Thank you, Steve; a scan would be great.

Concerning B4, MTV fans will find it incomprehensible that anyone could have been offended by it a century ago. You'll recall Child's comment on "The Keach in the Creel," which, he says, contains lines that are "brutal and shameless almost beyond example." Today, no one is sure what he could have meant.

Even in big-city America in the '60s, the "sweetheart wi bairn" seemed, not "rude," but far spicier than anything one might hear in pop music. The bastardy was bad enough, but there was then the frank recommendation to get away uncaring and unscathed. Today the humorless will find the sexism objectionable rather than the fornication.

Teen folkies (if there are any) may find such musings enlightening.

Gutcher, when I write Scots I try to stick as close to ordinary English spelling as conscience will allow. (Even Burns wrote " *To* a Mouse." My students still had to grapple with the poem as though it were written in Dutch or something.)