The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #82650   Message #1514724
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
03-Jul-05 - 06:22 PM
Thread Name: Lyr/Chords Add: A-Begging We Will Go
Subject: RE: Chords Add: A-begging we will go
Oh, I see. I don't suppose she said where she got it? By appearances, it's a cut-down re-write of The Jovial Beggar, from Richard Brome's play Jovial Crew, or The Merry Beggars (revived production, 1683/4). Tune and text are in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719-20, III, 265) etc.

Broadside editions at  Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads:

The beggars chorus, in the Jovial Crew


All that "me" business is unnecessary, really; Maddy isn't a traditional singer, so there's no need to try to reflect her pronounciation as if it had some ethnographic value. The word is "my", however she pronounces it.