Baw Burdie

DESCRIPTION: The singer hushes a birdie she has in a bog, among a little moss. It runs away, she looks all day and finds it in a duck's nest. She bids it go home.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1828 (Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2)
KEYWORDS: separation lullaby bird
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 161, "Baw Burdie" (1 text)
Roud #15115
NOTES [128 words]: Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 says it "may be compared with 'The Lost Birdies, or The Hobe and the Robin.'" The action is similar but Henry's text is better organized and the singer is not an actor in that song. If I had more texts I might lump them together. - BS
I would suspect that we are to understand the bird as a cuckoo -- although I've never heard of a cuckoo parasitizing a duck; the lifestyles are too different.
The word "burdie" is interesting. "Bird/burd" could mean a young girl or maiden (see the notes to "Burd Ellen and Young Tamlane" [Child 28]), but it also seemingly sometimes meant specifically an illegitimate child. Maybe, at a deeper level, this is an accusation that some family is raising a cuckoo's egg -- a child not their own. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: LyCr2161

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