Hughie Graham

"Hughie Graham" or "Hughie Graeme" is Child ballad number 191, existing in several variants. It was collected by Robert Burns.[1]

Synopsis

Hughie Graham is caught for stealing the bishop's horse, and sentenced to hang. Several pleas to ransom him are unavailing. He sees his mother or father and sends greetings to his father, his sword to Johnnie Armstrong, and a curse to his wife. (The legend is that his motive for the horse-theft was that the bishop had seduced his wife.)

Recordings

Ewan MacColl recorded a version on his album of traditional Scottish ballads (Topic TSCD480 English & Scottish Folk Ballads).

Dáithí Sproule recorded a version with fiddling master James Kelly and button box master Paddy O'Brien (Offaly) on the Shanachie album Traditional Music of Ireland.

The Scottish folk band Malinky recorded a version of this song, called "Hughie The Graham", on their 2005 album The Unseen Hours.

English folk singer June Tabor recorded a version of this song on An Echo of Hooves in 2003.

The Czech folk group Asonance recorded a version translated to Czech called "Hugo Graem (Hughie the Graeme)" on Vzdálené ostrovy (Remote Islands) in 2003.

Connie Dover recorded the song as "Hugh the Graeme" on her album The Wishing Well.

Footnotes
  1. Kinsley, James, ed. (1969) The Oxford Book of Ballads. Oxford: Clarendon Press; pp. 579-81 & 704
gollark: I mean, you can but it's much harder because you need to physically be elsewhere.
gollark: With companies or people or whatever, you can usually just go to a different one. You *can't* do that for governments.
gollark: They do not, at least, have legally binding power and the whole "monopoly on violence" thing going on.
gollark: If it's really easy to convert some new opinion into binding law, then people will do it lots and you get badness.
gollark: And I don't trust the government much either, because they tend to grow excessively and/or do stupid/powergrabby things.


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