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Poems and Songs of Robert Burns

Chapter 461: A Fiddler In The North
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About This Book

The collection assembles lyrical songs, narrative poems, satirical pieces, epistles, epitaphs, and fragments that shift between convivial drinking verses, tender laments, and comic storytelling. Many lyrics were shaped to traditional airs and preserve vernacular speech, while longer works portray rural labor, domestic scenes, and compassionate encounters with animals. Satire targets religious hypocrisy and social pretension, and several poems take a direct, personal tone of moral reflection or affectionate address. The selections alternate moods and forms, emphasizing melodic phrasing and a versatile technical range.

A Fiddler In The North

Tune—“The King o’ France he rade a race.”
Amang the trees, where humming bees, At buds and flowers were hinging, O, Auld Caledon drew out her drone, And to her pipe was singing, O: ’Twas Pibroch, Sang, Strathspeys, and Reels, She dirl’d them aff fu’ clearly, O: When there cam’ a yell o’ foreign squeels, That dang her tapsalteerie, O. Their capon craws an’ queer “ha, ha’s,” They made our lugs grow eerie, O; The hungry bike did scrape and fyke, Till we were wae and weary, O: But a royal ghaist, wha ance was cas’d, A prisoner, aughteen year awa’, He fir’d a Fiddler in the North, That dang them tapsalteerie, O.