A. ‘The Keach i the Creel,’ Alexander Whitelaw, The Book of Scottish Ballads, p. 35, 1845; Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs, p. 112, Percy Society, vol. xvii, 1846.
B. ‘The Creel, or, Bonnie May.’ Communicated by Mr David Louden, Morham, Haddington, 1873.
C. ‘The Cunning Clerk,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 278, 1828.
D. ‘The Covering Blue,’ Kinloch MSS, I, 276; Kinloch’s Ballad Book, p. 61, 1827.
A few copies of A were printed about 1845 by a Northumbrian gentleman for private distribution. One of these came into Whitelaw’s hands, another into Dixon’s. Dixon made some changes in reprinting. Bell, Ancient Poems, etc., p. 75, 1857, and Bruce and Stokoe, Northumbrian Minstrelsy, p. 82, 1882, repeat Dixon. This last remarks that “this old and very humorous ballad has long been a favorite on both sides of the Border.”
James Telfer, writing to Sir W. Scott, May 12, 1824 [Letters, XIII, No 73], says: “I have an humorous ballad sung by a few of the old people on this side of the Border. It is entitled The Keach in the Creel. It begins thus:@
A bonny may went up the street
Some whitewish (sic) for to buy,
And a bonny clerk’s faen in love with her,
And he’s followed her by and by, by,