Both Sides The Tweed waltz

There are only a few ornaments marked in the sheet music, but the charm in this tune comes out when you add additional ornamentation. I learned it as a lament, and so whenever I play it I add ornaments that sound like sobs. I also vary the length of notes and all that business, shake it up a bit. You can find this all over YouTube, if you want an example of how it sounds; I think it also has lyrics, but I don’t know what they are, as the person I learned it from is a flutist. Please add harmonies and stuff, and post them!

I don’t see much point to this tune without the lyrics, which I had always thought wholly written by Dick Gaughan, but according to his website, the song is "partly traditional". The melody itself is his composition. You can find the background to the song on his website.

What’s the spring-breathing jasmine and rose ?
What’s the summer with all its gay train
Or the splendour of autumn to those
Who’ve bartered their freedom for gain?

Let the love of our land’s sacred rights
To the love of our people succeed
Let friendship and honour unite
And flourish on both sides the Tweed.

No sweetness the senses can cheer
Which corruption and bribery bind
No brightness that gloom can e’er clear
For honour’s the sum of the mind

Let virtue distinguish the brave
Place riches in lowest degree
Think them poorest who can be a slave
Them richest who dare to be free

Bars 5 and 6 - and their repetitions - are wrong, especially that long B note in bar 6 which is perfectly horrible. I’d suggest anyone wishing to learn this melody to listen to the original by Dick Gaughan, or by Karen Mathieson of "Capercaillie"

https://thesession.org/recordings/4279

https://thesession.org/recordings/271

..and I think it needs to be pointed out that the song is not a "lament".
Also - it’s not obvious from Gaughan’s website, nor above, but the 2nd "verse" there, beginning "Let the love…" is actually a chorus which is sung after each verse.

Words suspected to be originally written by James Hogg to which Dick Gaughan made minor amendments. The melody though, as Kenny says, is all Dick’s.

Glad you cleared that one up!

This transcription is what I learned second-hand from a French friend of mine. If you know what bars 5 and 6 should really be, please post a correction. Thanks!

This sounds to me very much like a C version with variations of "The Limerick rake" (https://thesession.org/tunes/6643)

I would love to get the harmony for this tune. I bet it sounds pretty.