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Title
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Ye banks and braes of bonny Doon
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Singer
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Iles, Elijah
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Notes
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This song is not attributed to Elijah Iles in the Bathe / Clissold Index but it is placed within a series of songs by him. Andrew Bathe refers to a reference to the song in Williams' obituary of Iles in the Oxford Times [p 570].
Evidence that the song was collected from Iles is in this quotation from an article by Wiliams in the Oxford Times entitled, 'Upper Thames folk songs:
'I knew a man near Lechlade, nearly a hundred years old, who sang versions of “Green Grow the Rushes,” and “The Banks of Bonny Doon,” and if he learned them from his grandfather, as he assured me he did, they were popular before Burns was born. And it may be that they were not originally Scots songs, but only adaptations.'
Green grow the rushes is attributed to Iles and it follows that he must have been the source for Ye banks and braes.
Transcribed and edited by Chris Wildridge, 2012
