Robert Burns: How To Know Him

by William Allan Neilson

And fare thee weel, my only love,

And fare thee weel a while!

And I will come again, my love,

Tho' it were ten thousand mile.

Of the songs already quoted, the germ of [Ae Fond Kiss] lies in the first line of Robert Dodsley's Parting Kiss,

“One fond kiss before we part;”

[I Hae a Wife o' My Ain], borrows with slight modification the first two lines; a model for [My Nannie O] has been found in an anonymous eighteenth-century fragment as well as in a song of Ramsay's, but neither contributes more than the phrase which names the tune as well as the words; [The Rigs o' Barley] was suggested by a verse of an old song:

O, corn rigs and rye rigs,

O, corn rigs are bonie;

And whene'er you meet a bonie lass