Tha Was a Wee Yow

DESCRIPTION: A ewe looks at the moon and sees wonders; it goes to Ireland and Aberdeen, returns home, and finds more wonders right there.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1828 (Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2)
LONG DESCRIPTION: A ewe looks at the moon and sees more wonders [?] than fifteen; it goes to Ireland and Aberdeen and returns home; the husband is herding, the pigs are inside, the wife supervising the girls making cheese; the cat is in the stall eating when a cinder burns its nose and it cries 'yeowe, yeowe, yeowe.'
KEYWORDS: return travel farming talltale animal sheep
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 134, "Tha Was a Wee Yow" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Robert Chambers, The Popular Rhymes of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1870 ("Digitized by Google")), p. 27, ("There was a wee yowe") (1 text)
Roud #13067
NOTES [198 words]: Except for dialect the Chambers and Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 texts are the same. Chambers (1802-1871) records his text from Forfarshire. The preface included is to the third edition and is dated 1841. Notes for Greig/Duncan8 1635, "I'll Tell Ye a Talie," connects that text to this one but I don't see the connection.
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 p. xli: "Crawfurd supplied songs and rhymes for Robert Chambers ... it appears that versions of 143 'Cow the Nettle Airlie' and 144 'The Wee Wyfie' ... highly probable that 134 'Tha Was a Wee You' ... was from Crawfurd too."
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 p. xl: "Part of 134 'Tha Was a Wee You' may be compared with Opie 107; cf. also the Rymour Club Miscellanea vol. 2 (1921) p. 100 and Gomme 1.51." Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2/Chambers share no lines with Opie 107 but the description beginning when the ewe returns home has the beat and strangeness of image of Opie ("The cock's on the wood pile a-blowing his horn ...."); I would say the same for the comparison with Gomme 1.51 ("As I was going o'er misty moor I spied three cats at a mill-door ...."). I haven't seen the Rymour Club. - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: LyCr2134

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