Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 42: WILLIE BREWED

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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.

WILLIE BREWED

O Willie brew’d a peck o’ maut,

And Rob and Allan cam to see;

Three blyther hearts, that lee-lang night,

Ye wad na found in Christendie.

We are na fou’, we’re no that fou,

But just a drappie in our e’e;

The cock may craw, the day may daw,

And aye we’ll taste the barley bree!

Here are we met, three merry boys,

Three merry boys, I trow, are we;

And mony a night we’ve merry been,

And mony mae we hope to be!

It is the moon, I ken her horn,

That’s blinkin’ in the lift sae hie;

She shines sae bright to wyle us hame,

But, by my sooth! she’ll wait a wee.

Wha first shall rise to gang awa,

A cuckold, coward loun is he!

Wha first beside his chair shall fa’,

He is the King among us three!