BURNS'S NEW VERSES FOR
"AY WAUKIN O"

In 1795, for George Thomson’s Select Collection, Burns wrote a completely new set of English verses, “On Chloris Being Ill.”

Long, long the night,
Heavy comes the morrow
While my soul's delight
Is on her bed of sorrow.

Can I cease to care?
Can I cease to languish,
While my darling Fair
Is on the couch of anguish?
Long, long, &c.

Ev'ry hope is fled,
Ev'ry fear is terror,
Slumber ev'n I dread,
Ev'ry dream is horror.
Long, long, &c.

Hear me, Powers Divine!
Oh, in pity, hear me!
Take aught else of mine,
But my Chloris spare me!
Long, long, &c.


While the new verses were to accompany one of the tunes for “Ay Waukin” (though
it is not clear which), Burns kept the two sets of words distinct, by omitting the traditional refrain from Tytler, and replacing it with a brand new one:

Long, long the night,
Heavy comes the sorrow,
While my soul’s delight
Is on her bed of sorrow

Gone also are the pastoral opening and the allusions to summer. Only the first two lines of the refrain, and the third new stanza, seem to echo Burns’s version for the Scots Musical Museum:

Ev’ry hope is fled;
Ev’ry fear is terror;
Slumber e’en I dread,
Ev’ry dream is horror

Burns’s new verses were not, however, published till six years after his death, and when they then appeared in Thomson’s Fifty Scottish Songs (1802), Thomson put back the (Anglicized) title “Ay Waking, O!,”
relegated “On Chloris being Ill” to a small-type subtitle, and restored the traditional verses, heavily reworked, for a more familiar opening stanza:

Ay waking, O!
Waking ay and wearie,
Rest I canna get
For thinking on my dearie.
O this love, this love!
Life to me how dreary!
When I sleep I dream,
O! When I wake I’m eerie.
O this love, this love!

The new verses that Burns had written as a refrain are now repeated at the beginning rather end of each stanza after the first, and to fit the new setting of the music (with nine instead of eight lines to a stanza), Thomson has added a new refrain line, “O this love, this love!,” varied in the very last line to read “Spare, O spare my love!”


Ay waking, O!
Waking ay and wearie,
Rest I canna get
For thinking on my dearie.
O this love, this love!
Life to me how dreary!
When I sleep I dream,
O! When I wake I’m eerie.
O this love, this love!

Long, long the night,
Heavy comes the morrow
While my soul's delight
Is on her bed of sorrow.
Can I cease to care?
Can I cease to languish,
While my darling Fair
Is on the couch of anguish?
O this love, this love!

Long, long the night,
Heavy comes the morrow
While my soul's delight
Is on her bed of sorrow.
Ev'ry hope is fled,
Ev'ry fear is terror,
Slumber ev'n I dread,
Ev'ry dream is horror.
O this love, this love!

Long, long the night,
Heavy comes the morrow
While my soul's delight
Is on her bed of sorrow.
Hear me, Powers Divine!
Oh, in pity, hear me!
Take aught else of mine,
But my Chloris spare me!
Spare, O spare my love!

a) Fifty Scottish Songs with Symphonies and Accompaniments, wholly by Haydn,
vol. III (Edinburgh: Printed for George Thomson, 1802), p. 11.
b) A select collection of original Scottish airs &c, vol. III (Edinburgh: Printed for George Thomson, 1803), p. 111.

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