And the foumart lay his crawin!
He waukend the auld wife frae her sleep
A wee blink or the dawin.
The first stanza of ‘The Grey Cock’ seems to have been suggested by ‘Sweet William’s Ghost’ (of which the Irish ballad noted by Graves may have been a variety), as again is the case in Buchan’s ‘James Herries.’ The fantastic reward promised the cock in stanza 6 is an imitation, or a corruption, of the bribe to the parrot in No 4, D 23, E 15, F 10, or in No 68, A 10, B 13, C 14, etc.
Of the same general description is ‘Le Chant de l’Alouette,’ Victor Smith, Chansons de Velay, etc., Romania, VII, 56 (see further note 6 of Smith); ‘Le Rendez-vous,’ Mélusine, I, 285 ff., Rolland, Recueil, etc., IV, 43, No 196. Again, ‘La Rondinella,’ Kopisch, Agrumi, p. 80, 1837; ‘La Visita,’ Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, p. 8; ‘La Rondine importuna,’ Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 75, No 54; ‘Il Furto amoroso’ Gianandrea, C. p. marchigiani, p. 274; ‘La Rondinella,’ Archivio, VII, 401, No 6. The treacherous or troublesome bird is in French the lark, in one case the cock; in Italian the swallow.
This piece is a variety of the aube (concerning which species see Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poésie lyrique en France, the third chapter), but is none the less quite modern.
1
‘O saw ye my father? or saw ye my mother?
Or saw ye my true-love John?’