added the lines “A plume in his helmet, / a sword at his
knee,” (l. 10) leaving little doubt that Bonnie George is
prepared for battle. In other versions, however, Bonnie
George/James simply goes riding.
The opening of the song conjures up the rugged
highlands and scenic rivers of Scotland. The ballad is
written in an evocative Scots dialect. The archaic qual-
ity of the language is part of its appeal to later genera-
tions who are taken back to the feudal world of the
Highland clans.
“Bonnie George Campbell” probably dates from the
late 1500s. Some critics have suggested that it refers to
the 1594 Battle of Glenlivet, in which cousins Alexan-
der Campbell and John Campbell died fi ghting for the
cause of Protestantism with 10,000 Highlanders
against a well-trained army of 2,000 fi ghting for
Catholicism; however, there is no hint of religion in
the ballad.
The ballad also highlights the traditions of Scotland.
The beauty of the Highlands is an appropriate back-
ground for the heroes produced by the land, support-
ing the English belief that the clans were medieval or
feudal in their chivalry and martial virtue. The heroic
sense is heightened when combined with the ballad’s
rich, plaintive minor-key melody, the most popular of
the different musical versions. In various versions, we
fi nd the wife pregnant with the child Bonnie George
will never see; a loving mother mourning her fi ne son;
and the fi elds that bloom again every year ironically
juxtaposed with the fact that Bonnie George Campbell
will never, never return.
Eric P. Furuseth“BONNY EARL OF MURRAY, THE”
ANONYMOUS (16th century) A popular Scottish
folk BALLAD that valorizes the rivalry between James
Stewart, earl of Murray (or Moray) and the earl of
Huntly. The confl ict peaked in 1592, when Huntly mur-
dered Murray, whom he believed to be conspiring with
the earl of Bothwell against King JAMES VI (later James I).
Murray’s castle was torched, and Huntly was caught in
Fife and executed. Huntly’s actions were widely con-
demned, though the Crown did not punish him. The
ballad diverges from history as it assigns to James a
speech explicitly berating Huntly, perhaps in an attempt
to keep it from being declared treasonous. It also
includes erroneous apocrypha about Murray being the
queen’s lover and next in line for the throne.
The fi rst STANZA of this ballad is the source of the term
mondegreen (misheard lyric). In popular culture, lines 3
and 4 (“They have slain the Earl of Murray, / And they
layd him on the green”) were long thought to be “They
have slain the Earl of Murray, and Lady Mondegreen.”
See also BORDER BALLADS, “LORD RANDAL.”
FURTHER READING
Ives, Edward D. The Bonny Earl of Murray: The Intersections
of Folklore and History. Champagne: University of Illinois
Press, 1997.BOOKE OF AYRES, A THOMAS CAMPION
(1601) THOMAS CAMPION’s A Book of Ayres, which con-
tains 21 lyrics for a single voice accompanied by the
lute, refl ects a new emphasis on the clarity of the words
in songs. This work stands in stark in contrast to the
MADRIGAL tradition, where the lyrics were often obscured
by overlapping parts and multiple notes on individual
syllables. The book is a collection of individual, self-
contained poems which feature a wide range of personae
and themes, and which demonstrate Campion’s dex-
terity in both music and verse. Campion’s poems were
published as a collaboration effort with Philip Rosse-
ter, a professional lutenist, who added another 21
AYREs of his own.
Most of the poems in A Booke of Ayres deal with
themes of love. They range from songs of wooing and
conquest (“I CARE NOT FOR THESE LADIES”) to those
dealing with loss and thwarted love (“WHEN TO HER
LUTE CORINNA SINGS”). Some, like “My Love Hath
Vowed,” take on a female persona. Several of the songs
draw inspiration from classical sources. For instance,
in “MY SWEETEST LESBIA,” the fi rst STANZA is a loose
translation of a poem by Catullus (ca. 84–54 B.C.). The
fi nal lyric in Campion’s collection, “Come, Let Us
Sound,” turns to a divine theme and is a paraphrase of
Psalm 19 from the Bible. This seriousness is also fore-
shadowed by the 18th song, “The Man of Life Upright,”
which advocates a withdrawal from worldly affairs.
Other than this, the poems do not appear to have even
a loose relation to each other. Thus, there is no sense of
an overarching theme or development of a narrative.88 “BONNY EARL OF MURRAY, THE”