Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 17: THERE’LL NEVER BE PEACE TILL JAMIE COMES HAME

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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.

THERE’LL NEVER BE PEACE TILL JAMIE COMES HAME

By yon castle wa’, at the close of the day,

I heard a man sing, tho’ his head it was grey:

And as he was singing, the tears down came—

‘There’ll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.

‘The church is in ruins, the state is in jars,

Delusions, oppressions, and murderous wars;

We dare na weel say’t, but we ken wha’s to blame—

There’ll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.

‘My seven braw sons for Jamie drew sword,

And now I greet round their green beds in the yerd;

It brak the sweet heart o’ my faithfu’ auld dame—

There’ll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.

‘Now life is a burden that bows me down,

Sin’ I tint my bairns, and he tint his crown;

But till my last moment my words are the same—

There’ll never be peace till Jamie comes hame.’