Comin' Thro' The Rye

"Comin' Thro' the Rye" is a poem written in 1782 by Robert Burns (1759–1796). It is well known as a traditional children's song, with the words 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—in fact the melodic shape is practically the same, the difference lying in the tempo and rhythm.

G.W. Napier, in an 1876 Notes and Queries, wrote that,

The original words of "Comin' thro' the rye" cannot be satisfactorily traced. There are many different versions of the song. The version which is now to be found in the Works of Burns is the one given in Johnson's Museum, which passed through the hands of Burns; but the song itself, in some form or other, was known long before Burns.

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