The Book of Scottish Song/Somebody 2

by Robert Burns

For other versions of this work, see Somebody (Burns).

Somebody.

[Written by Burns for Johnson's Museum. Burns, it will be seen, borrowed two or three lines from the opening stanza of the old verses. Hogg, in his Jacobite Relics, gives a version of the song in which the "Somebody" is made to mean the dethroned Stuart, but it is clearly a fabrication.]

My heart is sair—I daurna tell—
My heart is sair for somebody;
I could wake a winter night,
For the sake of somebody.
Ochon, for somebody!
Och hey, for somebody!
I could range the warld round,
For the sake of somebody.

Ye powers that smile on virtuous love,
O, sweetly smile on somebody!
Frae ilka danger keep him free,
And send me safe my somebody.
Ochon, for somebody!
Och hey, for somebody!
I wad do—what wad I not?—
For the sake of somebody.

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