Cecil Sharp's Note 05 (1916)

No. 5. The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies, O!

Compare this song with “The Gipsy Countess (Songs of the West, No. 50, 2d ed.) and “The Gipsy” (A Garland of Country Song, No. 32). A Scottish version of the words is in Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany (volume iv); see also “Gypsie Laddie,” in Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (volume ii, p. 95, ed. 1791). In Finlay’s Scotish Ballads (1808), the ballad appears as “Johnnie Faa,” and in Chambers’s Picture of Scotland, a valiant effort is made, after the manner of Scottish commentators, to provide the story with a historical foundation.

The tune is in the Æolian mode. I have noted no less than eighteen variants.