DAINTIE DAVIE.
This song, tradition says, and the composition itself confirms it, was composed on the Rev. David Williamson’s begetting the daughter of Lady Cherrytrees with child, while a party of dragoons were searching her house to apprehend him for being an adherent to the solemn league and covenant. The pious woman had put a lady’s night-cap on him, and had laid him a-bed with her own daughter, and passed him to the soldiery as a lady, her daughter’s bed-fellow. A mutilated stanza or two are to be found in Herd’s collection, but the original song consists of five or six stanzas, and were their delicacy equal to their wit and humour, they would merit a place in any collection. The first stanza is
“Being pursued by the dragoons,
Within my bed he was laid down;
And weel I wat he was worth his room,
For he was my Daintie Davie.”
Ramsay’s song, “Luckie Nansy,” though he calls it an old song with additions, seems to be all his own except the chorus:
“I was a telling you,
Luckie Nansy, Luckie Nansy
Auld springs wad ding the new,
But ye wad never trow me.”
Which I should conjecture to be part of a song prior to the affair of Williamson.