Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 66: A BOUSING CATCH

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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.

A BOUSING CATCH

My love she’s but a lassie yet;

We’ll let her stand a year or twa,

She’ll no be half sae saucy yet.

I rue the day I sought her, O,

I rue the day I sought her, O;

Wha gets her needs na say she’s woo’d,

But he may say he’s bought her, O!

Come, draw a drap o’ the best o’t yet;

Gae seek for pleasure where ye will,

But here I never miss’d it yet.

We’re a’ dry wi’ drinking o’t,

We’re a’ dry wi’ drinking o’t;

The minister kiss’d the fiddler’s wife,

An’ could na preach for thinkin’ o’t.