SOURCE: "Love and the Lassies," in The Songs of Robert Burns: A Study of the Unity of Poetry and Music, Uppsala, 1977, pp. 31–53.

[In this essay, Ericson-Roos analyzes the women of Burns's love poetry, asserting that "Burns shows an extraordinary psychological insight into the feminine mind."]

The majority of Burns's songs deal with love, love seen from the poet's point of view or love seen through the eyes of one of the lovers. There are conventional pieces, droll and humorous scenes, young love, mature love, and erotic love. There are love-songs where the emphasis lies on sentiment, others where it lies on character or on action. Among all these songs we find Burns's most interesting and exciting characters. These are his young girls in love and particularly those who speak for themselves in the songs. Here Burns shows an extraordinary psychological insight into the feminine mind and as Christina Keith points out [in her The Russet Coat: A Critical Study of Burns' Poetry and of Its Background, 1956], at the time he wrote them he had "had great experience of girls, at any rate of the particular girl he had chosen as his type". These girls display a considerable amount of independence, of self-confidence, of self-knowledge, and of knowledge of the world. Their world is love, and love exclusively, but into this world they grow and through love they grow, from the first stage of girlhood and innocence into womanhood and experience. They come into conflict with convention and the code of female behaviour and with their parents' opinions, but in all situations they show strength of mind and individuality. A passive woman who lets herself be subdued cannot be found among these young women. Furthermore, as Christina Keith has shown [in The Russet Coat], Burns carried on the tradition of the Scottish folk-songs and ballads in which free love had managed to survive in spite of the Reformation and John Knox's attack on women. The Kirk had an iron grip on the people and on women, who had a very low status. Love flourished, however, where the Kirk could not reach it, in the Borders and in the Highlands, and with it the free and independent woman. In these songs we find the women of the old Scotland, women who "were captivating, free and elegant, without the remotest shadow of subjection".

The youngest and most innocent of these girls is to be found in "Tam Glen", a song which gives a portrait of a highly infatuated girl who is totally engrossed in the thoughts of her lover. Excitedly, she chatters away without stop about her dear Tam Glen, naively she believes in superstitious omens, and with growing self-confidence she reacts against her parents' opinions. The situation is common enough: the mother warns her against flattering men and the father wants her to marry for money. She listens to neither for the only advice she wants to hear is to marry Tam Glen. With the impatience of a very young girl in love, she begs and bribes her sister:

Her character, her girlishness and her state of mind with its agitation and restlessness is conveyed through words and music. The quick flight of her thoughts and the intensity of her chatter lie embodied in the quick tempo of the tune (the 9/8-time is suggestive of this) and in the syllabic setting for the undotted notes, which makes one pronounce each word quickly and vigorously and with equal force. Kinsley notes the preoccupation with the name and also how the "girl's persistent chatter" is sustained by the melody. She speaks uninterruptedly, her heart seems to beat quickly, and she has hardly time to take a breath before she starts talking again. The shortness of the tune (it is only four bars long), the monotonous melody and the even rhythm captures this very well. Only at the end of the second and fourth bars does the tune come to a rest on a crotchet and on these cadences the repeated name of Tam Glen and its rhymes fall.

At one point in each stanza there is an intensification of the girl's emotions. This happens in the last bar, where the melody emphatically rises. There is a large and unexpected upward skip to the highest note of the tune-followed by a gradual descent to the tonic. This feature of the tune reinforces the climax of the fourth lines of each stanza and, as the mode is minor, it lends them a sense of despair and exasperation. But there is also irritation and impatience in the expression and the high note brings out the important question words "what", "when" and "wha". These lines are also the keys to the girl's state of mind. Young as she seems and new as the sensation is to her, she is full of wonder, questions and impatience: "what will I do", "wha can think sae" and "wha will I get".

Another young, inexperienced but less impatient girl appears in "I'm o'er young to Marry Yet", a more uncomplicated song with humorous implications. This girl is being courted by a man somewhat older than herself, but she rejects him, claiming that she is too young to marry. Yet she is intelligent—and witty—enough to see that it will not be long before she is ready to say yes. She measures time by the seasons, and half a year, from winter to summer, is what she believes she needs to be old enough to marry. The song is spun around the contrasts between winter and summer, young and old, mother's child and man's woman, innocence and experience, the present and the future. The girl is now her mother's "ae bairn" (only child), she is "o'er young", and "o'er young" is repeated four times in the chorus, it is "winter" and "frosty" and both words are emphasized through the rise in the melody. But what will come is implied strongly enough in the last stanza of the song:

The light note of the song is struck already in the old chorus from which Burns took his start [Notes on Scottish Song by Robert Burns: Written in an Interleaved Copy of the Scots Musical Museum with Additions by Robert Riddell and Others, 1908, edited by James C. Dick; hereafter referred to as Notes] and the skittish, cheerful and innocent character of the young girl is suggested in the light-tripping reel-tune, the even rhythm, the quick tempo, the high register, the rising phrases, and the major mode. [In his Burns: A Study of the Poems and Songs, 1960, Thomas] Crawford acknowledges the importance of the tune and says that "the words and music combine to give us a girl's mood shortly after puberty—shy, blushing, yet full of the knowledge of what she is and what she must become".

