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Bruce O. Origins: Waly, Waly - Water is Wide (31) RE: Waly, Waly 05 Jan 00


Does anyone have the 4 verse version of "Waly Waly" that appeared in the original 1725 edition of 'Orpheus Caledonius'?

I once saw it but failed to copy it. Allan Ramsay gave a 10 verse version in the 2nd volume of 'The Tea Table Miscellany', (1725). Thompson then gave a 10 verse version in the 2nd edition of 'Orpheus Caledonius', 1733, but the "When Cockle shells" verse of OC2 isn't in the TTM text (and is the only one that isn't). This makes it obvious that Jamie Douglas (Child #204) wasn't based on the 'Tea Table Miscellany' text.

The verse:

If I had wist before I had kist,
that love had been so deare to win;
My heart I would have clos'd in gold,
and pinn'd it with a silver pin.

is from a broadside ballad of c 1660, "The Seaman's leave taken of his Sweetest Margery" (ZN2431). Another from this ballad that doesn't appear in the early copies of "Waly Waly", but does appear in later ones and some other folk songs is:

I have seven ships upon the sea,
and all are laden to the brim;
I am so inflam'd with love to thee,
I care not whether I sink or swim.

J. W. Allen wrote an article where he attempted to separate "Waly Waly", "The Water is wide" and "Down in yon meadow" (Picking Lillies), but it wasn't entirely successful in my opinion. For it see "Some Notes on 'O Waly Waly'" in the 'Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society', VII #2, 161-71, (1954). He gives a fairly comprehensive bibliography of chapbook, broadside and traditional texts, and Steve Roud's folksong index gives more. Roud's number, 87, is for both "Wally waly" and "The Water is Wide".

Many editors have been wont to combine traditional versions in a massive conflated text that no singer actually ever sang (e.g., Reeves 'Idiom of the People' #108 which has the extra verse of "Seaman's Leave" quoted above, "Down in the meadows", "I put my finger to the bush" (from Martin Parker, c 1629), but "The water is wide" verse and some others are delegated to a footnote there.) Unfortunately, conflated texts seem to be more readily available than true traditional versions. Stephen Sedley, 'The Seeds of Love', has a conflated "Water is Wide" derived from chapbook texts and a "Waly Waly" which is actually "Jamie Douglas"


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