Annotation:Charlie He's My Darling

Back to Charlie He's My Darling

---

CHARLIE HE'S MY DARLING. AKA - "O Charley is My Darling." Scottish, Air (4/4 time). D Minor (): E Minor (Manson). Standard tuning (fiddle). One part (Johnson): AB (Howe, Manson): AAB (Gow). A song air to which various sets of lyrics were set by Robert Burns, Lady Nairne,James Hogg, and Captain Charles Grayre. Burns' lyric was either reworked by Robert Burns from a c. 1775 broadside, or was his original work; it appears in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, vol. 5 [1] (No. 428, p. 440) in 1796. His lyric begins:

'Twas on a Monday morning,
Right early in the year,
That Charlie came to our town,
The young Chevalier.

Chorus:
An' Charlie, he's my darling,
My darling, my darling,
Charlie, he's my darling,
The young Chevalier.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Gow (Complete Repository, Part 4), 1817; p. 1 (two versions). Howe (1000 Jigs and Reels), c. 1867; p. 124. Johnson (Scots Musical Museum, vol. 5), 1796; No. 428, p. 440. Manson (Hamilton's Universal Tune Book, vol. 2), 1846; p. 12.

Recorded sources: HMV 3-7939 (78 RPM), Horace Fellowes (1911).

See also listing at:
Jane Keefer's Folk Music Index [2]
Hear Ewan McColl & Peggy Seegar's version on youtube.com [3]

---