“My heart’s in the Highlands wherever I roam / That’s where I’ll be when I get called home.”
Well not any more, Bob, at least in a literal sense. Late last year he sold Aultmore House near Nethy Bridge which he’d bought with his brother David in 2006. He was in Aberdeen in 2004 being awarded an honorary doctorate by the university so maybe he’d gone stravaiging round the local area and saw the house with its 25 acres of private grounds. Seemingly he stayed there for a few weeks each year until about four years ago and the brothers decided it was now “surplus to requirements.”
The house was built in the early years of the 20th century for an Aberdeen industrialist called Archibald Merrilees and was later owned by the Nivinson family for 50 years or so. The new owner is the Angus Dundee Distillers company who, in spite of their very Scottish name, are now owned by an American billionaire – Henry HiIlman from Pennsylvania. Angus Dundee have two distilleries in the area: Tomintoul and Glencadam, Brechin. They’re planning to use Aultmore House as a base for private clients and for staff training, according to a Rosalind Erskine article in The Scotsman.
If you want to have a look at the house, there’s a Tatler article online and there’s another from Ideal Home headlined “We get an insider look at Bob Dylan’s £3 million Scottish Highland estate”; it’s at http://www.idealhome.co.uk/homes/house-tours/bob-dylan-scottish-highland-estate-tour
There is much to be said about the issues around land ownership in Scotland, especially the marketing of large estates to any folk who have the money but not necessarily the local connections or honest intentions to benefit the area but I feel this is not the post for that. I’m not begrudging Bob Dylan his ownership of his Cairngorms house but land reform needs to be urgently pursued by the Scottish Parliament and I wish they’d get over their ‘don’t frighten the horses’ approach. Maybe there’s some hope in the upcoming legislation described in The Guardian as “Scottish lairds may be forced to break up estates during land sales”, 14 March this year.
On Bob Dylan’s first LP, he sang Pretty Peggy-O. The sleeve notes say: “A traditional Scottish song is the bare bones on which Dylan hangs Pretty Peggy-O. But the song has lost its burr and acquired instead a Texas accent, and a few new verses and fillips by the singer.” (I’ve just had to double-check “burr” there and it’s the way we roll or trill the ‘r’ sound.) The “traditional Scottish song” is “The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie” and Fyvie somehow became Fennario after the song was taken to North America, maybe helped along by the ‘o’ added at the end of the line to fit the tune and to rhyme with “marry – o”, “tarry – o” and “carry – o” elsewhere in the song. In his spoken introduction, Dylan says: “I’ve been around this whole country but I never yet found Fennario.” Listen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwZkMDxtYpo
At this time in the early 1960s, Bob Dylan was in Greenwich Village, New York as was Jean Redpath and for a time they shared a flat so maybe he heard an original version from her. They appeared on the same stage but I don’t know if they actually sang together. Jean Redpath sang the song unaccompanied on her LP “Skipping Barefoot Through the Heather” – as we often do. Listen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?vKZtEG2eBVnM
For more info on Jean Redpath – and some mentions of Bob Dylan – go to Ross Altman’s article at https://folkworks.org/milestone/remembering-jean-redpath/
The original song was also recorded by The Corries and The Clancy Brothers so Dylan may have been aware of their versions too. Joan Baez sang it as “Fennario” (though her mother was from Dundee) and so did Simon and Garfunkel, Judy Collins and The Grateful Dead. Dylan sang “Pretty Peggy O” live for at least the next 35 years: watch him in Ottawa in July 1989 or in Pennsylvania in January 1998 – both performances on YouTube.
There are various versions of the song but the place names mentioned in the oldest ones root it in north-east Scotland: as well as Fyvie itself, there’s the Howe o Auchterless, the Garioch, Aberdeen, the River Ythan, Oldmeldrum and the Braes of Gight. If you’re interested in the story line, there’s an article from 2002 on the history behind this 17th century song in Leopard, The Magazine for North East Scotland; it’s online and is called “Lucky escape for Fyvie’s bonnie lass”. Even as a young girl listening to the song, I admired the lass’s spirited refusal to “marry a soldier – o” and thought the captain had a right cheek expecting her to “ride when your captain he is ready – o”. I was pleased to read that Iona Fyfe has recorded the song recently and I saw her version on a digital album (whatever that is when it’s at home) at ionafyfe.bandcamp.com; I noted also that she has Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” on the same album.
Another of his songs influenced by an old Scottish song is “Restless farewell” which he released in 1964. Wikipedia claims the LP below was Dylan’s “first to feature only original compositions” and the other powerful and famous songs are definitely his own. That’s not entirely true of his version of “The Parting Glass” which “takes its melody from the traditional Irish-Scots song”; it’s not just the tune though but also some of the wording that echo, and it was the latter that made me link it with the Scots song. Not being a musical person, I was very pleased to read later that other folk had found this too. For once I was right.
As with “The Bonnie Lass of Fyvie”, I’m sure Dylan would have heard “The Parting Glass” being sung by Jean Redpath, The Clancy Brothers and others on the folk circuit. An old version is sung at the end of part 1 of Phil Cunningham’s excellent 2018 (?) BBC4 series “Wayfaring Stranger” which explored musical links between Scotland, Ulster and the USA. The programmes are on YouTube at the moment; watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0F0k_vMAns I wonder if the name and tradition behind the song derive from the Gaelic “deoch aig an dorus” – a drink at the door?
I am very fond of Sheila Stewart’s version of “The Parting Glass” with its haunting final line: “We may or may never all meet here again”. And if you ever get the chance, watch the film called “Where you’re meant to be” in which she takes on the cheeky Aidan Moffat and tries to put him right about updating folk songs.
Here are the lads of the Official face Vocal Band giving it laldy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sql9X4H0VY
Bob Dylan nominated one of Robert Burns’s most famous poems as the lyric which had the biggest impact on his life. Jeremy Paxman meanwhile called it “sentimental dross”. I’ll leave you to take sides.
Back where we began: Bob Dylan tells us eight times where his heart is in the song “Highlands” from his “Time Out of Mind” album in 1997. His geography might be a bit suspect with a reference to “up in the border country” and “where the Aberdeen waters flow” and I certainly don’t care for him being “with the horses and hounds” – though Burns of course had his heart “chasing the deer”. The influence of and the tribute to our most famous Scot is unmistakeable.
Splendid, Bella! 