Annotation:Nancy Wants Her Own Share
NANCY WANTS HER OWN SHARE. AKA and see "Echoes of Killarney," "Well I know what Kitty wants," "Whistle o'er," "Whistle O'er the Lave O'T." Irish, March (2/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The air is identified as one of the marching tunes of the Irish Volunteers in 1782. "It is an old 17th century Irish air, which wandered over to Scotland in the '45 period, and was printed in 1756" (Musical Times, 7/1/1914, p. 456). "Nancy Wants Her Own Share" has some distanced relationship to "Maggie Pickens," and may have derived from the same ancestral melody. However, the melody is nowadays familiar to many players of traditional music as the polka "Maggie in the Woods". It can also be found in single jig ("Hen and all Her Broth (The)") and slides ("Echoes of Killarney" & Well I know what Kitty wants") versions.
Editor Patrick McCall used the tune as the indicated air for one of his songs, "Over the Hills to Mary," in his book of verse Irish Nóiníns (daisies), published in 1894.
Source for notated version: farm laborer and flutist John Ferguson (Rathangan, Co. Wexford, Ireland) [Darley & McCall].
Printed sources: Darley & McCall (Feis Ceóil Collection of Irish Airs), 1914; No. 69, p. 31.
Recorded sources: