Bonnie Jean O' Aberdeen, She Lang'd for a Baby

DESCRIPTION: "Oh, there was a farmer's daughter And she longed for a baby And she rolled up a big grey hen And she put it into the cradle ... she rocked the cradle, saying: If it wasn't for your big long neb I would gie ye a draw of the diddy, oh"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1803 (Mother Goose's Melody, according to Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes)
KEYWORDS: bird baby humorous
FOUND IN: Ireland Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Greig/Duncan7 1419, "Bonnie Jean o' Aberdeen, She Lang'd for a Baby" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 183, "A girl in the army" (4 texts)
ADDITIONAL: Robert Chambers, The Popular Rhymes of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1870 ("Digitized by Google")), p. 25, ("There was a miller's dochter")
Roud #2293
RECORDINGS:
Eddie Butcher, "The Farmer's Daughter" (on IREButcher01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Rose Tree in Full Bearing" (tune, notes to IREButcher01)
NOTES [143 words]: The opening lines of the four Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes texts are "A girl in the army She longed for a baby,' "There was a miller's dochter, She couldna want a babie,' "The little lady lairdie She longt for a baby" and "There once was a lady Who longed for a babby oh."
"Neb" can be either beak or nose. "Diddy" is teat. (source: Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, 1976).
See Tim Coughlan, Now Shoon the Romano Gillie, (Cardiff,2001), #28, pp. 227-228, "As I Bung Through the Dodder's Wood" [Scotto-Romani/Tinklers' Cant from MacColl and Seeger, Till Doomsday in the Afternoon (1986)].
In Chambers's text (also reported in Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes as Chambers 1842) the girl takes her father's greyhound and complains about its "lang beard." Maybe a grey goat is meant. - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: OOx2183

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