Digital Tradition Mirror

Willie Buckthorne Had a Cow

Willie Buckthorne Had a Cow

     1.
     Willie Buckthorne had a cow,
     They ca'd her Killiecrankie;
     She fell o'er the auld-bane dyke
     And broke her covenantie.

     Hinck, spinck, sma' drink
     Het yill and brandie;
     Round about the haystack
     Seeking hochmagandie.


     2.
     Willie Buck had a coo,
     They ca'd her Leddy Pentie,
     She fell owre the Brig o' Dee
     And bruke her Covenainty;
     The King's Covenainty,
     The King's Covenee,
     And a' the Deuks o' Gordon
     Were gaun awa' to flee!

     3.
     Will Broo hed a coo,
       They ca'd her Lady Penty.
     She fell ower the Brig o' Dee
       And broke her covenentie.
     Hey, covenentie! Hey, covenee!
       A' the fowk in Aiberdeen
       Cam' rinnin' oot tae see.
    ________________________________________________________
     (1) Thomas Wilkie MS. notebooks (1813-15) in NLS, per
     Thomas Crawford, Love, Labour and Liberty (1976), 17.
     (2) Rymour Club Misc. I (1906-11), 172 (4 lines), from
     Kirriemuir, common 50 years before, i.e. c. 1860; whence
     SC 48 (no. 45).
     (3) Rodger Lang Strang (1948), 18.
     Hink-skink is a variety of small beer: cf. Chambers PRS
(1847), 319, (1870), 392:



There's first guid ale, and syne guid ale,
            And second ale, and some,

Hink-skink, and ploughman's drink,
            And scour-the-gate, and trim.


Another form is inkie-pinkie [perhaps the same as hickery-
pickery, a purgative, originally a corruption of Latin (and
Greek) hiera picra], reduced to ink, pink, as in a milder
version of Wilkie's lines:



Ink, pink, sma' drink,

Het yill and brandy:

Scud aboot the haystack:

And you'll get sugar-candy.


[SND V.281, quoting R. Wallace's ed. (1899) of James Shaw, A
Country Schoolmaster, originating in Dumfries, c. 1800, p.
380.]

MS
oct99

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!