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Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 22: DUNCAN GRAY
By Robert Burns
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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.

DUNCAN GRAY

Duncan Gray came here to woo,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t,
On blythe Yule night when we were fou,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
Maggie coost her head fu’ heigh,
Look’d asklent and unco skeigh,
Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh;
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
Duncan fleech’d, and Duncan pray’d;
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t,
Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
Duncan sigh’d baith out and in,
Grat his een baith bleer’t and blin’,
Spak o’ lowpin o’er a linn;
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
Time and chance are but a tide,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t,
Slighted love is sair to bide,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
Shall I, like a fool, quoth he,
For a haughty hizzie die?
She may gae to—France for me!
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
How it comes let doctors tell,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t,
Meg grew sick as he grew haill,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
Something in her bosom wrings,
For relief a sigh she brings;
And O, her een they spak sic things!
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
Duncan was a lad o’ grace,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t,
Maggie’s was a piteous case,
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.
Duncan couldna be her death,
Swelling pity smoor’d his wrath;
Now they’re crouse and cantie baith!
Ha, ha, the wooing o’t.