Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 105: YOUNG HIGHLAND ROVER

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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.

YOUNG HIGHLAND ROVER

Loud blaw the frosty breezes,

The snaws the mountains cover;

Like winter on me seizes,

Since my young Highland Rover

Far wanders nations over.

Where’er he go, where’er he stray,

May Heaven be his warden,

Return him safe to fair Strathspey,

And bonnie Castle-Gordon!

The trees, now naked groaning,

Shall soon wi’ leaves be hinging,

The birdies, dowie moaning,

Shall a’ be blythely singing,

And every flower be springing:

Sae I’ll rejoice the lee-lang day,

When, by his mighty warden,

My youth’s return’d to fair Strathspey

And bonnie Castle-Gordon.