Annotation:Had I the Wyte

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HAD I THE WYTE/WIGHT. AKA - "Had I the Wate she bade me." AKA and see "Kail and Knockit Corn," "Bob of Fettercairn (The)," "Newburn Lads" (Northumberland). Scottish, Reel (whole time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABBCC. The title is Scottish and appears in James Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 7 (Edinburgh, 1760). A song to the air, also called "Had I the Wyte She Bad Me," was printed in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, vol. 5 (1797, pp. 427-428), adapted by poet Robert Burns from an older folk song. Burns produced another version of the song--a much more bawdy version--for The Merry Muses of Caledonia (1799). This version begins:

Had I the wyte, had I the wyte,
Had I the wyte, she bade me;
She watch'd me by the hie-gate-side,
And up the loan she shaw'd me.
And when I wad na venture in,
A coward loon she ca'd me:
Had Kirk and State been in the gate,
I'd lighted when she bade me.

Sae craftilie she took me ben,
And bade me mak nae clatter;
'For our ramgunshoch, glum Goodman
'Is o'er ayont the water:'
Whae'er shall say I wanted grace,
When I did kiss and dawte her,
Let him be planted in my place,
Syne, say, I was the fautor.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Oswald (Caledonian Pocket Companion, Book 7), 1760; p. 20.

Recorded sources:

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