Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 100: WHISTLE OWRE THE LAVE O’T

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About This Book

A collected selection of the poet's songs and shorter lyrics presents his explorations of love, nature, rural Scottish life, patriotism, and social observation, often rendered in Scots dialect and intended for musical performance. The volume groups brief pieces alongside several longer poems, supplies a glossary of dialect terms and an index of first lines, and includes illustrative plates. Many lyrics evoke landscapes, domestic scenes, and communal gatherings, balancing tenderness and satire while varying tone from celebratory to elegiac. The arrangement favors lyrical vitality rather than strict chronology, offering readers both popular airs and more extended narrative poems within a single accessible anthology.

WHISTLE OWRE THE LAVE O’T

First when Maggy was my care,

Heaven, I thought, was in her air;

Now we’re married—spier nae mair—

Whistle owre the lave o’t.

Meg was meek, and Meg was mild,

Bonnie Meg was nature’s child—

Wiser men than me’s beguil’d;

Whistle owre the lave o’t.

How we live, my Meg and me,

How we love and how we ’gree,

I care na by how few may see—

Whistle owre the lave o’t.

Wha I wish were maggots’ meat,

Dish’d up in her winding sheet,

I could write—but Meg may see’t;

Whistle owre the lave o’t.