Over and over a young woman asks who will help her, and each time the poem answers before she can draw breath: "The rantin' dog, the daddie o't." That refrain is a curse, a reply and a confession all at once. The song lives in the gap between what she thinks of him and what she feels for him.
The situation is clear from the text, even through the Scots. The speaker is an unmarried mother-to-be, and she is making a list of what she needs. It begins with practical things: "babie-clouts" (baby clothes) and someone to "tent" her, that is, tend her, when she cries. Next comes the "groanin maut", the malt for the ale drunk at a birth, and someone to tell her how to "ca't", to name the child. In the third stanza she mentions the "creepie-chair", the stool in the Scottish kirk where those accused of sexual sin sat to be publicly rebuked. Shame is therefore part of her situation, and the poem knows it. Yet the central idea is that shame and longing do not cancel each other. She calls the father a dog, and she still wants him.
The construction makes this work. The lines are short, usually seven syllables, with the stress falling at the start and the final unstressed beat dropped: "O WHA my BAbie-CLOUTS will BUY?" Every line ends on a thump, which gives the song a bouncing, tune-like quality, close to a nursery rhyme or a dance. That jauntiness sits oddly against the subject, and the oddness is the point. She is frightened and also, somehow, cheerful. Each stanza has three rhyming lines (buy, cry, lie; faut, maut, ca't) followed by the refrain. In the second stanza the rhymes lean toward the refrain itself, since "ca't" and "o't" almost click together. Meanwhile "wha" opens nearly every question and makes her sound like someone calling out into an empty room.
The refrain never changes, but its meaning does. In the first stanza, after the demand for baby clothes, "rantin' dog" sounds bitter. A "rantin'" man is boisterous and roistering, the sort who has his fun and moves on. By the last stanza the same words sound closer to a pet name. The dog is still a dog, but he is her dog.
The shift comes through the order of her requests. They move from what money can buy to what only he can give. Early on she wants clothes and ale. Later she wants someone to "crack to me my lane", to chat with her when she is alone, and someone to "mak me fidgin' fain", to set her fidgeting with eager delight. That is a lovely physical detail, a restless, giddy happiness that has nothing to do with duty. The poem also closes in a ring. Stanza one asks who will "kiss me where I lie", and the last line asks who will "kiss me o'er again". "Where I lie" could mean the childbed, but judging by the tone it may also hint at the bed where the trouble began. The kiss she misses is both comfort and desire.
The third stanza is the hinge. It is the only place where the run of questions breaks into a statement: "Gie me Rob, I'll seek nae mair." The father is named here, and nowhere else. After all those "wha"s, one name settles everything. The picture before it is the stool of repentance, with her sitting in front of the congregation, and she asks only who will sit beside her there. If it were Rob, the public shame would be bearable. She wants him next to her more than she wants the shame removed.
The poem is significant because of the voice it gives her. Burns speaks as a woman in her own Scots, with no sermon and no pity. She is not a victim to be lectured or a fool to be laughed at. She is frank, funny and clear-eyed about the man she loves. The poem takes a situation the kirk punished and treats it with warmth, and it is the repeated refrain that lets the humor and the hurt sit side by side.