Explore "MacFadden and MacFee" by David Rorie on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ [This ballad is of great interest, and, as far as we know, has / not hitherto appeared in print. It is certainly not in Child's / Collection. It was taken down from the singing of an aged man of / 105 years, in Glen Kennaquhair. Internal evidence would tend to / show that the incidents recorded in the ballad occurred in the / seventeenth century, and that Sir Walter Scott had heard at least / one verse of it. The aged singer-now, alas! no more-sang it to the / air of "Barbara Allen."]
It was an' aboot the Lammas time, / In sixteen forty-three, sirs, / That there fell oot the awfu' fecht / 'Twixt Macfadden an' Macfee, sirs.