Donal Don

[ Roud 13125 ; Ballad Index FVS180 ; trad.]

Norman Buchan: 101 Scottish Songs Nigel Gatherer: Songs and Ballads of Dundee

Enoch Kent sang Donal Don in 1962 on his Topic EP The Butcher Boy and Other Ballads. This EP’s songs were reissued in 1965 on the Topic album of songs, ballads and broadsides from Scotland, Bonny Lass Come O’er the Burn. Norman Buchan noted:

The text of this hymn of praise to a successful smuggler and illicit whisky distiller comes from Ford’s Vagabond Songs, where it is printed without music. Enoch sings it here to a tune best known as In and Out the Dusty Blue Bells, the Gaelic O theid mi fhein…. ‘Gauger bodies’ means customs officers, to evade whom was not only a national pastime but at times a patriotic duty.

Jock Tamsons’s Bairns sang Donal Don in 2001 on their Greentrax album May You Never Lack a Stone. They noted:

Rod [Paterson] plays the trump, the Scots word for the jaw or jew’s harp, and Ian [Hardie] bounces chopsticks on his fiddle strings in this cheerful salute to the famously grimy illicit distiller. The song is printed in Ford’s Vagabond Songs and Ballads.

Lyrics

Jock Tamson’s Bairns sing Donal Don

Chorus (after each verse):
Hi-rum ho for Donal Don
Wi a’ his tanter wallops on,
A may he never lack a scone
While he maks hielan’ whisky.

Wha hasnae heard o’ Donal Don
Wi a’ his tanter wallops on,
For oh, he was a lazy drone
And smuggled hielan’ whisky.

When first he cam tae auld Dundee
Twas in a smeeky hole lived he,
Where gauger bodies couldna see
He played the king a pliskie.

When he was young and in his prime
He lo’ed a bonnie lassie fine,
She jilted him an’ aye sin sine
He’s dismal, dull and dusky.

A bunch o’ rags is a’ his braws,
His heathery wig wad fricht the craws,
His dusky face and clarty paws
Wad fyle the Bay of Biscay.

He has a sark, he has but ane,
It’s fairly worn to skin and bane,
A-loupin’ like tae rin its lane
Wi’ troupers bold and frisky.

Whene’er his sark’s laid out tae dry
It’s Donal in his bed maun lie,
And wait till all the troupers die,
Ere he gangs oot wi’ whisky.

So here’s a health tae Donal Don,
Wi’ a’ his tanter wallops on,
And may he never lack a scone
While he maks hielan’ whisky.