Comin' Thro' the Rye

Template:Short description "Comin' Thro' the Rye" is a poem written in 1784 by Robert Burns (1759–1796). The words are put to the melody of the Scottish Minstrel "Common' Frae The Town". This is a variant of the tune to which "Auld Lang Syne" is usually sung—the melodic shape is almost identical, the difference lying in the tempo and rhythm.

Origin and meaning

File:Comin' thro' the Rye. Robert Burns. 1920.jpg

Illustration to "Comin' Thro' the Rye" (published in Poetical Works of Robert Burns. 1920.)

File:Rye Water Ford, Dalry.JPG

The ford across the Rye Water in Drakemyre, Dalry

G. W. Napier, in an 1876 Notes and Queries, wrote: Template:Quote

The protagonist, "Jenny", is not further identified, but there has been reference to a "Jenny from Dalry" and a longstanding legend in the Drakemyre suburb of the town of Dalry, North Ayrshire, holds that "comin thro' the rye" describes crossing a ford through the Rye Water at Drakemyre to the north of the town, downstream from Ryefield House and not far from the confluence of the Rye with the River Garnock. When this story appeared in the Glasgow Herald in 1867, it was soon disputed with the assertion that everyone understood the rye to be a field of rye, wet with dew, which also fits better with other stanzas that substitute "wheat" and "grain" for "rye". An alternative suggestion is that "the rye" was a long narrow cobblestone-paved lane, prone to puddles of water.

While the original poem is already full of sexual imagery, an alternative version makes this more explicit. It has a different chorus, referring to a phallic "staun o' staunin' graith" (roughly "an erection of astonishing size"), "kiss" is replaced by "fuck", and Jenny's "thing" in stanza four is identified as her "cunt".

Burns' lyrics

• ^A weet – wet
• ^B draigl't – draggled
• ^C gin – given, in the sense of "if"
• ^D cry – call out [for help]
• ^E warl – world
• ^F ken – know
• ^G ain – own

Lyrics usually sung ("Ilka lassie")

Even the "cleaner" version of the Burns lyrics is quite bawdy, and it is this one, or an "Anglicised" version of it, that is most commonly "covered". Template:Quote

The Catcher in the Rye

The title of the novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger comes from the poem's name. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, misremembers the line of the poem as, "if a body catch a body," rather than, "if a body meet a body." He keeps picturing children playing in a field of rye near the edge of a cliff, and himself catching them when they start to fall off.

Cover versions

• The song was covered by many opera singers in the early years of recording, during the first two decades of the 20th century including Nellie Melba, Geraldine Farrar and Marcella Sembrich.
• The song is sung by Ava Gardner in the 1953 John Ford film Mogambo.
• Jo Stafford covered the song on her album Songs of Scotland.
• John C. Reilly sang the song on a special whiskey-themed episode of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour in 2020.

See also

• "Korobeiniki", a Russian folk song that uses a similar bawdy allusion to rye.

External links

• Digitised copy of Comin' thro' the rye in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum pp. 430–431, "Written for this Work by Robert Burns", printed between 1787 and 1803. Published online by National Library of Scotland. JPEG, PDF, XML versions.
• Public domain recording (1914) by Alma Gluck