Thursday 23 April 2015
Tune of the Day: By Yon Castle Wa'
Traditional Scottish tune
This Scottish air, also known as “There'll Never Be Peace Till Jamie Comes Hame”, is an old Jacobite tune. It was published in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum IV (1791) with words by Robert Burns, who knew the tune as “There are few good fellows when Jamie's awa”. The “Jamie” of the title is James VIII, the son of the deposed James VII of Scotland that the Jacobite movement recognized as the rightful heir to the English and Scottish thrones.
In the sheet music we included two variations of the basic tune, taken from the first book of James Oswald's The Caledonian Pocket Companion, published in London in 1743.