Annotation:Jackson's Bouner Bougher
X:1 T:Jackson’s Bouner Bougher O:”Irish” M:6/8 L:1/8 R:Jig B:James Aird – Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 3 (Glasgow, 1788, No. 546, p. 208) N:”Humbly dedicated to the Volunteers and Defensive Bands of Great Britain and Ireland” Z:AK/Fiddler’s Companion K:D AFE TEFE|FED DED|AFE EFA|BAF dAF| AFE EFE|FED D2d|cBA BAF|B2A Bcd:| |:d2e fdB|c2d ecA|d2e fed|f2e fga| d2efdB|c2d ecA|dcB cBA|B2A Bcd:|]
JACKSON'S BOUNER BOUGHER. AKA and see "Bouner Bouger," "Cordal Jig," "Darby Gallagher's," "Five Hundred a Year," "Idle Road (The)," "If I Had in the Clear," "Land of Potatoes," "Morgan Rattler." Irish, Jig (6/8 time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. A composition of the famous 18th century gentleman musician biography:Walker 'Piper' Jackson, of the townland of Lisduan, in the parish of Ballingarry, Limerick. The tune was first published by Samuel Lee in Dublin c. 1774 in Jackson's Celebrated Irish Tunes, a volume reprinted in 1790. Smollet Holden included it in his Collection of Old Established Irish Slow & Quick Tunes (Dublin, 1805) as "Bouner Bouger." O'Neill (1913) states that it is the original of "Morgan Rattler," before being embellished with variations, and Breathnach (1996) identifies "Darby Gallagher's" as another title appearing in County Fermanagh musician Patrick Gunn's manuscript. The song "Oh had I in the clear but Five Hundred a year," published by B. Cooke, Dublin, c. 1795, was written to the melody, from which the alternate titles "Five Hundred a Year," "If I Had in the Clear" and "Land of Potatoes" comes from. Breathnach suggests the title might be a corruption of the Irish Bonn ar bóthar.
A version of the jig was entered (with a garbled title) into the large multi-volume mid-19th century music manuscript collection (vol. 2, p. 172 [1]) of Canon James Goodman, a County Cork uilleann piper and collector.