In the first line of the song ("I am my mammy's ae bairn") the significance and implications of the word "ae" are emphasized in the musical context. It emphatically falls on a rising melodic line as well as on two notes in the otherwise syllabic setting of the song. The fact that the girl is her mother's only child is one of the reasons she gives to the man for not marrying him, and therefore '"twad be a sin / To tak me frae my mammy yet". The other reason for her denial of the man is that she shudders at the thought of creeping into bed with him: "And lying in a man's bed, / I'm fley'd it make me irie, Sir" (afraid; frightened). In this example (from stanza 1) "man's" falls on two notes, emphasizing an implied antithesis—to lie in a man's bed and not in one's own—and in stanza 2 ("And you an' I in ae bed, / In trowth, I dare na venture, Sir") the word "ae" is accented. A man and one bed, that is a collocation which is quite beyond her field of experience.

The "Sir" at the end of every second line has several functions. It makes the song more personal (the girl addresses one particular man) at the same time as it shows the girl's respect for the older man, but the word is also needed for technical reasons. Without it the cadence would end rather heavily on "winter", "timmer" etc. [In his Robert Burns, 1966, David] Daiches notes this and says that "the diction flows with a happy directness and a fine dramatic feeling, while the monosyllable 'Sir' provides just what the poem needs to bring the rhythms of the reel into the diction and fit the piece perfectly to its tune".

A girl who ventures into bed with a man with less hesitation is "the sleepy bit lassie" in "The Taylor fell thro' the bed, & c." "She thought that a Taylor could do her nae ill" and once she has been initiated she joyfully sings out her longing and her passion. The song has a wide register and, as [James] Kinsley points out [as editor of The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, 1968], it moves "from comedy through passion to longing, and a last touch of comedy". Only the second and fourth stanzas are Burns's own (Notes), but, as Kinsley notes, these, and the change in the third stanza from the traditional "The night it is short and the day it is lang, / It's a dear-won tipence to lie wi' a man" to "The day it is short and the night it is land, / The dearest siller that ever I wan" completely change the character of the song and the girl. Her frank and spontaneous passion now successfully corresponds to the free swing of the tune. It is major and has a dotted 6/8 rhythm which, along with the upward leap of an octave in the first and third bars, both enlivens the comical note in the song and expresses the girl's uninhibited joy in love-making.

Very free and independent for her eighteen years, mature and full of opposition against her parents is the girl of "O, for ane and twenty Tam". She will not be oppressed by them any longer, nor will she marry a fool for his money. She knows her worth and as soon as she comes of age ("ane and twenty") she will marry the boy she loves. Her maturity and strength is expressed through both text and tune. The melancholy high part with its stronger minor quality, its small intervals and intensifying upward direction enhances the girl's bitter feelings against her parents, expressed in the first stanza: "They snool me sair, and haud me down, / And gar me look like bluntie, Tam" (snool snub; sair sore; haud hold; gar make; bluntie fool). It also makes her opposition, expressed in the more relaxed chorus, psychologically logical. This girl has none of the worries of the girl in "Tam Glen", she is not dependent on anybody, and in the last stanza she gives her hand in pledge to the boy: "But hearst thou, laddie, there's my loof, / I'm thine at ane and twenty, Tam!" (hand given in pledge). The girl in "Tam Glen" is on her way to self-confidence and independence, but she still feels that "to anger them a' is a pity" (meaning her parents) and she needs her sister's support. The tune of "O for ane" is slow and much less excited than that of "Tam Glen". The emphatic high starts of the upbeats in the chorus ("An O", "An hey") give the girl's words a sense of conviction. She takes her time and rests on the cadences with the repeated "twenty Tam", and there is also a refrain-line in each stanza and a chorus to give the song a more balanced expression. Burns conceived of this song as fairly slow and he was not pleased with the setting in SMM [The Scots Musical Museum Originally Published by James bunson with Illustrations of the Lyric Poetry and Music of Scotland by William Stenhouse, vol. I, 1853; facsimile edition, 1960] (where it is marked as "canty" lively). In a letter to Thomson [printed in The Letters of Robert Burns, edited by J. De Lancey Ferguson, 1931] he writes: "but if you will get any of our ancienter Scots Fiddler to play you, in Strathspey time (my italics), 'The Moudiewort,' (that is the name of the air) I think it will delight you". The younger girl in "Tam Glen" is restlessly babbling on with no sense of pause anywhere: "She keeps on at it too—as they do—dinning the name at you in verse after verse", as Christina Keith puts it. Her conversation with her sister is intimate, worried, secret and whispering, whereas the girl in "O for ane" is critical, extrovert, straightforward and free.

She shares her strength of character with the girl in "Country Lassie" Just like her this girl is not prepared to listen to the materialistic and moral advice of her elders or let them decide for her, and she knows that "the tender heart o' leesome loove, / The gowd and siller canna buy" (dear love). The poem is set to a beautiful, slightly melancholy tune, but the length and complexity of the poem, along with its dialogue form, make the ties between text and tune seem weaker in this song and allow less insight into character.

