Dainty Davie

Did You Know?

• The tune was first published under the name Dainty Davie in 1657 in John Playford's collection The Dancing Master.
• David Williamson, the subject of the satire, was a minister at St. Cuthbert's Church, Edinburgh, who was married seven times.
• Captain John Creighton's memoirs were ghostwritten by Jonathan Swift in 1731.
• Robert Burns wrote two versions of the text: one bawdy for Merry Muses of Caledonia (1799) and one innuendo-free for the Scots Musical Museum.

History

The tune now known as Dainty Davie has been around in some form since at least the mid-1600s. It first appeared in print under that name in 1657, in John Playford’s collection The Dancing Master. A few decades later, the melody was given new lyrics that turned it into a satire aimed at Scottish Covenanters after their rebellions. The inspiration came from a story printed in a 1692 anti-Presbyterian pamphlet called The Scots Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed, which claimed the tale was already widely known in Scotland. It centered on David Williamson, a minister at St. Cuthbert’s Church in Edinburgh who lived from 1636 to 1706 and was married seven times.

According to the story, around 1676 Williamson was staying with the Kerr family (or the Murrays, depending on the account) at the Cherrytrees estate near Yetholm in the Scottish Borders. One night, a party of dragoons led by Lieutenant Creighton—the same Captain John Creighton whose memoirs were later ghostwritten by Jonathan Swift in 1731—showed up. Mrs. Kerr quickly hid Williamson in bed with her eighteen-year-old daughter, covering him with her own nightcap, then went downstairs to distract the soldiers with drink. While the dragoons searched the house, the story goes, Williamson and Miss Kerr became intimately involved, and he was later forced to marry her. She was his third wife at the time, and he went on to marry three more times, making him a figure of some mockery. Creighton’s memoir added that King Charles II, upon hearing the tale, said he wanted to meet the man who showed such vigor while soldiers were hunting him, joking that even when hiding in the royal oak he could not have kissed the prettiest woman in Christendom.

The tune and title Dainty Davie were soon set to a heavily suggestive text that mocked Williamson’s predicament, and in that form it became well known across Scotland.