Hi,

From: The Poetical Works of Robert Burns: Reprinted from the Best Editions comes this song

A WAUKRIFE MINNIE. [A wakeful mother]

I PICKED up this old song and tune from a country girl in Nithsdale. I never met with it elsewhere in Scotland:

Whare are you gaun, my bonnie lass?
Whare are you gaun, my hinnie?
She answered me right saucilie?
An errand for my minnie.

O, whare live ye, my bonnie lass?
O, where live ye, my hinnie?
By yon burn-side, gin ye maun ken,
In a wee house wi' my minnie.

But I foor up the glen at e'en,
To see my bonnie lassie;
And lang before the grey morn cam'
She was na hauf sae saucie.

O, weary fa the waukrife cock,
And the foumart lay his crawin'!
He waukened the auld wife frae her sleep,
A wee blink or the dawin.

An angry wife I wat she raise,
And o'er the bed she brought her;
And with a mickle hazel rung
She made her a weel-payed dochter.

O, fare thee weel, my bonnie lass,
O, fare thee weel, my hinnie :
Thou art a gay and a bonnie lass,
But thou hast a waukrife minnie.

* * * *

The identity of the "country girl" is revealed in Cromek's 'Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song,' 1810, which has a song "Oh who is this under my window'. The first half of the headnote is:

This old song is taken down from the singing of Martha Crosbie, from whose recitation Burns wrote down the song of "The Waukrife Minnie."

Martha Crosbie also entertained young Alan Cunningham at his father's house. Although Cunningham does not mention her as Burns' source, he says in 1925, "I have heard it often sung in my youth, and sung with curious and numerous variations." Cunningham adds "I believe it to be a very old song." He adds two stanzas.

Thomas Lyle says in 1827, ". . .considering how very common the Ballad has been over the shires of Ayr and Renfrew, both before and since the Poet's day; so common, indeed, is it still, that we have had some demurings about inserting it here at all."

Lyle's 1827 version was advertised as "Chiefly from Tradition, Manuscripts, and Scarce Works" and was printed in a c.1830 Scottish chapbook in Falkirk.

The identifying stanza "How old are you--" is missing in these versions but is included a 1795 Edinburgh print.

If anyone has access to or knows any early "Waukrife" versions, please post them.

Richie