Coming Through the Rye

DESCRIPTION: "Gin a body meet a body comin' through the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, need a body cry?" The singer remarks that no one knows her swain, but notes that all the lads smile at her in the rye. She observes that she has a love whom she keeps secret
AUTHOR: unknown (adapted by Robert Burns)
EARLIEST DATE: 1796 (Scots Musical Museum)
KEYWORDS: love courting bawdy nonballad farming
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1860, "Comin' Through the Rye" (1 fragment)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #369, p. 25, "Comin' Thro' the Rye" (1 reference)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 140, "Comin' Through the Rye" (1 text)
Heart-Songs, p. 113, "Comin' Thro' the Rye" (1 text, 1 tune)
Dime-Song-Book #5/72, p. 8 and #5/64, p. 8, "Comin' thro' the Rye" (1 text)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, pp. 178-179, "Comin' Thro' the Rye"
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 165, 170, 189, 491, "Coming through the Rye" (notes only)
National-4HClubSongBook, p. 27, "Comin' Thro' the Rye" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, COMTHRYE*
ADDITIONAL: James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #560, pp. 664-665, "Comin thro; the rye" (1 text, 1 tunes, from 1796)
Roud #5512
RECORDINGS:
Edith Helena, "Comin' Thro' the Rye" (Gramophone & Typewriter Co. 3348, n.d. but pre-1907)
Nevada Vanderveer, "Comin' Through the Rye" (Bell 1117/Bell S-77, c. 1923)
Ruth Vincent, "Comin' Thro' the Rye" (Columbia 30024, c. 1906)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Miller's Wedding" (tune, per Burns)
SAME TUNE:
We Beat 'Em on the Marne (File: BrPa039A)
Coming Down the Flat (by Charles R. Thatcher) (File: FaE096)
There Was a Girl Who Came to Camp (File: ACSF166T)
Coming Through the Rye (Cold Cuts) (Pankake/Pankake-PrairieHomeCompanionFolkSongBook, p. 11; DT, COMTHRY2)
Comin' from the War ("If a body meet a body") (see Wolf-AmericanSongSheets p. 25)
The Grundys ("If you nominate a woman, In the month of May," a song mocking the presidential candidacy of Victoria Woodhall in 1972) (Lawrence-MusicForPatriotsPoliticiansAndPresidents, p. 453)
The Saucy Little Turtle ("Down on the Mississippi River") (Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, p. 193)
Our Bonnie Lad ("Gie's song o' hearty greetin', For our bonnie lad") (Henry Randall Waite, _Carmina Collegensia: A Complete Collection of the Songs of the American Colleges_ first edition 1868, expanded edition, Oliver Ditson, 1876, p. 129)
If a body ask a body In her book to write; If a body refuse a body, Need a body fight? (J. S. Ogilvie, _One Thousand Popular Quotations Comprising the Choicest Thoughts and Sayings of Eminent Writers of All Ages, Together With Nearly Three Hundred Original and Choice Selections, Suitable for Writing in Autograph Albums_, J. S. Ogivie, Publisher (New York & Chicago), 1884 (available on Google Books), p. 115)
The Power of Thought ("Not by cannon nor by saber, Not by flags unfurled, Shall we win the rights of labor") (Foner, p. 165)
Comin' Thro' the Rye (populist campaign song) ("If a Jacob meet an Esau, Starving in the street") (by C. A. Sheffield) (Foner, p. 281)
Help a Bit ("Eater, able money-getter, With your magic power") (by France B. Damon) (Anna Adams Gordon, _Popular Campaign Songs_, National W.C.T.U. Publishing House, 1915, p. 33)
NOTES [135 words]: Fuld observes that the earliest copies of this song (including the text known to Burns) were bawdy, and the Digital Tradition text is one of these. Maurice Lindsay, The Burns Encyclopedia, 1959, 1970; third edition, revised and enlarged, St. Martin's Press, 1980, p. 79, implies that this text too is by Burns.
The Burns version from the Scots Musical Museum opens with an eight-line stanza that is rarely if ever heard, followed by the familiar "Gin a body meet a body" stanzas. The tune, according to Lindsay, is "The Miller's Wedding."
There is a version of this in the Wilder family tradition (By the Shores of Silver Lake, chapter 15), but it looks imperfectly Scottish, as if learned from print. - RBW
The Digital Tradition version is Burns's. The Greig/Duncan8 fragment is that version's chorus. - BS
Last updated in version 6.6
File: FSWB140B

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