A fine Lowland air from the early 1700s with an interesting title. The story goes that in 1337 an English raiding party were returning south and stopped near Galashiels to feast on the fruit from some plum trees. While they were busy harvesting and eating the plums Scottish forces took them by surprise and killed them all. To this day ‘Soor Plooms’ is the motto of Galashiels. Of course many folk will be more familiar with the sharp tasting green boiled sweet of the same name, available in any decent Scots sweetie shop.

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I think my setting originally came from Gordon Mooneys book ‘The Choicest Bagpipe Music From The Scottish Borders and Lowlands’. The dots above and below represent how I play it now, of course it has evolved a little under my fingers over the years. The tune includes high Bs and G sharps. If your pipes can’t play High Bs you can replace them with low Bs and I don’t think it impacts the feel of the tune too much. The G sharps may be a little more difficult to replace but I’m sure there is some way around those.

I’ve mentioned Gordon’s book before, it has a great selection of tunes in it and is well worth getting hold of if you are interested in this music. Gordon also collects stories about or including pipers and publishes them on his website where he has a page dedicated to Galashiels Pipers’ Tales.

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The Victorian folklorist George Petrie credited this tune to Carolan which he named ‘Wood’s Lamentation on the Refusal of his Halfpiece’. There’s no evidence before Petrie to credit the tune to Carolan and it’s thought that he may have written a satirical song of that title to the existing tune.

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Below is the tune in ABC notation. ABC is a great way to share simple, single staff notation and is popular amongst traditional musicians. You can learn about ABC notation here and I recommend EasyABC or Michael Eskin’s ABC Transcription Tools to convert the tunes into standard notation, for editing and playback.

X:1
T:Soor Plooms O Galashiels
M:C|
L:1/8
Q:1/2=60
K:Amaj
e |: c3d cAaf | ecBc A2A>B | c>ccB cA eA/2e/2 | f3e c3A |
fecf ecBd | cBAc B>BBc | ABcd eAac |1 B3A A2- Ae :|2 B3A A3e ||
f>gab a3A | a2ga f3e | c2e2 fgag | f3e e3A |
f>gab a3A | a2ga f3e | cAeA f>gag | f2eB c3A|
f>gab a3A | a2 ga f3 e | cB c2 ec e2 | fef2 g2- gf/2g/2 |
aA a2 fef2 | ec e2 cBcA | a2Af efAc| B3 A A4 |]

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