[In the first edition of the Reliques the number of the bairns is fixed at five instead of seven, and the rhyme to five is thrive instead of threven. The last line is
"For four of them were gotten, quhan Willie was awa."
The present copy has thus been altered to support the untenable position that the seven bairns were meant to represent the seven sacraments.
According to tradition John Anderson was formerly the town crier of Kelso, and the song is not of any great antiquity, for it is first found in the Skene MS., the date of which Dauney (Ancient Scottish Melodies, p. 219) fixes at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but which includes, according to Mr. Chappell, an English country dance that first appeared in 1698 (Popular Music of the Olden Time, vol. ii. p. 770).
Burns wrote his song—
"John Anderson my jo John
When we were first acquent,"
to the old tune, for Johnson's Musical Museum.]
Woman.