The White Rose o' June
Anne Lorne Gillies
© 2003 Brigh Productions BR002
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Some of the songs on this album are rare and have never been recorded before. But others rank among the best-known Scots folksongs in the world. Indeed many of them have been wrongly attributed to Robert Burns. In fact they were all penned by the 18th century Scottish poetess Carolina Oliphant (Lady Nairne) who remained anonymous throughout her life. For it was considered unseemly in those days for a woman to express herself publicly - especially with politically dangerous Jacobite sentiments like those found in "Will ye no come back again", "Charlie is my darling", "Wi' a hundred Pipers" and the exquisite title
track "White rose o' June".
Wha'll be King but Charlie
The women are a' gaen wud
The attainted Scottish nobles
Will ye no come back again
Carolina Oliphant (Lady Nairne) is described in The Companion to Scottish Culture as “by far Scotland's most enduringly popular song-writer after Burns”. But my generation was forced to sing her songs at school, an exercise which was largely counter-productive to a class of mutinous teenagers. We ended up hating Charlie is my darling.
But my imagination was caught when I discovered her biography among my father's collection of Scottish books. It told the story of a lively writer – a Highland woman – who published her songs anonymously, percolating her work out into the public domain with the help of a “Song-writing Committee” made up of douce Edinburgh ladies (including the two grand-nieces of the philosopher David Hume) all of whom were sworn to “guard her anonymity with Oriental scrupulosity”. She even dressed in disguise to visit her publisher in Princes Street, masquerading as an old countrywoman – “Mrs Bogan of Bogan” – a nom de plume which she abbreviated to BB for publication. As she said herself, it was expedient to make no mention of a woman, for “the Lairds o' the Creation have aye been inclined to undervalue that which may be said to be a feminine production”.
The more I read the more I sympathised with this daughter (and granddaughter) of Scottish patriots and Jacobite activists, forced by 19th century convention to live quietly in Ravelstone, painting watercolours and embroidering while her husband went off to work in Edinburgh Castle; turning to religion as the vestiges of Scottish independent nationhood were replaced by spurious tartanry; in 1822 avoiding being presented to King George IV – the first crowned head to visit Scotland since the Union of Crowns in 1603; the first member of the Hanover family to cross the Border since the Butcher Cumberland!
In 1983 when Edinburgh School of Art asked me to perform daily in their Festival Fringe programme. I wrote a one-woman play about Carolina's life (“Odd Times at Edinburgh”). I have performed it ever since, and the lady and her songs and the Scotland that she wrote about remain as fresh and funny and heart-breaking as ever…
Carolina Oliphant's life straddled the 18th and 19th centuries. She belonged both to the Highlands and the Lowlands, the minor rural aristocracy and the modern enlightened city. She was Cpublicly modest, gentle, and increasingly religious, inwardly full of opinions and ideas, outrage and unfulfilled potential. Her songs too are varied in style and content: sometimes quasi folksongs, sometimes near-classical arias, sometimes tongue-twisting settings of instrumental tunes (reminiscent, indeed, of Gaelic mouth-music), sometimes sentimental ballads. No wonder it is so hard to categorise them. Caller Herring, for example, “saw the light of day as a printed song, to be sung in the fashionable Edinburgh drawing rooms…. neither the words nor the tune are traditional. Nevertheless as (Nathaniel) Gow's harpsichord piece is based on the traditional street cry of the Newhaven fisher lassies calling their wares on the streets of Edinburgh, there is perhaps sufficient of the traditional element to qualify for that label.” (Frances Collinson: The Traditional and National Music of Scotland.)
Arranging Carolina's songs was equally challenging. And I am hugely grateful to Rhona MacKay, Marc Duff, Duncan MacColl, Alistair McCulloch and, especially, Gordon Cree, for their creative input into the shaping of each of these nineteen, highly individual tracks, and to Stuart Forbes, Lindsay McCulloch and Rick Standley for their brilliant interpretations. Fortunately Gordon, Duncan, Alistair, Lindsay, Stuart and I all live near one another in Ayrshire, while the others had to make the long journey from far-flung climes like Glasgow and Bridge of Weir!
But my greatest debt is to my husband, Kevin Bree: the sound engineer, studio manager, editor, designer, photographer, digital wizard and infinitely patient person without whom my voice (and my dreams) would have gone into retirement long ago.
ANNE LORNE GILLIES September 2003