Annotation:I Cannot Win at Her for Her Big Belly

Back to I Cannot Win at Her for Her Big Belly

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I CANNOT WIN AT HER FOR HER BIG BELLY. Scottish, Air or Jig (6/8 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. The meldoy was first printed by London publisher Henry Playford in his Collection of Original Scotch-Tunes (1700, p. 60). It also appears in Dublin publishers John & William Neal’s Scotch Tunes (c. 1724), and in the MacFarlan Manuscript (1740, part II, No. 148), in 'A' Mixolydian. Jack Campin finds cognates in the Henry Atkinson manuscript (c. 1694) under the title "Deal gae with hir his Tayle flies up (The)). James Oswald printed it twice in his mid-19th century collections, as "I cannot win at her" and "Hit her upon the Bum," the latter printed in Edinburgh at the end of the century as "Hit Her on the Thumb". A common 19th century title was We're No' Very Fu' But We're Geyly Yet and it is now most often known from an uncharacteristically respectable set of words as Bide Ye Yet.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book V), 1760; p. 6.

Recorded sources:

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