Annotation:Bonny Lad Lay Your Pipes Down

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BONNY LAD LAY YOUR PIPES DOWN. AKA - "Bonny lad, prithee lay your pipe down." Scottish, Air (3/4 time). D Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). AA'B (Oswald, vol. 1): AA'BBCC'DD (Oswald, vol. 4). The tune was printed by Henry Playford in Apollo's Banquet, vol. 7 (London, 1693, p. 67). However, the song comes from Thomas D'Urfey's (1653-1723) comedy The Marriage-Hater Match'd, performed in London in 1692 (music for the song set by Thomas Tollett). It is entitled "A Scotch song in the third act" and the first line goes, "Bonny lad, prithee lay thy pipe down"; the song was later included by D'Urfey in his Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719-20, pp. 230-31). The air was later the indicated tune for a song in Charles Coffey's opera The Beggar's Wedding (1729). D'Urfey's lyric goes:

Bonny Lad, prithee lay thy Pipe down;
Tho' blith are thy Notes they have now no power:
Whilst my Joy my dear Peggy is gone,
And Wedded quite fro me will Love no more.
My gud Friends that do ken my grief,
With Songs and Stories, a Cure would find:
But alas, they can bring no relief,
For Peggy still runs in my mind.

When I Visit the Park or the Play,
They aw without Peggy a Desart seem;
She's before my Eyes aw the Day,
And aw the long Night too, she haunts my Dream.
Sometime fancying a Heaven of Charms,
I wake, and Rob'd of my dear delight,
Find she Ligs in anothers Arms:
Ah then 'tis she kills me outright.

Take my Counsel aw you that love well;
Bestow Love and Wit on a Girl of Sense:
No such Blessing to Peggy befel,
'Twas Ignorance caus'd her absurd offence.
She could pray with an humble face;
And look as she never false could be:
But had she own'd either Wit or Grace,
She never had Wedded fro me.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion, vol. 1), 1760; p. 20. Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion, vol. 4), 1760; p. 18.

Recorded sources:

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