Dainty Davie

DESCRIPTION: "Being pursued by the dragoons," Davie is hidden in the bed of the daughter of Cherrytrees. He makes such efficient use of the time that the girl ends up pregnant; they eventually marry. She is happy with her Dainty Davie
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1776? (Herd MS.); c. 1800 (Merry Muses of Caledonia)
KEYWORDS: sex escape marriage bawdy
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
DT, DNTDAVE2
ADDITIONAL: Hanish Henderson, "The Ballad, The Folk and The Oral Tradition," in Edward J. Cowan, editor, _The People's Past: Scottish Folk, Scottish History_ 1980 (I use the 1993 Polygon paperback edition), pp. 83-86, "(Dainty Davie)" (2 texts, one of them being Peter Buchan's, shall we say, extended version)
Roud #2387
NOTES [496 words]: The variations among the versions of this song are extreme -- and not just because Burns rewrote it; the versions from "The Merry Muses" and Buchan's "Secret Songs of Silence" have hardly a word in common except for parts of the chorus. It seems likely that Burns was not the only one to rewrite it. Nonetheless there seems to be agreement that the song is about one Reverend David Williamson (died 1706?), who was accused of preaching rebellion against Charles II (reigned 1660-1685).
Supposedly Williamson was hidden by a wife who dressed him as a woman and put him in bed with her daughter, who was about 18. The girl went along; the mother was less happy, but allowed them to marry to avoid scandal.
Whether any of this has been verified by historians I do not know. Mostly we find folklorists repeating the tales of other folklorists. Williamson himself seems to have been real; Lindsay, pp. 375-376, reports that Williamson was "A covenanting minister denounced as a rebel on 6th July 1674 for holding conventicles, and intercommuned on 6th August the following year. After a final indulgence granted to the church in 1687, he returned to Edinburgh where a meeting-house was erected for him in the village then known as Water of Leith. However, he was arrested again the following February, his name having been discovered in papers belonging to the Covenanting leader Renwick, though released in a fortnight, the date of the reference being found to be within the period covered by his indemnity. Some time afterward, he was arrested for refusing to pray for the Prince of Wales [i.e. James son of James II, the so-called Old Pretender], but again released." I suspect he would have continued to get into trouble had not the Glorious Revolution of 1689 brought religious toleration.
Schoolbraid, p. 6, seems to suggest that the story as we have it "is Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Display'd, or The Folly of their Teaching Discover'd, in which 'Jacob Curate' presents anecdote after anecdote anent the amusingly inept or seemingly irreligious (not to say vulgar) rant of the Scottish covenanting clergy. Among other scurrilities, we are given the unedifying story of Mr David Williamson and the daughter of the house of Cherrytrees (giving rise to 'Dainty Davie')." Buchan's own thirteen-verse monstrosity (his #10) starts on page 70 of Schoolbraid, who on p. 198 admites "I suspect this is from the pen of Buchan himself."
According to Schoolbraid, p. 199, Williamson worked his way through seven wives before dying in 1706.
Lindsay says the events in this song are supposed to have taken place around 1690, when Williamson slept in the bed of Jean, daughter of the Kerrs of Cherrytrees. This date strikes me as unlikely, given that it was after the Glorious Revolution; 1688 seems more likely, or a date in the 1670s. The earlier the date, the better, from the standpoint of Williamson's ability to perform in bed; Lindsay's guess is that he was born c. 1630. - RBW
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