Note 13 — JOHN IMLAH.
Reading edition
The chorus of this song, which is said to have been originally connected with a plaintive Jacobite ditty, now lost, has suggested several modern songs similar in manner and sentiment. Imlah composed two songs with this chorus. The earlier of these compositions appears in the "May Flowers." It is evidently founded upon a rumour, which prevailed in Aberdeenshire during the first quarter of the century, to the effect, that a Scottish officer, serving in Egypt, had been much affected on hearing a soldier's wife crooning to herself the original words of the air. We have inserted in the text Imlah's second version, as being somewhat smoother in versification. It is the only song which we have transcribed from his volume, published in 1841. But the most popular words which have been attached to the air and chorus were the composition of a student in one of the colleges of Aberdeen, nearly thirty years since, who is now an able and accomplished clergyman of the Scottish Church. Having received the chorus and heard the air from a comrade, he immediately composed the following verses, here printed from the author's MS.:—
Oh, an' I were where Gadie rins, Where Gadie rins, where Gadie rins, Oh, an' I were where Gadie rins, At the back o' Bennachie! I wish I were where Gadie rins, 'Mong fragrant heath and yellow whins, Or, brawlin' doun the bosky lins At the back o' Bennachie; To hear ance mair the blackbird's sang, To wander birks and braes amang, Wi' friens and fav'rites, left sae lang, At the back o' Bennachie. How mony a day, in blithe spring-time, How mony a day, in summer's prime, I wil'd awa' my careless time On the heights o' Bennachie. Ah! Fortune's flowers wi' thorns are rife, And walth is won wi' grief and strife— Ae day gie me o' youthfu' life At the back o' Bennachie. Oh, Mary! there, on ilka nicht, When baith our hearts were young and licht, We've wander'd whan the moon was bricht Wi' speeches fond and free. Oh! ance, ance mair where Gadie rins, Where Gadie rins, where Gadie rins— Oh! micht I dee where Gadie rins At the back o' Bennachie.
"The air," communicates the reverend author of this song, "is undoubtedly old, from its resemblance to several Gaelic and Irish airs. 'Cuir's chiste moir me,' and several others, might be thought to have been originally the same in the first part. The second part of the air is, I think, modern." The Gadie is a rivulet, and Bennachie a mountain, in Aberdeenshire.