Work record

Scots Wha Hae (Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn)

Robert Burns

1793 · 18th Century · Poetry · English

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Abstract

Written: 1793; first printed in the Morning Chronicle, 1794
Setting: June 1314, before the battle of Bannockburn; Bannockburn, near Stirling, Scotland
Author: Robert Burns
Country: Kingdom of Great Britain (Scotland, United Kingdom)
Language: Scots
Genre: Patriotic war song (dramatic monologue)
Form: Six four-line stanzas on a single rhyme each, short trochaic lines
Recommended: Grades 6–12 (Short patriotic song in Scots.)

Background. Burns composed this for George Thomson's song collection, setting words to an old air believed to have been played for the Bruce's host. Written during the revolutionary 1790s, it voices a medieval king's appeal to his men.

Content. The king hails men who fought under Wallace and himself and offers them either death or triumph. He points to the English host coming with fetters, invites any traitor or coward to run, and summons free men to strike for crown and statute. He swears by their suffering and their captive children that they will spend their blood to make their people free, and closes with a fierce vow to conquer or perish.

Form. Each stanza holds three rhyming lines and a short fourth line; the meter drives like a drumbeat.

Themes. The lyric unites courage, law and liberty. Bruce does not call his men to plunder or glory but to defend a lawful kingdom against chains, and he asks each soldier to choose for himself between flight and the risk of death. Burns's own revolutionary decade gives the medieval speech a second, contemporary edge that careful readers should notice.

For students. Pair with an account of Bannockburn and the Declaration of Arbroath; discuss just war and the meaning of liberty.

Main characters

Robert the Bruce: King of Scots, speaking
The army: Scottish soldiers addressed

Summary

Scots Wha Hae, titled in Burns's editions Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn, is a war song that Burns wrote in 1793 and sent to George Thomson for his Select Scottish Airs. Burns imagined it as the address of King Robert the Bruce to his army before the battle of Bannockburn in June 1314, when the Scots defeated the much larger English army of Edward II and secured Scotland's independence. He set it to an old tune, Hey Tuttie Tatie, which tradition said had been Bruce's march. The song has six short stanzas. The first calls to the Scots who have bled with Wallace and been led by Bruce: welcome to your gory bed, or to victory. The second announces that now is the day and now is the hour; see proud Edward's power approaching, bringing chains and slavery. The third asks who would be a traitor knave or fill a coward's grave, and tells such a man to turn and flee. The fourth calls on those who will draw freedom's sword for Scotland's king and law. The fifth swears by the woes of oppression and by sons in servile chains to drain their dearest veins so that their children may be free. The last calls down the proud usurpers and ends: let us do or die. The song is short, fierce and memorable. It is often read as Burns's comment on liberty in his own revolutionary decade as well as on medieval Scotland. For students it is a vivid entry into the Scottish wars of independence and a text for discussing just war, courage and the meaning of freedom. Read it aloud: its short lines and single rhymes were made for a crowd to sing.

Virtues in this work

Fortitude: Bruce calls his men to stand and fight rather than flee before a stronger enemy.
Justice: The song fights for a people's lawful rule against usurpers and chains.

Plot or Argument

Stanzas 1-2: the call
Bruce greets his soldiers, veterans of Wallace's wars, and points to the approaching English army.
Stanzas 3-4: the choice
Cowards and traitors may flee; free men must stand and fight for king and law.
Stanzas 5-6: the oath
By oppression and enslaved sons, they swear to die if necessary so that the usurpers fall: do or die.

Characters

Robert the Bruce, speaker
King of Scots, addressing his army before Bannockburn (1314).
The Scots army, addressees
Soldiers who fought with Wallace and Bruce.

Lessons

Courage under threat
Bruce asks every man to choose between flight and the risk of death. Courage is a decision.
- What choice does Bruce set before the army?
- Why does he name traitors and cowards?
- Is it ever right to say do or die?
Related across the library
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- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Selections), Lesson: Courage at the end
  Courage at the end. Chapter LXVIII shows a besieged city divided by quarrels over the church union and outnumbered many times over, yet its last emperor stays at his post and dies with his men. Gibbon, who rarely praises Byzantine rulers, gives Constantine Palaeologus a soldier's honor, and contrasts him with the commander who left the wall.
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Liberty and law
The song fights for Scotland's king and law, not for lawlessness. Freedom here means a people's right to its own lawful rule.
- What does freedom mean in the song?
- Why does it mention king and law together?
- How does Galatians 5:1 speak of freedom?
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History and song
Burns wrote this nearly five centuries after the battle. Songs shape how nations remember their past.
- What does a song add that a history book does not?
- Why might Burns write this in 1793?
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Context

At Bannockburn (23-24 June 1314) Robert the Bruce defeated Edward II of England. Burns wrote in 1793, when the French Revolution and war with France made talk of liberty politically dangerous in Britain.

Composition

Written in 1793 and sent to George Thomson; first printed in the Morning Chronicle in 1794, then in Thomson's collection.

Reception

It became an unofficial Scottish anthem and is still sung at patriotic and political gatherings.

War Violence Leadership Heroism Power / Politics Justice Law

Comparisons

A Man’s a Man for A’ That
Burns's other great political song, about equality rather than war.
Paul Revere's Ride
Another poem that turns a moment of a nation's fight for liberty into memorable verse.

