5. The Maid O' Bellshill
(McGowan)

One of my very favourites on this box. First time we play together on one track in this whole box - and not at the same session even then... Davy asked me to add some cittern sound to this. I bought lately a new instrument, and we have not yet agreed of how it should be called: a cittern, a mandocello or an octave mandolin. It also reminds of an irish bozouki, but they all are related. You need a musical DNA scientist to tell what happened in the history of mandolin family!--Jore

My idea of what I'd have been writing if I'd have been alive in the 1800s - though I'd probably have been too busy working 16 hours in the fields to write anything at all. Nice mandocello - or cittern if you prefer - from Jore. --Davy

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As I came in by Bellshill toon as twilight shadows fell
A fair maid there approached me and said she knew me well
Her cheeks were like the roses red, her eyes the deepest blue
I recognized her not but said, 'I'll walk along with you'.

We went into an alehouse and she began to sing
And there we made right merry until the bell did ring
And coming out into the night she held my arm once more
And though twas all unsteadily, she led me to her door

I'd whisky in me glass and tobacco in me hand
A pretty wench upon me knee, was this the Promised Land?
She led me to the hall and then upstairs we did go
A gentle lover's kiss and then began my woe

I woke to empty pockets and bloodstains on my head
Twas in a field I knew not where, not in my lover's bed
A poorer and a wiser man I gazed upon the moon
A pox on my deceiver and a pox on Bellshill toon