"The gallant Weaver" also has the theme of the conflict between love and money but is less dramatic than the songs discussed above. Its major tune is gently undulating, its tempo is slow, and the rhythm alternates smoothly between crotchets and quavers. The opening scene is all pleasantness, the "Cart rins rowin to the sea, / By mony a flower and spreading tree" (rolling), and with conviction and confidence the girl calmly sings:

My daddie sign'd my tocher-band [marriage-settlement]
To gie the lad that has the land,
But to my heart I'll add my hand
And give it to the Weaver.—

Because of the musical pattern there is no sense of opposition or excitement in the third line of the quoted stanza. The air flows on at the same unvaried pace, having almost the same melodic curve here as for the first line. Emotional peaks are levelled out, and the impression is conveyed that this girl knows what she wants and that a parental decision cannot upset her or make her change her mind. This optimism is reinforced by the last stanza which lies on the high part of the tune, has a repetitional pattern and positive words like "rejoice" and "delight".

Another girl who is confronted with a materialistic love is the girl in "My Tochers the Jewel". The conflict in this song does not lie between the girl and her parents, but within the girl herself, for she has seen through her lover: "My laddie's sae meikle in love wi' the siller, / He canna hae luve to spare for me" (much). She presents this situation in the first half-stanza with a striking antithesis between "O meikle thinks my Luve o' my beauty" and the bitter truth of "But little thinks my Luve, I ken brawlie, / My tocher's the jewel has charms for him" (know well; dowry). This last line is intensified through the lift in the tune followed by a descent. There is melancholy and sadness in the girl's voice, an expression which is conveyed entirely by the slow, minor tune. In the second stanza she shows that she has insight and strength, and she despises the money-seeking lover: "But an ye be crafty, I am cunnin, / Sae ye wi' anither your fortune maun try" (an if; maun must). As Kinsley points out the song is not quite homogeneous as the last half stanza is old and not made an organic part of the song.

"When she can ben she bobbed" is not a song about or by a lassie as much as to a lassie. The singer (probably a man) wants to implant in the girl's mind just those values which we have seen are held high by the young girls in the other songs:

O never look down, my lassie at a',
O never look down, my lassie at a';
Thy lips are as sweet and thy figure compleat,
As the finest dame in castle or ha'.—

As noted by Kinsley, Burns took his start (lines 1–6) from a traditional song which presents a flirtatious laird who spites his wife for the collier lassie and "the lass in the stable". Burns changes the character of this man and makes him the true lover who chooses the collier lassie for love, instead of the wealthy "dochter of a lord" for her money. the girl, who is presented as shy and submissive in the first, traditional stanza ("O when she cam ben she bobbed fu' law" indoors; curtseyed very low), is then told to keep her head high and be proud, for her worth lies not in her economic status. The tune is light and lilting (6/8-time and major) but also emphatic with its snaps and upward skips and runs. This gives weight to the man's words, yet keeps the song at a light-hearted level. The lift of an octave in the second two-bar phrase should be noticed, for it gives a new intensification to the repetition in the second line of each stanza which passes unnoticed if the song is read.

A young girl's wishes might not only conflict with the expectations of the parents, as in many of the songs above, but also with society's claims for virtue, innocence and honour. In "Wha is that at my bower door?" the girl makes strong attempts to resist the man, as it is expected of her, but the song shows her slowly yielding to him, only a little anxious that anybody will know. The idea of the dialogue-form of the song is very old and Burns had an immediate model in a broadside. As pointed out by Kinsley, this has the same structure, with questions and answers, as Burns's own song, but lacks the humour and insight into character:

From this old broadside stanza and in the tradition of the night-visiting songs Burns develops the theme in his own way, creating, with a strong sense of humour, a "carle" who is self-assured, masculine and straightforward in his attempts to be let in by the girl:

Findlay's character remains constant throughout the song. His lines are only slightly varied with a touch of humour, as he teasingly takes up the preceding words of the girl: "In my bower if ye should stay, / Let me stay, quo' Findlay" or "Here this night if ye remain, / I'll remain, quo' Findlay". He sets out with one intention—to make the girl let him in—and he makes no attempts to conceal this. He is certain that her hesitation is only a conventional attitude and that his honest, but slightly provoking manner will force her into a quicker decision. She, in turn, shows that she knows perfectly well what it is all about. She is on her guard and puts Findlay on trial by being seemingly resistant. "Before the morn ye'll work mischief", she says and goes on:

Crawford describes the situation this way: "From the very start, despite all appearances to the contrary, she has wanted to let Findlay into the bower, and she ends as absolute mistress of the situation. Findlay has made a binding promise to her (to be secret)—that is, he has yielded to her femininity; and the joke is that he thinks that he has conquered her!"

The tune suits the poem perfectly. It has a simplicity which allows the oppositions to be exposed, the oppositions between the questions and answers, between the apparent change in the girl's attitude and the constancy in Findlay's, and between her worries and his self-confidence. It is short, consisting of only eight bars, where one bar in the music corresponds to one line in the lyric. Significantly the girl's words are sung to arched or descending phrases, whereas Findlay's lie on the arched or more aggressive ascending ones. Especially the second and sixth bars (corresponding to the second line of each stanza) are very emphatic in their assertive upward direction. This becomes the climax of each stanza and helps to express the joy Findlay takes in challenging the girl's female code of coyness. It is also the point where he teases her by repeating her words. A sense of strength and assurance is also embodied in the dotted four-beat rhythm of the tune and in the lack of an upbeat. The potency of the "direct attack" on "Wha is that", "What mak ye", "Gif I rise" brings out a tone of irritation in the attitude of the girl. This points to a strong attempt to cover up the desire to let him in, but it is also a sign of her independence. The girl is, as has been pointed out, not completely in Findlay's power.

