The Scots [A Dirge]
Black Scots and red Scots,
Red Scots and black;
I hae dealt wi’ the red Scot,
An’ dealt wi’ the black.
The Red Scot is angry
Among the sons o’ men—
He’ll pay you a bawbee,
An’ steal it back again.
Black Scots and red Scots,
Red Scots and black;
I hae dealt wi’ the red Scot,
An’ dealt wi’ the black.
The Black Scot is frien’ly—
A brither an’ a’—
He’ll pay you a bawbee,
An’ steal back twa.
The Ginger Scot o’ a’ Scots,
The warst shade o’ Scot,
For he’ll pay ye naething,
An’ tak’ a’ you’ve got.
Black Scots and red Scots,
Short Scots an’ lang,
Ginger Scots an’ bald Scots—
I dealt wi’ the gang.
poem by Henry Lawson
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Related quotes
Sad Song
Living on borrowed times
Im in love with mary, queen of scots
Fourteen hundred ninety-three
And everythings like it should be
Im gonna stop wastin my time
Henry the fifth would have broken my arm
Sad song, sad song, doo, doo
Sad song, sad song
Living on borrowed times
Im in love with mary, queen of scots
Fourteen hundred ninety-three
And things are just like they ought to be
Primrose and kilts, primrose and spain
Forget me not, my queen of scots
Sad song, sad song, doo, doo
Sad song, sad song
song performed by by Velvet Underground
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Song of the Edinburgh Academician
If ony here has got an ear,
He'd better tak’ a haud o’ me,
Or I'll begin, wi’ roarin’ din,
To cheer our old Academy.
Dear old Academy,
Queer old Academy,
A merry lot we were, I wot,
When at the old Academy.
There's some may think me crouse wi’ drink,
And some may think it mad o’ me,
But ither some will gladly come
And cheer our old Academy.
Some set their hopes on Kings and Popes,
But, o’ the sons of Adam, he
Was first, without the smallest doubt,
That built the first Academy.
Let Pedants seek for scraps of Greek,
Their lingo to Macadamize;
Gie me the sense, without pretence,
That comes o’ Scots Academies.
Let scholars all, both grit and small,
Of Learning mourn the sad demise;
That's as they think, but we will drink
Good luck to Scots Academies.
poem by James Clerk Maxwell
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Staff Nurse:Old Style
The greater masters of the commonplace,
REMBRANDT and good SIR WALTER-only these
Could paint her all to you: experienced ease
And antique liveliness and ponderous grace;
The sweet old roses of her sunken face;
The depth and malice of her sly, grey eyes;
The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies;
The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace.
These thirty years has she been nursing here,
Some of them under SYME , her hero still.
Much is she worth, and even more is made of her.
Patients and students hold her very dear.
The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill.
They say 'The Chief' himself is half-afraid of her.
poem by William Ernest Henley
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Scots Wha' Hae
Scots, wha' hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots wham Bruce has often led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to Victorie!
Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour,
See approach proud Edward's pow'r
Chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland's King and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw?
Freeman stand, or freeman fa'?
Let him follow me!
By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurper low!
Tyrants fall in ev'ry foe!
Liberty's in ev'ry blow!
Let us do or die!
poem by Robert Burns
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Scots of the Riverina
The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time --
They were Scots of the Riverina, and to run from home was a crime.
The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned,
And he scratched his name from the Bible when the old wife's back was turned.
A year went past and another. There were calls from the firing-line;
They heard the boy had enlisted, but the old man made no sign.
His name must never be mentioned on the farm by Gundagai --
They were Scots of the Riverina with ever the kirk hard by.
The boy came home on his "final", and the township's bonfire burned.
His mother's arms were about him; but the old man's back was turned.
The daughters begged for pardon till the old man raised his hand --
A Scot of the Riverina who was hard to understand.
The boy was killed in Flanders, where the best and bravest die.
There were tears at the Grahame homestead and grief in Gundagai;
But the old man ploughed at daybreak and the old man ploughed till the mirk --
There were furrows of pain in the orchard while his housefolk went to the kirk.
The hurricane lamp in the rafters dimly and dimly burned;
And the old man died at the table when the old wife's back was turned.
Face down on his bare arms folded he sank with his wild grey hair
Outspread o'er the open Bible and a name re-written there.
poem by Henry Lawson
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Robert Bruce's March To Bannockburn
Scots, what hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victorie!
Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour;
See approach proud Edward's power -
Chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha, for Scotland's King and Law,
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Free-man stand, or Free-man fa',
Let him on wi' me!
By Oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We sill drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud Usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do or die!
poem by Robert Burns
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Scots Wha Hae
Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victorie.
Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front of battle lour;
See approach proud Edward's power -
Chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor's knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha's sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland's King and Law,
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Free-man stand, or free-man fa'?
Let him follow me!
By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do, or die!
poem by Robert Burns
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Scots, Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled
Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!
Now's the day, and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lour,
See approach proud Edward's power—
Chains and slavery!
Wha will be a traitor-knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Let him turn and flee!
Wha for Scotland's king and law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand or freeman fa',
Let him follow me!
By oppression's woes and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in ev'ry foe!
Liberty's in ev'ry blow!
Let us do or die!
poem by Robert Burns
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Sad Song
Staring at my picture book
She looks like mary, queen of scots
She seemed very regal to me
Just goes to show how wrong you can be
Im gonna stop wastin my time
Somebody else would have broken both of her arms
Sad song, sad song
Sad song, sad song
My castle, kids and home
I thought she was mary, queen of scots
I tried so very hard
Shows just how wrong you can be
Im gonna stop wasting time
Somebody else would have broken both of her arms
Sad song, sad song
Sad song, sad song
Sad song, sad song
Sad song, sad song
Sad song, sad song
Sad song, sad song
...
song performed by by Lou Reed
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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In my end is my beginning.
quote by Mary Queen of Scots
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Irish seem to have more fire about them than the Scots.
quote by Sean Connery
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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No more tears now; I will think about revenge.
quote by Mary Queen of Scots
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A scots mist will weet an englishman to the skin.
