Wednesday 26 April 2023
Tune of the Day: Bung Your Eye
Traditional Scottish tune
The earliest known appearance of this tune is as a country dance in a manuscript now preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, inscribed A Collection of the Newest Country Dances Performed in Scotland written at Edinburgh by D.A. Young, W.M. 1740.
The expression “to bung your eye” means “to shut your eye”, a meaning taken from the bung or cork used to stopper a hole in a cask. More specifically, it was one euphemism for drinking gin or other spirits until one's eye is bunged up or closed.