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Home Jacobites Songbook

Jacobites

Chorus

Em G D

Ye Jacobites by name, lend an ear lend an ear,

Em G Em

Ye Jacobites by name lend an ear,

G D

Ye Jacobites by name, your thoughts I will proclaim,

Em G Em Am

Your doctrines I’ll unveil, you will hear, you will hear,

Em G Em

Your doctrines I’ll unveil you will hear.

What is right what is wrong, by the law by the law,

What is right and what is wrong by the law,

What is right, what is wrong, the weaker man, the strong,

The short sword and the long for tae draw, for tae draw,

The short sword and the long for tae draw.

Chorus

What makes a hero strive, famed afar, famed afar,

What makes a hero strive, famed afar,

What makes a hero strive, to whet the assassin’s knife,

And hound the bairns life wi bloody war, bloody war,

And hound the bairns life wi bloody war?

Chorus

So let your schemes alone, in the state in the state,

So let your schemes alone in the state,

Let your schemes alone, adore the rising sun,

And leave a man undone to his fate, to his fate,

And leave a man undone to his fate.

Chorus

(‘Whet’=sharpen ‘bairns’=children ‘hound’=threaten ‘wi’=with)

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There is a sharp difference in tone. The original version, after the first verse, is not addressed to Jacobites at all, it's just a stream of invective about them. But the Burns version is directed at Jacobites sympathisers throughout, seing them not as enemies to be defeatred but as friends to be won over.

He's putting it together at a time when the Jacobites were history, there was no chance of another rising, because, even aside from any other considerations, there wasn't a viable Jacobite pretender. So the phrase "Jacobites by name" takes on a new meaning - it now means anyone using the name and the sentiments and the rhetoric in a time when the time for that is over. "There are no birds in last year's nests" as Don Quixote puts it, quoting a Spanish proverb.

If you read between the lines you can speculate that he wouldn't have been averse to another crack at the English connection, without the Jacobite trappings, and if there was a chance for victory.

So in no sense pro-Jacobite - but anti-pro Jacobite rather than anti-Jacobite, as the threads title has it.

Remember, when Burns wrote the lyrics to the old scots tune, he was employed as a Government customs officer in Dumfries and was trying to gain some credence as a pro- Hanoverian supporter (he had a wife and kids by this time) to eke out his meagre income as a farmer of a pretty poor small farm. I'm pretty sure in his heart he yearned for the Jacobite cause, but 40 years after the failed '45 uprising and having seen at first hand on a tour through the Highlands the utter devastation wreaked by the English forces, Burns was astute enough to know the "way the wind blows" (to quote another great poet and songster). Definitely a song of the head if not the heart.