Volume 4 — 248 THE GREY COCK, OR, SAW YOU MY FATHER?
Reading edition
a..’The Grey Cock,’ Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 324; Herd’s MSS, I, 4; Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, 1776, II, 208. b. ‘Saw you my father?’ Chappell’s Popular Music, p. 731
Stanzas 1, 4, 6, 7, are printed in Herd, 1769; the three others are among the “Additions to songs in the former volume” [of 1769], at the beginning of the first volume of the MS.; the whole is given in Herd, 1776.
Repeated from Herd, 1776 (with a change or two) in Pinkerton’s Select Scotish Ballads II, 155, 1783, and in Johnson’s Museum, p. 77, No 76, 1787, ‘O saw ye my father?’ Stenhouse had not found the verses in any collection prior to that of Herd, but asserts that the song had been “a great favorite in Scotland for a long time past” (1820, Museum, ed. 1853, IV, 81).
“This song,” says Chappell, “is printed on broadsides, with the tune, and in Vocal Music, or the Songster’s Companion, II, 36, second edition, 1772. This collection was printed by Robert Horsfield, in Ludgate Street, and probably the words and music will also be found in the first edition, which I have not seen.” The words, he adds, are in several “Songsters.”
Three stanzas from recitation, wrongly attached to ‘The Broomfield Hill,’ No 43, E, have been given at p. 399 of the first volume of this collection. Much of the ballad has been adopted into ‘Willie’s Fatal Visit,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 259, the two concluding stanzas with little change. These two stanzas are given by a correspondent[150] of Notes and Queries, First Series, XII, 227, as heard by him in the nursery about 1787. They have been made the kernel of a song by Allan Cunningham, impudently put forward as “the precious relique of the original,” Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, 1810, p. 72.
The injunction to the cock is found in ‘The Swain’s Resolve,’ Lyle’s Ancient Ballads and Songs, 1827, p. 142:
She cries to the cock, saying, Thou must not crow
Until that the day be worn,
And thy wings shall be made of the silvery gray,
And thy voice of the silver horn.
It is also cited in Graves’s Irish Songs and Ballads, London, 1882, p. 249, No 50, as occurring “in a ballad descriptive of the visit of a lover’s ghost to his betrothed,” in which the woman, to protract the interview, says:
‘O my pretty cock, O my handsome cock,
I pray you do not crow before day,
And your comb shall be made of the very beaten gold,
And your wings of the silver so gray.’
The cock is remiss or unfaithful, again, in a little ballad picked up by Burns in Nithsdale, ‘A Waukrife Minnie,’ Cromek, Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 116 (of which another version is furnished by Lyle, p. 155, ‘The Wakerife Mammy’):
O weary fa the waukrife cock,
And the foumart lay his crawin!
He waukend the auld wife frae her sleep
A wee blink or the dawin.
390The first stanza of ‘The Grey Cock’ seems to have been suggested by ‘Sweet William’s Ghost’ (of which the Irish ballad noted by Graves may have been a variety), as again is the case in Buchan’s ‘James Herries.’ The fantastic reward promised the cock in stanza 6 is an imitation, or a corruption, of the bribe to the parrot in No 4, D 23, E 15, F 10, or in No 68, A 10, B 13, C 14, etc.
Of the same general description is ‘Le Chant de l’Alouette,’ Victor Smith, Chansons de Velay, etc., Romania, VII, 56 (see further note 6 of Smith); ‘Le Rendez-vous,’ Mélusine, I, 285 ff., Rolland, Recueil, etc., IV, 43, No 196. Again, ‘La Rondinella,’ Kopisch, Agrumi, p. 80, 1837; ‘La Visita,’ Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, p. 8; ‘La Rondine importuna,’ Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 75, No 54; ‘Il Furto amoroso’ Gianandrea, C. p. marchigiani, p. 274; ‘La Rondinella,’ Archivio, VII, 401, No 6. The treacherous or troublesome bird is in French the lark, in one case the cock; in Italian the swallow.
This piece is a variety of the aube (concerning which species see Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poésie lyrique en France, the third chapter), but is none the less quite modern.
1
‘O saw ye my father? or saw ye my mother?
Or saw ye my true-love John?’
‘I saw not your father, I saw not your mother,
But I saw your true-love John.
2
‘It’s now ten at night, and the stars gie nae light,
And the bells they ring ding, dang;
He’s met wi some delay that causeth him to stay,
But he will be here ere lang.’
3
The surly auld carl did naething but snarl,
And Johny’s face it grew red;
Yet, tho he often sighd, he neer a word replied
Till all were asleep in bed.
4
Up Johny rose, and to the door he goes,
And gently tirlëd the pin;
The lassie taking tent unto the door she went,
And she opend and let him in.
5
‘And are ye come at last? and do I hold ye fast?
And is my Johny true?’
‘I hae nae time to tell, but sae lang’s I like mysell
Sae lang will I love you.’
6
‘Flee, flee up, my bonny grey cock,
And craw whan it is day;
Your neck shall be like the bonny beaten gold,
And your wings of the silver grey.’
7
The cock prov’d false, and untrue he was,
For he crew an hour oer soon;
The lassie thought it day when she sent her love away,
And it was but a blink of the moon
a.
41. MS. Then up.
54. Ed. 1776, sall I.
b.
11. Saw you my father? Saw you my mother.
12. Saw you.
13,4. He told his only dear that he soon would be here, But he to another is gone.
21,2==13,4.
23. has met with ... which has caused.
24. here anon.
3. Wanting.
41. Then John he up arose.
42. And he twirld, he twirld at.
43. lassie took the hint and to the.
44. she let her true love in.
5. Wanting.
61. Fly up, fly up.
63. Your breast shall be of the beaming gold.
71. cock he.
72. crowd an hour too soon.
73. day, so she.
74. it prov’d but the.
Notes and Queries, I, xii, 227:
62. But crow not until it be day.
63. And your breast shall be made of the burnishd gold.
391