The Book of Scottish Song/Will ye go to the Indies
Will ye go to the Indies.
[This simple yet energetic song, to the tune of The Ewe-Bughts, was written by Burns in early life. He afterwards sent it to George Thomson for publication in his collection, and thus wrote of it:—"In my very early years, when I was thinking of going to the West Indies, I took the following farewell of a dear girl: it is quite trifling, and has nothing of the merit of the Ewe-Bughts. You must know that all my earlier love-songs were the breathings of ardent passion; and though it might have been easy in after times to have given them a polish, yet that polish to me would have defaced the legend of the heart which was so faithfully inscribed on them. Their uncouth simplicity was, as they say of wines, their race." Thomson did not at first see the beauty of Burns's words to the tune of the Ewe-Bughts, but afterwards adopted them in his collection.]
Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary,
And leave auld Scotia's shore?
Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary,
Across the Atlantic's roar?
Oh, sweet grow the lime and the orange,
And the apple on the pine;
But a' the charms o' the Indies
Can never equal thine.
I ha'e Sworn by the heavens, my Mary,
I ha'e sworn by the heavens to be true;
And sae may the heavens forget me,
When I forget my vow!
O, plight me your faith, my Mary,
And plight me your lily-white hand
O, plight me your faith, my Mary,
Before I leave Scotia's strand.
We ha'e plighted our troth, my Mary,
In mutual affection to join;
And curst be the cause that shall part us!
The hour and the moment o' time!