Laird o Cockpen, The

DESCRIPTION: "The Laird o Cockpen, he's proud and he's great... He wanted a wife his braw hoose tae keep...." He comes to court the noble but poor Jean, who at first turns him down (but is sometimes expanded so that she thinks of his wealth and chooses to wed him)
AUTHOR: Adapted by Caroline Oliphaunt, Lady Nairne (1766-1845)?
EARLIEST DATE: 1821
KEYWORDS: courting marriage money nobility
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Logan-APedlarsPack, pp. 355-359, "The Laird of Cockpen" (1 text)
Heart-Songs, p. 448, "The Laird o' Cockpen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ford-SongHistories, pp. 184-191, "The Laird of Cockpen" (1 text plus Ferrier's addition and a text of "When She Cam' Ben She Bobbit")
DT, COCKLAIR*
ADDITIONAL: Charles W. Eliot, editor, English Poetry Vol II From Collins to Fitzgerald (New York, 1910), #333, pp. 563-564, "The Laird o' Cockpen" (by Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne)
Alfred M. Williams, _Studies in Folk-Song and Popular Poetry_, Houghton Mifflin, 1894, pp. 116-117, "The Laird of Cockpen" (1 text)
ST Log355 (Full)
Roud #2859
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Squire and the Gipsy" (theme)
SAME TUNE:
The Wife o' Denside (File: Gath009)
Tipperty's Jean (File: Ord283)
Parody on Laird o' Cockpen (Broadside NLScotland L.C.Fol.178.A.2(103), "Parody on Laird o' Cockpen" ("The Laird o Cockpen he's puir and he's duddy"), unknown, c. 1875)
New Year (Broadside NLScotland L.C.Fol.178.A.2(104), "The New Year" ("And now we're to enter another New Year, When little is thought on but whiskey and beer"), unknown, c. 1875)
The Laird of D--mm-- (broadside NLScotland, ABS.10.203.01(102), "The Laird of D--mm--e," unknown, c. 1835)
"Incompetence of Politicians" (Broadside NLScotland L.C.Fol.70(6a), [no title] ("Oh! hae ye heard o' an unprincipled squad"), unknown, n.d.)
NOTES [282 words]: According to Alfred M. Williams, Studies in Folk-Song and Popular Poetry, Houghton Mifflin, 1894, p. 115-116, Lady Nairne wrote this, "it is said, to supply proper words to the gay old air of When She cam ben, She bobbit, which being interpreted, means that when she came into the front of the house, she curtsied."
Ford-SongHistories, p. 184, mentions that various people attributed this to Sir Alexander Boswell (son of the biographer) and to a Miss Ferrier, but has no doubt that Lady Nairne wrote it. Ford things that Nairne had it via Burns, who had expurgated the song for the Scots Musical Museum without producing a very good song.
The expansion in which the girl changes her mind is attributed by Ford-SongHistories, p. 186, to Susan Ferrier rather than Lady Nairne.
Ford-SongHistories, p. 189, says that the "real" Laird of Cockpen was a man named Mark Carse, who was a companion of King Charles II in his exile during the Commonwealth period (1649-1660). However, I checked five histories of the era of Charles II (G. N. Clark, The Later Stuarts 1660-1714, corrected edition, Oxford, 1944; Godfrey Davies, The Early Stuarts: 1603-1660 (Oxford, 1937); Antonia Fraser, Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration (British title King Charles II), 1979 (I use the 1980 Delta paperback); Ronald Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1989; John Miller, James II, 1978, 1989 (I use the 2000 Yale English Monarchs paperback edition with a new introduction by the author)) without finding a reference to either Carse or someone with the title Cockpen. I strongly suggest that that tale is just folklore. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: Log355

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