Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 69: THE BONNIE LAD THAT’S FAR 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.

THE BONNIE LAD THAT’S FAR AWA

O how can I be blithe and glad,

Or how can I gang brisk and braw,

When the bonnie lad that I lo’e best

Is o’er the hills and far awa?

It’s no the frosty winter wind,

It’s no the driving drift and snaw;

But aye the tear comes in my e’e,

To think on him that’s far awa.

My father pat me frae his door,

My friends they hae disown’d me a’:

But I hae ane will tak my part,

The bonnie lad that’s far awa.

A pair o’ gloves he bought to me,

And silken snoods he gae me twa;

And I will wear them for his sake,

The bonnie lad that’s far awa.

O weary winter soon will pass,

And spring will cleed the birken shaw:

And my young babie will be born,

And he’ll be hame that’s far awa.