The Keach i the Creel


The Keach I' the Creel, also known as The Ride in the Creel or The Wee Toun Clerk, is an English-language folk song, originating from England and Scotland sometime in the early 1800s.

Synopsis

A young woman tells a man that her parents keep her too close for them to meet. The man has his brother make a ladder and a pulley to hoist a basket down the chimney; the ladder takes him to the chimney, and riding in the large creel he is lowered into her bedroom. Her mother guesses there is a man in the daughter's bed and sends the father. She hides her lover and persuades her father she was praying. Her mother, still suspicious, goes herself. She trips and is caught in the creel and tossed all about in it; the father professes that he's fed up with all of them, for he's had no rest all the night with the goings-on.

Recordings

This ballad has been recorded by: