Just decided to stay home tonight and clean up the deathly messy apartment. But naturally, I could not keep away from my guitar. And for reasons I cannot fix, I suddenly had to look up an old Scottish song that I used to love listening to as a teenager as sung by Dick Gaughan. The song is Jock O’Hazeldean, and I found the lyrics and chords in one of my Nothing Books as written out when I was 15 or so.
So I sat down a few minutes ago to sing Jock O’ Hazeldean with my Q3HD set to microphone-only, to put it up here, sung by me for the first time in years. It was difficult to find some kind of compromise with the Scottish lyrics and accent and my inevitable Canadian voice and need for modern lyrics. So I just improvised – as I did a bit on the guitar playing. So here is a bit of self-indulgence on this Friday at home ostensibly cleaning up the mess….
But here is a link to Dick Gaughan’s version of the song, which if you press the play button you can hear. I am not sure of the history of this song, but Gaughan was and is one of Scotland’s foremost folk singers, and I love his voice. I decided this blog needs a little surprise occasionally to tear it away from the same old open mics and kinds of music. So here is this song sung by Dick Gaughan, and with lyrics by Sir Walter Scott….