Songs Every Child Should Know - online book

The Best Songs Of All Nations For Young People With Sheet Music & Lyrics.

	24 Songs That Every Child Should Know
	Comm' Thro* The Rye
	It is by no means an established fact that Burns wrote the words of this song, although he did scratch a stanza of it upon a pane of glass at Mauchline.                ,. „. , , , . , , " Gm a body kiss a body Comin' thro' the grain; Need a body grudge a body What's a body's ain ? " If Burns wrote the words of the entire song, then the stanza on the pane seems differently to interpret the word " Rye"—which has been inter­preted in another place as a reference to the river Rye. There is a fugi­tive stanza that seems to argue in favor of the river, quite as much as the Mauchline stanza seems to stand for the other explanation. These verses run thus:                     _ T . ,                       , , " O Jennie 's a weet, poor body, Jennie 's seldom dry ; She 's draigl't a' her petticoatie, Comin' thro' the RYE." If we are to accept that word as other than a reference to grain, it means that Jennie forded the river at Dairy, in Ayrshire. The song was prob­ably first sung at a Christmas pantomime in London, in 1795.
	If a body meet a body Comin' frae the town, If a body greet a body, Need a body frown ? Ev'ry lassie has her laddie, etc.