Souter Gaed the Soo a Kiss
The souter gaed the soo a kiss,
Tantiriorum.
Fie, ye rogue, it's for my birss,
Taran-antiorum.
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Paul, Past & Present of Aberdeenshire (1881), 158 (no. 34).
This is a fugitive verse from the slightly unsavoury
song "The Souter's Feast", of which a somewhat abridged
version is in Greig FSIB (1905), 24 (and FSNE xii,1),
missing however this stanza; the fuller version is in
Peter Buchan's MS. of "high-kilted" songs Secret Songs
of Silence (1832), 1 (at Harvard). It begins "There came
a Soutter out o' Ein", and the relevant stanza runs "The
Soutter gaed the sow a kiss,/ Tum, tirry, arum;/ Grumph!
said he, it's for my birse,/ Sing--Adli, umpti, arum,
&c." [the he of line 3 should be she]. Greig's burden
is "Tanteerie orum/ The eedle and the orum" [bis];
"Thee-a-noddle, thee-a-num,/ The eedle and the orum."
The tune is related to Maggie Lauder/The Forfar Sodger.
MS
Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!