SOURCE TEXT FOR "AY WAUKIN O"

While stanza 1 and 3 are now known to be of Burn's authorship, the source text for the chorus and stanza 2 likely originated from William Tytler text (ca. 1779) and to a lesser extent David Herd text (ca. 1769).


Burns Chorus:
Ay waukin O,
Waukin still and wearie:
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.

Burns Stanza 2:
When I sleep I dream
When I wauk I'm eerie;
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.


William Tytler text:
Ay wa'king oh!
Wa'king ay and wearie;
Sleep I canna get,
For thinking o' my dearie.

When I sleep, I dream;
When I wake, I'm irie:
Rest I canna get,
For thinking o' my dearie.


David Herd text:
O WAT, wat—O wat and weary!
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my deary.
A’ the night I wak,
A’ the day I weary,
Sleep I can get nane
For thinking on my dearie.


William Tytler text appears in:
Appendix, "No. VIII: A Dissertation on the Scottish Musick,” in Hugo Arnot's, History of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: W. Creech, 1779), p.689.


David Herd text appears in:
a) Hans Hecht, ed., Songs from David Herd’s Manuscripts (Edinburgh: W.J. Hay, 1904), p. 240.
b) W. E. Henley and T.F. Henderson, eds, The Poetry of Robert Burns [The
Centenary Edition], 4 vols. (London: T.C. and E.C. Jack, 1896), vol III: p.338.


William Tytler (1711-1792) was an aquaintance of Robert Burns. In January 1793, writing to George Thomson about plans for his Select Collection, Burns had boasted “All the late Mr. Tytler’s anecdotes, I have with me, taken down in the course of my acquaintance with him from his own mouth.” Later, in his long letter to George Thomson in early September 1793, Burns mentions Tytler’s published dissertation (“Tytler’s Hist: of Scots Music”).

While most of the Tytler text provides close parallels not only to Burns’s full refrain but to his second stanza also, only two lines of Davd Herd's text appear in the refrain of Burn's song.

David Herd (1732-1810) had not included his text fragment in his Ancient and Modern Scots Songs (1769 etc.), but it was printed by Henley and Henderson among their annotations in 1896 (as “probably the true original”), and then by Hans Hecht in 1904.
Hecht noted several other Burns’s songs for which Herd’s manuscripts seemed to be the source and was confident that while Burns was in Edinburgh he had access, directly or through friends, to Herd’s manuscript collections.

The Tytler and Herd versions provide good sources for Burns’s chorus and stanza 2.
A close examination of Burns's manuscripts for drafts of the song provide evidence that indicate that stanza 1, and particularly stanza 3, can be attributed to Burns himself.

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