Annotation:Jockie's Fu' and Jennie's Fain
X:1 T:Jockie's Fow and Jenny's Fain M:2/4 L:1/8 S:Allen Ramsay Z:AK/Fiddler's Companion K:G GG BG|dG A2|GG BG|dG A2|GG BG|cB AB| Gg de|dg d2|Gg fg|dB A2|Gg de| dg df|gf ed|cB A2|Gg de|Bg d2||
JOCKIE'S FU' (DRUNK) AND JENNIE'S FAIN (EAGER). Scottish, Air (cut time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The bawdy title, from the 18th century, appears in the ballad opera The Highland Fair (1731), in Adam Craig's Collection of the Choicest Scots Tunes (1730) and in Edinburgh fiddler and writing master biography:David Young's MacFarlane MS. (vol. 3, c. 1740, No. 36). Words to the melody appear in Allen Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany, and begin:
Jockie's fow and Jennie's fain,
Jenny was nae ill to gain;
She was couthy, he was kind,
And thus the wooer tell'd his mind.
Jenny, I'll nae mair be nice,
Gie me love at ony price;
I winna prig for red or whyt,
Love alane can gie delight.
19th century antiquarian William Stenhouse (1773-1827) noted that Ramsay dropped the older stanzas after this (the more objectionable ones) and substituted ones of his own crafting. He also remarks that Craig greatly embellished the tune, and that "The composer of 'Tullochgorum' has evidently taken the subject of it from this old tune", to which John Glen[1] gives the one word rebuttal: "Absurd!"
- ↑ John Glen, Early Scottish Melodies, 1900, No. 381, p. 180.