Annotation:Bonny Gray-Eyed Morn
Back to Bonny Gray-Eyed Morn
BONNY GRAY-EYED MORN, THE. "Jockey Rous'd with Love," "The Bonny Grey-Eyed Morn Begins to Peep." English, Air (whole or 2/2 time). B Flat Major (Gay): D Major (Aird). Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. Chappell (1859) asserts the Scots appropriated "The Bonny Grey-eyed Morn" or "Jockey rous'd with love," composed by Jeremiah Clark, for their tune, but that it was English in origin. He says Clarke's composition was sung in D'Urfey's comedy The Fond Husband, or The Plotting Sisters (1676). Henry Playford published it in his Dancing Master, Part II, 2nd Edition (1698) and it was retained in all subsequent editions until the demise of the series in 1728 (at which time it was being published by John Young, heir to the Playford publishing concerns). John Walsh published it in his Compleat Country Dancing Master (London, 1718). Kidson (1922) identifies it as an Anglo-Scotch song, the music being perhaps composed by Jeremiah Clark. Stenhouse doubted that Clark(e) composed the melody, and Grove's Dictionary gives dates for Clarke that would make him only six or seven years old when The Fond Husband was produced. Oswald included it in the collection of Scottish Tunes, calling it "The Old Gray-ey'd morning." A version also appeared in Oswald's seventh book of The Caledonian Pocket Companion as "The Gray Ey'd morning" albeit in a different version of the tune, in 3/4 time. It also appears in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, vol. III (1719), on half-sheet music, and in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1729) under the title "'Tis woman that seduces all mankind." It was a popular tune, much employed in ballad operas, and also appears in Cibber's Patie & Peggy (1730), The Jew Decoy'd, or the Progress of a Harlot (1733), The Happy Lovers, or the Beau Metamorphos'd (1736), Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd, and others.
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Aird (Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 5), Glasgow, 1797; No. 27, p. 11. Barnes (English Country Dance Tunes, vol. 2), 2005; p. 14. Raven (English Country Dance Tunes), 1984; p. 50.
Recorded sources: Wildgoose Records, Belshazzar's Feast - "Mr. Kynaston's Famous Dance" (2000).