Even more illustrative of this double-standard of morality is the "Scotish Ballad". In this song it is very obvious how the girl tries to cover up her real feelings by keeping up a pretence of irritation and haughtiness. Yet she knows her feminine influence and when she risks the loss of her lover she is quick to act. Passivity is not a feature of Burns's heroines. [In The Tuneful Flame: Songs of Robert Burns as He Sang Them, editor Robert D., 1957] Thornton asserts that "never was there a girl more confident of her charm or more able to turn her lover inside out by teasing". The song has a very human humour and touch of subtle irony, and it is set to a tune of splendid momentum and liveliness. With gentleness Burns takes the ardent lover and the proud girl through a development where, as Kinsley puts it, "she begins in the pretences of the conventionally indifferent mistress, and ends by accepting her suitor—though with the humorous understatement characteristic of the Scots", and where "he begins with the traditional protestations of the sophisticated lover, falls back on appeals to greed and ambition, and in the end betrays a natural, comically desperate passion".

The irony in the handling of the characters and the pathetic overstatement in the love-effusions of the boy is to a great extent embodied in the way the words are set to the music. The middle-cadence in the second two-bar phrase is an ascending line ending on a long dotted crotchet. The words falling on this note are subsequently prolonged, and dimensions and implications are brought out which cannot be heard in a read version. There is irritation in the girl's first lines: "Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen, / And sair wi' his love he did deave me" (handsome; deafen), and mocking despise in her rendering of the boy's pathetic words: "He spak o' the darts in my bonie black een, / And vow'd for my love he was dying". Her incisive answers to the boy fall on the emphatic rise in the third two-bar phrase, and the rise-fall followed by a dotted upward leap from the fifth to the tonic expresses the energy which the girl needs to convince herself and him of her indifference. She protests, "I said, there was naething I hated like men", and her "naething" is saucily spat out on this upward leap. However, already in the second stanza it is clear that she is desperately trying to keep up pretences ("I said, he might die when he liked for JEAN—/ The Lord forgie me for lying, for lying") and in the third stanza she reveals that she has some feelings for the boy ("I never loot on that I kend it, or car'd" showed; was aware of).

In these three opening stanzas the first two phrases (a + b) of the tune are devoted to the boy and the last three (c + d + e) to the girl. The contrast between the two, thus reinforced by the music, is also emphasized by her resolute "I said" and "I never", falling on the rise up to the dotted tonic, which prolongs and accents the verbs. The irony lies in the opposition between what she says and what she actually feels, and the implications are obvious: she says one thing, but means and feels another. As the story proceeds it is the lover's turn to pretend, and being close (as she believes) to losing him, the girl has to act. She gives him a wink and "My wooer he caper'd as he'd been in drink, / And vow'd I was his dear lassie, dear lassie". Here the leap in the first bar of c makes the verb "caper'd" illustrative of the physical demonstration of the lover's joy. Crawford speaks in terms of "character, motive and mask" about this song, and if the mask was indifference with the girl at the beginning, it has now developed into irony and humour. In the last stanza the boy is back to the passion of the first part of the song, but the girl's answer this time expresses compassionate understatement:

The songs discussed so far have been songs of courtship. They have caught the young girls in the act of choosing (or refusing) a lover or a husband, and they have thrown light on the conflicts which might then arise. There has been a stress on personal strength, self-confidence and independence more than on the actual feelings of love. Some of the songs have been light-hearted, suggesting young girls, others have been humorous and most of them have been set to brisk, extrovert tunes. In another group of songs the themes are spun around longing and affectionate love, the relationships are more definitely established and the tunes are of a reflective character. In his essay on different types of folk-songs [Folk-song in Buchan and Folk-song of the North-East 1963] Gavin Greig makes a distinction between "apostrophic", introspective love-songs, and biographic, narrative ones, a distinction which applies very well to the songs in the following. To the latter group belong "My Harry was a Gallant gay" and "Wae is my heart" in which the girls speak about their love and their longing rather than addressing themselves straight to the beloved. The apostrophic songs, on the other hand, represent "the higher kind of lyric where the lover utters his own feelings in direct appeal to the object of his adoration". Songs of this type are the musical and lyrical translation of a central feeling and as Greig puts it, they give "unlimited scope for intensity of feeling and expression".

Such a song is "For the sake o' Somebody" in which a most generous and tender love is expressed, a love which is not seeking its own ends but is directed to the beloved person. There is a continuous return to the word "somebody" and a preoccupation of thought around this person. The lyric is beautifully suited to the structure, rhythm and melody of the tune, and the emotional dimensions of the song cannot be understood if text and tune are not considered together as one unity.

