🎵 Ballads & Songs

Traditional Scottish border ballads connected to the Telfer family

A note on Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead

We'd like to think Jamie Telfer is one of our own — a border Telfer, same ancestral country. But so far the records don't prove a family connection. We're still researching, and until we find real evidence, this page stands as the famous ballad it is, not as a confirmed branch of our family tree.

Telfer's Cows

Performed by Andrew Calhoun · Traditional border ballad

A Scottish border ballad telling the story of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead, whose cattle were stolen by the Captain of Bewcastle. The ballad was collected by Sir Walter Scott and published in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802–1803).

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More ballads will be added as they're preserved. The Telfer name appears in several traditional Scottish border ballads, reflecting the family's deep roots in the Scottish Borders region.