Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 51: WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD

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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.

WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD

O whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad;

O whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad:

Tho’ father and mither and a’ should gae mad,

O whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad.

But warily tent, when ye come to court me,

And come na unless the back-yett be a-jee;

Syne up the back-stile, and let naebody see,

And come as ye were na comin’ to me,

And come as ye were na comin’ to me.

At kirk, or at market, whene’er ye meet me,

Gang by me as tho’ that ye car’d na a flee:

But steal me a blink o’ your bonnie black e’e—

Yet look as ye were na lookin’ at me,

Yet look as ye were na lookin’ at me.

Aye vow and protest that ye care na for me,

And whiles ye may lightly my beauty a wee;

But court na anither’ tho’ jokin’ ye be,

For fear that she wyle your fancy frae me,

For fear that she wyle your fancy frae me.