Go to Berwick, Johnny

DESCRIPTION: "Go, go, go, Go to Berwick, Johnny, You shall have the horse, I shall have the pony."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1794 (Ritson, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: animal travel
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1689, "Busk and Go to Berwick, Johnnie" (1 text)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 281, "Ride Away, Ride Away, Johnny Shall Ride" (3 texts)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishSong, p. 571, "Go to Berwick Johnnie" (2 texts)
Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 9, "(Go, go, go)" (1 fragment)
Roud #8693
NOTES [141 words]: Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes: "Denham (1858) says that the Scottish version [of ("Ride away, ride, away, Johnny shall ride")], in which Johnny rides to Berwick, is a fragment of the 'good old border song "Go to Berwick, Johnny"'." ("Ride away, ride, away, Johnny shall ride") is a nursery rhyme version.
Whitelaw: "The old tune of 'Go to Berwick, Johnnie,' is usually sung to a nursery doggerel [sic] beginning "Go, go, go...." Then he prints two verses from Johnson's Museum "said to have been partly written by John Hamilton" about a raid across the border to bring back an English "bonnie lassie." The Greig/Duncan8 text, and one of the Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes texts seem somewhere between "nursery doggrel" and border raid song. I can't decide how to split the texts so I am lumping everything together here. - BS
Last updated in version 3.2
File: MSNR009

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