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Description: | Burns composed this song at the age of eighteen. The song is sung to the tune, Invercauld's Reel. 'Tibby' is Isabella Steven of Littlehill farm near Lochlie where Burns' father farmed from 1777.
It has been suggested that 'one night Robert Burns called at her home and the door was answered by a member of the household who said that Tibbie was entertaining another gentleman', hence the circumstances for the composition.
The main theme of this song concerns Tibby's preference for prosperous suitors. Burns says that 'because I'm poor', Tibby is disregarding him as shown in the two lines 'Yestreen I met you on the moor, Ye spak na, but gaed by like stoure!'. Tibby cares not for the Poet because she 'snufft an gae your head a cast -' and that since she has money (she came into a legacy of ��75) she 'can please me at a wink.' | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 | Publisher: | Burns Monument Trust | Temporal: | 1776-01-01 - 1776-12-31 | Source: | Burns Scotland | Identifier: | Song by Robert Burns: 'O Tibby, I hae se | Go to resource |
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