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Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 82: TO THE WEAVERS GIN YE GO

By Robert Burns

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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.

TO THE WEAVERS GIN YE GO

My heart was ance as blythe and free

As simmer days were lang,

But a bonnie westlin weaver lad

Has gart me change my sang.

To the weavers gin ye go, fair maids,

To the weavers gin ye go;

I rede you right gang ne’er at night,

To the weavers gin ye go.

My mither sent me to the town,

To warp a plaiden wab;

But the weary, weary warpin o’t

Has gart me sigh and sab.

A bonnie westlin weaver lad

Sat working at his loom;

He took my heart as wi’ a net,

In every knot and thrum.

I sat beside my warpin-wheel,

And aye I ca’d it roun’;

But every shot and every knock,

My heart it gae a stoun.

The moon was sinking in the west

Wi’ visage pale and wan

As my bonnie westlin weaver lad

Convoy’d me through the glen.

But what was said, or what was done,

Shame fa’ me gin I tell;

But oh! I fear the kintra soon

Will ken as weel’s mysel.

To the weavers gin ye go, fair maids,

To the weavers gin ye go;

I rede you right gang ne’er at night,

To the weavers gin ye go.