1753 Poem, Anon. (William Starrat), ‘An additional Verse to the Widow my Laddie’
Author: Anon. (William Starrat)
Date: 1753
Source: ‘An additional Verse to the Widow my Laddie’, an anonymous poem signed ‘T’ in ‘Scotch Poems’, The Ulster Miscellany, 1753
Comments: This song is one of nine anonymous ‘Scotch Poems’ from the ‘Laggan’ area of North-East Donegal published in The Ulster Miscellany of 1753. In Philip Robinson’s ‘William Starrat of Strabane: the first Ulster-Scots Poet’, Ullans, 5, 1997, he identifies William Starrat as the likely author of at least some of these. Given Starrat’s well-known friendship and poetical correspondence (in Scots) with Allan Ramsay about 1722, further corroboration of Starrat’s authorship of these ‘Scotch Poems’ is revealed in this poem. The original ‘Widow my Laddie’ was published inThe tea-table miscellany: or, A collection of choice songs, Scots and English: In four volumes, by Allan Ramsey, 1750. p. 149
Doc. ref. no.: USLS/TB/Poetry/1700-1799/009
An additional Verse to the Widow my Laddie
An additional Verse to the Widow my Laddie.
Young lasses, like fillies, will wantonly skip,
And lead ye a dance, e’er they stand to the ripp;
But free frae that trouble ye’ll easily grip
The hamely young widow, my laddie.
She kens a’ the sweets o’t, and like to the cat,
That has tasted the kirn, she langs to be at.
That rowth o’ sweet pleasures, she formerly gat,
E’re she was a widow my laddie.
T.
