No. 80 Sinner’s Invitation, Ol 211
Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)
Sinner go, will you go
To the highlands of heaven,
Where the storms never blow
And the long summer’s given,
Where the bright blooming flow’rs
Are their odors emitting
And the leaves of the bow’rs
In the breezes are flitting.
Where the rich golden fruit
Is in bright clusters pending,
And the deep laden boughs
Of life’s fair tree are bending;
And where life’s crystal stream
Is unceasingly flowing,
And the verdure is green,
And eternally growing.
The tune and words which are parodied here are those of the ‘Braes o’ Balquhidder’. The text is attributed, by the compiler of the Olive Leaf, to “Rev. Wm. McDonald, I guess”. The Scotch song begins:
Will you go, lassie, go to the braes o’Balquhidder,
Where the blackberries grow in the bonnie blooming heather.
See Gilchrist, JFSS, viii., 77. Another variant of the ‘Braes o’ Balquhidder’ tune in this collection is ‘Lone Pilgrim’. Gilchrist traces the Scotch tune back still farther to ‘Brochan Buirn’, an old Gaelic air. See JFSS, viii., 76. It influenced Stephen Foster in his making of the tune ‘Linda Has Departed’. (See my article in The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii, No. 2.)