Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 87: WANDERING WILLIE

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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.

WANDERING WILLIE

Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie,

Here awa, there awa, haud awa hame;

Come to my bosom, my ain only dearie,

Tell me thou bring’st me my Willie the same.

Winter winds blew loud and cauld at our parting,

Fears for my Willie brought tears to my e’e;

Welcome now, Simmer, and welcome, my Willie,

The Simmer to nature, my Willie to me!

Rest, ye wild storms, in the cave of your slumbers;

How your dread howling a lover alarms!

Wauken, ye breezes, row gently, ye billows,

And waft my dear laddie ance mair to my arms.

But oh, if he’s faithless, and minds na his Nannie,

Flow still between us, thou wide roaring main;

May I never see it, may I never trow it,

But, dying, believe that my Willie’s my ain!