One cannot imagine Scots music and song without the contribution of Burns.
quote by Len G. Murray
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Mary Queen of Scots was my first love, and that is always something special.
quote by Antonia Fraser
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Rebel Scot
How, Providence? and yet a Scottish crew?
Then Madam Nature wears black patches too!
What, shall our nation be in bondage thus
Unto a land that truckles under us?
Ring the bells backward! I am all on fire.
Not all the buckets in a country quire
Shall quench my rage. A poet should be feared
When angry, like a comet's flaming beard.
And where's the stoic can his wrath appease,
To see his country sick of Pym's disease?
By Scotch invasion to be made a prey
To such pigwidgeon myrmidons as they?
But that there's charm in verse, I would not quote
The name of Scot without an antidote;
Unless my head were red, that I might brew
Invention there that might be poison too.
Were I a drowsy judge whose dismal note
Disgorgeth halters as a juggler's throat
Doth ribbons; could I in Sir Empiric's tone
Speak pills in phrase and quack destruction;
Or roar like Marshall, that Geneva bull,
Hell and damnation a pulpit full;
Yet to express a Scot, to play that prize,
Not all those mouth-grenadoes can suffice.
Before a Scot can properly be curst,
I must like Hocus swallow daggers first.
Come, keen iambics, with your badger's feet,
And badger-like bite till your teeth do meet.
Help, ye tart satirists, to imp my rage
With all the scorpions that should whip this age.
Scots are like witches; do but whet your pen,
Scratch till the blood come, they'll not hurt you then.
Now, as the martyrs were enforced to take
The shape of beasts, like hypocrites at stake,
I'll bait my Scot so, yet not cheat your eyes:
A Scot within a beast is no disguise.
No more let Ireland brag; her harmless nation
Fosters no venom since the Scot's plantation;
Nor can our feigned antiquity obtain:
Since they came in, England hath wolves again.
The Scot that kept the Tower might have shown,
Within the grate of his own breast alone,
The leopard and the panther, and engrossed
What all those wild collegiates had cost
The honest high-shoes in their termly fees;
First to the salvage lawyer, next to these.
Nature herself doth Scotchmen beasts confess,
Making their country such a wilderness:
A land that brings in question and suspense
God's omnipresence, but that Charles came thence,
But that Montrose and Crawford's loyal band
Atoned their sin and christened half their land.
Nor is it all the nation hath these sports:
There is a Church as well as Kirk of Scots,
As in a picture where the squinting paint
Shows fiend on this side, and on that side saint.
He that saw hell in's melancholy dream
And in the twilight of his fancy's theme,
Scared from his sins, repented in a fright,
Had he viewed Scotland, had turned proselyte.
A land where one may pray with curst intent,
Oh may they never suffer banishment!
Had Cain been Scot, God would have changed his doom:
Not forced him wander, but confined him home!
Like Jews they spread, and as infection fly,
As if the devil had ubiquity.
Hence 'tis they live at rovers and defy
This or that place, rags of geography.
They're citizens of the world; they're all in all;
Scotland's a nation epidemical.
And yet they ramble not to learn the mode,
How to be dressed, or how to lisp abroad;
To return knowing in the Spanish shrug,
Or which of the Dutch states a double jug
Resembles most in belly or in beard
(The card by which the mariners are steered).
No, the Scots-errant fight and fight to eat;
Their ostrich stomachs make their swords their meat.
Nature with Scots as tooth-drawers hath dealt,
Who use to string their teeth upon their belt.
Yet wonder not at this their happy choice,
The serpent's fatal still to Paradise.
Sure, England hath the hemorrhoids, and these
On the north postern of the patient seize
Like leeches; thus they physically thirst
After our blood, but in the cure shall burst!
Let them not think to make us run o' the score
To purchase villenage, as once before
Call them good subjects, buy them gingerbread.
Not gold, nor acts of grace, 'tis steel must tame
The stubborn Scot; a prince that would reclaim
Rebels by yielding, doth like him, or worse,
Who saddled his own back to shame his horse.
Was it for this you left your leaner soil,
Thus to lard Israel with Egypt's spoil?
They are the Gospel's life-guard; but for them,
The garrison of New Jerusalem,
What would the brethren do? The Cause! The Cause!
Sack-possets and the fundamental laws!
Lord! What a godly thing is want of shirts!
How a Scotch stomach and no meat converts!
They wanted food and raiment; so they took
Religion for their seamstress and their cook.
Unmask them well; their honors and estate,
As well as conscience, are sophisticate.
Shrive but their titles and their moneys poise,
A laird and twenty pence pronounced with noise,
When contrued, but for a plain yeoman go,
And a good sober twopence, and well so.
Hence, then, you proud impostors; get you gone,
You Picts in gentry and devotion;
You scandal to the stock of verse, a race
Able to bring the gibbet in disgrace.
Hyperbolus by suffering did traduce
The ostracism and shamed it out of use.
The Indian that Heaven did forswear
Because he heard some Spaniards were there,
Had he but known what Scots in hell had been,
He would, Erasmus-like, have hung between.
My Muse hath done. A voider for the nonce,
I wrong the devil should I pick their bones.
That dish is his; for when the Scots decease,
Hell, like their nation, feeds on barnacles.
A Scot, when from the gallow-tree got loose,
Drops into Styx and turns a solan goose.
poem by John Cleveland
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