The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #15389   Message #137773
Posted By: Murray on SS
18-Nov-99 - 12:53 AM
Thread Name: Origins: The Bonnie Wee Window / ...Lassie
Subject: Lyr Add: THE BONNIE WEE WINDOW
P.S.: The above text is in Ord's Bothy Ballads (1930), 99-100; an identical text is in Gavin Greig's Folk-Song of the North-East, article 123, and Robert Ford's Vagabond Songs & Ballads of Scotland (vol. I, 1899), 20-22 (2nd ed. in one vol., 1904, 20), + the music, which is the same as James Nicholson's "Imphm". That last song is in John Greig's Scots Minstrelsie (c. 1895), vol. VI p. 302, and the note gives our song much as above, except that the last verse becomes two:

But when he got hame, wi' a hatchet soon he
Frae his wooden cravat quickly set himsel' free;
An' oot o' fair spite, and to please his desire,
He burn'd baith the wood an' the gless in the fire.
'Twas a bonny wee window, etc.

Next morn he arose at the break o' daylicht,
An' sent for a joiner to mak' a' things richt;
But he vow'd that the deil micht ha'e him for his ain,
If he e'er kissed a lass through a window again--
Be she ever sae bonnie,
Or ever sae braw,
Or the handsomest lass that ever he saw.

There's an American text in Vance Randolph's Ozark Folksongs, I.431 [Laws classification O 18].