Stanzas 1, 4, 6, 7, are printed in Herd, 1769; the three others are among the "Additions to songs in the former volume" [of 1769], at the beginning of the first volume of the Manuscript; the whole is given in Herd, 1776.
Repeated from Herd, 1776 (with a change or two) in Pinkerton's Select Scotish Ballads II, 155, 1783, and in Johnson's Museum, p. 77, No 76, 1787, 'O saw ye my father?' Stenhouse had not found the verses in any collection prior to that of Herd, but asserts that the song had been "a great favorite in Scotland for a long time past" (1820, Museum, ed. 1853, IV, 81).
"This song," says Chappell, "is printed on broadsides, with the tune, and in Vocal Music, or the Songster's Companion, II, 36, second edition, 1772. This collection was printed by Robert Horsfield, in Ludgate Street, and probably the words and music will also be found in the first edition, which I have not seen." The words, he adds, are in several "Songsters."
Three stanzas from recitation, wrongly attached to 'The Broomfield Hill,' No 43, E, have been given at p. 399 of the first volume of this collection. Much of the ballad has been adopted into 'Willie's Fatal Visit,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 259, the two concluding stanzas with little change. These two stanzas are given by a correspondent[foot-note] of Notes and Queries, First Series, XII, 227, as heard by him in the nursery about 1787. They have been made the kernel of a song by Allan Cunningham, impudently put forward as "the precious relique of the original," Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, 1810, p. 72.
The injunction to the cock is found in 'The Swain's Resolve,' Lyle's Ancient Ballads and Songs, 1827, p. 142:
It is also cited in Graves's Irish Songs and Ballads, London, 188?. 249, No 50, as occurring "in a ballad descriptive of the visit of a lover's ghost to his betrothed," in which the woman, to protract the interview, says:
The cock is remiss or unfaithful, again, in a little ballad picked up by Burns in Nithsdale, 'A Waukrife Minnie,' Cromek, Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 116 (of which another version is furnished by Lyle, p. 155, 'The Wakerife Mammy'):
The first stanza of 'The Grey Cock' seems to have been suggested by 'Sweet William's Ghost' (of which the Irish ballad noted by Graves may have been a variety), as again is the case in Buchan's 'James Herries.' The fantastic reward promised the cock in stanza 6 is an imitation, or a corruption, of the bribe to the parrot in No 4, D 23, E 15, F 10, or in No 68, A 10, B 13, C 14, etc.
Of the same general description is 'Le Chant de l'Alouette,' Victor Smith, Chansons de Velay, etc., Romania, VII, 56 (see further note 6 of Smith); 'Le Rendez-vous,' Mélusine, I, 285 ff., Rolland, Recueil, etc., IV, 43, No 196. Again, 'La Rondinella,' Kopisch, Agrumi, p. 80, 1837; 'La Visita,' Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, p. 8; 'La Rondine importuna,' Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 75, No 54; 'Il Furto amoroso ' Gianandrea, C. p. marchigiani, p. 274; 'La Rondinella,' Archivio, VII, 401, No 6. The treacherous or troublesome bird is in French the lark, in one case the cock; in Italian the swallow.
This piece is a variety of the aube (concerning which species see Jeanroy, Les Origines de la Poésie lyrique en France, the third chapter), but is none the less quite modern.
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