My Love She's but a Lassie Yet (I)

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."
AUTHOR: Words: Robert Burns
EARLIEST DATE: 1803 (_Scots Musical Museum_ #225); cf. Tom Thumb's Pretty Song Book of c. 1744
KEYWORDS: courting love youth drink nonballad clergy
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1871, "We're A' Dry wi' the Drinkin' O't" (1 text)
Meredith/Covell/Brown-FolkSongsOfAustraliaVol2, p. 226, "My Love is but a Lassie Yet" (1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 524, "My love, she's but a Lassie Yet" (3 texts)
DT, LUVELASS*
ADDITIONAL: James Kinsley, editor, _Burns: Complete Poems and Songs_ (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #293, pp. 409-410, "My love she's but a lassie yet" (1 text, 1 tune, from 1790)
James Johnson, Editor, _The Scots Musical Museum_ [1853 edition], volume III, #225, p. 234, "My love she's but a Lassie yet" (1 text, 1 tune)
Robert Chambers, The Scottish Songs (Edinburgh, 1829), Vol II, p. 473, "My Love, She's But a Lassie Yet"
ST MCB226 (Full)
Roud #8979
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Lady Badinscoth's Reel" (tune, per Burns)
cf. "Green Grow the Rashes" (tune, per Greig/Duncan8)
NOTES [133 words]: 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-AnnotatedMotherGoose #23, p. 37). This is also in Herd's manuscript of 1776. Whether there is more to the piece than that I do not know. - RBW
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes: "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
Last updated in version 3.0
File: MCB226

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography