Hey Donald, Love and Freedom or Strathmartine Mains was written by Mary Brooksbank (1897-1978), who often told how she was inspired to write this song after hearing a young traveller boy playing the pipes at her door. The song celebrates the Travelling People’s itinerant way of life. 

Mary Brooksbank was a jute mill worker born in Aberdeen and raised in Dundee. Mary started work as a shifter at thirteen in the Baltic Jute Mill and became a spinner at fifteen. She became politically active very young and “led protest marchers through the streets of Dundee in the Twenties.”

The savvy among you will spy that this was recorded at the Laurencekirk viewpoint, and not Strathmartine! 

As I cam owre Strathmartine Mains
Wha dae ye think I seen?
But a braw young piper laddie
Cam a-linkin owre the green

Chorus (after each verse):
Singing hey Donald, ho Donald
Dirrum-a-doo-a-day

He played a jig and he played a reel
And he played a sweet strathspey
He roused my hairt ’til the beat skipped time
Tae the tappin’ o’ ma tae

Well, I’ve nae gowd tae offer ye
I hae but little gear
But we’ll hae love and freedom
Gin ye’ll gang wi’ me, my dear

There’s gowd in the broom o’ the Sidlaw Hills
Honey in the heather sweet
There’s a speckled trout in the henlinn tarn
A cairpet ’neath oor feet

He blew up his chanter
An’ it’s sic a spring he plays
So I chose love and freedom
An’ I’ll wander all my days