Matchmaking Mayhem: Annachie Gordon

Arranged marriages were fairly common in the British Isles, especially among families where money, land or titles were at stake, for a very long time, and make up provide inspiration for any number of tragic stories, plays and, of course, songs. While in real life most couples either found themselves growing fond of each other over time or came to some arrangement that let them basically ignore eah other for decades on end (which is easier to manage, I imagine, in a manor house than a studio apartment), in folk ballads they almost always end up involved in some sort of tragedy.

This week's Dead Lovers song comes from Scotland and was first written down in the early 1800s and is known as "Lord Saltoun and Auchanachie" (Child 239, Roud 102) or in more modern renditions simply as "Annachie Gordon"

In this story, young Jeannie from the Aberdeen region of Scotland wishes to marry a young man named Annachie (or Auchanachie, but it's hard enough to keep spelling it out the other way), but her father, feeling he isn't well-off enough, forces her into marriage with the local Lord Saulton (who, between 1785 and 1853 would have been Alexander George Fraser, though his wife's name was Catherine, so either the ballad is older than that or it took a lot of liberties with history, or probably both). Jeannie begs her parents not to marry her to a man she doesn't love when she'd rather have her handsome-but-broke lover Annachie, but the wedding goes ahead anyway.

In a particularly... I gues you'd say, "invasive" twist on the plot, when Jeannie refuses to consummate the marriage with Lord Saulton, her father orders her maids to "loosen up her gowns" at which point Jeannie falls to the floor and, as tragic heroines are wont to do in these situations, dies.
Annachie, who was off on a boat somewhere happens to come home the same day that Jeannie was both married and died, and comes across his lover's servants weeping and moaning for their lost lady. He goes up and gives his dead beloved a kiss and then, as tragic heroes are wont to do in these situations, dies.

I'm not an expert on this period in Anglo-Scottish history by any means, but my understanding, and some quick Google searching, seems to bear out that the late 1700s and early 1800s represented a time when arranged marriage was on its way out. I would speculate that maybe the ballad audiences of the time were fascinated by stories of arranged marriage gone awry in part because it was not the way things were currently done, and was regarded as a relic of the unenlightened past (not that, from our modern point of view, marriage and womens' rights were particularly enlightened in 1824, but hey, baby steps).

As an interesting contrast is another Scottish ballad from about the same time, "Jock O' Hazledean," (Child 293) which was a reworking by Sir Walter Scott of an even older song. In it, the young lady is to be married to a young lord named Frank (Lord of Langleydale, a town in the north of England) but is desperately in love with young Jock. Frank's father spends the song telling her how great her husband-to-be is, and how wealthy she'll be, but she's inconsolable. However, this song avoids a place on the Dead Lovers compilations because unlike poor Jeannie, the unnamed heroine of this song flees her wedding day and absconds across the border into Scotland with her Jock of Hazledean (which I'm not sure is actually a real place, unlike many of the others mentioned in these ballads, so if you're of a fantastical turn of mind, the "border" may not be between England and Scotland but the border of Fair Elfland. Or not, maybe Scott was more worried about rhymes than geography).