The tune consists of two almost identical sections, ab + a¹b, where a¹ lacks the upbeats and also has a heavier rhythm with longer first and third beats. In a and a¹ the phrases have an upward direction and the same melody is repeated twice, but the second time one fifth higher. This lift is strongly intensifying, and with his instinctive perception of the inherent expression of the tune Burns makes the lyrical meaning in both stanzas correspond to it:

Whereas the first line is tentative, the second is more definite and more passionate: "My heart is sair" not for anybody, but for "Somebody", and "Ye Powers that smile" on all lovers, smile especially on "Somebody". In both stanzas one word is repeated in both lines to hold them more firmly together ("sair" and "smile"). On the descent in b the girl gives proof of her love: she could "wake a winter-night" for her lover (stanza 1) and she bids the heavenly powers to keep him from danger (stanza 2).

For the second half of the tune there is a refrain with the change of the rhythm in a¹. As the rhythmical swing in the music is stronger here, the first and third beats being heavier, these lines seem more extrovert, and more overflowing with the joy of love. But the four-beat lilt and the arched melodic contour is also very expressive of sighing and yearning, and the intensity of the long close O of "Ohon" (often an expression of lament) and "Ohey" gives added emphasis to these feelings. The refrain-lines lead up to the protestation in the last couplet of each stanza, "I could range the warld round" and "I wad do—what wad I not", and this "For the sake o' Somebody". The fusion of the two arts, poetry and music, is most perfect in this song. The generous love and the passionate longing is embodied in both text and tune, and the simplicity and sensitivity with which the one is coupled to the other makes the song an organic whole, where each part is dependent on and enhanced by the other.

Another apostrophic song is "Ay waukin O", the lyrical and musical expression of a young girl lying awake at night, unable to sleep for thoughts of her dearie. Her longing, her unrest, her infatuation, her sadness, and her weariness, all this lies embodied in the short lyric and in its tune. The structure, the diction and the tonal language are extremely simple and nothing seems superfluous in this song. Through very small means it captures the desolate situation like a Japanese lyric, and the song itself is like a weary sigh.

The chorus expresses the girl's longing, her melancholy and her sighing. On two long notes (minims) the "Ay" and the "Oh" fall, being the utterance of her love-sick heart. The minor melody drops here, enhancing that sadness, but it rises in the second bar (taking line 2) as if to express her impatience and her unrest. In the third bar it monotonously repeats the same note four times before it falls again (line 3). It finally reaches its peak in the rise of the last bar, reinforcing the intensity of the girl's feelings. The stanzas contain the thoughts occupying the girl's mind and keeping her awake. The second (see below) is only a variation of the chorus and the other two are impressionistic lines, capturing the tired thoughts passing through her mind:

The music lies higher here, it has more dotted notes and seems to embody her unrest and excitement. But each poetical line is sung to a falling melodic phrase, each one starting anew as if it is an effort for the girl to express her thoughts, tired and sad as she is.

A narrative variant of the same theme is "How lang and dreary is the night" of which the first version (without the chorus) appeared in SMM. The second version, with a chorus and set to another tune, was sent to Thomson. This song, however, lacks the simplicity and concentrated emotional impact of "Ay waukin O". Its tune is more active with melodic rises, a large upward skip in the first bar and a dotted rhythm. As it is decidedly major it also fails to convey the sadness expressed in the lyric. The song is not a naked direct expression of a longing heart as "Ay waukin O" is, but the lyrical expansion about this feeling.

In the narrative "My Harry was a Gallant gay" the theme of longing and sadness is opposed to that of strength and vengeance. There are tensions within the girl of her tender feelings towards Highland Harry and of her bitter feelings toward those who saw to his banishment, and these tensions are embodied both in the tune and in the poetical interpretation of the tune. The predominant thought in the girl's mind is that of Highland Harry's return home, and in the refrain it is kept alive throughout the whole song. The form of the tune is abcb¹, where ab takes the stanzas and cb¹ the chorus. Burns has followed the musical structure with the repeated b-phrase and connected his own stanzas with the theme of the old chorus (Notes) by letting each last line take up the refrain of the latter:

In the chorus the girl's emotions intensify and get unbounded sway. At this point the tune changes register (it lifts by an octave) and the long first beat for "O" (n.b. the expressive lack of the upbeat) embodies all her unfulfilled longing.

With its interplay of dotted notes and snaps, its limited tonal material (the scale is pentatonic and bars 1 and 5 are built up on the tonic) and its assertive authentic range the tune is very powerful. All this is particularly effective in the first lines of the first and last stanzas, where the snaps accent the alliterations and make the words sound forceful and fierce. There is pride in the girl's voice when she sings, "My Harry was a gallant gay, / Fu' stately strade he on the plain", and for "stately" the tune makes a large upward leap, emphasizing that word. The alliteration in "stately strade" also adds to the sense of power as it helps to accent the beat. But the girl's happy reverie comes to a sudden end in line 3, where she bursts out, "But now he's banish'd far awa". Dramatically the tune now lifts and rises to the top note, before it descends into the refrain.

In the second stanza the girl's sadness is expressed. The descent of the tune in bar 2 here becomes finely expressive of the despondency in "I wander dowie up the glen" (sad), as if she slowly drops her head. The stanza is a good example of the expressive flexibility of a tune. From having been powerful in the first stanza it now responds to the more lyrical expression of the words. In the last stanza the girl gathers up strength and its first half expresses suppressed anger and threat. On the melodic ascent in b, however, she cheers up at the thought of seeing her lover again: "Then I might see the joyfu' sight, / My Highland Harry back again".

