Mother Bunch

DESCRIPTION: Bessie's daughter would marry Andrew Carr. Mother objects. Maggie Spreul married Roger because she was pregnant; Andrew has had daughter's maidenhead. Daughter says, mother had done the same when she was young. Mother must agree and the couple marry.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1826 (Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1)
KEYWORDS: poverty courting marriage sex pregnancy dialog mother
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 28, "Mother Bunch" (1 text)
Roud #3872
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Sprightly Young Damsel" (theme: daughter, wanting to marry, reminds mother of her own indiscretions)
cf. "Between the Meadow and the Moss" (theme: daughter, wanting sex, reminds mother of her own indiscretions)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Andrew Carr
NOTES [179 words]: Mother Bunch objects to the marriage only because "scarce there's ane of the twa has a sark to put on your back." Unspoken is the threat that daughter may already be pregnant but does not yet show it, as Maggie Spreul had. Besides, says daughter, "when ye were young and braw Ye likit the lads yoursel As weel as ony ane o us aw."
The stories of Mother Bunch of Bonny Venture are reprinted by George Laurence Gomme from "the copy in the Pepsyian Library at Cambridge, dated 1685," "... a story of an old woman who lived in the west county, who took delight in studying how she might know what a sweetheart she might have, for at that time she thought she had tarried very long; she being full twenty years of age .... finding some [Grandmother strategies] to be true she took upon her to teach other maidens ...." The stories are always of a maiden meeting Mother Bunch and being instructed how to find a man (see George Laurence Gomme, editor, Mother Bunch's Closet Newly Broke Open, and the History of Mother Bunch of the West (London, 1885) ("Digitized by Microsoft")). - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: LyCr128

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