Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 25: GREEN GROW THE RASHES

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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.

GREEN GROW THE RASHES

There’s nought but care on ev’ry han’,

In ev’ry hour that passes O;

What signifies the life o’ man,

An’ ’twere na for the lasses O.

Green grow the rashes O,

Green grow the rashes O;

The sweetest hours that e’er I spend,

Are spent amang the lasses O!

The warly race may riches chase,

An’ riches still may fly them O;

An’ tho’ at last they catch them fast,

Their hearts can ne’er enjoy them O.

But gie me a canny hour at e’en,

My arms about my dearie O;

An’ warly cares, an’ warly men,

May a’ gae tapsalteerie O!

For you sae douce, ye sneer at this,

Ye’re nought but senseless asses O:

The wisest man the warl’ e’er saw,

He dearly lov’d the lasses O.

Auld nature swears, the lovely dears

Her noblest work she classes O;

Her prentice han’ she tried on man,

An’ then she made the lasses O.