The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #160090   Message #3795416
Posted By: Richie
13-Jun-16 - 05:21 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Drowsy Sleeper
Subject: RE: Origins: Drowsy Sleeper
Hi,

Here are two more examples:

"The Secret Lover." Stanza 2:

"What is my Love a-sleeping? or is my Love awake?"
"Who knocketh at the Window, who knocketh there so late?"
"It is your true love, Lady, that for your sake doth wait."
And sing, Go from the Window, love, go!

Wit and Mirth: Or, Pills to Purge Melancholy by Henry Playford- 1719; 1st stanza:

"Arise, arise, my Juggy, my Puggy,
    Arise, get up, my dear;
The Night is cold, it bloweth, it snoweth;
I must be lodged here."

Is this version considered to be the oldest extent traditional version?

From Alan Cunningham's Works of Robert Burns: With His Life, Volume 4 (1834). Cunningham writes: 'An old Nithsdale song seems to have been in the Poet's thoughts when he wrote this exquisite lyric. Martha Crosbie, a carder and spinner of wool, sometimes desiring to be more than commonly acceptable to the children of my father's house, made her way to their hearts by singing the following ancient strain:-

    "Who is this under my window?
    Who is this that troubles me?"
    "O, it is I, love, and none but I, love,
    I wish to speak one word with thee.

    Go to your mother, and ask her, jewel,
    If she'll consent you my bride to be;
    And, if she does na, come back and tell me,
    This is the last time I'll visit thee."

    "My mother's in her chamber, jewel,
    And of lover's talking will not hear;
    Therefore you may go and court another,
    And whisper softly in her ear."

The song proceeds to relate how mother and father were averse to the lover's suit, and that, exasperated by their scorn, and the coldness of the maiden, he ran off in despair: on relenting, she finds he is gone, and breaks out in these fine lines:-

    "O, where's he gone that I love best,
    And has left me here to sigh and moan?
    O I will search the wide world over,
    Till my true love I find again.

    The seas shall dry, and the fishes fly,
    And the rocks shall melt down wi' the sun;
    The labouring man shall forget his labour,
    The blackbird shall not sing, but mourn,
    If ever I prove false to my love,
    Till once I see if he return." '