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Mary Morison

[ Roud V18242 ; DT MARYMORI ; Robert Burns]

Jean Redpath sang Mary Morison in 1980 on her Philo/Greentrax album The Songs of Robert Burns Volume 2. Serge and Esther Hovey noted:

“The song is one of my juvenile works. I leave it among your hands. I do not think it very remarkable, either for its merits, or demerits. It is impossible, at least I feel it in my stinted powers, to be always original, entertaining & witty.”
— [from Robert Burns] to George Thomson, 20 March, 1793

Burns was not usually concerned with being “original, entertaining & witty”. It is more likely that such sentiments were a reflection of the writer’s highly charged relationship with an editor who subsequently published the song with a different tune, The Glasgow Lasses, in Scotish Airs, 1818.

Burns used the tune Duncan Davison for three songs: Duncan Davidson, collected with bawdy lyrics for The Merry Muses of Caledonia; a polite version starting with “There was a lass, they ca’d her Meg”, for The Scots Musical Museum; and Mary Morison.

Hector Gilchrist and Liz Thomson sang Mary Morison on their 1996 WildGoose album of Robert Burns songs, The Lea Rig. They noted:

Burns may in fact have written this song in 1784 for Alison Begbie and not, as was later claimed, Mary Morison whom he did not really know. The original setting was to Duncan Davidson. The later setting to The Miller, in the second version in The Museum, has become more widely accepted.

Rod Paterson sang Mary Morison on his 1996 Greentrax album of Robert Burns songs, Songs From the Bottom Drawer. He and Kirsten Easdale also sang it on Bring in the Spirit’s 2024 anthology Bring in the Spirit. He noted:

For Hugh McDiarmid, the single most telling line in all Burns’ songs was s“Ye are na’ Mary Morrison”. We think the rest of the song’s no’ bad either.

Alan Reid sang Mary Morison in 1997 on his Temple album The Sunlit Eye.

Billy Ross sang Mary Morison in 2002 on the Linn anthology The Complete Songs of Robert Burns Volume 10.

Lyrics

Rod Paterson sings Mary Morison

O Mary, at thy window be!
It is the wish’d, the trysted hour.
Those smiles and glances let me see.
That make the miser’s treasure poor.
How blythely wad I bide the stoure.
A weary slave frae sun to sun.
Could I the rich reward secure—
The lovely Mary Morison!

Yestreen, when to the trembling string
The dance gaed thro’ the lighted ha’,
To thee my fancy took its wing,
I sat but neither heard nor saw:
Tho’ this was fair, and that was braw,
And yon the toast of a’ the town,
I sigh’d and said amang them a’:—
“Ye are na Mary Morison!”

O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace
Wha for thy sake wad gladly die?
Or canst thou break that heart of his
Whase only faut is loving thee?
If love for love thou wilt na gie,
At least be pity to me shown:
A thought ungentle canna be
The thought o’ Mary Morison.