The Lea Rig Robert Burns Song Scotland

Tour Scotland travel video of the Lea Rig song by Robert Burns set to a slide show of some old photographs of Scottish ploughing. The landscape of love, loss and longing so powerfully present in Burns's poems and songs was also the inhospitable habitat from which he had to wrest an uncertain living. But, at working day's end, the sheltered edge of a ploughed field could be a trysting place too. The lea rig, that narrow strip or ridge of tenant farmed, pasture-land left untilled, is sufficient setting for 'rustic' romance. Yet the yearning given vent to, rings right and real as the Ayrshire back-drop to it and the drowsy oxen trudging to the byre. Not even the gloom of gloaming can keep the lover from his lass in this ineffably beautiful lyric with its deep delving, high topped, heart meltingly wistful tune.

When o'er the hill the eastern star
Tells bughtin time is near, my jo,
And owsen frae the furrow'd field
Return sae dowf and weary O;
Down by the burn where scented birks
Wi' dew are hangin clear, my jo,
I'll meet thee on the lea-rig,
My ain kind Dearie O.

At midnight hour, in mirkest glen,
I'd rove and ne'er be irie O,
If thro' that glen I gaed to thee,
My ain kind Dearie O:
Altho' the night were ne'er sae wet,
And I were ne'er sae weary O,
I'll meet thee on the lea-rig,
My ain kind Dearie O.

The hunter lo'es the morning sun;
To rouse the mountain deer, my jo;
At noon the fisher seeks the glen,
Adown the burn to steer, my jo:
Gie me the hour o' gloamin grey,
It maks my heart sae cheary O
To meet thee on the lea-rig,
My ain kind Dearie O.

Robert Burns was born, on the 25 January 1759, two miles south of Ayr, in Alloway, the eldest of the seven children of William Burnes, a self educated tenant farmer from Dunnottar in the Mearns, and Agnes Broun, the daughter of a Kirkoswald tenant farmer. The only occasion that Robert Burns visited Perth, Perthshire, was towards the end of his 22 day tour of the Highlands during August and September, 1787.

All photographs are copyright of Sandy Stevenson, Tour Scotland, and may not be used without permission.

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