December Tunes
This month’s tunes feature Scottish Chestnuts: The Thistle of Scotland and two Harry Lauder songs
The New Harry Lauder Set:
A couple of months ago, Allan Chertok suggested to the Music Committee that we should introduce some of the toe-tapping Jimmy Shand marches and Harry Lauder songs as a concert set. Ever responsive to our members, we came up with a set of well-loved Scottish ‘marchy’ tunes. Click on the tune titles to hear the mp3 recordings.
One of these is already in our repertoire: Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ (2.27) sung here by Harry Lauder.
The new tunes are a traditional pipe march in D major The Badge (Thistle) of Scotland, played here by Bill Hepburn, and a couple of Harry Lauder’s best known melodies, I Love a Lassie (aka Ma Scotch Bluebell) and (Just a) Wee Deoch an Doris
Click here to see the December ‘dots’ and here to see the new Harry Lauder concert set.
Read more about the tunes…
The Badge of Scotland
The Order of the Thistle, founded in 1540 by King James V, is the highest honor in Scotland. The badge has the thistle in the center, with a saltire cross surmounted by a star of four silver points, and a green circle bordered and lettered with gold, with the motto “Nemo me impune lacessit”, “No-one harms me without punishment” but more commonly translated in Scots as “Wha daurs meddle wi me”.
The thistle is Scotland’s national emblem and was first used on silver coins issued by James III in 1470. The legend goes that the thistle became Scotland’s symbol from the events surrounding the Battle of Largs in 1263.
For hundreds of years much of Scotland was part of the Kingdom of Norway, but Norwegians seem to have had little interest in their former far flung territory, until King Alexander III proposed to buy back the Western Isles and Kintyre from the Norse King Haakon IV. The thought of relieving King Alexander of some of his riches, and keeping their territories, re-kindled the Norse interest in Scotland.
Late in the summer of 1263 King Haakon of Norway set off with a sizeable fleet of longships for the Scottish coast. Gales and fierce storms forced the ships onto the beach at Largs in Ayrshire, and a Norwegian force landed. The Norsemen tried to surprise the sleeping Scottish clansmen, and removed their footwear in order to move more stealthily under the cover of darkness. But as they crept barefoot, one of Haakon’s men unfortunately stood on a patch of thistles. His shout of pain warned the Scots who rose up and routed the enemy, thus saving Scotland from invasion.
Harry Lauder
According to Wikipedia (click on his name above to read all about him), Harry Lauder (1870 - 1950) became the highest-paid performer in the world in 1911, and he was the first British artist to sell a million records. We added “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ “ to our repertoire early on (SRS 2.27), but are missing a couple of his most famous tunes.
Harry Lauder Music book cover on right.
In 1905 he made a hit with I Love a Lassie.
The alternative words I used to sing as a young lad in Dundee went like this:
I love a sausage a Co-operative sausage.
You can tell it’s Co-operative by the smell.
If you fry it wi’ an ingin’, you can hear the ingin’ singin’,
Mary ma Scotch Bluebell !
(The Co-op was our local grocery store, and an ingin’ is an onion in the Dundee dialect)
In 1912 he had another hit with A Wee Deoch-an-Doris.
This translates from the Gaelic as “A Little Drink at the Door” , and celebrated a time honored custom of ‘one for the road!’.
Those were the days before breathalyzers and DUI’s !!
Happy Holidays, and enjoy these Scottish chestnuts.
All the Best,
Alan Wilson
