Bonnie Dundee - The Tunes

The Tunes

To help Jane identify the tune, Scott gave a few lines from each of three songs for which it had been used. His first quotation is from Jockey's Escape from Dundee; the second is from Scots Callan o' Bonnie Dundee (though a version of these lines also appears in Jockey's Escape); and the third is from John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728; Air LVII, The Charge is prepar'd).

The transcriptions of the tune for different sets of words vary both in notes and in rhythmic phrasing. The version in The Beggar's Opera differs most widely, with most of the dotted rhythms smoothed out into a regular succession of crotchets. We cannot say whether Scott had any particular variation in mind; he professed to have a good ear for time but little or none for tune. All are in a minor key, and their melancholy and their subtle rhythms will surprise anyone familiar only with the setting now best known.

This later setting, with its cheerful major key and cantering rhythm, suits both the spirit of Scott's lines and their metre, and makes an excellent cavalry march. Scott might well have approved: he intended the verses "to be sung a la militaire" and not as the song is in The Beggars Opera. In this tune, too, variations occur in different publications.

The origin of this immensely popular tune is uncertain. It makes use of the Lombard rhythm or "Scotch snap", and may owe something to Scottish folk-song. It seems first to have been used about 1850 and was associated with the contralto and composer Charlotte Dolby, later Sainton-Dolby (1821-85). The sheet music of Bonnie Dundee was published by Boosey & Sons as "sung by Miss Dolby" and (after 1860) "sung by Madame Sainton-Dolby", but Boosey credits her only with performing the song and arranging the accompaniment; no composer is named, and Boosey lists the piece as a Scotch Air. However, Bonnie Dundee has been included among Dolby's works.

It has been suggested that the melody comes from a piano piece called The Band at a Distance, and that it was Dolby who first combined this tune with Scott's words. A score for piano or harp called The Band at a Distance, by Nicolas-Charles Bochsa, was published by Walker & Son c. 1830, but has no resemblance to Bonnie Dundee.

In the Scottish Orpheus (1897), Adam Hamilton gives the song as "Composed by Dr E. F. Rimbault. Arranged by Edward Rimbault Dibdin" (p. 52). This attribution has not been confirmed. Edward Francis Rimbault (1816-1876) was a prolific writer of and about music, but his songs are not listed separately in any bibliography. His name sometimes appears as having "arranged" Bonnie Dundee.

It is a very old Scottish folk-tune used for at least fifteen songs, some of which refer to the city as "Bonnie Dundee"