Jeannie Hutchison                               SA1980.03.11

There exist a number of ‘broken token’ songs that tell of a young man who goes off to sea or to the war but leaves half a coin with his lover as a token of remembrance.
Jeannie’s fragment opens with part of a verse from of another of her songs – Logie o’ Buchan (but to a different tune) and then finishes with a couple of lines belonging to the song The Bonnie Light Horseman.  Interestingly we find in the Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection (vol 5 no. 1584) a  similar fragment sung to virtually the same tune as Jeannie’s: it was collected in the neighbourhood of Fraserburgh from a Miss Mary Carle  in 1905.       Roud index no. 9275.

I’ll sit on my creepie and spin at my wheel           [low stool]
And think on the laddie that lo’ed me sae weel.

He had but ae sixpence; he broke it in twa
And he gied tae me the hauf o’t just afore he gaed awa.

Broken hearted I will wander for the loss of my young lover;
He wis a bonnie sodger laddie in the war where he was slain.