HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RABBIE

ROBERT BURNS BIO

ROBERT BURNS POETRY ON-LINE

Almost everyone knows AULD LANG SYNE, and some might know MY LUV IS LIKE A RED, RED ROSE, or if you read J.D. Salinger you know COMING THROUGH THE RYE. Maybe you know SCOTS WHA HAE, or the epic TAM O'SHANTER.

But may favourite song was on my mom's Jean Redpath album, about Bonnie Prince Charlie. I always loved that he uses an old children's fairy rhyme as the last line ("up yon heathery mountain and down yon scroggy glen we dare not go a milking for fear of little men").

I will have to tell you the story some day, about my "boat aristocracy" lineage to the Stewarts. You will laugh. But when I was a little girl I often dreamt of being a Scottish Princess.



Charlie, He's My Darling
1794

'Twas on a Monday morning,
Right early in the year,
That Charlie came to our town,
The young Chevalier.

Chorus-
An' Charlie, he's my darling,
My darling, my darling,
Charlie, he's my darling,
The young Chevalier.

As he was walking up the street,
The city for to view,
O there he spied a bonnie lass
The window looking through,
An' Charlie, &c.

Sae light's he jumped up the stair,
And tirl'd at the pin;
And wha sae ready as hersel'
To let the laddie in.
An' Charlie, &c.

He set his Jenny on his knee,
All in his Highland dress;
For brawly weel he ken'd the way
To please a bonnie lass.
An' Charlie, &c.

It's up yon heathery mountain,
An' down yon scroggie glen,
We dare na gang a milking,
For Charlie and his men,
An' Charlie, &c.

(Twirled at the pin is twirling his kilt. "Brawly weel he ken'd the way" means he really knew how to please a lady. Which, actually, seems very true of Burns himself, and not the Jacobite Prince. Burns was very bawdy and had a reputation as a ladies man.)

UNTIL NEXT TIME, TOODLE ON!!!