LiederNet logo

CONTENTS

×
  • Home | Introduction
  • Composers (20,117)
  • Text Authors (19,508)
  • Go to a Random Text
  • What’s New
  • A Small Tour
  • FAQ & Links
  • Donors
  • DONATE

UTILITIES

  • Search Everything
  • Search by Surname
  • Search by Title or First Line
  • Search by Year
  • Search by Collection

CREDITS

  • Emily Ezust
  • Contributors (1,114)
  • Contact Information
  • Bibliography

  • Copyright Statement
  • Privacy Policy

Follow us on Facebook

by Robert Burns (1759 - 1796)

O dear minny, what shall I do?
Language: Scottish (Scots) 
Chorus: O dear minny, what shall I do?
O dear minny, what shall I do?
O dear minny, what shall I do?
‘Daft thing, doylt thing, do as I do.’

If I be black, I canna be lo'ed;
If I be fair I canna be gude;
If I be lordly, the lads will look by me:
O dear minny, what shall I do?

Confirmed with The Complete Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, edited by James Barke with an Introduction by John Cairney, HarperCollins, Glasgow, 1995, page 452


Text Authorship:

  • by Robert Burns (1759 - 1796), "O dear Minny, What shall I do?" [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by Francis George Scott (1880 - 1958), "O dear minny, what shall I do?", published 1936 [ baritone and piano ], from Scottish Lyrics, Book 4, no. 8, Bayley & Ferguson [sung text not yet checked]

Researcher for this page: Iain Sneddon [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website: 2018-11-27
Line count: 8
Word count: 63

Gentle Reminder

This website began in 1995 as a personal project by Emily Ezust, who has been working on it full-time without a salary since 2008. Our research has never had any government or institutional funding, so if you found the information here useful, please consider making a donation. Your help is greatly appreciated!
–Emily Ezust, Founder

Donate

We use cookies for internal analytics and to earn much-needed advertising revenue. (Did you know you can help support us by turning off ad-blockers?) To learn more, see our Privacy Policy. To learn how to opt out of cookies, please visit this site.

I acknowledge the use of cookies

Contact
Copyright
Privacy

Copyright © 2025 The LiederNet Archive

Site redesign by Shawn Thuris