Annotation:Yellow Cow (The)

Back to Yellow Cow (The)

---

YELLOW COW. AKA and see: “Is Trua gan Peata 'n Mhaoir agam (1)," "Mother and Child Reel (The)," "Peata Beag is a Mháthair," "Your Mother’s Fair Pet." Irish, Air and Reel. D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB’. The tonality is at times ambigiuous, shifting from D Major to A Mixolydian. It is derived from a "dandling" song, or a kind of nonsense song sung to an infant (hence one of the alternate titles, "Mother and Child"). However, there are a number of variants of both tune and song, including reel settings (most noticeable in the first strain).

"Yellow Cow" is a version of an Irish song called "I Wish the Shepherd's Pet Was Mine" in which the protagonist wishes for the shepherd's lamb and a yellow cow:

I wish 1 had the yellow cow,
The yellow cow, the yellow cow,
I wish I had the yellow cow
And welcome from my darling.

and whose chorus (in translation by P.W. Joyce) goes:

And Oh! I hail thee, I hail thee!
My heart's love without guile are thou.
And Oh! I hail thee, I hail thee,
The fair pet of thy mother.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources:

Recorded sources: GIFT 10007, Arty McGlynn & Nollaig Casey – “Lead the Knave.”

See also listing at:
Alan Ng's Irishtune.info [1]

---