WARNING!! NOT SUITABLE FOR MAIDS STRIPLINGS ET AL.


CUMNOCK PSALMS

1.
As I looked o'er yon castle wa',
I spied a grey goose & a gled;
They had a fecht between them twa,
And O, as their twa hurdies gade.—
Chorus
With a hey ding it in, & a how ding it in,
And a hey ding it in, it's lang to day;
Tal larietal, tallarietal
Tal larietal, tal larie tay.

2.
She strack up & he strack down.
Between them twa they made a mowe,
And ilka fart that the carlin gae,
It's four o' them wad fill a bowe.
With a hey ding it in &c.

3.
Temper your tail, Carlin, he cried,
Temper your tail by Venus' law;
Double your dunts, the dame replied,
Wha the deil can hinder the wind to blaw!
With a hey &c.

4.
For were ye in my saddle set,
And were ye weel girt in my gear,
If the wind o' my arse blaw ye out o' my cunt,
Ye'll never be reckoned a man o' weir.—
With a hey &c.

5.
He placed his Jacob whare she did piss,
And his ballocks where the wind did blaw,
And he grippet her fast by the goosset o' the arse
And he gae her cunt the common law.
With a hey &c.

_____
Collected by Burns, and sent to his publisher/correspondent George Thomson [who appreciated bawdry] in September 1794 (Letters, ed. Fergusson, II.257), given here from the Barke-Smith-Ferguson ed. of The Merry Muses of Caledonia (1959; 1964, 75); the MS. is in the Morgan Library, N.Y. Burns calls it "The Grey Goose and the Gled", but the common name, as he says, is "Cumnock Psalms", from the tune name, first printed in Scots Musical Museum V.418, #405. Also in MMC 1799 [= first ed. of the collection] with a few differs: Title, "Cumnock Psalms". Cho. 3-4 Fal lary tele, tale, tale,/ Fal lary tal, lal lary tay. 2.1 She heav'd up, 2.3 That ilka 2.4 fill'd 3.1 the carlin cried [an obvious error!] 3.3 Gird hame your gear, gudeman, she cried, 4.1 on my 4.3 Gin 4.4 wier. 5.3 gushet. The "double your dunts" is a reminiscence (or precursor) of the very similar "Wha the deil can hinder the wind to blaw", which I would not be reluctant to lay at the door of Burns himself.

In 2.4 a 'bowe' is a boll, or a dry measure varying in quantity according to the article and locality. A boll of oats, e.g., is about 6 imperial bushels. On 3.1, cf. st. 30 (lines 175-6) of "Fryar and Boye" in the Percy Folio (p. 104; Loose and Humorous Songs [1868], 16; Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads I (1895, 1897], 58:

"ffye!" said the boy unto his dame,
"temper your teltale bumm, for shame!"

On the freedom to break wind, cf. the rhyme

Let the wind go free where'er ye be,
For it's the wind that sends the ships to sea.

[The first line certainly, and (I believe) the second, were constantly quoted as circumstances suggested by Maggie Ness or Ruddiman, a crony of my mother's, Fife, 1950s.] A variant of the second line is "For the keeping o' a fart was the ruin o' me," said to be an epitaph.

'Jacob' in 5.1 is the erect penis, likened to Jacob's staff (either from the pilgrim's staff of St. James, or in reference to that of Jacob, son of Isaac, in Gen. xxxii.10). Partridge, Slang, p. 432, gives 'Jacob's ladder' as a low 19th century phrase for the female pudend (seen as the gateway to Heaven, doubtless; cf. Gen. xxviii.12), and 'Jacob' as the male member. Cf. Burns' letter to Ainslie printed in the "1827" Merry Muses, eulogising the penis—repr. in Legman, The Horn Book (1964), 148-9. MMC text also in Farmer MSB V.222-3, correcting 'carlin' of 3.1 to 'carle'. Not in "1827" or 1884 edd. I've always found the tune to be a bit boring, tho as a piece of antiquity it may be interesting. Burns said that his musical friend Stephen Clarke, who transcribed the music, had opined that "the tune is positively an old chant of the Romish Church, which corroborates the old tradition that at the Reformation, the Reformers burlesqued much of the old church music. As a further proof, the common name for this song is 'Cumnock Psalms'." Anyway: the tune is in James C. Dick, The Songs of Robert Burns (1903, reprinted Hatboro, 1962), p.238; and (more accessible maybe) in the complete ed. of Burns's poetry by James Kinsley (Oxford U.P., 1968).vol. II p. 832 (no. 555); the editor says (with justification, perhaps) that Clarke was guessing about the tune. It's actually outwith the common stock of Scots tunes, and with a bit of imagination you can hear some plainchant in it. Anyway: I must confess, Mac, that the connection with Cumnock is a wee bit tenuous, but there it is. I hope the annotations above are not too pedantic for you—I've copied that from my soon to be finished perhaps opus 'Musa Proterva', an anthology of Scots bawdry.
Cheers
Murray