Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 11: BLYTHE AND MERRY

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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.

BLYTHE AND MERRY

By Ochtertyre there grows the aik,

On Yarrow banks the birken shaw;

But Phemie was a bonnier lass

Than braes o’ Yarrow ever saw.

Blythe, blythe and merry was she,

Blythe was she but and ben:

Blythe by the banks of Earn,

And blythe in Glenturit glen.

Her looks were like a flower in May,

Her smile was like a simmer morn;

She trippèd by the banks of Earn

As light’s a bird upon a thorn.

Her bonnie face it was as meek

As ony lamb’s upon a lea;

The evening sun was ne’er sae sweet

As was the blink o’ Phemie’s e’e.

The Highland hills I’ve wander’d wide,

And o’er the Lowlands I hae been;

But Phemie was the blythest lass

That ever trod the dewy green.

She trippèd by the banks of Earn

As light’s a bird upon a thorn.