Scottish Country Dancing Dictionary

My Mary

Scottish Song By Robert Tannahill

The tune Invercauld's Reel, written in the 1700s, inspired Robert Tannahill to write My Mary appearing in The Nightingale and The Caledonian Musical Repository, both in 1806 and also The Book Of Scottish Song (1843) edited by Alexander Whitelaw.

Robert Tannahill (1774-1810) was a Scottish poet of labouring class origin. Known as the 'Weaver Poet', he wrote poetry in English and lyrics in Scots in the wake of Robert Burns.


Related Scottish Country Dances

Invercauld's Reel

My Mary - By Robert Tannahill

My Mary is a bonnie lassie,
Sweet as the dewy morn,
When Fancy tunes her rural reed,
Beside the upland thorn.
She lives ahint yon sunny knowe,
Where flow'rs in wild profusion grow,
Where spreading birks and hazels throw
Their shadows o'er the burn.

'Tis no the streamlet-skirted wood,
Wi' a' its leafy bow'rs,
That gars me wait in solitude
Among the wild-sprung flow'rs;
But aft I cast a langing e'e,
Down frae the bank out-owre the lea,
There haply I my lass may see,
As through the broom she scours.

Yestreen I met my bonnie lassie
Coming frae the town,
We raptur'd sunk in ither's arms
And prest the breckans down;
The pairtrick sung his e'ening note,
The rye-craik rispt his clam'rous throat,
While there the heav'nly vow I got,
That erl'd her my own.


My Mary
My Mary, From Glen Collection Of Printed Music, Poems And Songs, Chiefly In The Scottish Dialect, Page 228


The Online Scots Dictionary Translate Scots To English.
Dance information licensed under this Creative Commons Licence 3.0.
Text from this original My Mary article on Wikisource.
Image copyright (cropped) https://digital.nls.uk/special-collections-of-printed-music/archive/90348050 under this Creative Commons Licence 4.0.

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