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"Comin' Thro' the Rye" is a poem written in 1782 by Robert Burns (1759–1796). The words are put to the melody of the Scottish Minstrel "Common' Frae The Town". This is a variant of the tune to which "Auld Lang Syne" is usually sung—the melodic shape is almost identical, the difference lying in the tempo and rhythm. Origin and meaning G. W. Napier, in an 1876 Notes and Queries, wrote: The original words of "Comin' thro' the rye" cannot be satisfactorily traced. There are many different versions of the song. The version which is now to be found in the Works of Burns is the one given in Johnson's Museum, which passed through the hands of Burns; but the song itself, in some form or other, was known long before Burns. The protagonist, "Jenny", is not further identified, but there has been reference to a "Jenny from Dalry" and a longstanding legend in the Drakemyre suburb of the town of Dalry, North Ayrshire, holds that "comin thro' the rye" describes crossing a ford through the Rye Water at Drakemyre to the north of the town, downstream from Ryefield House and not far from the confluence of the Rye with the River Garnock. When this story appeared in the Glasgow Herald in 1867, it was soon disputed with the assertion that everyone understood the rye to be a field of rye, wet with dew, which also fits better with other stanzas that substitute "wheat" and "grain" for "rye". An alternative suggestion is that "the rye" was a long narrow cobblestone-paved lane, prone to puddles of water. While the original poem is already full of sexual imagery, an alternative version makes this more explicit. It has a different chorus, referring to a phallic "staun o' staunin' graith" (roughly "an erection of astonishing size"), "kiss" is replaced by "fuck", and Jenny's "thing" in stanza four is identified as her "cunt". Burns' lyrics A weet – wet B draigl't – draggled C gin – given, in the sense of "if" D cry – call out [for help] E warl – world F ken – know G ain – own Lyrics usually sung ("Ilka lassie") Even the "cleaner" version of the Burns lyrics is quite bawdy, and it is this one, or an "Anglicised" version of it, that is most commonly "covered". The Catcher in the Rye The title of the novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J. D. Salinger comes from the poem's name. Holden Caulfield, the protagonist, misremembers the line of the poem as, "if a body catch a body," rather than, "if a body meet a body." He keeps picturing children playing in a field of rye near the edge of a cliff, and himself catching them when they start to fall off. Cover versions The first recording of this song was made in 1906 by Ruth Vincent. The song was sung by Marcella Sembrich in 1912. The song was sung by Marian Anderson in 1944 The song is sung by Ava Gardner in the 1953 John Ford film Mogambo. Jo Stafford covered the song on her album Songs of Scotland. Peggy King sang this song on the TV show "Maverick" in the episode "The Strange Journey of Jenny Hill". (First broadcast on March 29, 1959) John C. Reilly sang the song on a special whiskey-themed episode of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour in 2020. See also Russian folk song Korobeiniki uses a similar bawdy allusion to rye. References External links Digitised copy of Comin' thro' the rye in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum pp. 430–431, "Written for this Work by Robert Burns", printed between 1787 and 1803. Published online by National Library of Scotland. JPEG, PDF, XML versions. Public domain recording (1914) by Alma Gluck. Discover the James Comins popular books. Find the top 100 most popular James Comins books.