Rattlin' Roarin' Willie

DESCRIPTION: Rattlin' Willie goes to the fair to sell his fiddle. Someone urges him, "O, Willie, come sell your fiddle... And buy a pint o wine!" He refuses; "The warl' would think I was mad." He plays in "guid company"; his wife(?) says "Ye're welcome hame to me."
AUTHOR: Robert Burns
EARLIEST DATE: 1803 (Scots Musical Museum, #194)
KEYWORDS: music commerce drink
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Greig/Duncan4 776, "Rattlin Roarin Willie" (1 text)
Montgomerie/Montgomerie-ScottishNurseryRhymes 91, "(Johnny, come lend me your fiddle)" (1 text, which appears to mix elements from "Rattlin' Roarin' Willie" with something rather like "Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be?")
DT, RTLNROAR
ADDITIONAL: James Johnson, Editor, _The Scots Musical Museum_ [1853 edition], volume II, #194, p. 202, "Rattlin, roarin Willie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #6192
NOTES [179 words]: Like most Burns pieces, this has a traditional stub -- there is an item in Gammer Gurton's Garland,
John, come sell thy fiddle
And buy thy wife a gown.
No, I'll not sell my fiddle
For ne'er a wife in town.
(Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #91, p. 86; Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 267, pp. 239-240).
I suspedt there was a second intermediate state, however. Maurice Lindsay, The Burns Encyclopedia, 1959, 1970; third edition, revised and enlarged, St. Martin's Press, 1980, p. 113, says that "Burns celebrated Dunbar's rumbustious good humour by adapting the Border Ballad 'Rattlin', Rovin' Willie."
The Dunbar of this quote was William Dunbar (died 1807), a distant relative of the Earls of Dunbar, and a younger son who probably wasn't very well-off but who was involved in a number of civic groups and apparently worked as a lawyer. He and Burns had a modest correspondence, with Burns apparently wanting it to be more active.
The Baring-Goulds mention a note by Sir Walter Scott that Willie was a real fiddler who was tried and executed for murder. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: DTrtlnro

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