Hi,

In the 1827 book "Ancient Ballads and Songs: Chiefly from Tradition, Manuscripts, and Scarce Works" Thomas Lyle wrote the following and supplied a version which dates earlier to the mid-1700s:

The "Wakerife mammy," is here noted down with some trifling corrections, from the west country set of the Ballad, where its day of popularity amongst the peasantry, was equal, at least, with that of the foregoing one. Burns says that he picked up a version of it from a country girl's singing in Nithsdale, and that he never either met with the song or the air to which it is sung elsewhere in Scotland. We marvel not a little at this, after 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. The air is a very pretty one, with two lines of a nonsensical chorus, sung after each stanza, which certainly merits other verses to be adapted for it, when like many other wanderers of the day, it then might again be received into favour. Burns's copy, in Johnston's Museum, differs a good deal from the foregoing one, besides wanting the commencing stanza. Cunningham's set of words in the second volume of his " Songs of Scotland," is equally faulty.

THE WAKERIFE MAMMY.

As I gaed o'er the Highland hills,
I met a bonnie lassie;
Wha' look'd at me, and I at her,
And O but she was saucy.

Whare are ye gaun, my bonnie lass,
Whare are ye gaun, my lammy;
Right saucily she answer'd me,
An errand to my mammy.

An' whare live ye, my bonnie lass,
Whare do ye won, my lammy;
Right modestly she answer'd me,
In a wee cot wi' my mammy.

Will ye tak' me to your wee house,
I'm far frae hame, my lammy;
Wi' a leer o' her eye, she answer'd me,
   I darna for my mammy.

But I fore up the glen at e'en,
To see this bonnie lassie;
And lang before the gray morn cam',
She wasna' half sae saucie.

O weary fa' the wakerife cock,
An' the fumart lay his crawing;
He wauken'd the auld wife frae her rest,
A wee blink or the dawing.

Wha straught began to blaw the coal,
To see gif she could ken me;
But I crap out from whare I lay,
And took the fields to skreen me.

She took her by the hair o' the head,
As frae the spence she brought her,
An' wi' a gude green hazel wand,
   She's made her a weel paid dochter.

Now fare thee weel, my bonnie lass,
An fare thee weel, my lammy,
Tho' thou has a gay, an' a weel-far't face,
Yet thou has a wakerife mammy.

* * * *

Richie