Eight months ago I wrote a blog entry about the famous poem coming "Coming Through the Rye". My grandmother said the Rye was a river; I thought the poem was about a young couple having a good time in a field of rye grain.
My grandma was right; you can read the details in the original blog entry, which I have updated with new information about the "Rye Water", the river near Robbie Burns home town that couldn't be found by web searches until recently.
Original blog entry (with updates) is here: Coming through the Rye; it's not what you think!
I am not the only person who thought the poem was about a tryst in a dewy field of rye. Here is an article written more than a hundred years ago, whose author got the same impression I did:
Date: September 24, 1898 (sent by post)
Date: October 8, 1898 (published)
To: Editor of The New York Times
From: Thomas Wilson (Washington, D.C.)The internal evidence that Burns in his celebrated song meant the rye field and not the River Rye appears satisfactory.
1. He sang about many rivers and burns of his neighborhood, but he never left any doubt that he meant a stream.
"Adown winding Nith I did wander."
"Behind yon hills where Stinchar flows."
"Amang the bonnie winding banks, where Doon rins wimpling clear."
2. He sang quite as many times about the fields and grain and never left any room for doubt on that score.
"Corn rigs are bonnie."
"Wi' sma' persuasion she agreed
To see me thro' the barley.""The rustling corn, the fruited thorn."
"The waving grain, wide o'er the plain."
"While the bloom is on the rye."
3. Among the country people it is the rule to rise early, while the dew is still on the grass. Work is begun generally before it has dried off. The flocks are afield and must be brought home, the horses fed, and cows milked, &c. So, it not only is not uncommon but is usual for the lads and lasses to go out into the fields, getting their feet wet and "petticoats draigl't" in the dew. What more natural than that the incident described should have happened. It undoubtedly did happen to Burns, probably many times, and whether so or not, it has happened (and will again) to many another. What more natural than that Burns should commemorate it with a song, especially as it was in his line, both of thought and poetry?
Compare the sentiment of the described meeting happening in a rye field and in the crossing of a river, and the great probability in favor of the former will be apparent.
Perhaps the reason "Coming through the Rye" is Burns most remembered poem, is exactly because it is so ambiguous. People that know where Burns lived, know about the Rye Water river and the famous ford crossing the river. But the way the poem is written, the first thought that springs to mind is a youthful love tryst, hidden in a fertile field of grain. The poem is sexy and chaste, and its references to the rye bespeak primeval fertility rituals, grain offerings, wave offerings, heave offerings and the blood of virginity on an altar of the rich, fertile earth. It really speaks to all levels of the human experience.
Anything good can also be twisted to bad. Burn's poem is ambiguous and short enough you can't really tell if he was using the symbolism of "dew" in the good Biblical sense, or in the bad Canaanite sense. In Canaanite religion, dew on the ground and rain from heaven were considered the same as human sperm; the stuff of fertility. That is why the Canaanites spread their seed all over everything in disgusting yearly orgies, to encourage the fertility of the land.
The poem John Barleycorn is even more explicit in its description of an ancient grain and wine offering sacrifice ritual. I don't have space or time here to go into the fact that Robbie Burns lived in a hotbed of Knight Templars, or his connection to Rosslyn Chapel and participation in Free Masonry.