There have been other threads regarding the source of Peggy Godon, some say it started its life as Sweet Maggie Gordon in New York arround 1880 others, Canada, Nova Scota. It did not seem to exist in England, Scotland or Ireland before 1960 although some quote it was written by Robbie Burns.

Reading these previous threads there is belief that Ingo does infact refer to England, and one quotes that the "Corries" actualy sang England in their version, arround 1965, although this is unsupported.

I have copied the last message from Malcolm Douglas which he posted on 14th March 2003.

"What are nowadays thought of as typical Scottish and Irish "versions" of Peggy/Maggie Gordon don't seem to date back further than the 1960s; they all seem to derive from published example(s) found in Canada and subsequently recorded by popular Revival performers.

Whatever the ultimate source(s) of the song -and attempting to place all the floating verses of which it is made is practically impossible, so often do they occur in so many related and unrelated songs- its modern travels are really a separate issue from a consideration of its origins. The fact that the tune to which it is sung nowadays is that most associated with the English Banks of the Sweet Primroses further clouds the matter, perhaps.

On reflection, I see no reason to exclude -as I had suggested earlier- an Irish source (at least in part) for the American and Canadian sets, but the same arguments apply at least equally to possible Scottish and English traditional sources; on the whole I think it pointless to make outright claims for any. Certainly, the song in its present form is a direct product of none of them; all we can say is that it was put together in America and/or Canada, using material drawn from the common stock of Britain and Ireland, and set to a tune which was subsequently abandoned in favour of a traditional one.

This is really only to summarise what was said when this discussion was originally started nearly three years ago."

Will we ever realy know?