The Tarbolton Lasses
The Tarbolton Lasses - fact Summary
Tarbolton Community Portrait
This poem offers a lively, local portrait of Tarbolton women through brief, characterful sketches. Each stanza presents a different lass — Peggy, Sophy, Mysie, Jenny, Bessy — and mixes admiration, teasing, and social judgment about beauty, fortune, and manners. Written in Scots dialect, the voice is conversational and rooted in village gossip and courtship practices. The poem is best read as Burns observing and enjoying his community: playful, partial snapshots that reveal local social hierarchies and the poet’s eye for personality.
Read Complete AnalysesIf ye gae up to yon hill-tap, Ye'll there see bonie Peggy: She kens her father is a laird, And she forsooth's a leddy. There's Sophy tight, a lassie bright, Besides a handsome fortune: Wha canna win her in a night Has little art in courtin. Gae down by Faile, and taste the ale, And tak a look o' Mysie; She's dour and din, a deil within, But aiblins she may please ye. If she be shy, her sister try, Ye'll may be fancy Jenny: If ye'll dispense wi' want o' sense She kens hersel she's bonnie. As ye gae up by yon hillside, Spier in for bonnie Bessy: She'll gie ye a beck, and bid ye light, And handsomely address ye. There's few sae bonny, nane sae guid, In a' King George' dominion; If ye should doubt the truth o' this It's Bessy's ain opinion.
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