Weary Pund o' Tow, The

DESCRIPTION: The singer bought his wife good linen for her to spin but she stalls: "I thought my wife wad end her life Before she span her tow" When he criticized her she broke a stick over his head. At last she left him, and he was happy to see her go
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1822 (Thomson's _Select Melodies of Scotland_, according to Chambers)
KEYWORDS: shrewishness marriage violence abandonment husband wife
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1867, "The Weary Pun, The Weary Pun" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishSong, p. 580, "The Weary Pund o' Tow" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #360, pp. 494-495, "The weary Pund o' Tow" (1 text, 1 tune, from 1792)
Robert Chambers, The Scottish Songs (Edinburgh, 1829), Vol II, p. 499, "The Weary Pund o' Tow"
Roud #435
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "She's Aye Tease, Teasin'" (theme: the wife who won't spin) and references there
cf. "The Cogie" (tune, per Greig/Duncan8)
NOTES [45 words]: Whitelaw: "The chorus of this song and the tune are old: the rest was furnished by Burns for the museum."
Roud lumps this with "The Pound of Tow" in Greig/Duncan7 but I see no connection except the general theme that women will do anything but spin their pound of tow. - BS
Last updated in version 3.2
File: BdWePuTo

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography