Come Rede Me Dame
written in 1789
Come Rede Me Dame - meaning Summary
Rustic Bawdy Self-mockery
This short, comic Scots poem presents a bawdy exchange in rustic dialect about sexual prowess. Speakers compare anatomy and technique, insisting that skill and force matter more than simple length. Burns adopts coarse rural voices and earthy humor to celebrate and parody masculine boasting and local sexual culture. The poem’s tone is playful and ribald rather than moralizing; its language and setting underline Burns’s interest in vernacular speech and everyday rural life while using sexuality as a vehicle for comic characterization.
Read Complete AnalysesCome rede me dame, come tell me dame, My dame come tell me truly, What length o' graith when weel ca'd hame Will sair a woman duly?" The carlin clew her wanton tail, Her wanton tail sae ready, "l learn'd a sang in Annandale, Nine inch will please a lady." "But for a koontrie cunt like mine, In sooth we're not sae gentle; We'll tak tway thumb-bread to the nine, And that is a sonsy pintle. Oh, Leeze me on, my Charlie lad, I'll ne'er forget my Charlie, Tway roaring handfuls and a daud He nidged it in fu' rarely." But wear fa' the laithron doup And may it ne'er be thriving, It's not the length that makes me loup But it's the double drivin. Come nidge me Tom, come nidge me Tom Come nidge me, o'er the nyvel Come lowse an lug your battering ram And thrash him at my gyvel!
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