“My Love She's but a Lassie Yet”

Description

"My love, she's but a lassie yet (x2), We'll let her stand a year or twa, She'll no be half sae saucy yet!" Singer tells of a hard courtship, calls for more drink, and concludes, "The minister kisst the fiddler's wife, He couldna preach for thinkin' o't."

Supplemental text

My Love She's but a Lassie Yet
  Complete text(s)

          *** A ***

My love she's but a Lassie yet

From James Johnson, "The Scots Musical Museum," Volume III, #225, p.
234. As found in the 1853 edition (punctuation is somewhat uncertain,
given the state of the facsimile).

My love she's but a lassie yet,
My love she's but a lassie yet,
We'll let her stand a year or twa,
  She'll no be half sae saucy yet.
    I rue the day I sought her O,
    I rue the day I sought her O,
    Wha gets her needs na say he's woo'd,
      But he may say he's bought her O.

Come draw a drap o' the best o't yet,
Come draw a drap o' the best o't yet;
Gae seek for pleasure whare ye will,
  But here I never misst it yet.
    We're a' dry wi' drinkin' o't,
    We're a' dry wi' drinkin' o't,
    The minister kisst the fidler's wife
      He could na preach for thinkin' o't.

Notes

The verse, "We're all dry wi' the drinkin' o't... The minister kisst the fiddler's wife, He couldna preach for thinkin' o't" precedes Burns; it appeared (in a more English version) in the _Pretty Songs of Tommy Thumb_ in 1744 (see Baring-Gould-MotherGoose #23, p. 37). Whether there is more to the piece than that I do not know. - RBW

Opie-Oxford2: "This song fragment ... had all the while quietly been residing in the English nursery. where it appeared about 1744.... Burns also borrowed the title 'My Love, she's but a Lassie yet'. The tune appears in Walsh's _Caledonian Country Dances_ (c.1740), and in Johnson's _Twelve Country Dances_ (1749) under the title 'Foot's Vagaries', as well as in the _Museum_." - BS

References

1. Meredith/Covell/Brown, p. 226, "My Love is but a Lassie Yet" (1 tune)
2. Opie-Oxford2 523, "My love, she's but a Lassie Yet" (3 texts)
3. DT, LUVELASS*
4. ST MCB226 (Full)
5. Roud #8979
6. BI, MCB226