Annotation:Gae to the ky wi me johnnie

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GAE TO THE KY WI' ME JOHNNIE/JOHNNY. Scottish, Air (9/8 time). F Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AAB. Ky is Scots for 'cows'. John Glen thought the melody to be a Border tune. The song, claims Stenhouse, has some antiquity, "because he had been told by a respectable lady who was bornin 1738, that it was so reckoned even in her infancy" (Glen, Early Scottish Melodies, 1900, p. 105). The song was printed in Herd's second volume (1776) and Johnson's Scots Musical Museum [1] (vol. 2, 1788, song 135, p. 142), where it was "slightly touched" by Robert Burns. The first verse goes:

O Gae to the ky wi' me, Johnny,
Gae to the ky wi' me,
O Gae to the ky wi' me, Johnny,
And I'll be merry wi' thee.
And Was she na wordy of kisses,
And was she na wordy of three,
And was she na wordy of kisses,
That gaed to the ky wi' me?
O Gae to the ky wi' me, Johnny,
Gae to the ky wi' me;
O Gae to the ky wi' me, Johnny,
And I'll be merry wi' thee.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Dow (Ancient Scots Music), c. 1775; p. 42.

Recorded sources:

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