Busk, busk, bonnie lassie, and come alang w' me,
I will tak' ye tae Glenisla near bonnie Glenshee.

O do you see yon shepherds as they all march along,
Wi' their plaidies buckled roond them and their sheep they graze on?
Busk, busk, bonnie lassie, and come alang wi' me,
I will tak' ye tae Glenisla near bonnie Glenshee.

O, do you see yon soldiers as they all march along,
Wi' their guns on their shoulders and their broadswords hanging doon?
Busk, busk, bonnie lassie, and come alang wi' me,
I will tak' ye tae Glenisla near bonnie Glenshee.

O do you see yon high hill a' covered wi' snaw?
They hae parted mony a true love and they'll soon pair us twa.
Busk, busk, bonnie lassie, and come alang wi' me,
I will tak' ye tae Glenisla near bonnie Glenshee.

abc | midi | pdf

---

Source: MacColl and Seeger, Traveller's Songs from England and Scotland, Routledge And Kegan Paul, 1977

Notes:
MacColl wrote:

This ong does not appear in any of the major Scots collections.  It is a kind of mirror-image of 'O No, No', a song of the 'Lisbon/Banks of the Nile' genre, in which a girls plea that she should be allowed to accompany her lover to war is rejected on the ground her beauty would fade and her colour stain when exposed to the frost and rain of the highlands.

The first halves of stanzas 1 and 3 of 'O No, No' correspond to the first halves of our third and fourth stanzas:

O don't ye see yon mountains sae gloomy and sae high?
They've parted many a lover and they'll part you and I.
But sae sair's that does grieve me, away I main go,
And ye canna come wi' me, lovie, O, no, no

O don't ye see yon soldiers, how they march along?
Their guns are all cocked and they swords are all drawn
But sae sair (etc)

In the second half of each of the above stanzas, the young man is obviously refusing the girl's plea while, in the corresponding stanzas of 'Busk Busk' he is trying to persuade her to accompany him.

The song is a great favourite with Scots Travellers.

Roud: 832 (Search Roud index at VWML)
Laws:
Child: