The Auchanachie Ballad

A Commentary by Professor Gerald Auchinachie

The name of Auchinachie in North America, at least, is not one much seen in print. I remember my aunt writing enthusiastically about a murder mystery simply because it briefly featured a police officer called "Sergeant Auchinachie". You can imagine my pleasure and even amazement as a Canadian when several decades ago I stumbled on the lyrics of the ballad of "Lord Saltoun and Auchanachie" which is #239 in Francis J. Child's five volume collection, "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads"

What is even more pleasing to family vanity is the fact that Gordon Auchanachie of the ballad is depicted as "bonny and braw", the sort of man who "would tempt any woman" who lays eyes on him. Despite his having neither title nor significant land and his being apparently only a fisherman, Gordon Auchanachie has sufficient attractions in Jeanie Gordon's mind to outweigh the material advantages of a marriage to a lord.

The ballad is dramatic, even melodramatic. In Child's synopsis: "Jeanie Gordon loves Auchanachie, who is bonny and braw, but she is forced to wed [Lord] Saltoun, who is bowed in the back and thrawin on the knee [crooked or bow-legged]; and all for Saltoun's lands [he is a Fraser of Saltoun near Fraserburgh in the extreme north-east corner of Aberdeenshire]. Jeanie refuses to be bedded; her maidens, at her father's order, loose off her gown and stays; she falls in a swoon and dies. Auchanachie comes home from the sea the same day, learns what has happened, asks to be taken to the chamber where Jeanie lies, kisses her cold lips, and dies."

You can see a sort of Romeo and Juliet theme here. In his book on the ballads, David Buchan suggests that this one is showing a sentimental streak which connects it with developments in the 18th century. The lovers do seem overgiven to swooning.

Child mentions "airs" (music) which might go along with this ballad, but an enterprising American musicologist, Bernard H. Bronson, actually collected all music connected to Child's ballads and so if one wishes to play the piece, it is better to go directly to Bronson's "The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads". Bronson's discography of the American recordings of Child's ballads (1960) records no performance of the "Auchanachie" ballad, though a more recent discography will reveal at least one post-1960 recording. In the 1970s I persuaded my friend and Concordia University colleague, Harry Hill, a talented actor, voice teacher and singer (from Aberdeen) to record it for me since I never expected that the ballad would take the fancy of any well known singer.

The 1990s proved me wrong. The Canadian singer Loreena McKennitt (now of world reknown) recorded it on a CD called "Parallel Dreams" (QR CD103). It is called "Annachie Gordon" (a name variant given in Child). McKennitt's voice is beautiful and haunting and her rendering is what I would call "lyrical": the sweetness of her voice colours everything and distances the events which, for me, reduces a little the dramatic immediacy of the ballad. Certainly, Harry Hill's interpretation is dramatic; he impersonates the various characters: the angry father, the wheedling groom, the bridesmaids, and, at the end, the bereft Gordon Auchanachie.

However, since McKennitt's is likely the only internationally available rendering and is far and away more than a merely acceptable interpretation, I would heartily recommend your trying to get a copy. Play it to your friends and remind them that your name is famous in song and story.

© 2003 Bruce L. Pollock, all rights reserved.
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