Roamin’ in the gloamin’ (1928)

134 ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' really special. Not a burlesque, or a comic song, nor yet a character study ; by this time I had quite a large repertoire of good songs, all of them popular and I knew that I could "get over" in pantomime with the material I had on hand. What I wanted was a jingling, simple love-lyric. I felt all the time that I would like to strike a new and dominant note. Then one night, on leaving a London theatre, the stage-door keeper handed me a letter. It was in a pink envelope, it had a seal on the back and the handwriting was in large sprawling letters. "That's sure from a lady, Mr. Lauder," said the attendant. "I suppose you love a lassie?" "Yes," I replied, "I do love a lassie — and I'm gaun awa' home to her noo." I love a lassie ! I love a lassie ! I love a lassie ! The words rang in my head all the way down to Tooting. I hummed them. I sang them to a dozen different musical phrases. I tried to get a verse out of them but the elusive something just failed me. A few nights later I met Mr. Gerald Grafton, a well-known London song-writer. I mentioned the phrase which had so impressed me. He was interested and said he would see what he could do with the idea. He worked on it and I worked on it, and at last we hammered out the framework of the song which I have sung in every part of the world during the past twenty-one years. It took Grafton and myself several weeks to get the words "just pat" but the melody I wedded to them came to me all at once and I do not think I ever afterwards altered a note of it. I knew I had got a great song. I knew it would be a winner. But I was scarcely prepared for the triumph it proved the first time I sang it on the opening night of the Glasgow Pantomime of 1905. The vast audience took the song to its heart instantly. Every night for thirteen weeks "I Love a Lassie" held up the action of the pantomime so long that it is a