Bonny [Bonney] Bet of Aberdeen

The staid and middle-aged couple in this engraving does not seem to echo the text of this song, a paean to a lover’s girl. Nor does the language, as it lacks the Scots expressions one would expect in a song about a girl from Aberdeen. The text appeared in an English garland printed by W. Eyres around 1790. It also appeared in two songsters between 1794 and 1798 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters). “Bonny Bett” in The Songster’s Museum (147-48), beginning “No more I’ll court the town-bred fair,” is not the same text and its tune does not fit this lyric.

This broadside is one of seven English prints Thomas added to his collection of Coverly broadsides before having them bound (see The Sailor’s Departure from His True Love Susan). Three of the English prints, including this one, are identified as coming from John Evans’s press at Long Lane, West Smithfield, between 1791 and 1792, and the others resemble them closely. They are printed from engraved plates and the fine details of the illustrations are enhanced with watercolors. Broadsides like these were rare in America although not unknown.