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Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Chapter 562: Mally’s Meek, Mally’s Sweet
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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.

Mally’s Meek, Mally’s Sweet

Chorus—Mally’s meek, Mally’s sweet, Mally’s modest and discreet; Mally’s rare, Mally’s fair, Mally’s every way complete. As I was walking up the street, A barefit maid I chanc’d to meet; But O the road was very hard For that fair maiden’s tender feet. Mally’s meek, &c. It were mair meet that those fine feet Were weel laced up in silken shoon; An’ ’twere more fit that she should sit Within yon chariot gilt aboon, Mally’s meek, &c. Her yellow hair, beyond compare, Comes trinklin down her swan-like neck, And her two eyes, like stars in skies, Would keep a sinking ship frae wreck, Mally’s meek, &c.