A bothy ballad about a young woman farm worker who admires the handsome young ploughman from afar.

Often bothy ballads about farm work speak of kindness to the unmarried men who live in the bothy from the ‘kitchie deem’, the kitchen maid, who lived in the farmhouse along with the farmer and his family, and who worked very hard.

In this song the farm girl wants to escape the drudgery of the farm, including getting fuel for the fire from the ‘stack’, but rejects her maybe real, maybe dreamt-of admirers in the town, the merchant and the miller. In this context ‘den’ means a farm in a narrow wooded valley.

'Plooman Laddies', performed by Christine Kydd From Dark Pearls (CD), CUL 115D, Culburnie Records