‘Say’t oer again, say’t oer again,
Ye thief, that I may hear ye;
I’se gar ye dance upon a peat,
Gin I sall cum but near ye.’
The story of the ballad was in all likelihood traditionally derived from the good old tale of the wife lapped in Morrel’s skin.[91] Here a husband, who has put up with a great deal from an excessively restive wife, flays his old horse Morrell and salts the hide, takes the shrew down cellar, and, after a sharp contest for mastery, beats her with birchen rods till she swoons, then wraps her in the salted hide: by which process the woman is perfectly reformed.[92]
A
Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, I, 319. “From the recitation of a friend of the editor’s in Morayshire.”
1
She wadna bake, she wadna brew,