIE"?

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12757, 1 April 1910, Page 1

WHO WROTE "ANNIE LAURIE"?

("T.P.'s Weekly.") — • - The other evening, when the writer was passing through an Essex hamlet, he happened on two Scotchmen, tarrying awhile in the lath-and-plaster parlour of the local tavern. While the men of Essex ardently and pugnaciously discussed the Budget and the election, they two were- sitting apart in the far corner of the stuffy room. One was singing under his breath the haunting lines of "Annie Laurie" ; the other, with eloquent face, and forefinger sawing the air, was asserting to him Lady John Scott's authorship of the song in question. "You're- wrong," said the first, in repljv, "you're wrong — wrong altogether. The 'auP sang is older than Lady. Scott. It's mv mother singing of it I'm giving you — the 'axil' Gallowa' sang all my folk have kent. It is so old, do jvfti ken, it is never heard nowadays." - . Maxwelton banks are bonnie, j Where early fa's the dew, : Where me and Annie Laurie Made up the promise true, Made up the promise true, And ne'er forget will I ; And for bonnie Annie Laurie . I'd lay dou n me heid and die. She's backit like a peacock, She breastit like a swan, She's jimp about the middle, Her waist ye weel may span, Her waist ye. weel may span, She has a rolling eye ; And for bonnie Annie Laurio I'd lay doun me heid and die. These words, which he repeated with a subdued and pathetic intonation, as if he were harking baclr to the muirs and the whaups of his childhood days are of the original song, written by William Douglas, of Fingland, Galloway, two hundred odd years ago, upon a beautiful" daughter of Srr Robert Laurie of Maxwolltown, Kirkcudbright. It took the ear of the gifted Lady John Scott, of Spottiswoode, who revised it to much advantage, and aJso composed the popular tune now accompanying it. It is stated in a collection of Scottish songs, published by Gardiner, Paisley, 1893, that the song was first printed by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpo in 1824; but the- version of it in the book referred to is different when compared with the words which the writer 1 * heard. On engaging in pleasant conversation with the worthy Scots, the writer remarked that the lines he had overheard appeared to differ from those now attributed to Douglas, and v.-as informed, with a considerable measure of caustic warmth, that as tho speaker came from Nithsdale, and had repeated the song, as his irother and grandmother had before linn— and they both had been born in Xith'sdale, their conjoint ages running Iv.ck 100 years — his words were undoubtedly those of the original render--5 -jr. with which past generations of C.illovidians had been familiar, though now nigh forgotten through the long-time popularity of Lady SVott's rendering.