Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 14: DAINTY DAVIE

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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.

DAINTY DAVIE

Now rosy May comes in wi’ flowers,

To deck her gay, green spreading bowers;

And now comes in my happy hours,

To wander wi’ my Davie.

Meet me on the warlock knowe,

Dainty Davie, dainty Davie,

There I’ll spend the day wi’ you,

My ain dear dainty Davie.

The crystal waters round us fa’,

The merry birds are lovers a’,

The scented breezes round us blaw,

A wandering wi’ my Davie.

When purple morning starts the hare,

To steal upon her early fare,

Then through the dews I will repair,

To meet my faithfu’ Davie.

When day, expiring in the west,

The curtain draws o’ Nature’s rest,

I flee to his arms I lo’e best,

And that’s my ain dear Davie.