Billy in the Lowground

Billy in the Lowground gets called when somebody wants out of the fiddle keys. Bluegrass lives in G, D and A, and a whole night can go by without a tune in C. This is the C tune everybody has, and that gives it a job no other standard does.

The melody is old, and Scottish or Irish underneath. Researchers trace it through eighteenth century collections to a family of tunes called The Braes of Auchtertyre, Belles of Tipperary and Beaus of Albany, an air in three that somebody squared off into a duple time dance tune along the way. It reached American records early. Eck Robertson cut it for Victor on July 1, 1922, in a medley with Sally Johnson, though the side sat unreleased until 1924. Burnett and Rutherford recorded it in Atlanta in 1927, and the Lomaxes took it down from Luther Strong in Hazard, Kentucky, in 1937.

Who Billy was and what the lowground is are open questions with a favorite answer. Most writers settle on King William III and the swampy ground at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. It fits the tune's British ancestry and not much else. Other candidates include a male goat, a grave, the Scottish Lowlands, and a girl named Jinny from a variant title. None of them is documented. The tune has also picked up a crowd of near namesakes over the years, so a player who insists it goes differently may have learned a cousin.

The shape is a major phrase answered by its relative minor. Both strains spend two bars in C and two in A minor, then run the same G to C turnaround home, so the harmony is one four bar idea used four times. Tony Rice's version is the one most flatpickers treat as the reference. Doc Watson's is in D, and trying it there is a quick way to find out how well you really know the tune.

On a mandolin this one covers ground. The first strain starts on the open G course, the lowest note the instrument has, and climbs an octave and a half to the C at the third fret of the A course. The second strain picks up where the first one topped out and keeps climbing to the B at the seventh fret of the E course. Getting from bottom to top cleanly is most of the work. The crossing in the second strain, where the line rocks between E and G and then between A and B on the top pair, is where slow practice pays off.