Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > Songs of Robert Burns

IX. MISCELLANEOUS 489
published in 1508 : ' For all the bnddis of Johne Blunt when he abone clymis.'
Laing's Dunbar, i. 66. The details of the tale differ in the various countries.
That in Straparolo's Eighth Day describes a traveller seeking lodgings ; and
arriving at an open house he enters and finds a man lying on a bench, apparently
alive but speechless. He next addresses the wife, who is in bed with a like
result, and being tired he gets into bed. In the morning when the traveller has
risen, the wife, no longer able to remain silent, furiously enquires of the husband
what sort of a man he is to permit a stranger to occupy his bed. ' Fool, fool !'
the man replies ; ' get up and shut the door.' Blunt in the old Scots language
meant stripped, bare, naked ; and equivocally that meaning may be attached to
the quotation of Dunbar.
The ballad of Burns correctly states that Johnie Blunt ' bears a wondrous
fame, O,' and it can scarcely be doubted that the legend on which he wrote is
very old. The more modern Scottish version of the tale entitled The barrin
the door, and written for general use, was first published in Herd's Scots Songs,
1769, x?o, and is still very popular. It begins as follows: —
'It fell about the Martinmas time,
And a gay time it was then ;
When our guidwife had puddings to make
And she boiled them in the pan.'
One of the ' two gentlemen ' in this case proposes to shave the man with the
pudding soup, and the other is to kiss the wife. The man, like Johnie Blunt,
first breaks into speech.
I see no reason to doubt the assertion of Stenhouse that Burns communicated
the tune Johnie Blunt, which was with the verses originally published anony-
mously in the Museutn, and have so remained until now.
* No. 336. Upon the Lomonds I lay, I lay. This very well-known song,
with its gay melody, is reproduced in nearly every miscellaneous collection of
Scottish Songs, but Bums is never connected with it, and this is the first time
the verses are published as his work. They were originally published anony-
mously in the Scots Musical Museum, i790> No. 2(^g, from Burns's MS. now in
the British Museum, and Burns styles them ' Mr. Burns's old words ' in Law's
MS. List. A note in the index of the Mztseum gravely states that the song ' is
said to be composed on the imprisonment of Mary, Queen of Scots, in Lochleven
Castle.*
The music is at least as early as the first rebellion. In the year 17 16, when
Argyle's Highlanders entered Perth and Dundee, the three companies had
distinct pipers who respectively played The Campbells are coming Oho, Oho ! ;
Wilt thou play tne fair play, Highland ladie ; and Stay and take the breiks
with thee {IVodrow Corresporidence, vol. xi. No. g6'). No verses for the tune
are found earlier than those entitled The Clans in Loyal Songs, 1750, the first
stanza of which is : —
' Here 's a health to all brave English lads,
Both lords and squires of high renown,
That will put to their helping hand
To pull the vile usurper down ;
For our brave Scots are all on foot,
Proclaiming loud where'er they go
With sound of trumpet, pipe and drum ;
The Clans are coming, Oho, Oho ! '
This may have been the parody of an earlier popular song, but none is known,
and Burns's verses in the text are the original on the Campbells. The instru-
mental tune Campbells are co??nng Oho\ is in Bremner's Reels, 1761, 8j\
and the Caledonian Pocket Companion, 1751, iii. 12. It is one of the irresistible
melodies of Scotland which Mr. Glen says is in Walsh's CQ,ledonian Country
D nces, c. 1745, entitled Hob or Nob,