Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Chapter 525: Bonie Peg-a-Ramsay

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About This Book

The collection assembles lyrical songs, narrative poems, satirical pieces, epistles, epitaphs, and fragments that shift between convivial drinking verses, tender laments, and comic storytelling. Many lyrics were shaped to traditional airs and preserve vernacular speech, while longer works portray rural labor, domestic scenes, and compassionate encounters with animals. Satire targets religious hypocrisy and social pretension, and several poems take a direct, personal tone of moral reflection or affectionate address. The selections alternate moods and forms, emphasizing melodic phrasing and a versatile technical range.

Bonie Peg-a-Ramsay

Cauld is the e’enin blast, O’ Boreas o’er the pool, An’ dawin’ it is dreary, When birks are bare at Yule. Cauld blaws the e’enin blast, When bitter bites the frost, And, in the mirk and dreary drift, The hills and glens are lost: Ne’er sae murky blew the night That drifted o’er the hill, But bonie Peg-a-Ramsay Gat grist to her mill.