Gin I Were Where Gadie Rins polka

A really driving polka, ideal for set dancing.
Is the title Scottish? Anyway, if it’s good enough for Matt Cunningham it’s good enough for me.

Wierd - I was just reading a comment from Richard Thompson tonight about that very river and I have barely heard of it before. I believe it is in the North East of Scotland.

No Cause, no, not weird. This once is just happenstance, twice would be coincidence, and the third time would be enemy action, as they say 🙂
Anyway, many thanks for pointing out that Gadie is a river.

There are two sets of lyrics to this tune - I’m sure I have them somewhere if here’s interest. A slightly different way of playing:

X: 2
T: O Gin I Were Where Gadie Rins
T:The Back o’ Benachie
M: 2/4
L: 1/8
K: D
d/B/ | AA/B/ A/B/d/e/ | ff fe/d/ | ff fe/d/ | ee f/e/d/B/ |
AA/B/ A/B/d/e/ | ff fe/d/ | aA AB/c/ | d3 :|
B | AF F>A | GE EG | FD FA | dc/d/ e/d/c/B/ |
AF F>A | GE EG | FD FA | d2 d :||

Chorus
O gin I were where Gadie rins,
Where Gadie rins, where Gadie rins,
O gin I were where Gadie rins
By the foot o’ Benachie.

I’ve roam’d by Tweed, I’ve roam’d by Tay
By border Nithan’ Highland Spey,
But dearer far to me than they
Are the braes o’ Benachie.

Chorus

When blade an’ blossoms sprout in spring
An’ bid the birdies wag the wing,
They blithly bob an‘ soar an’ sing
By the foot o’ Benachie.

Chorus

When simmer cleads the varied scene
Wilicht o‘ gowd an’ leaves o’ green,
I fain wad be where aft I’ve been
At the foot o’ Benachie.

Chorus

When autumn’s yellow sheaf is shorn,
An‘ barnyards stored wi stooks o’ corn,
’Tis blithe to toom the clyack horn,
At the foot o’ Benachie.

Chorus

When winter winds blaw sharp an’ shrill
O‘er icy burn an’ sheeted hill,
The ingle neuk is gleesome still
At the foot o’ Benachie.

Chorus


Version 2

O gin I were whaur Gadie rins,
Whaur Gadie rins, whaur Gadie rins,
O gin I were whaur Gadie rins
At the back o’ Bennachie.
Aince mair to hear the wild birds’ sang,
To wander birks an’ braes amang
Wi‘ friends and fav’rites left sae lang
At the back o’ Bennachie.
O gin I were whaur Gadie rins,
Whaur Gadie rins, whaur Gadie rins,
O gin I were whaur Gadie rins
At the Back o’ Bennachie.

How mony a day in blithe Springtime,
How mony a day in Summer’s prime
I’ve saunterin’ whiled awa the time
On the heights o’ Bennachie.
But fortune’s flowers wi’ thorns grow rife,
An‘ wealth is won wi’ toil an’ strife;
Gie me ae day o‘ youthfu’ life
At the back o’ Bennachie.
O gin I were whaur Gadie rins,
Whaur Gadie rins, whaur Gadie rins,
O gin I were whaur Gadie rins
At the Back o’ Bennachie.

Dave Mallinson Publications, 1999
ISBN: 1-899512-45-4

http://www.mally.com/
http://www.mally.com/details.asp?id=64

64 pages and 298 dance tunes, with chords ~ and a nice mix of forms. Because of that variety this is one of the few one volume collections I readily and regularly recommend, and the settings are decent too… These are the tunes on the first 10 CD’s by Matt Cunnigham and band, “The Dance Music of Ireland”, so you can get ahold of recordings to accompany the book, and dance, all are dance length… Hounddog has beat me to transcribing them on to the site here, so he isn’t as lazy as I am in this matter. I was fussing with volumes 11 - 14, which haven’t the tunes listed, and then gave up… 😏

K: D Major
|: c/B/ |
AA/B/ dd/e/ | ff fe/d/ | f>f fe/d/ | ee f/e/d/B/ |
A/F/A/B/ d/c/d/e/ | ff fe/f/ | aA AB/c/ | d2 d :|
|: c/B/ |
AF FA | GE E>G | FD F/G/A | d2 cB |
AF F>A | GE E>G | FD F/G/A/F/ | de/d/ d :|

I forgot to mention that it is a really cheesy song!!

Oh and lazyhound - I would have thought less of it except that I had been talking about that very phenomenon earlier in school that day - where you don’t hear about something for ages and then you hear about it lots - is it wierd yet?

I love cheese, all kinds of cheese,
cheese that’s blue, cheese that pongs,
cheese for cows, sheep, goats and toes…

Forget that last one… 😉

for, there goes my transposing fingers, that should have read ~

~ cheese from cows, sheep, goats and ~ (deleted!)

http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=596

The version I’m used to hearing isn’t cheesy at all (unlike the lyric quoted above) - it’s about lads getting killed in drunken fights at country fairs or falling in the River Dee. Unfortunately both the singer’s fiancés were lost in this way, which as Oscar Wilde may have said, could be construed as carelessness on her part.

The Gadie burn runs through the village of Clatt and then into the river Urie at Oyne which joins the Don at Inverurie and then flows to the sea at Aberdeen.

The Old Blind Dogs recorded a driving cajun fiddle version of the song which dispensed with the B part and is all the stronger for it

I’ve edited the ABC to make it more readable (thanks to a useful tip from ceolachan!)

It could just as easily be taken as another species of cheese. I don’t know if you’d know, but in the 70’s there was a run of cancer flicks, maudlin melodramas badly written and acted. A friend took me to one showing in the theatre in Enniskillen in the late 70’s, about a swimmer. The poor folks and my poor sentimental friend. Maybe it was the late sessions that week, me being worse for wear, but I couldn’t stop laughing and eventually had to leave the cinema. The Ballad tradition has had its corkers too. As another friend said about standing stones after seeing another for the umpteenth time ~ “not another f-k‘n pile of rocks!” Castles affected them in a similar way. Well, ballads about loss, whether murder or hanging or drowning ~ intoxicated or otherwise ~ sometimes can feel a bit like those cancer-flicks ~ or ’another pile or rocks’…or another species of cheese… 😏

Hounddog ~ hopefully it will now pass over to the other side… 😉

Et voila! ~ magic…

I’m from Aberdeenshire (Huntly, if anyone’s asking) and the only version I’ve ever heard sung is the more raucus (and morbid) version quoted by Bren above. It’s most definitely not sung a slow lament. This is a fine tune for dancing.

It can be sung as a slow lament, and considering the song is about a woman who loses 2 fiances, through drowning and murder, to my mind that would be a far more appropriate treatment of the subject matter than the “Old Blind Dogs’” version. I played flute on a slow version of the song about 25 years ago, on a recording “When These Shoes Were New” , by Aberdeen singer/guitarist Allan Carr, his wife fiddler Jane Rothfield and former “Silly Wizard” bassist Martin Hadden. Jane and Allan were over at the 1st Portsoy Folk Festival last year, and I had the pleasure of going up on stage to play it with thm again, 25 years after the original recording.