Aiken Drum

The name *Aiken Drum’ is best known in the Scottish nursery rhyme:

There cam’ a man to oor toun,
To oor toun, to oor toun.
There cam’ a man to oor toun
An’ his name was Aiken Drum.

This is quoted in full by lona and Peter Opie in The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes as, * There was a man lived in the Moon’. It is, however, the name given by William Nicholson to the Brownie of Blednoch in Galloway.
William Nicholson wrote several ballads on folklore themes; ‘Aiken Drum’ is to be found in the third edition of his Poetical Works (1878).

Aiken Drum in the nursery rhyme wears entirely edible clothes, a hat of cream cheese, a coat of roast beef, buttons of penny loaves, and so on, but the Brownie of Blednoch was naked except for a kilt of green rushes, and like all brownies he was laid by a gift of clothing:

For a new-made wife, fu’ o’ rippish freaks,
Fond o’ a’ things feat for the first five weeks,
Laid a mouldy pair o’ her ain man’s breeks
By the brose o’ Aiken-drum.
Let the learned decide when they convene,
What spell was him and the breeks between
For frae that day forth he was nae mair seen,
And sair missed was Aiken-drum!