The Gallant Weaver - Analysis

A love song that picks the working man

The poem’s central claim is plain and stubborn: the speaker chooses desire and loyalty over status. She introduces her beloved not with a title but with a trade—a gallant Weaver—and that adjective does a lot of work. Gallant turns ordinary labor into something admirable, even romantic, so that the weaver can compete with men who come armed with property, jewelry, and parental approval. The poem reads like a declaration meant to be repeated aloud, as if the speaker is rehearsing her own courage into existence.

Cart Water, flowers, and a world that approves

The opening places him Where Cart rins rowin toward the sea, among mony a flower and spreading tree. That landscape isn’t just pretty background: it feels like a whole environment leaning toward the speaker’s choice. Nature is abundant, unbought, and freely given—an implicit contrast to the purchased tokens that appear later. By anchoring the weaver in this living, growing setting, the poem suggests that the speaker’s love is as natural as the river’s movement, something that should not be diverted by social engineering.

Rings and ribbons: the tempting, flimsy economy of courtship

When the speaker admits she had wooers aught or nine, the tone becomes brisk and almost amused—she’s unimpressed by the crowd. The gifts, rings and ribbans fine, carry a double edge: they’re pretty, but they’re also superficial, objects meant to fasten her consent. The line about being fear'd my heart wad tine (afraid her heart would be lost or stolen) frames courtship as a kind of risk, as if these suitors might take her feelings away from her own control. Her decision, though, is simple and decisive: she gied it to the Weaver, giving her heart not to the highest bidder but to the one she actually wants.

The father’s contract versus the daughter’s hand

The poem’s sharpest tension is between social arrangement and personal will. Her father has sign'd my tocher-band—a formal agreement about her dowry—To gie the lad that has the land. Land stands for security and rank, the respectable match. Against that, the speaker counters with a bodily, almost oath-like gesture: to my heart I’ll add my hand. It’s a small phrase, but it turns the whole argument. The father can sign paper; she can sign herself. The contrast makes love feel not dreamy but defiant, an act of self-possession in a world that treats marriage as transaction.

Seasons as vows: love set to keep pace with growth

In the last stanza, the poem widens into a repeated While, tying her affection to cycles that will outlast any argument at the hearth. birds rejoice, bees delight, and corn grows green in simmer showers; these aren’t exotic images, but everyday proofs of continuance. The speaker’s final line—I love my gallant Weaver—sounds less like a fluttering confession and more like a seasonal promise: as long as the world keeps doing what it does, she keeps choosing him. The tone ends confidently, as if the living countryside itself has become her witness.

A harder question under the sweetness

Still, the poem’s sweetness has teeth. If a tocher-band can be signed without her, what does she risk by insisting on the weaver—comfort, shelter, acceptance? The poem never answers directly, but its insistence suggests she knows the cost and speaks anyway, turning a love lyric into a quiet argument for a woman’s right to choose.