Wolfgang: the tune appears in 1754 as "Lady MacIntosh's Rant" and/or "The Prince's Reel", then "Lady MacIntosh's Reel", etc. etc. As for the words, there's umpteen songs, it seems. Apart from Burns' "Is there for honest poverty" and "Tho' women's minds like winter winds", there's "Be Guid to Me as Lang's I'm here"in Ord's collection (1930), which MAY be as old as Burns. Also, "Is there for noble human kind" by Blackie [Scottish Students Song Book, circa 1880?]; "How Hard's the Fate of Womankind", said to be the original words, published by Watlen in the late 18th c. "A Lassie Fair" by Captain Charles Gray, who was writing new versions of old things in the early 1800s; "Shon McNab" by Alexander Rodger, in the big "Whistle-Binkie" collection in the mid-century; "What ails you now, my dainty Pate" by Alex. Douglas (died 1824); a Jacobite song, "Though Geordie reigns in Jamie's stead"; "Put butter in my Donald's Brose" in The Merry Muses of Caledonia (1799), and another obscene song, "They A' Do't" in the pornographic magazine "The Pearl",k 1880. There's more, I should think.
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