Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 70: OF A’ THE AIRTS

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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.

OF A’ THE AIRTS

Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw,

I dearly like the west,

For there the bonnie lassie lives,

The lassie I lo’e best:

There’s wild woods grow, and rivers row,

And mony a hill between;

But day and night my fancy’s flight

Is ever wi’ my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers,

I see her sweet and fair:

I hear her in the tunefu’ birds,

I hear her charm the air:

There’s not a bonnie flower that springs

By fountain, shaw, or green;

There’s not a bonnie bird that sings,

But minds me o’ my Jean.

There’s wild woods grow, and rivers row,

And mony a hill between;

But day and night my fancy’s flight

Is ever wi’ my Jean.