Cecil Sharp's Note 09 (1916)

No. 9. Geordie

For other versions with tunes, see Traditional Tunes (p. 24); Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties (p. 47); English Traditional Songs and Carols (p. 32); and Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 164; volume ii, pp. 27 and 208; volume iii, p. 191).

The tune here given is modal, and, lacking the sixth of the scale, may be either Dorian or Æolian; it is harmonized as though it were the latter.

Child gives many versions and exhaustive notes.

Buchan (Ancient Ballads and Songs, volume i, p. 133) prints a version, “Gight’s Lady,” and suggests that the ballad “recounts an affair which actually took place in the reign, or rather the minority, of King James VI. Sir George Gordon of Gight had become too familiar with the laird of Bignet’s lady, for which the former was imprisoned and likely to lose his life, but for the timely interference of Lady Ann, his lawful spouse, who came to Edinburgh to plead his cause, which she did with success—gained his life, and was rewarded with the loss of her own, by the hand of her ungrateful husband.” The version in the text cannot, however, refer to this incident.

Kinloch (Ancient Scottish Ballads) agrees that “Geordie” was George Gordon, Earl of Huntly, and that the incident related in the ballad “originated in the factions of the family of Huntly, during the reign of Queen Mary.” Motherwell, on the other hand, says that in some copies the hero is named George Luklie. In Ritson’s Northumberland Garland (1793), the ballad is described as “A lamentable ditty made upon the death of a worthy gentleman, named George Stoole.”

James Hogg (Jacobite Relics) prints another version, and in the Straloch Manuscripts (early 17th century), there is an air entitled “God be wi’ thee, Geordie.”

The words are on broadsides by Such and others.