Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Scottish songs > Volume 1

XXVI
The puddy he swam doun the brook ;
The drake he catched him in his fluke.
The cat he pu'd Lord Rotten doun ;
The kittens they did claw his croun.
But Lady Mouse, baith jimp and sma',
Crept into a hole beneath the wa' ;
" Squeak !" quo' she, " I'm weel awa !"
By the way, the frog seems to have been a favour-
ite character, and a distinguished figurant, in old po-
pular poetry. There is still to be found in the Scot-
tish nursery a strange legendary tale, sometimes called
" The Padda Sang," and sometimes " The Tale o' the
Well o' the Warld's End," in which the frog acts as
the hero. It is partly in recitative, and partly in verse,
and the air to which the poetry is sung is extremely
beautiful. I give the following version of it from the
recitation of an old nurse in Annandale.
" A poor widow, you see, was once baking ban-
nocks ; and she sent her daughter to the well at the
warld's end, with a wooden dish, to bring water. When
the lassie cam to the well, she fand it dry ; but there
was a padda (afrog,^ that came loup-loup-loupin, and
loupit into her dish. Says the padda to the lassie,
* I'll gie ye plenty o' water, if ye'll be my wife.' The
lassie didna like the padda, but she was fain to say
she wad take him, just to get the water ; and, ye ken,
she never thought that the puir brute wad be serious,
or wad ever say ony mair about it. Sae she got the
water, and took it hame to her mother ; and she heard
nae mair o' the padda till that nicht, when, as she and
her mother were sitting by the fireside, what do they
hear but the puir padda at the outside o' the door,
singing wi' a' his micht,
* Oh, open the door, my hinnie,* my heart,
Oh, open the door, my ain true love ;
* Honey — a very common phrase of endearment among the