Annotation:Will ye go to the Ew-Bughts Marion?
X:1 T:Ew-Bughts Marion M:C L:1/8 R:Air B: William Thomson - Orpheus Caledonius, vol. 2 (1733, No. 15, p. 53) Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:G D E|G2 A B d2 GF|TE2D2 z2 DE|G2 A B d2 GF|(E2e2) z2 {ef}g2| G2 AB d2 GF|E2 e>f g2f e |dB AG E>G D2|EG {e}d4|| e2|d<e B<d e2 GF|E2D2 z2 B c|d>e B>d g<e d<B|{A}G6 ze| d>e d>d e2 GF|E2 e>f g2 fe|eB AG E>G D2|D<e d4||
WILL YE GO TO THE EW-BUGHTS MARION? AKA - "Ew-bughts Marion (The)," "Go to the Ew-bughts, Marion." Scottish, English; Air (2/4 time). E Minor. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. "Will ye go to the Ew-Bughts, Marrion?" is a song from the writer and cleric Thomas Percy (1729–1811), published in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1791). While visiting a friend Percy noticed a neglected folio whose pages were being used by the maids to light the fire. He rescued them for examination, and found the song on one of them. Ew-bught is a Scots word for sheep-pens or the place where the ewes are milked. The first stanza goes of Percy's dialect version goes:
Will ze gae to the ew-bughts, Marion,
And wear in the sheip wi' mee?
The sun shines sweit, my Marion,
But nae half sae sweit as thee.
O Marion's a bonnie lass,
And the blyth blinks in her ee;
And fain wad I marrie Marion,
Gin Marion wad marrie mee.
The song was hardly unknown, however, for it had been printed a few years earlier in the first volume of Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (1787), where it was considered an old song (Percy also noted its antiquity). The Museum version begins:
'Will ye go to the ew-bughts, Marion,
and wear in the sheep wi' me;
the sun shines sweet, my Marion,
but nae half sae sweet as thee,
the sun shines sweet, my Marion.
but nae half as sweet as thee.
The earliest version of the song was printed in London by poet Allan Ramsay in his Tea-Table Miscellany (1733, p. 88) and by William Thomson in Orpheus Caledoneus, 2nd Edition, vol 2 (1733, No. 15). Ramsay's version ("Ew-bughts Marion") begins:
Will ye go to the ew-bughts, Marion,
And wear in the sheep wi' me;
The sun shines sweet, my Marion,
But nae haff sae sweet as thee.
O Marion's a bonny lass,
And the blyth blinks in her eye;
And fain wad I marry Marion,
Gin Marion wad marry me.