The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #94415 Message #1833977
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
13-Sep-06 - 09:26 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: The Water o' Wearie's Well
Subject: RE: Waters o' Weeries Well
For two earlier postings of The Bonnie Wells o' Wearie, see thread
The Bonnie Wells O' Wearie
The Wells of Wearie, above, is copied here with no acknowledgement of any source, so I had better provide the missing details, insofar as that is possible.
The text appears to come from http://www.jigheads.com/, the website of American performers Kim McKee and Ken Willson.
They themselves credit no source of any kind for the words they publish: as it happens, these are a shortened form of the text appearing in Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, as example B of group number 4, 'Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight'; but with various alterations made by somebody or other; perhaps McKee and Willson, but for all we know it could have been the fairies at the bottom of the garden.
I don't know where they got their tune from; none is known for this variant. Perhaps they explain in the sleeve notes to their recording?