Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 88: OUT OVER THE FORTH

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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.

OUT OVER THE FORTH

Out over the Forth I look to the north,

But what is the north and its Highlands to me?

The south nor the east gie ease to my breast,

The far foreign land, or the wild rolling sea.

But I look to the west, when I gae to rest,

That happy my dreams and my slumbers may be;

For far in the west lives he I lo’e best,

The lad that is dear to my babie and me.