TY Steve,

I've got some corrections of Charlotte Higgins version. It should be correct now. Charlotte sings the same melody as Jennie Roberston, who married a Higgins and was a cousin of Jock Higgins who was Charlotte's second husband. Charlotte claims on her 1955 recording that she heard her great grandmother sing this song. It was "my great granny's song." In her 1955 recording she adds this stanza:

It's when my apron it was new,
It wis a bricht and bonny blue
But noo my apron's tae my knee,
He cares nae mair what becomes o me.

This was her first stanza of that session- she stopped twice. Charlotte Higgins (nee Riley) was born in Perkmass, Lumphanon, Aberdeenshire, in 1893. Her father Thomas Lucas from Bristol was a fisherman who arranged for Charlotte to be brought up by the Riley's a family of travellers after her mother Mary Paul died.

Her first husband a MacGuire, was killed in the First World War and her second husband, Jock Higgins was a cousin of Jeannie Roberston who married a Higgins. Here's the corrected text (see stanza 6) from Charolotte's 1961 recording:

I Wish, I Wish- sung by Charlotte Higgins (1895-1971) of Blairgowrie, Perthshire in July, 1961. Recorded by Hamish Henderson; Maurice Fleming.

1. The blackbird sits in yonder tree,
Some say he's blind and cannae see;
Some say he's blind and cannae see,
So is my true love to me.

2. O I wish, I wish, but I wish in vain,
I wish I were a maid again,
But a maid again I'll never be,
Til the apple grows on the orange tree.

3. O, I wish, I wish my babe were born,
And sitting on his nurse's knee.
I wish myself was dead and gone,
And green, green grass growing over me.

4. There is a tavern in this toon,
Where my true love gangs and he sits doon
He takes a damsel on his knee,
He tells her what he once told me.

5. O I wish, I wish, but I wish in vain
I wish I were a maid again,
But a maid again I'll never be,
Til the apple grows on the orange tree.

6. O I wish my father ne'er had whistled,
O I wish my mother never had sung,
I wish the cradle never had rocked
I wish I died when I was young.

7. O I wish, I wish, but I wish in vain
I wish I were a maid again,
But a maid again I never will be,
Til the apple grows on the orange tree.

Richie