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GET UP AND BAR THE DOOR
A. a. ‘Get up and bar the Door,’ Herd, The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 330; Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, 1776, II, 159. b. [Pinkerton], Select Scotish Ballads, 1783, II, 150.
B. ‘John Blunt,’ Macmath MS., p. 74.
C. ‘Johnie Blunt,’ Johnson’s Museum, IV, 376, No 365, 1792.
The copy in Johnson’s Museum, volume three, No 300, p. 310, 1790, is A a with two slight changes; that in Ritson’s Scotish Song, I, 226, 1794, is A a. A b is substituted for A a in the third edition of Herd, 1791, II, 63. Christie, II, 262, who follows A a, but with changes, gives as a refrain, “common in the North of Scotland from time immemorial,”
And the barring o our door,
Weel, weel, weel!
And the barring o our door, weel!
A, B. A housewife is boiling puddings anight; a cold wind blows in, and her husband bids her bar the door; she has her hands in her work and will not. They come to an agreement that whoever speaks first shall bar the door. Two belated travellers are guided to the house by the light which streams through an opening. They come in, and, getting no reply to their questions or response to their greetings, fall to eating and drinking what they find; the goodwife thinks much, but says naught. One of the strangers proposes to the other to take off the man’s beard, and he himself will kiss the goodwife. Hot water is wanting (for scalding), suggests the second; but the boiling pudding-bree will serve, answers the first. The goodman calls out, Will ye kiss my wife and scald me? and having spoken the first word has to bar the door.