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Up Among the Heather

[ Roud 1506 ; Ballad Index FVS157 ; DT UPMOOR ; Mudcat 156417 ; trad.]

Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor sang Up Among the Heather in 1962 on their album with The Galliards, A Rovin’.

Elizabeth Stewart sang Up Among the Heather in 2004 on her CD Binnorie. Thomas A. McKean noted:

This relatively little-known local song, set on the slopes of Bennachie near Inverurie, is a light-hearted account of courtship and mishap. Found almost exclusively in Traveller communities, it has parallels with the more ribald The Cuckoo’s Nest.

and:

In 1960, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, along with Charles Parker, were preparing a “radio ballad”, a montage of interviews, ambient sound of working life, music and new songs, on the life of English and Scottish fisher-folk: Singing the Fishing. Arthur Argo, grandson of Gavin Greig, sent the team a tape of Elizabeth and her sister Jane singing Up Among the Heather, with piano, jazzed-up to quickstep time. Peggy Seeger recalls,

I remember those two aligned voices and the gutsy piano. We were dancing around listening to it; it was so bouncy and full of life.

The resulting tune was used by MacColl for the now classic Come A’ Ye Fisher Lassies, a song now usually assumed to be traditional and which perfectly encapsulates the hard graft of the gutting quines.

Lyrics

Elizabeth Stewart sings Up Among the Heather

Chorus (after each verse):
It’s up among the heather on the hill o Bennachie
Twas there I met a bonnie lassie kilted tae the knee
When a bumbee stung me richt below the knee
And we baith gaed haem a-murnin fae the hill o Bennachie.

Said I tae my lassie, Whaur are ye gaun tae spend the day?
Oh I’m gaun tae spend the day on the hill o Bennachie
Whaur the lads and the lassies they aa sit sae free
Amongst the bloomin heather on the hill o Bennachie.

As I wis a-walkin on the hill o Bennachie
Twas there I sat a bonnie lassie sitting on ma knee
I took her and whurled her and aye she said tae me,
O Jock we’ll ging a-wanderin on the hill o Bennachie.

Said I tae my lassie, Will you tak my advice?
Never let a sodger laddie kiss ye mair than twice
For aa the time he’s kissin ye he’s makin up a plan
For tae hae anither rattle at yer aul tin can.