WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH:
AND THOMAS CADELL, LONDON.
M.DCCC.XXXIX.
Written for Auke de Boer, the carillon player of Dokkum, Groningen and Assen in the Netherlands.
|
Green grow the Rashes, O; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, Are spent amang the lasses, O |
There's nought but care on ev'ry
han', In ev'ry hour that passes, O; The warly race may riches chase, An' riches still may fly
them, O; But' gie me a canny hour at e'en, My arms about my Dearie,
O; For you sae douse! ye sneer at this, Ye'er nought but senseles
asses, O; Auld Nature swears, the lovely Dears, Her noblest work she
classes, O; |
LXXVII.
GREEN GROW THE RASHES.
The air of this song is old; a bad set of it occurs in Oswald's first Collection, 1740; but he seems to have forgot that the tune had been used as a reel as well as a song, in Scotland, time out of memory. Some fragments of the ancient song are still preserved. It begins,
We're a' dry wi' drinking o't;
The parson kist the fiddler's wife,
And cou'dna preach for thinking o't.
Green grow the rashes, O,
Green grow the rashes, O:
A feather-bed is nae sae saft,
as a bed anmang the rashes,O
The remaining lines are quite unfit for insertion, but the song seems to have been one of those burlesque and sly satires on the real or supposed profligacy of the priests prior to the reformation. The tune, however, appears to have been quoted in the Complaint of Scotland, in 1549. The verses in the Museum were written by Burns, and, if I rightly remember, it was the first song which he contributed to that work.