Scots Wha Hae
"Scots Wha Hae" (
Scottish Gaelic: Brosnachadh Bhruis) is a patriotic song of Scotland written using both words of the Scots language and English, which served for centuries as an unofficial national anthem of the country, but has lately been largely supplanted by "Scotland the Brave" and "Flower of Scotland
".
Background
The lyrics were written by
Real McKenzies' punk rock rendition on their 1998 album Clash of the Tartans
.
The song was sent by Burns to his publisher,
Friends of the People Society, and was eventually sentenced to 14 years' transportation to the convict settlement at Botany Bay. Burns was aware that if he declared his republican
and radical sympathies openly, he could suffer the same fate.
When Burns notably agreed to let the party song of the Scottish National Party. In the past, it was sung at the close of their annual national conference each year. The tune was adapted for military band as Marche des soldats de Robert Bruce by French army Chef de Musique Léonce Chomel, and recorded around 1910 in his Marches historiques, chants et chansons des soldats de France.[3] The tune is also featured in the fourth movement of the Scottish Fantasy, composed in 1880 by German composer Max Bruch .
Lyrics
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In popular culture
- The opening lyrics of the song are the key words for the posthypnotic-suggestion programming of military science-fiction novel The Forever War, intended to make them particularly aggressive in battle.
- In the Dad's Army episode "My British Buddy", Private Frazer recites a personally updated version of the song's second and third lyrics to an American colonel during the welcoming of the United States into World War II.
References
- ^ Murray Pittock, Poetry and Jacobite politics in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland
- ^ "The Songs of Former Days". The New York Times. 6 November 1881.
- ^ Chomel, Léonce, Marches historiques, chants et chansons des soldats de France, 3 tomes, Musée de l’armée, 1912 (manuscrit).
- Bold, Alan (editor), Rhymer Rab, An Anthology of Poems and Prose by Robert Burns, Black Swan, Transworld Publishers Ltd, London 1993, ISBN 0-552-99526-6
- Mackay, James A. (editor), The Complete Letters of Robert Burns, Ayr 1987.
External links
- Digitised copy of Scots Wha Hae in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, printed between 1787 and 1803, from National Library of Scotland. JPEG, PDF, XML versions.
- MP3 file of vocal performance The Reevers • Farewell to the Highlands