PATIE AND PEGGY. English, Air (whole time). D Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCCDD. Patie and Peggy: or, The Fair Foundling (1730) was a Scotch ballad opera by Theophilus Cibber staged at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. "Patie and Peggy" is also the name of a dialogue song by poet and playwright Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), first printed in a single sheet and later reprinted into his first collection of poems (1721) and then introduced into the second act of his masterwork The Gentle Shepherd (1725).
'Patie and Peggy', a youth comforts a weeping girl who sits by a pail; plate 9 of Alan Ramsay's 'Gentle Shepherd' as reworked for the 1808 Leith edition. 1788Etching and aquatint.
Patie: BY the delicious warmness of thy mouth And rowing eye, which smiling tells the truth, I guess, my lassie, that, as well as I, You ’re made for love, and why should ye deny?
Peggy: But ken ye, lad, gin we confess o’er soon, Ye think us cheap, and syne the wooing ’s done: The maiden that o’er quickly tines her power, Like unripe fruit will taste but hard and sour.
Patie: But when they hing o’er lang upon the tree, Their sweetness they may tine, and sae may ye; Red-cheeked you completely ripe appear, And I have tholed and wooed a lang half-year.
Peggy: Then dinna pu’ me; gently thus I fa’ Into my Patie’s arms for good and a’. But stint your wishes to this kind embrace, And mint nae farther till we ’ve got the grace.
Patie: O charming armfu’! Hence, ye cares away. I ’ll kiss my treasure a’ the livelang day: A’ night I ’ll dream my kisses o’er again, Till that day come that ye ’ll be a’ my ain.
Chorus: Sun, gallop down the westling skies, Gang soon to bed, and quickly rise; O lash your steeds, post time away, And haste about our bridal day; And if ye ’re wearied, honest light, Sleep, gin ye like, a week that night.
Additional notes
Printed sources : - Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 6), 1760; p. 6. Alexander Stuart (Musick for Allan Ramsay’s Collection part 6), Edinburgh, c. 1724; pp. 150-153. William Thomson (Orpheus Caledonius, vol. II), 1733; No. 34, p. 137.