From a Jean Redpath record; the prior source is not named. Kilbogie

"Wee pickle heather", incidentally, should be "wee puckle heather"; that is, "a little bit of heather". It dries well enough, but I don't think it pickles all that well.

See also thread Lyr Req: Glascow Peggy, where a text recorded by Ewan MacColl is quoted. There are a further two examples in the DT; links and attributions (omitted in the DT files) are also provided in the discussion.

I wasn't accurate to say that traditional texts I'd seen provided no clues to the missing word. "Cankered" does occur in one (from Greig-Duncan), but applied to the wife:

But an aul carl an' a cankered wifie.