This is a late Victorian parlour-song by the Rev. Thomas Davidson and Mr T S Smail of Jedburgh, found in the British Students' Song Book circa 1900
'Jedwater' is not a folk song, nor really a Scottish song. It is a song in the Victorian romantic tradition, intended for performance at the drawing-room piano, with just a hint of Scots in the words - 'aye' for ever (pronounced like 'eye'), 'ae' for the singular (pronounced like 'hay'), 'doun' for down, 'gaed' for went, 'mune', 'bluid', and the opening word 'Yestreen' meaning 'last night' which was archaic even at the time. It is rarely performed today and very few Jedburgh folk would even know it existed. I have been accurate in singing the first verse and a little more free with the second verse as far as the melody and phrasing goes. Sticking rigidly to the printed dots on a song like this makes it too starched at the collar. I have also dropped the song a full three semitones in pitch from Eb to C.
Our daughter Ailsa met her Colin (a guitar-playing student not too much like the old songbook cover!) beside Jedwater, and my niece Lucy and her Scots husband Brian in Oxford have called their new daughter Eilidh, which is pronounced 'Ailie', so this recording is really dedicated to both of them.
The song is recorded in one take with a single AKG C3000B microphone, my Lowden S35C ziricote/cedar guitar, and Roland VS800-EX recorder.
Yestreen I roamed by Jedwater,
When the sun was set, an' the dew was doun,
An' there was a sang in Jedwater,
An' my Ailie's name was its tune.
It sang o' her een, it sang o' her hair,
An' it sang o' her neck o' the lily fine;
But aye the sweetest is sang o' her heart,
My Ailie's heart that is mine!
It's up an' doun by Jedwater
I gaed an' listed to that ae sweet tune,
O it's up an' doun by Jedwater,
Till it glentit under the mune.
O her deep, deep een! O her dark, dark hair!
An' her lip that is red as the bluid red wine!
But sing, sweet River, sing aye o' her heart -
My Ailie's heart that is mine!