The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie (Roud # 545) is a Scottish folk song about a thwarted romance between a soldier and a woman. Like many folk songs, the authorship is unattributed, there is no strict version of the lyrics, and it is often referred to by its opening line "There once was a troop o' Irish dragoons". The song is also known by a variety of other names, the most common of them being "Peggy-O", "Fennario", and "The Maid of Fife".
Of the many versions, one of the most intricate is:
The song is about the unrequited love of a captain of Irish dragoons for a beautiful Scottish girl in Fyvie. The narration is in the third person, through the voice of one of the captain's soldiers. The captain promises the girl material comfort and happiness, but the girl refuses the captain's advances saying she would not marry a foreigner or a soldier. The captain subsequently leaves Fyvie. In two different variations of the song, he threatens to burn the town(s) if his offer is rejected, or alternately save the town if his offer is accepted. He later dies of a broken heart, or battle wounds, or possibly both.
Several variations on this theme exist. The soldier also proposes marriage in some versions. Some versions have the girl declare her love for the soldier, but only to be stopped short by a reluctant mother.
The song is set in Fyvie, a small town with a historic castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Some sources claim that the original song suggests the region of Fife (as the "Fair Maid of Fife"), but the references to the River Ythan, Aberdeen and other locations near Fyvie like Gight, confirm that the original song was set in Fyvie, Scotland.
It is probably better not to read strong historical associations into the song, although it is just possible that the song refers to the capture of the Fyvie Castle by Montrose's Royalist army in 1644. (A large part of this army was Irish, but they were not dragoons.)
The oldest known version of the Scottish ballad is called "The Bonnie Lass O' Fyvie". Another early transcribed version is given under the title "Bonnie Barbara-O". An early English version "Handsome Polly-O" is also present, though in slightly different settings. Another English version is called "Pretty Peggy of Derby". The song probably travelled with Scottish immigrants to America. It is recorded in the classic English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians by Cecil Sharp. Variants of the song refer to the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. A Dixie version of the song makes the final resting place of the captain to be Louisiana.
The last two stanzas from the Bob Dylan version is typical of such Americanized forms, and goes as follows:
Over time, the name of Fyvie also got corrupted, and phonetically similar permutations like "Fennario", "Fernario", "Finario", "Fidio", "Ivory" or "Ireo" were placed in its stead to fit the metre and rhyme. As a result, the song is commonly referred to as "Fennario". The 1960s folk music movement saw "Peggy-O" become a common song in many concerts owing to its clear melody and lilting rhyme.
The song was originally composed and sung in Scots. It then made its way into mainstream English, but retains its Scottish flavour. Words like birk (for birch), lass and bonnie are typically Scots as are words like brae (hill) and braw (splendid). As is typical of such cases, quite a few of the less familiar words degenerated into nonsense words as the song travelled over cultures, the most interesting ones probably being Ethanside for Ythanside (banks of the River Ythan), and brasselgeicht for braes o' Gight (hills of Gight).
Many traditional singers have recorded versions of the song, including Scotsman John Strachan[1] (from close to Fyvie) and the Irish singer Thomas Moran.[2] Many Scottish recordings made by James Madison Carpenter between 1929 and 1934, including one of the Aberdeenshire singer Bell Duncan (1849-1934),[3] can be heard on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website.
The Southern American version of the song was arranged for the harmonica by Bob Dylan on his eponymous debut album in 1962, under the title "Pretty Peggy-O". He starts off the song with the introduction "I've been around this whole country but I never yet found Fennario", as a playful remark on the fact that the song has been borrowed and cut off its original "setting".Dylan began playing the song live again in the 90s, using the lyrics and melody of the Grateful Dead version.
Joan Baez recorded a lyrical version under the title "Fennario" on her 1963 Vanguard Records album Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2.
Simon and Garfunkel also recorded a heavily harmonized arrangement of the song titled "Peggy-O" as part of their Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. album of 1964 and Columbia Records studio recordings of the 1960s (which was released on the box set The Columbia Studio Recordings (1964-1970) in 2001). Simon and Garfunkel sing the variant of the song where the captain threatens to burn the city down if his advances are refused.
The Grateful Dead have variously arranged and sung this song on 265 known occasions between 1973 and 1995, using Fen-nar-io and Fi-dio as the name of the place depending on metre constraints. The place Fennario is also mentioned in their song "Dire Wolf", on the album Workingman's Dead. The song was titled "Peggy-O", and was sung by Jerry Garcia using the following lyrics:
The song appears as "Fennario" on the reissue of Jerry Garcia's album Run for the Roses. Following the Grateful Dead's disbandment in 1995 after Garcia's death, "Peggy-O" continued to be performed by offshoot bands including Bob Weir & RatDog, Phil Lesh & Friends, The Other Ones, The Dead, BK3, Furthur, Billy & The Kids, Dead & Company, and Bob Weir & Wolf Bros.
Books
NB: ISBN s may not point to the referenced editions
Periodicals and magazines