One of Scotland's oldest ballads, sung or told as a story in many countries, about fatal jealousy between sisters.

There are many Scottish, English and American versions of this ballad. It was printed as ‘The Miller and the King’s Daughter’ in 1656. In older versions the young man who comes courting is a prince; here he is a miller’s son. In other versions the drowned girl is the miller’s own daughter.

John Strachan’s version omits the wonderful ‘magical’ ending, in which a harp or fiddle (or even a piano) is made from the sister’s white bones and yellow hair, and taken to play at the wedding, where it sings the story of the murder.

John Strachan was a well-to-do farmer at the Aberdeenshire farm of Crichie, near Fyvie, who had a wonderful fund of old ballads and bothy ballads. In 1951 Hamish Henderson took American folklorist Alan Loma to record Strachan's singing. Strachan was born in 1875 and died in 1958.

Binnorie O Binnorie

There were two sisters lived in a glen
Binnorie o Binnorie,
And the bonnie millert laddie cam a–coortin o them,
By the bonnie mill dams o Binnorie.

Oh sister oh sister, will ye take a walk
Roond be the dams o Binnorie,
For to hear the blackbird whistle o’er its notes
By the bonnie mill dams o Binnorie.

They walked up and sae did they doon
And roon be the dams o Binnorie,
Till the elder stepped aside and dang the younger in
To the deep mill dams o Binnorie.

Oh sister, oh sister stretch oot yer hand Binnorie o Binnorie,
And I’ll gie ye my gold and a fifth o my land
For the bonny millert laddie o Binnorie.

It wisna for yer money that I dang you in Binnorie o Binnorie,
It’s you being so fair love and I so very grim
For the bonny millert laddie o Binnorie.

Oh millert oh millert rin oot yer dam
Binnorie o, Binnorie,
For there’s some grand lady or some deid swan
Floatin up and doon the dams o Binnorie.

Listen to 'Binnorie O Binnorie', sung in 1951 by North East farmer John Strachan
From the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Used courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity.