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Songs and lyrics of Robert Burns

Chapter 131: HERE’S A HEALTH TO THEM THAT’S AWA

By Robert Burns

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About This Book

A collected selection of the poet's songs and shorter lyrics presents his explorations of love, nature, rural Scottish life, patriotism, and social observation, often rendered in Scots dialect and intended for musical performance. The volume groups brief pieces alongside several longer poems, supplies a glossary of dialect terms and an index of first lines, and includes illustrative plates. Many lyrics evoke landscapes, domestic scenes, and communal gatherings, balancing tenderness and satire while varying tone from celebratory to elegiac. The arrangement favors lyrical vitality rather than strict chronology, offering readers both popular airs and more extended narrative poems within a single accessible anthology.

HERE’S A HEALTH TO THEM THAT’S AWA

Here’s a health to them that’s awa,

Here’s a health to them that’s awa;

And wha winna wish guid luck to our cause,

May never guid luck be their fa’!

It’s guid to be merry and wise,

It’s guid to be honest and true,

It’s guid to support Caledonia’s cause,

And bide by the buff and the blue.

May liberty meet wi’ success!

May prudence protect her frae evil!

May tyrants and tyranny tine in the mist,

And wander their way to the devil!

Here’s a health to them that’s awa,

Here’s a health to them that’s awa;

Here’s a health to Tammie, the Norland laddie,

That lives at the lug o’ the law!

Here’s freedom to him that wad read,

Here’s freedom to him that wad write!

There’s nane ever fear’d that the truth should be heard,

But they wham the truth wad indite.

Here’s a health to them that’s awa,

Here’s a health to them that’s awa,

Here’s Chieftain M’Leod, a Chieftain worth gowd,

Tho’ bred among mountains o’ snaw!