The Gallant Weaver

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About this work

This is a song by Robert Burns. It was written in 1791 and is read here by Annette Crosbie.

More about this song

'The Gallant Weaver' was published in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum in 1792. Burns's reference to the River Cart points to the weaving town of Paisley where a thriving textile industry sprung up in eighteenth century.

In 'The Gallant Weaver' Burns adopts a common motif of folk song: the importance of marrying for love and happiness as opposed to wealth and social elevation: 'My daddie sign'd my tocher-band/ To gie the lad that has the land,/ But to my heart I'll add my hand/ And give it to the Weaver.'

Finances played an important, practical part in eighteenth-century courtships and marriages. Certainly, a young man or woman's prospects for marriage were significantly increased should they come from a wealthy family.

Themes for this song

lovemarriage

Selected for 03 June

The Paisley weaver poet Robert Tannahill was born on this day in 1774. The younger Robert looked up to and indeed came close to venerating Robert Burns. Although his own poems and songs were often excellent, a volume of his work was rejected for publication. Disappointment and depression caused the physically and mentally frail poet to take his own life. When he drowned in the Cart canal in 1810, he was almost exactly the same age the older Robert was at his death. Robert Tannahill may have lacked the appeal and prospects of the Paisley weaver celebrated in today’s poem but he was a gallant weaver nonetheless and his reputation has spread far beyond his native town.