Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 49: DUNCAN DAVISON

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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 DAVISON

There was a lass, they ca’d her Meg,

And she held o’er the moors to spin;

There was a lad that follow’d her,

They ca’d him Duncan Davison.

The moor was driegh, and Meg was skiegh,

Her favour Duncan could na win;

For wi’ the rock she wad him knock,

And ay she shook the temper-pin.

As o’er the moor they lightly foor,

A burn was clear, a glen was green,

Upon the banks they eased their shanks,

And aye she set the wheel between:

But Duncan swore a haly aith,

That Meg should be a bride the morn;

Then Meg took up her spinnin’ graith,

And flung them a’ out o’er the burn.

We’ll big a house—a wee, wee house,

And we will live like King and Queen,

Sae blythe and merry we will be

When ye set by the wheel at e’en.

A man may drink and no be drunk;

A man may fight and no be slain;

A man may kiss a bonnie lass,

And aye be welcome back again.