balls to the wall
Sharlene Toney
the Wall. i recently heard this song at Grandfather Mountain Highland
Games and was given a web page with lots of songs and other scottish
info but lost the page. If anyone can help me please write
shar...@hotmail.com
Jerry Humphrey
recorded by Jim Croce at the last concert before his untimely death. It is
on the last concert album and was published after his death.
According to the lead in giving by Jim, the song had been passed down
'orally' for a number of years before being written down by Robert Burns.
Whether or not this is true, I have no idea. A very ribald song, the "Ball
at Kirriemuir" is very adaptable to adding verses of one's imagination.
Alexander Maclennan
> According to the lead in giving by Jim, the song had been passed down
> 'orally' for a number of years before being written down by Robert
> Burns. Whether or not this is true, I have no idea. A very ribald song,
> the "Ball at Kirriemuir" is very adaptable to adding verses of one's
> imagination.
This must be in some doubt. In his edition of Burns` Merry Muses of
Caledonia, Sidney Goodsir Smith includes a learned essay, Pornography
and Bawdry in Society by James Barke. This gives an account of the
origin of the ŹBallŹ following an orgiastic barndance at Kirriemuir in
1880. This account he had from a local historian about thirty years
earlier. This makes it much too late in origin for Burns to have had a
hand in it. He also recounts the tale of how the bandless Highland
Brigade marched past Churchill in Tunis after the advance in North
Africa. They sang the Ball as they passed the saluting base.
Churchill at first looked puzzled then broke into a broad grin. The
recording was scrapped from the BBC broadcast.
Many years ago in the Spectator, I think, Naomi Mitchison suggested
that the Ball was the real Scottish National Anthem.
ref
The Merry Muses of Caledonia. Barke, Goodsir Smith and Ferguson,
Edinburgh 1959
--
Alexander MacLennan sand...@sandymac.demon.co.uk
Jerry Humphrey
the record. Thanks for the additional info.
the lazy dragon
Ball of Kerrimuir. The other is _The Ball of Ballinour_.
Ballinour's lyrics may be found on Cantaria at
http://chivalry.com/cantaria/lyrics/ballbali.html. They also have .wav
and RealAudio versions of the music. Ballinour may also be know by the
name _Four and Twenry Virgins Came Down From Inverness_, as that is the
first line of the song.
One version of Kerrimuir may be found at the Mudcat Cafe on Digital
Traditions http://www.mudcat.org. You'll need to run a search for it. I
used to have a complete listing for this song, but I've lost it.
--
z...@tiny.net
The Lazy Dragon
Historical Clothing and Accoutrements
http://www.visi.com/~zed/
Limestone Cowboy
have a misspent youth.
I can't recall seeing this song listed in Burns collection of bawdy ballads,
however it was the sort of thing he might have collected. After all he has
recorded the words to 9 inch will please a lady !
the lazy dragon
search and found (after sorting through all the chaff) about a dozen
different versions of Balinour/Kerriemuir with more different verses than
I care to count. Some are bowdlerized versions of explicit verses from
other versions of the song (Jim Croche recorded a *very* tame one).
I won't post all the URLs here, but you can do your own search at
It searches 10 WWW search engines (the OpenText option doesn't work -
they've gone commercial) and 4 Usenet engines.
I really should get a link to them from my site.
--
z...@tiny.net
the Lazy Dragon
http://www.visi.com/~zed/