Corresponde7ice. 8 7
" I will buy thee beads and ear-rings, I will buy thee diamond stones : I will buy thee beads and ear-rings, When thy baby's dead and gone.
"What care I for beads and ear-rings? What care I for diamond stones? What care I for beads and ear-rings, When my baby's dead and gone ? "
"Johnnie Johnston" may be a variant of "Jolly Jorden," just as, not long ago, I heard the line — " O where ha'e ye been, Lord Randal, my son?" sung — "O where ha'e ye been, Lord Roberts, my son?"
But I fear Mr. Lang's correspondent has mistaken the words which the children sing. — I am, etc., D. F.
Berwick-upon-Tweed, December 17, 1908.
Sir, — The quaint lines quoted by " D, F." in to-day's Scotsman are sub- stantially identical with those sung in their leisure hours by the children in the West of Scotland.
Apart from its subject, which is the old story of the man who has "fyld his fay the," and of the hapless maiden that has proved once more that "love is bonnie, a little time while it is new," the song captures us by the sweet simplicity of its notes, and the perfect rhythm of its movement.
This Johnny Johnston is probably the same individual to whom a re- proachful reference is made in another west country rhyme-song, which a summer hailstorm never fails to suggest —
" Rainy, rainy rattle-stanes, Don't rain on me ; Rain on Johnny Johnstone, Far across the sea."
I am inclined to think that this fervid imprecation is intended for the perfidious Johnny who promised "beads and ear-rings" and other gewgaws as a salve to a broken heart.
He appears again in his ancient character in the seventeenth century song, "O Johnny Johnston was my Luve." But Nemesis overtakes him in the " tochered lass" for whom he jilted the not too amiable heroine of the song, for, ere the bridal day was at an end, we find that Johnny "sighed and rued his bargain." — I am, etc.,
SCOTUS IN Anglia.
P.S. — The following version is well known in Northumberland :
Jacky Johnson took a notion
For to go away to sea, And he left his dearest Mary
Weeping on the Ballast Quay.
