Hi,

I was wondering if anyone knows the earliest date of "Croodin Doo"? and is it "Croodlin" or "Croodin"? I've always thought of the title as "cooing dove." Agree?

Walter Scott in 1803 knew a version of it for in his notes to Lord Randal he commented, "there is a very similar song, in which, apparently to excite greater interest in the nursery, the handsome young hunter is exchanged for a little child, poisoned by a false step-mother." This version would take it back to the late 1700s or so.

In 1870 Chamber's give in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, p. 51. "Mrs. Lockhart's copy." Since Mrs. Lockhart is Sophia Scott who was Walter Scott's eldest daughter (born in 1799), could this be the same version? Scott was in Abbotsford circa 1811, his daughter would have been 12, at least.

Chambers says, "This beautiful little ballad, of which the above is Mrs Lockhart's copy, as she used to sing it to her father at Abbotsford, is the same as a ballad called Grandmother Addercook, which is popular in Germany."

So Chamber's concludes it's derived from the German version because of the step-mother? Comments?

Richie