Hey, Johnnie Cope, Are Ye Waking Yet?
traditional song
"Hey, Johnnie Cope, are Ye Wauking Yet?" (Roud 2315), also "Hey Johnnie Cope, are you awake yet?", "Heigh! Johnnie Cowp, are ye wauken yet?", or simply "Johnny Cope" is a Scottish folk song that also features in bagpipe recitals.
Background
The song commemorates the Battle of Prestonpans, fought on 21 September during the Jacobite rising of 1745. Forces led by the Stuart exile Charles Edward Stuart defeated a government army under Sir John Cope, whose troops broke in the face of a Highland charge. The battle lasted less than fifteen minutes and was a huge boost to Jacobite morale, while a heavily mythologised version of the story entered art and legend. Cope and two others were tried by a court-martial in 1746 and exonerated, the court deciding defeat was due to the 'shameful conduct of the private soldiers'.
Adam Skirving, a local farmer, visited the battlefield later that afternoon where he was, by his own account, mugged by the victors. He wrote two songs, "Tranent Muir" and the better-known "Hey, Johnnie Cope, Are Ye Waking Yet?" by using well-known tunes which still feature in Scottish folk music and bagpipe recitals. The song does not accurately represent what occurred during the battle.
The poet Robert Burns later wrote his own words to the song, but these are not as well known as Skirving's.
“Hey, Johnnie Cope, Are Ye Waking Yet?” enters the record as traditional song. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Johnnie, Cope and Waking can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Hey, Johnnie Cope, Are Ye Waking Yet?” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Johnnie, Cope and Waking provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5749173. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1745 and 1746.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Hey, Johnnie Cope, Are Ye Waking Yet?” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.