Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 31: O, FOR ANE AN’ TWENTY, TAM!

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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.

O, FOR ANE AN’ TWENTY, TAM!

An’ O for ane an’ twenty, Tam!

An’ hey, sweet ane an’ twenty, Tam!

I’ll learn my kin a rattlin’ sang,

An I saw ane an’ twenty, Tam.

They snool me sair, and haud me down,

An’ gar me look like bluntie, Tam!

But three short years will soon wheel roun’,

An’ then comes ane an’ twenty, Tam.

A gleib o’ lan’, a claut o’ gear,

Was left me by my auntie, Tam;

At kith or kin I need na spier,

An I saw ane and twenty, Tam.

They’ll hae me wed a wealthy coof,

Tho’ I mysel’ hae plenty, Tam;

But hear’st thou, laddie? there’s my loof,

I’m thine at ane and twenty, Tam!