> Folk Music > Songs > Andro and His Cutty Gun / Blythe, Blythe and Merry Was She

Andro and His Cutty Gun / Blythe, Blythe and Merry Was She

[ Roud 2868 ; Ballad Index MPCAACG ; DT CUTTYGUN ; trad.]

Ewan MacColl: Folk Songs and Ballads of Scotland

The Clutha sang Andro and His Cutty Gun in 1974 on their Topic album of Scots ballads, songs and dance tunes, Scots Ballads, Songs & Dance Tunes. Don Martin noted:

One of the fine old songs of obscure origin which Robert Burns found so stimulating. A ‘cutty gun’ was a short tobacco pipe: a convenient phallic symbol. Words from David Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs; tune from Robert Chambers’ The Songs of Scotland Prior to Burns. Some bawdy verses (roughened up by Burns?) are in The Merry Muses of Caledonia.

Andrew Cronshaw played the tune of Andro and His Cutty Gun on his 1982 album The Great Dark Water.

Jock Tamsons’s Bairns sang Blythe, Blythe and Merry Was She in 2005 on their Greentrax album Rare. They noted:

Andro (and His Cutty Gun) features regularly in the Scots song tradition. In this 17^th Century episode he confirms his superhero status by standing everyone a round.

Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller sang Blythe, Blythe in 2010 on their Greentrax album Shadows Tall. They noted:

This merry song about a drinking session appeared in Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany (1740). Burns later rewrote it into two different lyrics. Pawning your clothes to buy more drink may return to fashion as recession bites.

Lyrics

Jock Tamson’s Bairns sing Blythe, Blythe and Merry Was She

Chorus (after each verse):
Blythe, blythe and merry was she,
Blythe was she but and ben.
Weel she loo’ed a Hawick gill,
And leuch tae see a tappit hen.

She took me in, she set me doon
And hecht tae keep me lawin free,
But cunnin’ carlin that she was
She gart me birle my bawbee.

The landluck brocht her kebbucks ben,
Wi’ girdle cakes weel toasted broon
Weel does the canny kimmer ken
They gar the swats gae glibber doon.

We loo’ed the liquor weel eneuch
But wae’s my hert my cash was done,
Afore that I had quenched my drooth,
And laith was I tae pawn my shoon.

When we had three times toomed the stoop,
And the neist chappin new begun
In started tae heeze up oor hopes,
Young Andro wi’ his cutty gun.

We ca’d the bicker aft aboot,
Till dawnin’ we ne’er lee’ed oor bun
And aye the cleanest drinker oot
Was Andro wi’ his cutty gun.

I ha’e been east, I ha’e been west,
I ha’e been far ayont the sun,
But the blythest lad that e’er I saw
Was Andro wi’ his cutty gun.