> Martin Carthy > Songs > Bonny Woodhall

Bonny Woodhall

[Geordie Hamilton]

Martin Carthy sang Bonny Woodhall in 2004 on his album Waiting for Angels. He commented in the album's sleeve notes:

Geordie Hamilton was a songwriter and coal miner from around Kirkintilloch who I met in Edinburgh in 1961 through Hamish Henderson. He was an exceptionally graceful singer with a beautiful lyrical sense and I always thought of Bonny Woodhall as his party piece. He would often ask people if they wanted his songs and I am one who gratefully took up the offer although I didn't feel ready to sing it publicly until much more recently, but it's always been lurking. I have no idea which particular war it actually dates from and indeed it could be any one of a dozen or so of those 17th-19th century conflicts in which the British army was engaged. But it doesn't really matter. I think that as a song of an ordinary soldier dying on the field of battle it's just about unique.

Lyrics

By Calder's clear valley, by Calder's clear stream,
Where I and my Annie together were seen.
Days they past swiftly and happy were we,
It is little, she thought, that a soldier I'd be.

On the 20th of August our regiment was lost
When a shot from the enemy our line came across;
Struck me on the forehead, the blood it ran down,
I reeled and I staggered, I fell to the ground.

“Oh come here,” cries the captain, “come here with good speed,
For I fear by a bullet young Dinsmore is dead.”
They poured me the water and the whisky so free,
And they turned me all over by brute for to see.

If my Annie she were here, she would bind up my wounds,
One kiss from her sweet mouth would staunch all the stoons.*
But if fortune smile on me and back I return
I will sport with you, Annie, by Calder's clear dam.

For it's wet and I am weary and I think of lang syne,
When I was a young man and I worked down the mine.
Tears they do trickle and down they do fall,
Like the dew on the daisies in bonny Woodhall.

* stoons = pains