"Wee Willie Winkie" is a Scottish nursery rhyme whose protagonist has become popular as a personification of sleep. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 13711.
Scots poet William Miller (1810–1872), appears to have popularised a pre-existing nursery rhyme, adding additional verses to make up a five stanza poem. Miller’s “Willie Winkie: A Nursery Rhyme’ was first published in a collection of poems called Whistle-Binkie: Stories for the Fireside (1841)1. with the footer that ‘Willie Winkie’ was “The Scottish Nursery Morpheus” indicating, that Miller was drawing upon an established folkloric figure of sleep, Morpheus.
The chapbook The Cries of Banbury and London (c.1820) contains the singular first verse ‘little willie winkie’, pre-dates the publication of Miller’s poem. Another nursery collection, published in London three years after Miller’s poem, also contains just the first stanza, suggesting that the lyrics were circulating independently in the 1840s.
Words
thumb|upright|A [[tirling pin on a house in Edinburgh. The pin was scraped up and down to make a rattling sound, announcing a visitor's presence]]
Original text of 1841 in Scots, alongside a paraphrased English version (from 1844):
<!-- Please do not change this to your own interpretation as to how Scots is spelt. This is the way the author spelt it and your own spelling ideas are not warranted -->
Origins and meaning
The poem was first printed in Whistle-binkie: Stories for the Fireside by William Miller in 1841, then re-printed in Whistle-Binkie; a Collection of Songs for the Social Circle published in 1873. but it seems likely that Miller was simply using the name rather than writing a Jacobite satire. and Billy Winker in Lancashire.
Notes
External links
- — includes "Wee Willie Winkie"
- — contains "Willie Winkie" and the autograph of Miller (1873)