Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 92: YE BANKS AND BRAES

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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.

YE BANKS AND BRAES

Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?

How can ye chant, ye little birds,

And I sae weary fu’ o’ care?

Thou’lt break my heart, thou warbling bird,

That wantons thro’ the flowering thorn:

Thou minds me o’ departed joys,

Departed never to return.

Aft hae I rov’d by bonnie Doon,

To see the rose and woodbine twine;

And ilka bird sang o’ its love,

And fondly sae did I o’ mine.

Wi’ lightsome heart I pu’d a rose,

Fu’ sweet upon its thorny tree;

And my fause lover stole my rose,

But ah! he left the thorn wi’ me.