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.
Does haughty Gaul invasion threat?
Then let the loons beware, Sir,
There’s wooden walls upon our seas,
And volunteers on shore, Sir.
The Nith shall run to Corsincon,
And Criffel sink in Solway,
Ere we permit a foreign foe
On British ground to rally!
O let us not like snarling tykes
In wrangling be divided,
Till, slap! come in an unco loon
And wi’ a rung decide it.
Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted!
The kettle o’ the kirk and state,
Perhaps a clout may fail in’t;
But deil a foreign tinkler loon
Shall ever ca’ a nail in’t.
Our father’s blude the kettle bought,
An’ wha wad dare to spoil it?
By heavens! the sacrilegious dog
Shall fuel be to boil it!
The wretch that would a tyrant own,
And the wretch, his true-sworn brother,
Who’d set the mob aboon the throne,—
May they be damned together!
Who will not sing God save the King!
Shall hang as high’s the steeple;
But while we sing God save the King!
We’ll not forget the people!