"Jamie come try me" also expresses the longing of a girl, but is more purely a song of the senses and a song of the passions. It is an interpretation of emotions only and says nothing about the circumstances around these emotions. It "calls up a picture of someone 'just waiting to be asked'—breathless with desire, and almost beseeching Jamie to take the first step", as Crawford puts it. The contents, language and structure of the lyric in combination with the character of the tune also suggest a slightly older girl than the ones in the songs discussed above.

The impact of the song is largely dependent on the tune, and the emotional connotations of the words can only be fully understood if the song is sung. The lyric has a very tightly knit structure which is moulded on that of the tune. At five places the two-bar phrases end on a minim and a crotchet, an ending which carries the repeated "try me" and its rhymes. The three remaining phrases have, melodically and rhythmically, a less final character. They take the repeated "love", and as these musical phrases more definitely lead on to the next, the poetical lines are correspondingly subordinate clauses leading onto the following main clause. The chorus introduces the theme round which the two stanzas are spun:

The first "Jamie come try me" is sung on an assertively ascending melodic line going from the tonic to its octave. It lacks the upbeat which makes the invitation more direct and straightforward. After this first attempt the girl becomes sensuous and alluring and her words are sung in a low register and with less directness (the melodic curve is now arched). Then there is a sudden tone of despair in her tune. It leaps up one octave and on this high note the word "if" falls. It jumps down again, but ascends from there and comes back to the last "Jamie come try me". This time it lies very high and therefore has a stronger intensity.

The stanzas, set to the second half of the tune, are spun round the if-questions and the tune in this section remains in the high register, giving more emphasis to these questions. For "Could I deny thee?" and "Wha could espy thee?" the melody rises, after which there is a return to the refrain of the song which is now sung to a passively descending melodic line: it is the last appeal, it is the least forceful, yet the snaps give it a certain urgency.

On the printed page this simple poem reveals very little of its emotional overtones. The sensuality, the urgent and alluring appeal, the intensity of the questions, the underlying despair, the wide emotional range of the song; all this lies embodied in the tune with its slow tempo, its great range, its melodic contour and the gentle lilt of the triple rhythm. One would never read the song as slowly as one can sing it, and one would not rest so pleadingly on "try", "deny" and "espy". A reading of the lyric becomes tediously regular, particularly because of the repetitions.

Another song which is even more lifeless and stereotype in print is "Stay, my Charmer, can you leave me?" Sung to its tune, however, it has an emotional dimension which the words alone are not capable of conveying. The song is about the cruelty of love:

The first two lines sound trite and conventional without their beautiful melodic lines, but when delivered in music they display the conflicting emotions within the woman. The melodic contour is for the first line passively descending and the plea to stay is filled with a feeling of resignation and hopelessness. But in the second line the despised woman gets excited at the thought of the deceiver: the melody changes direction and now emphatically rises. It is the cruelty of the committed "crime" which is the overwhelming feeling and the word "cruel" is repeated twice, the second time more incisively on the top note of the rising line. The word comes back, in lines 4 and 5, but are then connected with "Charmer". Line 4 is set to a descending phrase, it is passive, accepting facts, whereas line 5 is a sudden outburst of pain making the end of the song highly dramatic. There is an abrupt change of register of an octave and a fourth and a rise at the end of the phrase which changes the mechanical repetition of "Cruel Charmer, can you go!" into a kind of haunting thought in the lover's mind. The impact of the second stanza is weaker because of its stilted language and repeated "by". But the music levels out the grossest effects of this and lends different colours to each line. What was said about the repeated "cruel" in lines 4 and 5 applies equally to "do not" in lines 9 and 10.

"Wae is my heart" is also a song about the pains of love, although presented with more pretentiousness than the songs above. The grief felt by the girl is heightened by the slow tune with its falling contour and dramatic up-ward leap in the first half, and the higher and livelier second half, which makes the lyrical expression there more intense and more urgent. The fact that bars 1 and 3 lack upbeats gives added emphasis to the important words "wae" and "lang" in stanza 1, to the repeated "love" in stanza 2, and to the longing "O" in stanza 3. But the song is not one of Burns's best. Its somewhat rhetorical style ("Love, thou hast pleasures, and deep hae I loved; / Love thou hast sorrows, and sair hae I proved") and the name "Phillis" give it a tinge of eighteenth-century English poetry, which is not quite in unison with the unpretentiousness of the Scottish tune.

A love-song of a more uncomplicated and happy kind is "Young Jockey was the blythest lad". Through the frequent use of repetitions and words with pleasant associations Burns gives this lyric an extrovert character which finely responds to the cheerful expression of the tune. He also takes advantage of the contrast between the two sections of the tune to convey the emotions behind the girl's words. The first four lines of stanza 1 describe the lad in an objective way: "Fu' blythe" the lad whistles and "Fu' lightly" he dances, and as if to imprint this on the listener the word "blythe" is used twice. With the lift in the second half of the tune, its shift from minor to major and its less jerky rhythm, the lyric now speaks of the girl's feelings for the boy, and her face seems to light up at the thought of her own relations to him:

In the second stanza the minor first part of the tune with its energetic, snapped rhythm becomes aptly descriptive of the scene—young Jockey "toils" on the plain through "wind and weet" (rain) and through "frost and snaw". In the last half-stanza the lad comes home, he takes the girl in his arms, and the gaiety of the situation is enhanced by the switch to the high register and the major quality of the tune, and the tension of the hard work is released through the smoother rhythm.

