Annotation:Andrew and His Cuttie Gun (1)

A 'cuttie gun' was a 'pop-gun', a toy, used by Burns as a reference to the male organ. The melody is a variant of "The Boyne Water" family of tunes (see discussions for "The Boyne Water," "The Cameronian Rant," "The Wee, Wee German Lairdie"). The song appears in Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany of 1740, and an amended version can be found in Herd's collection (1776). It was reworked by Robert Burns for his Merry Muses of Cealedonia (1798), albeit changed from a tavern setting to rather bawdy lyrics. Burns did not include a tune (which he described as "the work of a master"), but referenced one in the Scots Musical Museum (1797, No. 180), where it appears as a slow strathspey. Bruce Olson says the tune was published c. 1754. Burns' bawdy lyric version (he also wrote a sanitized one) begins:

Cho: Blythe, blythe, blythe was she,

Blythe was she but and ben,

An' weel she lo'ed it in her neive,

But better when it slippit in.

When a' the lave gaed tae their bed,

And I sat up to clean the shoon,

O wha think ye cam jumpin' ben,

But Andrew and his cutty gun.

Printed Sources: Carlin (The Gow Collection), 1986; No. 3. Gow (The First Collection of Niel Gow's Reels), 1784 (revised 1801); pg. 20.