The Highland Lass

The speaker hears a woman singing in the fields. She is a nameless “Highland Lass,” or a woman from the Scottish Highlands, and is also the “Solitary Reaper” of the title. She works alone in the fields, thrashing and binding grain and leaning over her sickle. As she works, she sings a song that echoes across the valley. The narrator says that the woman sings as well as any nightingale or cuckoo heard by weary travelers or sailors. It is unclear what the woman is singing about, but it is clear that her singing is mournful. The narrator wonders if her songs are about a long-ago battle or something that is troubling her today. The woman’s singing is so affecting that long after the narrator hears it, he continues to think about it. The image of the woman bending over her sickle calls to mind the image of Father Time, the classical symbol of time. There is something timeless and ageless about this woman. The narrator sees her at one moment in time, but she has nothing about her that characterizes her as belonging to one particular age. Her song might refer to either the present or the distant past, and she is frozen forever in time after the narrator walks away from her.

The Speaker

The speaker of the poem is similar to William Wordsworth (the author of the poem), who toured the Scottish Highlands with his sister. Though the speaker is not exactly the same as the poet, in many ways the speaker is like Wordsworth. The narrator is a careful observer of the people and nature around him, and he is struck by the singer’s plaintive tune. He tells the reader to stop to listen to the woman or to pass by without disturbing her. He does not presume to know what her singing means, but, as a Romantic, he allows himself to be affected deeply by the song. He never figures out what the song means, but he continues to think about it. He is a man who allows his emotional state to be altered by what he sees and hears around him.