One group of Burns's females grow from girlhood to womanhood through the experience of motherhood. A common feature of Scottish life in the eighteenth century which is reflected in the folk-songs, is the young girl who has been seduced and deserted by her lover. Burns picked up this traditional theme and to tunes of both light-hearted and reflective characters he wrote lyrics which mirror different aspects of such situations. He shows deep understanding and sympathy for these girls, and his fine psychological insight into the female mind reveals itself particularly in these songs.

A young and very inexperienced girl is depicted in "To the Weaver's gin ye go" in which the girl's encounter with the erotic side of love comes very abruptly. Her "heart was ance as blythe and free / As simmer days were lang", but innocence met with bitter experience and her singing changed to sighing. There is a foreshadowing of the disastrous event already at the beginning ("But a bonie, westlin weaver lad / Has gart me change my sang" made), and although there are elements of delight and joy and excitement in the song there is also a sense of doom hovering over it. The shame and fear of the girl is the underlying sentiment of the song and it is expressed in the last stanza:

Her words are sung to the low, monotonous part of the tune, which is centered round one note (F-sharp) and has a descending melodic contour.

Although it is lively, the tune also strikes a tone of regret and hopelessness through the incessant drumming character of the reiterated F-sharp. This also calls to mind the regular thump of the loom, which accompanies the girl's sighing and sobbing (notice the monotonous effect of the repetition and alliteration in "But the weary, weary warpin o't", weaving).

But, as Kinsley points out, the "blend of delight and regret" is also palpable in the chorus because of its "melancholy final phrase". This chorus, which is traditional (Notes), is a jocular, yet serious comment on the girl's words in the stanzas. What happens if a girl goes to the weaver at night is said only by implication, and the chorus is meant as a warning to other young girls:

As it is not the girl who speaks in it, it becomes the comment of a detached observer and recalls the function of the chorus in a Greek drama. The tune has an assertively rising melodic line in major, before it falls into minor in the last bar, which gives it that curiously sad twist at the end. Alexander Keith [in his Burns and Folk-Song, 1922] aptly describes the significance of this minor end thus: "Sprightly enough through three-quarters of its length, it [the chorus] drops to the minor in the concluding bar, with an odd simulation of warning, a sort of admonitory, cautious finger wagged before the face of the lassie to enforce the prophecy of the dire consequences, 'to the weaver's gin ye go.'"

The girl of "Here's his health in water" is in the same predicament. She is pregnant, deserted, and has to stand "the kintra clatter" (the country people's gossip), but she has a less worried and more cheerful attitude than the weaver-lassie. She curses the "wanton sides" and the flattering tongue of the boy, yet with a shrug of the shoulders she gives him the toast:

There is no sadness or regret in this song. The tune is gay and extrovert, and in the first half its melodic lines are mainly falling, except at the end where it emphatically rises one octave and the girl can be imagined lifting her hand for the toast: "Yet here's his health in water". In the second half there is emphasis on "O wae gae by" (may evil befall), "Sae brawly's he" (admirably) and "Till for his sake" because of the lifts in the tune. This is where the girl reveals that she is angry with the boy, but she quickly resumes her attitude of "never mind" and forgives him.

"The rantin dog the Daddie o't" is also a song in which a young mother tries to grasp her situation with humour. It presents a young girl who enjoys life, love and sex and lets nothing depress her. She has a remedy for all the difficulties she might meet as an unmarried mother, and this is "the rantin dog the daddie o't" (merry-making). Her tune is cheerful and her attitude optimistic. She knows much more about life than the girl in "To the Weaver's gin ye go", and she also knows how to meet it with both its hardships and its joys. The young weaver-lassie is filled with fear and shame after her introduction to sex, but this lassie thoroughly enjoys it, in spite of the fact that it puts her on the "creepie-chair" (tree-legged stool, used as a stool of repentance in church). In a very female way she asks for protection ("O Wha my babie-clouts will buy" babie-linen) and attention ("O Wha will tent me when I cry" care for), and in a frank and open manner she sings out her passion ("Wha will mak me fidgin fain; / Wha will kiss me o'er again" make me excited).

The tune of the song consists of two sections (taking one stanza each) which are melodically built up in the same way. The first two-bar phrase of each section, corresponding to one line in the lyric, lies within the F-major triad, the second within the E-flat major, the third again within the F-major, and the fourth, which is exactly the same in both sections, leads on to the end-cadence, which is in F-major. For this air Burns has created a song with a very fine sense of structure and unity. The material he used was partly traditional, partly Ramsay's, and partly his own. A song in David Herd's collection [The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, heroic ballads, &c. now first collected into one body, second edition, 1776] probably gave him the idea of the repeated question-word:

whereas he owed the metre, the binding-rhyme (aaab/cccb/dddb etc.) and the thematic material to "The Cordial", Ramsay's song set to the same tune in SMM:

What if I shou'd waking ly
When the Hoboys are gawn by,
Will ye tent me when I cry,
My Dear, I'm faint and iry?

