ABSTRACT
In spite o f its popularity, this rollicking account o f a lost weekend in Dundee doesn’ t appear to have found its way into print. We have heard versions in which the text has been amplified by floater-verses from wellknown bothy songs. It is, o f course, quite possible that ‘The Overgate’ is itself an original bothy creation written at the time when urban music-hall song was exerting its greatest influence. Conversely, it may have begun its career as one o f those music-hall pieces modelled on a corn-kister.
