Description

The Flower of Yarrow

The title refers to the celebrated sixteenth century border beauty, Mary Scott of Dryhope Tower, who married the infamous Border Reiver, Auld Wat of Harden. This version is another taken from Henry Atkinson’s seventeenth century manuscript and is clearly a close relation of the later well known Northumbrian air, ‘Sir John Fenwick’s the Flower Amang Them All’. It is a bleak and empty tune, haunting and beautiful and completely evocative of the border region of England and Scotland.