Oh! No, No

DESCRIPTION: "Come here, dearest Peggy, you're my whole heart's delight... So fain I wad bide, love, but away I must go." He says he would guard her if they were together. She goes into frenzies of grief; he stops her, saying he will not leave
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1908 (Greig/Duncan5)
KEYWORDS: love courting separation trick
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #107, p. 1, "Oh No, No"; #141, pp. 2-3, "Oh No, No" (2 texts)
Greig/Duncan5 1053, "Oh No, No" (6 texts, 6 tunes)
Greig/Duncan8 1933, "No, Lassie No" (1 text)
Ord-BothySongsAndBallads, p. 136-137, "Oh! No, No" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #832
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Busk, Busk, Bonnie Lassie" (lyrics)
cf. "The Manchester Angel" (lyrics)
cf. "The Girl Volunteer" (theme: sweetheart tries to convince soldier to let her accompany him)
NOTES [319 words]: This guy is enough of a jerk to make John Riley look good.
Roud lumps this item with "Busk, Busk, Bonnie Lassie," and there are lyrics in common. But this has no chorus, and does have a happy ending -- if you believe that it's a happy ending when a man taunts a girl needlessly and then declares it a joke. There is kinship, but it doesn't look like the same song to me. - RBW
Greig/Duncan8 notes the similarity of the one verse of its text "to [Greig/Duncan5] 1053, especially to version F, [but] its different structure distinguishes it as a different song." Roud, who numbers the Greig/Duncan8 verse Roud #16606, apparently agrees. The verses in question, and Ord-BothySongsAndBallads p. 136, verse 1, do not seem to me to be different enough in structure to be classified as separate songs. Here is Ord:
Come here dearest Peggy, you're my whole heart's delight,
But the fairest of days love, brings on the dark night;
So fain I wad bide, love, but away I must go,
And ye canna win wi' me, love, oh! no, no.
Here is Greig/Duncan8 1933:
Farewell my dear jewel and whole heart's delight
The brightest of mornings fesses on a dark night,
And it's been cruel fortune that's caused it so
But will I win ye Johnie No lassie no,
But will I win ye Johnie No lassie no.
Which leads to the next question: is this related to "The Girl Volunteer" ("The Cruel War is Raging") [Laws O33]? Ord has a war connection ("You see yon soldiers ... So fain's I wad bide, love, but away I must go"; "If ye were in India, 'mong the frost and rain, Your color it wad fade love ... If I were in India, 'mong the frost and snow, I wad stand at your back lovie, and keep off the foe"). Maybe the end is enough to separate the songs: in "Cruel War" he sometimes lets her join him; in Ord he admits "I never intended away for to go." It's too bad that Laws did not say what British broadsides might have provided the source for his O33. - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: Ord136

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