There is another song which uses the phrase 'go to the broom' directly. This song has many versions - it may be called Allan McLean, Sally Allen, The Wedding of Westfield or The Four Students. It occupies several pages of the Greig Duncan collection Book 7, with many versions, and it's an excellent 3/4 tune which is very simple and easy to sing. Here is my conflation and adbridgement of the various different versions, together with a short MP3 sound file which indicates the tune of my preference - the variations are considerable. The MPEG track is 152Kb and it sounds perfect. This is a one-mike recording on Sony Minidisk - Lowden S25J nylon string used acoustically, one Creative Labs condensor mike placed on the seat in front of me, no effects. Just play and sing.
It is played with a Drop D tuning, in D, and the only chords required are D, G and A with an optional Bm and Em in the penultimate bar. It can be tackled entirely using D and G with a D drone and works equally well, with small amendments, played modally with dulcimer. As it is a very short and simple tune I see no particular reason why a complete harmonic variant - shifting the structure to a related minor, perhaps - should not be used to give the song some relief for a selected verse. An alternative would be to shift the entire thing up a full tone for the closing three verses.
Apparently, the song is or was popular in North East Scotland and was recorded in the past, but it does not seem to be in the repertoire of bands today and I've never heard it live, or noticed it on albums. I notice that the different version give various birthplaces - Cheshire, Sheffield, Paris, the Colonies and non-existent stuff like Cholshire and Freeburgh - so I would assume that singers were in the habit of customising the song to suit wherever they were singing.
My slightly revised story is of an emigrant's son (rather than just someone from another part of Scotland) returning to Aberdeen to go to college, but thrown out for having a girl in his room. I felt the version noted down by Greig from Charles Walker to be best suited in length and content to today's ear. The only major change I have made is the line 'And I sailed back to Scotland' in the second verse. This is taken from clues in other lines, such as 'Twas from the West Highland our course we did steer'. This is, however, a huge change.
The original song is around 200 years old and refers to a historical incident, but some archaic words have clearly been misinterpreted by Victorian oral transmission. For example, 'preaches abroad' for the student's father does not mean he preaches overseas, just that he is a travelling minister in the Highlands; one version places his birth in Paris, which is almost certainly a mishearing for 'parish'. One text gives a sailing time from the student's home in the north west of Scotland, to Aberdeen, of three days (three nights).
Where I mark an asterisk * the rythm allows you to insert almost any place except Weston-super-Mare! A three-syllable place with the emphasis on the middle syllable will work well, like Virginia or New Hampshire. Traditionalist will find all this unacceptable, but if it makes the song translate better for an American audience it is a small sacrifice bearing in mind the inconsistent and sometimes nonsensical words of the genuine' versions.
To set a' things in order
I'll write wi' ma pen
The life and misfortunes
O' Allan Maclean
I was born in *the colonies
A minister's son
And I sailed back tae Scotland
When ma schoolin' was done
I was sent tae the college
A student to be
But the Wedding o' Westfield
It has ruined me
George Donald, John Allen
Macgregor and I
Went all to the wedding
Pretty girls for to spy
We danced and we drank
And we took great delight
Till bonnie Sally Allen
Came into my sight
I asked her to dance
And I gave her a dram
And then I did ask her
If she'd go to the broom
We went to the broom
At the hour o' midnight
And we needed no candle
For the moon shone so bright
We hadna been in the broom
For scare half an hour
When by comes John Allen
And he calls her my whore
It's early next morning
Before the sun rose
Her brother John Allen
To the regent he goes
So farewell Aulton College
Likewise Aberdeen
Farewell Sally Allen
My ruin ye've been
There's a ship in the harbour
That's bound for the sea
Takin' in goods and passengers
And she'll surely take me
So I'm bound for *the Colonies
A doctor to be
And then to Jamaica
Strange countries to see
And if ever I return again
An' I hope that I shall
I'll marry Sally Allen
In spite of them all
Traditional, version copyright David Kilpatrick 1999. Please feel free to make any use you choose of this, but should a version based on what I have done be recorded or performed professionally, please acknowledge the source.