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 melody was first printed by London publisher Henry Playford in his Collection of Original Scotch-Tunes (1700, p. 60) with the garbled title "I Cannot Winfull Her, or, Her Bigg belly," dividing the one phrase into a title and alternate title. 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 a cognate in the Henry Atkinson manuscript (c. 1694) under the title "Ye deal gae with hir hir tayle flyes up" [1], although Atkinson's handwritten notation is rather inaccurate in his transcribed rhythm. James Oswald printed the jig twice in his mid-18th century collections, as "I cannot win at her" and "Hit Her on the Bum." The latter version was printed in Edinburgh at the end of the century by Nathaniel Gow with the modified title "Hit Her on the Thumb" in his The ancient curious collection of Scotland: consisting of genuine Scotch tunes with their original variations (Edinburgh, c. 1823, dedicated to Sir Walter Scott). Campin [2] finds further 18th century derivatives in the Scottish "We're no very fu' but we're gaily yet" and the later melodically distanced song version called "Bide Ye Yet (1)" where it finally disposes of its bawdy associations with a "respectable" set of words.

Source for notated version:

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

Recorded sources:

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