The Society’s version of this dance can be traced back to
Skillern’s Compleat Collection of Two Hundred & four Reels and Country Dances
of about 1789 where it is given as
Birks of Endermay
.
The Birks of Invermay
The smiling morn, the breathing spring,
Invite to tuneful birds to sing;
And while they warble from each spray,
Love melts the universal lay.
Let us, Amanda, timely wise,
Like them improve the hour that flies,
And in soft raptures waste the day
Among the birks of Invermay.
For soon the winter of the year,
And age, life’s winter will appear;
At this, thy living bloom will fade,
As that will strip the verdent shade;
Our taste of pleasure then is o’er;
The feathered songsters love no more;
And when they droop, and we decay,
Adieu the birks of Invermay.
– David Mallet (1705–1765)
About eight miles southwest of the city of Perth, in lovely Strathearn, is the village of Forteviot.
It is here that the Water of May tumbles down from the Ochil Hills to meet the River Earn.
Not far from the village stands a sign pointing to “The Birks of Invermay”,
a park of birches in the low-lying land about the Water of May.
Beside the river are the ruins of the original Invermay Castle,
the setting of Sir Walter Scott’s novel,
Redgauntlet
.
Over the entry to the castle are the arms of the Drummonds, the original stewards of Strathearn.
The House of Invermay was the home of the Belshes.
David Mallet, who wrote the song, was the son of a Perthshire farmer named Malloch.
In 1720 he entered Edinburgh University, where he became a friend of James Thomson,
who later wrote
The Seasons
.
Caught up in the furore for pastoral verse, he had several poems printed in
The Edinburgh Miscellany
and in 1723 he wrote the ballad “Wlliam and Margaret” which was published in the
Tea Table Miscellany
.
With his new-found fame, he changed his name from Malloch to Mallet or Malet.
For several years he was tutor to the sons of James Graham, 1st Duke of Montrose.
In 1740, then in London, he collaborated with James Thomson in writing
Alfred, A Masque
,
which contained the famous “Rule Britannia”.
The music for
Alfred
was written by Dr Thomas Augustine Arne.
Mallet became secretary to Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales,
and in 1760, just four years before Mallet died,
he received a sinecure from John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, later Prime Minister.
From “Scotland Dances”, by Eugenia (Jeannie) Callander Sharp
(Used by permission.)