“The Bonnie Moorhen”
Description
"(The/My) bonnie moorhen Has feathers enou'." "There's some of them black, And there's some of them blue." Additional verse may be about the bird, or perhaps about an exiled monarch
Notes
This is one of those conundrums. The lyrics by the Montgomeries seem to be a simple rhyme about a bird. But sources going back to Hogg's _Jacobite Relics_ have a fuller text in which the singers give a toast to the bonnie moorhen, who is in exile, and who wears red, green, white, and grey but not blue feathers (colors associated with the Stuart tartan).
It seems clear that these two forms are related, though which is earlier I cannot tell.
Then there is the version that provides most of Roud's texts, often starting "You brave lads of Wardhill/Wardale I pray tend an ear." This exists in several Bodleian broadsides [Harding B 25(261), ""Bonny moor hen," Stephenson (Gateshead), 1821-1850; also Harding B 11(414), Firth c, 19(39)]. This is an even fuller text, mostly about hunting, though there might be some Jacobite elements in there somewhere. My feeling is that that should be split off, though Roud lumps them.
Incidentally, it might be noted that Bonnie Prince Charlie, handsome though he was, would not have met the moorhen standard for attractiveness.According to Olivia Judson's tongue-in-cheek book on evolutionary biology, _Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation_ (Henry Holt, 2002), p. 126, the ideal male moorhen is fat (because the males sit on the eggs, and a fat bird can sit on them longer) and small (because a small bird can get fat more easily). - RBW
References
- Montgomerie-ScottishNR 17, "(The bonnie moor-hen)" (1 short text)
- Roud #2944
- BI, RcMyBoMu