ever float this one before?

[ritaxis]

I went looking through my tags, which meant I spent an hour I do not have, but I did not find this, so I guess I never wrote it down before. It's the song "Pretty Peggy," sometimes called "Fennario." It has a pretty tune with pretty variations, and a simple story: the army comes through town, the captain falls in love with a girl that won't have him, and he dies of a broken heart.

Okay. But the version I know best is a Scottish one, and it seems to me that this version is crawling with subtext and it makes me wonder if the "fennario" versions that we heard so much of in the sixties didn't simply miss the point?

Here's how I remember the words:

There was a troop of Irish dragoons
They marched down through Fyvie-O
And the captain fell in lobve with a very pretty girl
And her name it was called Pretty Peggy-O.

"Oh come down the stairs, Pretty Peggy, he cried,
Oh come down the stairs, Pretty Peggy-O --
Come down the stairs, come out your yellow hair,
Bid a last farewell of your daddy-O."

"Oh march boys, march,} the colonel he cried,
"Oh tarry, oh tarry," cried the captain-O:
"Oh tarry, oh tarry another day or so
While I see if the bonny lass will marry-O."

"I'll give you ribbons, and I'll give you rings,
And I'll give you a necklace of amber-O:
And I'll give you silken gowns to wrap your middle round
If you follow me on my wanderings-O."

Long were they come out of Fyvie-town,
they had the captain to carry-O:
And long were they come down to Aberdeen,
they had the captain to bury-O.

Okay, this song is sung to a sprightly, kind of martial tune: you can hear it played as a tattoo with brass and bagpipes here. There are longer versions that have various bits in it -- references to the beauty of the countryside, the naming of places, a part where Peggy rejects him explicitly because of his being a foreigner, a part where somebody or other contemplates burning down the town in revenge . . .

None of which do anything but enhance my suspicion that Pretty Peggy was not originally sung as a tragedy of young love or an indictment of fickle young ladies.

No, I think that it's Scottish nationalism at the core, and the "Irish dragoon" is rejected because of working for the English army (I've seen other slurs against Irish compradors in Scottish folksongs). Googling around, I see that there's a connection between the song and a the Battle of Fyvie, but it's a retcon, as are so many such associations in folk material, and only serves to enhance the subtext.

So far I haven't said anything new. This is it: I think the song is a taunt. "You want this, but you'll die trying to possess it." The tune sounds like a taunt, anyhow, especially as done by all bagpipes as here.

Here's a version I don't like.
Here's one by the Dubliners a long time ago that I like a bit better.
Here's a kind of pretension version by the Corries.
Here's one of those point-missing versions I was talking about.
Here's a livingroom bagpipe version with a drummer wearing an Edvard Munch "Scream" mask.
Here's a version where the piper's tricked out in a kilt and sporran and standing in front of a ruined castle and I think he really missed the point but it's pretty even though he's medleyed it with "The Collier Laddie" and a bunch of other things I don't recognize but which are probably also songs about girls refusing boys.

Anyway. The point is, and I did have one, that here's this song, which can be and probably usually is in recent decades, played as a sweet, sad song about young love gone wrong, which I think is originally, and more to the point, more interestingly, played as "neener-neener."

on another front: when I upgraded firefox, they turned the arrows that tell you there are more tabs -- and which you must click to see the more tabs -- invisible grey instead of visible blue. Why? Now I have to dig through all the stupid customization pages to see how to turn them back into something visible.

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I recall one of the versions was by Simon and Garfunkel in the late 60s. One of their very early LPs I think. Very prettily sung, but no balls.

The song's meaning is debatable. You make a good point about the nationalism aspect, but the whole point of a folk song is that each singer makes it their own so there are as many different meanings as you want to take from it, depending on the who when and where of the singer and the audience. Whoever first made this up may have had a completely different take on it than the next person to sing it.

If a singer misses one point they will invariably find another. I've lost track of the number of times I've heard 'Four Green Fields' sung in a folk club by someone who missed the point altogether and turned it into a song about agriculture.

It's the 'folk process'.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Yes. I was afraid that I was going to sound doctrinaire. Of course a song means exactly what it means when it is sung, and not just whatever it meant when it was first sung (most of which we can't usually be sure of).

I meant to say, for me the song is at its best when it is sung (or played) in this way, and for me those other renditions seem pointless.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

That's the great thing about folk songs, they can be exactly what you perceive them to be.
:-)