"Waly, Waly, Love be Bonny" is a Scottish ballad of love's fragility and the devastation of abandonment. The speaker leans against an oak she thought trustworthy, but it bows and breaks -- as her lover has broken faith. What follows is one of the most quoted meditations on inconstancy in the English language: love is bonny for a little time when it is new, but it grows cold and fades like morning dew. The ballad ends with a pregnant woman wishing herself dead and the green grass growing over her.

The ballad dates from the seventeenth century and belongs to the Scottish lyric tradition. It has been widely adapted and set to music over the centuries, and its central stanzas have entered the common vocabulary of English-language folk song. The place-names (Arthur's Seat, St. Anton's Well, Glasgow) anchor the song in a specific Scottish landscape.

This text appears in Hamilton Wright Mabie's A Book of Old English Ballads (1903), a widely circulated anthology that brought many Scottish ballads to a broader English-speaking audience.

O WALY, waly up the bank,
And waly, waly down the brae,

And waly, waly yon burn side,
Where I and my love were wont to gae.

I leant my back unto an aik,
I thought it was a trusty tree;

But first it bow'd, and syne it brak,
Sae my true love did lichtly me.

O waly, waly, but gin love be bonny,
A little time while it is new;
But when its auld, it waxeth cauld,
And fades awa' like morning dew.
O wherfore shuld I busk my head?
Or wherfore shuld I kame my hair?
For my true love has me forsook,
And says he'll never loe me mair.

Now Arthur-Seat sall be my bed,
The sheets shall neir be prest by me:

Saint Anton's well sall be my drink,
Since my true love has forsaken me.

Marti'mas wind, when wilt thou blaw,
And shake the green leaves aff the tree?

O gentle death, when wilt thou cum?
For of my life I am wearìe.

'Tis not the frost that freezes fell,
Nor blawing snaws inclemencìe;

'Tis not sic cauld that makes me cry,
But my love's heart grown cauld to me.

Whan we came in by Glasgow town,
We were a comely sight to see;

My love was clad in black velvet,
And I myself in cramasìe.

But had I wist, before I kist,

That love had been sae ill to win,
I had lockt my heart in a case of gowd,
And pinnd it with a siller pin.

And, oh! that my young babe were born,
And set upon the nurse's knee,

And I myself were dead and gane!
And the green grass growing over me.

Colophon

From A Book of Old English Ballads, edited by Hamilton Wright Mabie, with illustrations by George Wharton Edwards (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1903).

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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