The Gallant Shearers

The Tannahill Weaver’s version of the old Scottish song, The Gallant Shearers, sometimes called The Band O’ Shearers. In this instance, shearing refers not to sheep, but to the harvesting of grain, which was done in a large group.

The Gallant Sheareres

Adam’s wine and heather bells
Come rattlin’ ower yon high, high hills
There’s corn rigs in yonder fields
And autumn brings the shearin’

Chorus:
Bonnie lassie will ye gang
And shear wi’ me the hale day lang
And love will cheer us as we gang
Tae jine yon band o’ shearers

And if the thistle it be strang
And pierce your bonnie milk white hand
It’s wi’ my hook I’ll lay it lang
When we gang tae the shearin’

Chorus

And if the weather be ower hot
I’ll cast my gravat and my coat
And shear wi’ ye amang the lot
When we gang tae the shearin’

Chorus

And if the weather it be dry
They’ll say there’s love ‘tween you and I
We’ll shyly pass each ither by
When we gang tae the shearin’

Chorus

And when the shearin’ it is done
And slowly sets the wintry sun
Ye’ll be my ain till life is run
Nae mair tae jine the shearers

Chorus

Advertisement

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s