“A’ the lads they smile on me
When comin’ thro’ the rye,”
seem to imply that traversing the rye was a habitual or common thing; but what in the name of the Royal Agricultural Society could be the object in trampling down a crop of grain in that style? The song, perhaps, suggests a harvest-scene, where both sexes, as is the custom in Great Britain, are at work reaping, and where they would come and go through the field indeed, but not through the rye itself, so as to meet and kiss in it. The truth is, the rye in this case is no more grain than Rye Beach is, it being the name of a small shallow stream near Ayr, in Scotland, which, having neither bridge nor ferry, was forded by the people going to and from the market, custom allowing a lad to steal a kiss from any lass of his acquaintance whom he met in mid-stream. Reference to the first verse, in which the lass is shown as wetting her clothes in the stream, confirms this explanation:
“Jenny is a’ wat, puir bodie;
Jenny’s seldom dry;
She drag’lt a’ her petticoatie,
Comin’ thro’ the rye.”]
