Dance The Bob o' Dowally 608

Dowally is a small Perthshire village nestling among the hills and woods about four miles north of the cathedral town of Dunkeld. On the east side of General George Wade’s road into the Highlands, it faces on the west the rushing, racing River Tay.

According to Chambers’ Scots Dictionary, the word “bob” means, among a number of other things, “a dance”. Thus, there is “The Bob o’ Dowally“, “The Bob of Fettercairn”, “The New Bob” in Niel Gow’s First Repository, “Brisk Bob” by Duncan Macintyre and, last and most famous, the old song “The Bob of Dunblane”.

Come, lassie, lend me your braw hemp heckle,
  An’ I’ll lend you my thripling kame;
For fainness, deary, I’ll gar ye keckle,
  If ye’ll gae dance the Bob o’ Dunblane.

Haste ye gang to the ground o’ yer trunkies,
  Busk ye braw an’ dinna think shame:
Consider in time, if leading of monkies
  Be better than dancing the Bob o’ Dunblane.

Be frank, my lassie, lest I grow fickle,
  An’ take my word an’ offer again.
Syne ye may chance to repent it micke,
  Ye didnae accept o’ the Bob o’ Dunblane.

The dinner, the piper and priest sall be ready,
  An’ I’m grown dowy wi’ lying my lane;
Away then, leave baith minny an’ daddy,
  An’ try wi’ me the Bob o’ Dunblane.
– Anonymous

This old folk song was used by Robert Burs as the basis for his song:

Lassie, lend me your braw hemp heckle,
  And I’ll lend you my thrippling kame;
My heckle is broken, it canna be gotten,
  And we’ll gae dance the Bob o’ Dunblane.

Twa gaed to the wood, to the wood, to the wood,
  Twa gaed to the wood – three cam hame;
An it be na weel bobbit, weel bobbit, weel bobbit,
  An it be na weel bobbit, we’ll bob it again.

Far mor bawdy than the original and full of double, and even triple, meanings, Burns’ nonsensical ditty is far inferior to the original. Hence, poet and song writer Robert Tannahill (1774–1810) and Robert A. Smith, editor of The Scottish Minstrel, wrote a more polite version called “Jessie the Flower of Dunblane”. The Dunblane referred to is Dunblane, a market town in Perthshire very near Stirling.