Gramachie
William Stenhouse says:
“It is difficult now to determine, whether this air be originally Irish or Scottish.
In Scotland the old tune, ‘Will ye go to Flanders,’
which may be seen on the second page of M’Gibbon’s first Collection,
is almost, note for note, the same as ‘Gramachree.’”
James Johnson’s
The Scots Musical Museum
, Volume 1, of 1787
contains three songs set to this tune.
The first is “The Maid in Bedlam”, a strange theme for any song,
and the last “Had I the Heart for Falsehood Framed’ by the English playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
It is the second set of verses in the
Museum
that contains the word “Gramachree”
of which “Gramachie” is doubtless only a misspelling.
In his
Strictures on Scottish Songs and Ballads
Robert Burns comments:
“The song of
Gramachree
was composed by a Mr. Poe, a counsellor at law in Dublin.
This anecdote I had from a gentleman who knew the lady, the ‘Molly,’ who is the subject of the song,
and to whom Mr. Poe sent the first manuscript of his most beautiful verses.
I do not remember any single line that has more true pathos than –
‘How can she break that honest heart that wears her in its core!’
But as the song is Irish, it had nothing to do with this collection.”
One verse of the song, despite Burns’ view of the entirety
and his assessment of one line from the third stanza,
is sufficient to reproduce here.
As down on Banna’s banks I stray’d, one evening in May,
The little birds, in blythest notes, made vocal ev’ry spray;
They sung their little notes of love; they sung them o’er and o’er.
Ah! gramachree, mo challenouge, mo Molly astore.
From “Scotland Dances”, by Eugenia (Jeannie) Callander Sharp
(Used by permission.)