To the aaab-stanza Burns added the form of the triple question from Herd, so that the three lines are not only united at the end by the same rhyme, but also at the beginning by the same word. Each line is thought-contained, just like the two-bar phrase is self-contained in the triad. Finally, he made the last line a refrain and an answer to the questions, which was an original idea, not suggested by any known material:

O Wha my babie-clouts will buy,
O Wha will tent me when I cry;
Wha will kiss me where I lie,
The rantin dog the daddie o't.

This corresponds to the musical pattern where the last phrase, common to both sections of the tune, carries the refrain, and the three triad-phrases the questions. Kinsley notes this and points out how well the air "sustains the triple question and the energetic answer of Burns's stanza". This is a beautiful example of the unity of poetry and music which by far excels that of Ramsay's song. The repetitions suggest an urgency in the girl's questions and the nuances in her voice are brought about by the variations provided by the tonal shifts between F and E-flat major and by the change of register between the two halves of the tune.

Just as optimistic in a similar situation is the girl in "Duncan Gray", based on a traditional bawdy song. Although the sexual references of the old song are subtilized, Burns has kept the style and the droll situation. It is particularly because of the laughing refrain (taken from the old song and very expressive on two long emphatic notes) in the first half-stanzas that the song refuses to be serious, and this in spite of the fact that the girl shows indignation with Duncan Gray:

The song has a very gay tune. It is brisk and energetic and has an undotted four-beat rhythm which finely sustains the vigorous language. Because of this cheerful musical dimension and because of the prospect of marriage in the last stanza, there is no tragedy about this song.

A more reflective song is "Bonie Dundee". It has a wider emotional range as it expresses affectionate love towards both lover and child, and it is also the one which is most centred round the theme of mother and child. It expresses an almost holy stillness, yet also the shivering of passionate love. It is the most romantic of the songs in this group, and lyric and tune in conjunction sensitively convey the tenderness of the girl's feelings. The song is partly traditional,

but the second stanza is definitely by Burns. There are many versions of the old song, but Kinsley points out that "Burns's fragment is the only one that expresses the feelings of the seduced girl". The first half of the tune (AA) lies low, whereas the second (BC) is intenser in the higher register. It starts high, leaps down an octave but rises again in a very expressive way. On the whole the intervals are dramatically wider in B than in A, which is more evenly undulating. The triple rhythm has a lullaby-quality which finely sustains the tenderness of the lyric and creates an image of the young mother rocking the child in her lap.

The first, traditional, stanza perceptively responds to the difference of expression between the two halves of the tune. The first half-stanza (for the low part of the tune) is an objective presentation of the situation. It introduces the theme of the girl who has been made pregnant by "a young brisk Sodger Laddie", whereas the second half-stanza takes us straight into the emotional life of this girl:

With the intensive lifts in the tune her thoughts seem to wander away to the laddie she is in love with and they merely touch upon the child. On the return to the low part of the tune in the first four lines of the second stanza all her attention now turns to the baby, the music being illustrative of an action almost—from having wistfully looked away, she now looks down at the baby in her lap. To the rocking tune she gives him her blessings: "My blessins upon thy sweet, wee lippie! / My blessins upon thy bonie e'e brie!" (eye-brow). The music gives variation to the repeated blessings as the second lies a fifth higher than the first. From "my blessins" she moves to "Thy smiles are sae like my blyth Sodger laddie", which prepares for the switch of attention in the last four lines (for the high part of the tune). Here Burns makes the girl react in the same way as she did in the first stanza: she turns away from the baby again, her thoughts are still centred round it, but they are now also circling round the "dadie dear". They are the proud but affectionate thoughts of a mother, who has great dreams for her son. Best of all he will be like his father and remind her of him. The transition from the low part of the tune to the more dramatic and intense second half is marked in the text by the word "but":

Common in sentiment is "I look to the North", which is also about a dreaming girl who wistfully hopes for her lover's return. She also has been left alone with her baby, but her thoughts are less centred round the child. The rocking is more of an accompaniment to her thoughts of her lover. In the first stanza she looks to the north, she looks to the south and she looks to the east. Her thoughts span wide over the "far foreign land" and the "wide rolling sea", but nowhere does she find her lover. The tune lies low, it is undotted and not very exciting. In the second half of the song, however, it lifts an octave, it urgently repeats itself on a rising fifth, and most important, the rhythm changes from equal to dotted quavers. Her eyes now turn towards the west, and "West" is mentioned twice, and her dreams become happier: "For far in the West lives he I lo'e best, / The Man that is dear to my babie and me".

As we have seen the girls in the group of songs discussed in this chapter are full-fledged characters, capable of deep emotions and intelligent thinking. They are caught in various life-situations, acting and feeling, something which makes them and their emotions seem very real. There is a wide range of brisk and extrovert tunes as well as of more reflective ones, and a happy wedding of text and tune brings out the characters of the girls and enhances their emotions. Their language is conversational, the poetic diction limpid and the musical idiom simple. The majority of the girls also come alive through the fact that they speak for themselves in the songs—life is viewed through their eyes and described in their own words….