Charlie He’s My Darling

Tune: Charlie, He’s My Darling
First printed in S.M.M. December, 1796.

’TWAS on a Monday morning,

       Right early in the year,

That Charlie came to our town,

       The Young Chevalier. —

Chorus

5 An’ Charlie he’s my darling, my darling, my darling,

Charlie he’s my darling, the Young Chevalier. —

As he was walking up the street,

       The city for to view,

O there he spied a bonie lass

10        The window looking thro’. —

              An’ Charlie he’s &c

Sae light’s he jimped up the stair, so, jumped

       And tirl’d at the pin; knocked, latch

And wha sae ready as hersel who so

       To let the laddie in. —

              An’ Charlie he’s &c

15 He set his Jenny on his knee,

       All in his Highland dress;

For brawlie weel he kend the way finely well, knew

       To please a bonie lass. —

              An’ Charlie he’s &c

It’s up yon heathery mountain,

20        And down yon scroggy glen, scrubby

We daurna gang a milking, dare not go

       For Charlie and his men. —

              An’ Charlie he’s &c

Here, Burns has taken an old street song from the mid-1770s and grafted to it a Jacobite theme. The bard’s success in this fine lyric was adapted after his death by Caroline Oliphant (1766–1845). See Life and Songs of the Baroness Nairne: With a Memoir and Poems of Caroline Oliphant the Younger, ed. Rev. Charles Rogers (1869), pp. 125–6. The first verse and chorus are very similar to Burns’s version. Like all of the poet’s lyrics on the Jacobite theme, this song was unsigned in the S.M.M. The young Chevalier is, of course, Charles Edward Stewart.