Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 60: MY NANNIE’S AWA

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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.

MY NANNIE’S AWA

Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays,

And listens the lambkins that bleat o’er the braes,

While birds warble welcomes in ilka green shaw;

But to me it’s delightless—my Nannie’s awa.

The snaw-drap and primrose our woodlands adorn,

And violets bathe in the weet o’ the morn:

They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw,

They mind me o’ Nannie—and Nannie’s awa.

Thou laverock that springs frae the dews o’ the lawn

The shepherd to warn o’ the grey-breaking dawn,

And thou, mellow mavis, that hails the night-fa’,

Gie over for pity—my Nannie’s awa.

Come autumn sae pensive, in yellow and gray,

And soothe me wi’ tidings o’ nature’s decay;

The dark, dreary winter, and wild-driving snaw,

Alane can delight me—now Nannie’s awa.