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Description: | Verse 1: 'Whare are ye gaun, my bony lass, Whare are you gaun, my hiney. She answer'd me right saucilie, An errand for my minnie.' A 'waukrife minnie' can be translated as a wakeful mother.
The 'Scots Musical Museum' is the most important of the numerous eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collections of Scottish song. When the engraver James Johnson started work on the second volume of his collection in 1787, he enlisted Robert Burns as contributor and editor. Burns enthusiastically collected songs from various sources, often expanding or revising them, whilst including much of his own work. The resulting combination of innovation and antiquarianism gives the work a feel of living tradition.
Robert Hartley Cromek (1770-1812), author of 'Reliques of Robert Burns consisting of Original Letters, Poems and Critical Observations on Scottish Songs' (1808) quotes Burns as saying, 'I picked up this old song and tune from a country girl in Nithsdale'. Glen (1900) believes this to be true, since the piece was never published before appearing in the 'Museum'. Cromek was long suspected of forging the notes but in 1922 the discovery of a manuscript in Burns's hand proved that they were genuine. | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | National Library of Scotland | Temporal: | 1787-01-01 - 1803-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | Volume III, song 288, page 298 - 'A wauk | Go to resource |
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