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Broadside ballad entitled 'Bonnie Banks Of Lochlomond' |
CommentaryVerse 1: 'It's yon bonny banks and bonny braes, / Where the sun shines bright and bonny, / Where I and my true love went out for to gaze, / On the bonny, bonny banks of Lochlomond.' Below the title we are told that 'Copies of this popular song can be hud at 190 & 192 OVERGATE, DUNDEE'. This most famous of Scottish folk songs is rumoured to have been written by a Jacobite prisoner, who was about to be executed for his part in the failed 1745-46 uprising. The dominant theme of the song is the ancient Celtic belief that if you die away from your home country, then your spirit returns home by an underground route called 'The Low Road'. It is not clear what the connection between the different Poet?s Boxes were. They almost certainly sold each other?s sheets. It is known that John Sanderson in Edinburgh often wrote to the Leitches in Glasgow for songs and that later his brother Charles obtained copies of songs from the Dundee Poet?s Box. There was also a Poet?s Box in Belfast from 1846 to 1856 at the address of the printer James Moore, and one at Paisley in the early 1850s, owned by William Anderson. There are several theories concerning the ballad?s origins. One version is that the condemned prisoner wrote the song specially for his sweetheart. Another interpretation is that there were two Jacobite prisoners, with one of them being set free while the other was executed. This second version claims that the ballad was written by the prisoner who was sentenced to death, for the benefit of the pardoned Jacobite. Whatever the truth of the ballad's origins, it is a famous song that appeals to many people.
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Probable period of publication:
1880-1900 shelfmark: L.C.Fol.70(17a)
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