Allan Water’s wide and deep,
and my dear Anny’s very bonny;
Wide’s the straith that lyes above ‘t,
if ‘t were mine, I’de give it all for Anny.
Allan Cunningham says of the ballad, Songs of Scotland, II, 102: “I have heard it sung on the banks of the Annan. Like all traditional verses, there are many variations.” And he cites as “from an old fragment” these couplets:
O Annan water’s wading deep, [i.e. wide and]
Yet I am loth to weet my feet;
But if ye’ll consent to marry me,
I’ll hire a horse to carry thee.[[112]]
It is my conviction that ‘Anna Water,’ in Ramsay’s language, is one of the “Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before” 1800.