Folk and Traditional Song Lyrics:
Willie Buckthorne Had a Cow
Willie Buckthorne Had a Cow
Willie Buckthorne Had a Cow
1.
Willie Buckthorne had a cow,
They ca'd her Killiecrankie;
She fell o'er the auld-bane dyke
And broke her covenantie.
Hinck, spinck, sma' drink
Het yill and brandie;
Round about the haystack
Seeking hochmagandie.
2.
Willie Buck had a coo,
They ca'd her Leddy Pentie,
She fell owre the Brig o' Dee
And bruke her Covenainty;
The King's Covenainty,
The King's Covenee,
And a' the Deuks o' Gordon
Were gaun awa' to flee!
3.
Will Broo hed a coo,
They ca'd her Lady Penty.
She fell ower the Brig o' Dee
And broke her covenentie.
Hey, covenentie! Hey, covenee!
A' the fowk in Aiberdeen
Cam' rinnin' oot tae see.
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(1) Thomas Wilkie MS. notebooks (1813-15) in NLS, per
Thomas Crawford, Love, Labour and Liberty (1976), 17.
(2) Rymour Club Misc. I (1906-11), 172 (4 lines), from
Kirriemuir, common 50 years before, i.e. c. 1860; whence
SC 48 (no. 45).
(3) Rodger Lang Strang (1948), 18.
Hink-skink is a variety of small beer: cf. Chambers PRS
(1847), 319, (1870), 392:
There's first guid ale, and syne guid ale,
And second ale, and some,
Hink-skink, and ploughman's drink,
And scour-the-gate, and trim.
Another form is inkie-pinkie [perhaps the same as hickery-
pickery, a purgative, originally a corruption of Latin (and
Greek) hiera picra], reduced to ink, pink, as in a milder
version of Wilkie's lines:
Ink, pink, sma' drink,
Het yill and brandy:
Scud aboot the haystack:
And you'll get sugar-candy.
[SND V.281, quoting R. Wallace's ed. (1899) of James Shaw, A
Country Schoolmaster, originating in Dumfries, c. 1800, p.
380.]
MS
oct99