Thanks Jack for posting the words, as I haven't got them down in my db. Cilla says her father used to sing this song in an amusing music-hall style, and it was passed on to her via her sister Ray.

This is the extract from Robert Ford's 'Song Histories':

[1900:] John Grumlie may have been singular in the fact that he was the only man who "swore by the licht o' the moon and the green leaves on the tree", but assuredly he was not alone in believing that he "could work mair work in a'e day than his wife could do in three". Such is the common belief of a prolific species of husband, some of whom may be justified, or otherwise, in so concluding, but whose individual cases do not concern us now. The question meantime is, whence the song, who made it, and what about it? Well, to get at the virgin-spring of its inspiration, one has to step far back in history, as it is clearly evident that the popular and humorous lyrical account of John Grumlie is neither more nor less than a clever modern adaptation, in singable measure, of an old Scottish poem entitled The Wife of Auchtermuchty, which is not less than three hundred years old. This poem, which is preserved in the Bannatyne MS., is supposed to have been written by a Sir John Moffat, one of the "Pope's Knights" who flourished in the early years of the sixteenth century, and was author, besides, of a fine serious poem beginning "Brother, be wise, I rede you now", printed in Lord Hailes's Collection.

In its journey down the centuries the poem has suffered almost no alteration or corruption. A copy printed by David Laing and the version given by Herd contain additional matter, but this fits so well into the Bannatyne copy that it is supposed to be genuine. David Laing, moreover, believes the poem to be founded on yet an older story, which occurs in "Silva Sermonum Iucundissimorum", published at Basle in 1568, and into which it is supposed to have been copied from some still earlier collection of kindred native matter. The story - originate where it may - has a theme common to many literatures, and may even have perplexed our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the squaring of the domestic circle, a problem frequently as difficult of solution as the same task in mathematics. The song is consistently less exhaustive than the poem, and, though cleverly cast, omits the mention of an important factor towards the subsequent result. The husband, we are told in the poem,
Weel could tipple out a can
And neither luvit hunger nor cauld.

Returning home from the plough, wearied, wet, cold, and tired, one night, the sight of his sonsy better-half comfortably seated by the fire, regaling herself with a fat soup, gives occasion for the "old man" to inwardly rebel, and
Quo' he, Where is my horse's corn?
My ox has neither hay nor straw
Dame, ye maun to the plough the morn
I shall be hussey gif I may.
The wife is equal to the occasion:
Husband, quoth she, Content am I
To tak' the plough my day about
Save ye will rule baith calves and kye
And all the house, baith in and out.

She readily gives him instructions suggested by her experience relative to many matters connected with her "housewife's-kep". He must sift, and knead, and attend to the bairns, both in and out of bed, and keep the goslings safe from the hawk, etc., etc. The foolish man accepts the challenge, not disputing the terms. Now the wife has got the opportunity she has been long waiting for. John's selfishness of late has been growing less and less tolerable, and by one grand coup she must give him a lesson that will serve for the natural term of his existence. See, then, the strategy adopted.

Surreptitiously, before going to bed,
She kirned the kirn, and skimmed it clean
Left the gudeman but bleddoch bare,
that is, left nothing but buttermilk, so that next day
He jumilt at it till he swat
When he had fumilt a full lang hour
The sorrow a scrape o' butter he gat.
Also, she did not neglect, before leaving with the oxen in the morning, to take a hearty breakfast, and to provide herself further with a double luncheon in her lap. This would enable her to stay a-field long enough for John to work out his own discomfiture; and everything happened surely as disastrously as the man's worst enemy could have desired. Of the five goslings which he called forth to feed, the greedy gled licked up three in a twinkling; the calves broke loose and sucked the kye; and when he attempted to redd them with a rung, "an illy-willy cow brodid his buttock till it bled". In his attempt at spinning he fared no better; and his butter-making, of course - the kirn being skimmed the night before - proved a complete failure. The sow drank his buttermilk; and aiming a blow at her, his weapon sped wide of the mark and clashed out the brains of the two remaining goslings. He next set the kiln on fire in an attempt to kindle it; and proceeding to take up the bairns - his experience of the first he lifted daunted his courage or desire to intermeddle with the others. The poem presents the whole scene very graphically. But here we can only say that "a' gaed wrang and naething gaed richt"; and when the poor man's patience was completely worn out - when the last straw had broken the camel's back:
Then up he gat on a knowe-head
On her did cry, on her did shout.
How loud and how long we are not told, only -
She heard him as she heard him not,
But stoutly steered the stots about;
She drove all day until the night
She lowsed the plough an' syne cam' hame
She fand a' wrang that should been right
I trow the man thought right great shame.

Poor John? What else could he do? He resigned his office unconditionally, confessing that had he been gudewife for twenty days he would have wrecked the house. But the wife, as yet too proud of her triumph, refuses to release him:
Quoth she, Weel mot ye brook your place
For truly I will ne'er accept it.
John retaliates to this with an oath:
Then up she caught a meikle rung
And the gudeman made to the door
Quoth he, Dame, I sall haud my tongue
For an' we fight I'll get the waur
Quoth he, When I forsook my pleugh
I trow I but forsook mysel'
And I will to my pleugh again
Or land this house will ne'er do well
It deserves for the song to be said that it is more refined than the poem, and therefore more presentable in these more scrupulous times. Indeed, it is a model in this way - exceedingly humorous without being in the slightest degree coarse. In the collections it has generally been printed as anonymous, though some have ascribed it to Allan Cunningham. "Honest Allan" himself, however, in a note in his "Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern", describes it as "an old song, and a favourite amang the peasantry of Nithsdale, where it was formerly sung at weddings, house-heatings, 'prentice-bindings, or other times of fixed or casual conviviality." And he adds - "I took it from the recitation of Mr. George Duff, of Dumfries, with whose father it was a great favourite." [...]

The story, on which both the poem and the song are founded, is common, as I have said already, to other literatures than ours. It forms the ground of one of Dasent's "Popular Tales from the Norse", and also of one of Campbell's "Popular tales of the West Highlands". In Harland's "Ballads and Songs of Lancashire, chiefly older than the Nineteenth Century" - a very interesting volume - there is a fragment of a ballad called The Tyrannical Husband, many of the incidents in which are identical with those made familiar to the Scottish people by the singing of John Grumlie. This Lancashire ballad has also been whipped into song-shape, and becomes by the process so like our own, though less graphic and facile [...].

Now, nowhere else, surely, than there exhibited could be found a better example of the superior skill of the Scottish song-maker as compared with the English, or of the superiority of the Scottish tongue over the English for the depiction of a stirring humorous scene. Yea, moreover, John Grumlie ranks among the first six humorous songs of any language. Let singers note this, and keep the good old ditty persistently to the front. It will never fail them. Of the air - its age and source - I have learned no particulars. (Ford, Histories 39ff)