Not the hills of home

I've been humming The Glandaruel Highlanders, which is on my latest CD acquisition, Polbain to Oranmore. Actually, that's not quite true. I've been singing the song Campbeltown Loch:

Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky,

Campbeltown Loch, Och aye!

Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky,

I would drink you dry!

Not that I have ever heard the song, but Kevin Macleod mentioned the lyrics on the sleeve notes, and they took my fancy, and I've been singing them (Och aye!) to a very mangled version of The Glendaruel Highlanders. I know that it's mangled because when I tried the tune out on my pipes this evening it didn't sound like any tune I know.

I think this is partly because when I listen to the tune I immediately start singing the song, which means I am not really listening, and I know that I am repeating the chorus only over the whole of the tune. As I've mentioned before It seems that if I have words and a tune my brain seems to prefer the words, no matter how wrong they are.

I suppose the other problem is that voice is, in its way, just another instrument, and just as a pipe tune sounds very different when played on banjo or fiddle or even whistle, it sounds different with voice. It's not just that other instruments can slur or lilt or bounce in a way that pipes can't. Some of it is to do with the different ways in which other instruments treat the gracing. It's something I came across early on when I first heard A Scottish Soldier. It's The Green Hills of Tyrol, Jim, but not as we know it. 

(Incidentally, I found Glendaruel in the Seaforth Highlanders, and I knew it would be there because this handy site told me so).