XLII, pp. Mrs. Mogg must have heard the song in her youth and in 1904 she recalled a fragment of the shorter version: two more or less complete verses as well as two half verses that she  merged to one.
In some verses it's The second one (text F) with only three badly remembered verses was recorded from William Nichols,Whitchurch, Devon, whose "grandmother sang it to him in 1825":On the British broadside sheet this song  is combined with "The Green Willow" that includes another variant form of this verse:That's the version of the first verse we know today.

Being a Collection of Songs [...], Printed and sold in Aldermary Church Yard, Bow Lane, London, [1770?]
They regularly recycled verses for "new" texts. Two can be found in Amazingly the anonymous author also resorted to songs that also share verses with Allan Ramsay's version of "Oh Waly, Waly" although he used not the same but others. Both Ritchie (p. 18) and Lomax (No.

A. Fuller Maitland, English County Songs, London [1893]Lucy E. Broadwood et al.,  1923, Songs of Unhappy Love, in: Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. Another offspring of "I'm Often Drunk" was published in 1900 in O the ripest of apples, they must soon grow rotten,This is a fragmentary version of the earlier and longer variant of "I'm Often Drunk": it still uses the phrase "I cannot wade them" instead of "can't get over".

To which are added, Tippet is the dandy---o. "The Water Is Wide" (also called "O Waly, Waly" or simply "Waly, Waly") is a folk song of Scottish origin, based on lyrics that partly date to the 1600s.

They have reached us on different transmission routes, but their trip was very similar: first was the broadside with scattered verses from older songs, then the "Folk" that stored these texts in their memory for a couple of decades, then the Folklore collectors who saved these verses from oblivion by writing them down and publishing their findings in books and then at last the Folk Revival singers who used them for new "old" songs. But the anonymous author of this piece  was not necessarily one of the great poets of his era. How did the anonymous writers of broadside ballads produce their texts? songs.

Variants of this verse were occasionally used in other songs but none of them predates the broadsides with "I'm Often Drunk" that was apparently first printed around 1820.Already in the 1820s and early 1830s  a song called "Peggy Gordon" was published on American song-sheets: in New York and in Boston (available at the libraries of Here we find three verses known from the longer version of "I'm Often Drunk" including the one starting with "the seas are deep, and I cannot wade them [...]". Joseph Phair (Madden Ballads 7-4995) was busy in London between 1827 and 1853 (see A second version of "I'm Often Drunk" is little bit shorter.

Sharp, London : Novello and Co, 1943 (see The best known was of course Benjamin Britten's version that he first published in 1947 in hisThe first "Folk"-recording was by singer and dulcimer player Andrew Rowan Summers from Virginia who included "Oh, Waly, Waly" in 1954 for his LP In fact this song only became "famous" after Pete Seeger had recorded his version in 1958. Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Songs and Ballads from the Cambridge University Library, 12 Volumes, Woodbridge, CT 1987 (Microfilm)Notes And Queries.

1650, ESTC But "Oh Waly, Waly" also shares four verses with "Arthur's Seat Shall Be My Bed, or: Love in Despair". Campbell & Sharp 1917, No. Vol. "The Water Is Wide" is one of the most popular "Folk songs" today, not at least because of its beautiful tune. Some verses from these texts were then borrowed and included in "new" songs like "The Unfortunate Swain" and "I'm Often Drunk And Seldom Sober" that were published on popular broadside sheets during the second half of the 18th century and in the early 19th century. W. Allen, Some Notes on "O Waly Waly", in: JEFDSS 7, 1954, p. 161-171Sabine Baring-Gould & Henry Fleetwood Sheppard, Songs And Ballads Of The West: A Collection Made From The Mouths Of The People, London 1891 (available at Sabine Baring-Gould, H. Fleetwood Sheppard & F. W. Bussell, Songs Of The West. The first with nine verses and a chorus can be found for example on a song-sheet printed by John Pitts in London (This is a song of somehow dubious quality, in fact it looks more like a random selection of verses without much inner coherence. But it  seems that Ramsay's text itself had very little or even no influence on oral tradition even though it had been printed and reprinted so often. Much of the text sounds very clumsy and in the fourth as well as in the last verse there aren't even any rhymes.When was this song first published? In fact the melodies of versions A and C - and D  should also be mentioned  -  of "Lord Thomas" (Sharp 1917, No.16, pp.

Third Series, London 1906 (available as a pdf-file at Cecil Sharp, One Hundred English Folk Songs For Medium Voice, Boston & New York 1916 (available at Betty N. Smith, Jane Hicks Gentry: A Singer Among Singers, Lexington 1998Harold W. Thompson, Body, Boots, & Britches: Folktales, Ballads, and Speech from Country New York, Syracuse 1979 (first published 1939; partly available at Many thanks  to Stewart Grant who has written about “The Water Is Wide” for my former website and  who encouraged me find out a little more about this song!