Until that the day be worn,
And thy wings shall be made of the silvery gray,
And thy voice of the silver horn.
It is also cited in Graves’s Irish Songs and Ballads, London, 1882, p. 249, No 50, as occurring “in a ballad descriptive of the visit of a lover’s ghost to his betrothed,” in which the woman, to protract the interview, says:
‘O my pretty cock, O my handsome cock,
I pray you do not crow before day,
And your comb shall be made of the very beaten gold,
And your wings of the silver so gray.’
The cock is remiss or unfaithful, again, in a little ballad picked up by Burns in Nithsdale, ‘A Waukrife Minnie,’ Cromek, Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 116 (of which another version is furnished by Lyle, p. 155, ‘The Wakerife Mammy’):
O weary fa the waukrife cock,