BONNYMUIR
( Tune : Johnny Cope )
Allan Murchie

                                            Although our lives were ventured fair
                                            To free our friends from toil and care,
                                            The English troops we dint to dare,
                                            And wish'd them a' good mornin'. 

                                            It's with three cheers we welcomed them
                                            Upon the Muir of Bonny Plain,
                                            It was our rights from them to gain
                                            Caused us to fight that mornin'. 

                                            With pikes and guns we did engage;
                                            With lion's courage did we rage
                                            For liberty or slavery's badge
                                            Caused us to fight that mornin'.

                                            But some of us did not stand true,
                                            Which caus'd the troops them to pursue,
                                            And still it makes us here to rue
                                            That e'er we fought that mornin'. 

                                            We're a' condemned for to dee,
                                            And weel ye ken that's no a lee,
                                            Or banish'd far across the sea
                                            For fightin' on that mornin'. 

                                            But happy we a' ha'e been
                                            Since ever that we left the Green,
                                            Although strong prisons we ha'e seen,
                                            Since we fought that mornin'. 

                                            If mercy to us all shall be shown
                                            From Royal George's kingly crown,
                                            We will receive't without a frown,
                                            And sail the seas some mornin'. 

                                            Mercy to us has now been shown
                                            From Royal George's noble crown,
                                            And we're prepared without a frown,
                                            To see South Wales some mornin'.

Footnote : This song was written by one of the participants in the Battle of Bonnymuir on 5 April 1820. He was among the nineteen Radicals taken prisoner by Government troops and subsequently sentenced to life transportation in Australia. He wrote the song when imprisoned in Stirling Castle awaiting transportation. Dunfermline-born Allan Barbour Murchie was twenty-four when he stepped off the ship Speke to spend the rest of his life, forty-five years, in Australia. He married and had seven children and seems to have prospered far beyond any prospects available to him in his native land. For the story of the 1820 Radical Rising go to Features and read James Halliday's booklet 'The 1820 Rising - The Radical War'.