Annotation:My Wife She Dang Me

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MY WIFE SHE DANG ME. Scottish, Reel. D Mixolydian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCDDEE. Dang = beat. Poet Robert Burns penned "Oh aye, my wife she dang me" for Johnson's Scots Musical Museum [1] (vol VI, No. 532, p. 549) in 1795. The old song was once well-known, but all that remained to Burns was the chorus and fragments, which he reconstructed. Alan Cunningham, in his Songs of Scotland (1825), disdainfully remarked, "...I know of no relics of ancient song which merit oblivion more." Burns's lyric goes:

Chorus:
O aye my wife she dang me,
An' aft my wife she bang'd me,
If ye gie a woman a' her will,
Gude faith! she'll soon o'er-gang ye.

On peace an' rest my mind was bent,
And, fool I was! I married;
But never honest man's intent
Sane cursedly miscarried.
O aye my wife, &c.

Some sairie comfort at the last,
When a' thir days are done, man,
My pains o' hell on earth is past,
I'm sure o' bliss aboon, man,
O aye my wife, &c.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: McGibbon (Scots Tunes, Book 1), c. 1746; pp. 6-7.

Recorded sources:

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