My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean

About this arrangement

A waltz-time song in two halves: the verse, which rocks down from E to A and back, and the “bring back” chorus on long dotted minims. The hand sits a step higher than usual: the thumb starts on G, the top note of C position, and the little finger reaches up to the E above for “Bon-nie”, so the whole piece lies between the E below the thumb and the E an octave above. Several notes are tied across the bar line (“o-cean”, “sea”, “me”), so hold them and count. The left hand plays a waltz bass, one bass note and two chords, through C, F, G7, Dm and one A minor bar.

Practice tip: Play the chorus first: “Bring back, bring back” is four dotted minims, one to a bar, and lets you hear the waltz bass. Then add the verse, counting “1 2 3” through every tied note.

The words

My Bonnie lies over the ocean, my Bonnie lies over the sea, my Bonnie lies over the ocean, oh bring back my Bonnie to me. Bring back, bring back, oh bring back my Bonnie to me, to me; bring back, bring back, oh bring back my Bonnie to me.

A short history

“My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” is a Scottish folk song that was being sung in Britain and America by the middle of the 19th century. The earliest known printing is from 1881, in the United States, by Charles E. Pratt, under the pen names H. J. Fuller and J. T. Wood, as “Bring Back My Bonnie to Me”; it is likely that both were arranging a song people already knew.

One old theory is that the “Bonnie” of the song is Bonnie Prince Charlie, who fled Scotland for France after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden in 1746, so that a lament for a lost lover was really a coded Jacobite song. There is no proof of this, but it has kept the song in Scottish songbooks.

It became a standard of school singing, scout camps and college glee clubs, and in 1961 a rock-and-roll version by Tony Sheridan was recorded in Hamburg with a young backing band called the Beatles.

Quick facts

Tune

Traditional (Scottish, 19th century)

Key

C major

Time signature

3/4

Length

32 bars and a pickup

Tempo

Gently swaying, crotchet = 132

Difficulty

Level 5: A wider range (piece 144 of 201)

Type

Folk song

Hands

Both: melody in the right hand, chords in the left

Copyright

Public domain tune; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal and classroom use

Questions and answers