BURNS' MARCH / PRETTY PEGGY
The fullest version of this march comes from Donnchadh ó hAmhsaigh (Denis O'
Hampsey), the oldest harper to attend the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792, being 97 at
the time as Edward Bunting tells us. Hampsey is also the source of what Bunting
relates to be an English translation by the harper of an Irish ditty sung to the tune.
The chorus of the ditty, which went something like 'í im bó ('g)us ú um bó', is
composed of 'vocables': syllables which in context have no real meaning. An
example of the English equivalent of this would be 'Hey Diddle Diddle'. In Gaelic,
these vocables are sometimes subject to puns. 'Í im bó is ú um bó', for example,
could be twisted to 'ithim bó, is uaim bó' (I eat cow, I want a cow) and 'ú um bó is í im
bo' could be twisted into 'chugam bó is ithim bó' (may a cow come to me and may I
eat cow)!
This kind of word play may have inspired the notated translation of the title 'steal a
cow and eat a cow' which does not appear as the chorus in Hampsey's versified
translation. The title Chugad a' Gadaí fríd a' Monaí (watch out for the thief coming
through the moor) might imply a lyric on a related topic! It appears twice in Bunting's
MSS but Bunting chose Hampsey's chorus as the Irish title. The English title Burns´
March appears ubiquitously with the music for this song in the manuscripts. The
description 'very old' appears beside this English title in MS29 and so it might have
come from Hampsey. The appearance of the surname 'Burns' hints at the piece's
Scottish connection.
Pretty Peggy is a title noted in Bunting MS33 book I solely in association with the
version of the tune obtained from harper Pádraig ó Coinne (Patrick Quinn), one of
the younger attendees at the Belfast Harp Festival, being 47! 'Pretty Peggy' has a
Scottish predecessor in the shape of a 'Bonny Peggie' found in Daniel Dow's
Collection of Ancient Scots Music (a publication which contains a large proportion of
instrumental music for the Gaelic harp). The rhythm of Dow's tune might indicate
that the full Scottish title, Thug Bonny Peggie Dhòmhsa Pòg, was the second line of
the Gaelic chorus.
Burns' March