More about this song
The song 'Gie the lass her fairin' appears in The Merry Muses of Caledonia (1799) and has been attributed to Robert Burns by the critic W. Scott Douglas. In the absence of any manuscript evidence, or indeed any evidence to the contrary, scholars tentatively reiterate this attribution.
The title and refrain of the song, 'Gie the lass her fairin' encourages men to feed women as a prelude to sex, and so carnal sexuality is placed alongside references to bodily appetites more generally.
The reference to the female genitals, in crude terms, as 'a hairy thing', emphasises that the song is concerned more with the practical, physical mechanics of intercourse than sexual pleasure. Not only this, but the female is depicted as a sexual play-thing, to be 'couped' and 'banged' until she 'squeels'. And so, masculine sexuality is quite clearly the driving force of the song.
Pauline Mackay