Quotes

Frequently cited

“Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to Victorie!”

— Robert Burns, Scots Wha Hae (Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn), Stanza 1 (Gutenberg #1279: Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (chronological arrangement)).Quote card

The Conquest of Gaul, Book VIII.44
Accordingly he cut off the hands of those who had borne arms against him. Their lives he spared, that the punishment of their rebellion might be the more conspicuous After the fall of Uxellodunum, Caesar mutilates the defenders as a deterrent, with Hirtius insisting that this was not natural cruelty.
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, Summary
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners is John Bunyan's account of his own conversion, written in the Bedford county jail and first published in 1666. It is told in 339 numbered paragraphs, opened by a preface addressed to the members of his congregation, whom he calls his children in the faith, and to whom he sends what he calls honey taken from the carcase of a lion. Bunyan begins with his low descent and his boyhood in Elstow, where at nine or ten he is terrified by dreams of devils and hell, yet cannot leav...
On the Nature of the Universe, The Senses And Mental Pictures
born No speaking ere the tongue created was But origin of tongue came long before Discourse of words and ears created were Much earlier than any sound was heard And all the members so meseems were there Before they got their use and therefore they Could not be gendered for the sake of use But contrariwise contending in the fight With hand to hand and rending of the joints And fouling of the limbs with gore was there O long before the gleaming spears ere flew And nature prompted man to shun a wound Before the lef...
John Anderson, My Jo, Lesson: Faithful marriage
Faithful marriage. The song praises love that has lasted through a whole life. The wife still blesses her husband when youth is gone.
Henry VI, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1
I will stir up in England some black storm Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell York's soliloquy after receiving an Irish army: he will use Cade's rising to test the realm while he waits abroad.

Frequently cited

“Liberty’s in every blow!— Let us Do or Die!”

— Robert Burns, Scots Wha Hae (Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn), Stanza 6 (Gutenberg #1279: Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (chronological arrangement)).Quote card

Candide: Or Optimism, Ch. 3
Battle between Bulgars and Abares; heaps of dead and dying, mutilated villagers.
Second Inaugural Address, Paragraph 2
Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. Lincoln's compressed account of how the war began in 1861, ending in four plain words.
The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lesson: Conversion as reorganisation of the self
Conversion as reorganisation of the self. James describes conversion as a shift in the 'habitual centre of personal energy', prepared by subconscious processes and experienced as given from outside. This psychological account is neutral about whether anything divine is involved, which allows him to compare religious conversion with recoveries from addiction and despair.
Henry VI, Part 2, Act 3, Scene 1
I will stir up in England some black storm Shall blow ten thousand souls to heaven or hell York's soliloquy after receiving an Irish army: he will use Cade's rising to test the realm while he waits abroad.
Laws, Book I
the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats--which each man gains or sustains at the hands, not of another, but of himself Cleinias explains that the Cretan view of life as constant war extends even to the war each person wages within.

“Now’s the day, and now’s the hour;”

— Robert Burns, Scots Wha Hae (Robert Bruce’s March to Bannockburn), Stanza 2 (Gutenberg #1279: Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (chronological arrangement)).Quote card

A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Lecture XVIII
In their dreams these patients regularly live over the traumatic situation Freud compares neurotic fixation to the traumatic neuroses made common by the war, while admitting he cannot yet fit them into his theory.
On War, Book I, Ch. 1, §3
Now, philanthropists may easily imagine there is a skilful method of disarming and overcoming an enemy without great bloodshed, and that this is the proper tendency of the Art of War Clausewitz goes on to call this view an error which must be extirpated, insisting that war is too dangerous for kind-hearted illusions.
Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, The Cotter’s Saturday Night, stanza 12
And “Let us worship God!” he says with solemn air The father begins family worship.
The Agricola and the Germania, Agricola 30
To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace. The climax of the Caledonian leader's speech before the battle of Mons Graupius, condemning Roman conquest.
Walden, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. The book's statement of purpose, explaining why Thoreau moved to the pond.

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

The dramatic setting: a speech before battle.
The repeated rhyme sound in each stanza.
The questions in stanza 3.
The final cry Do or Die.

Key terms and names

Bannockburn: Battle of 1314 in which Robert the Bruce defeated Edward II of England.
Wallace: William Wallace, Scottish leader executed by the English in 1305.
Usurper: One who seizes rule without right.
Wha hae: Scots for who have, as in Scots who have bled with Wallace.

Seminar Questions

Comprehension Who is speaking and on what occasion?
Comprehension What does Edward's army bring, according to stanza 2?
Interpretation Why does Bruce mention Wallace?
Interpretation What does freedom mean in this song?
Interpretation Why might a poet in 1793 write about 1314?
Big Question When is it right to fight for liberty?

Faith Connections

Galatians 5:1 (Scripture)
For freedom Christ has set us free; distinguish the spiritual freedom Paul names from political liberty, while noting their links.
Nehemiah 4:14 (Scripture)
Nehemiah tells his people to fight for their brothers, sons and homes; compare Bruce's appeal.
Declaration of Arbroath (1320) (Great Conversation)
The Scottish barons' letter to the Pope after Bannockburn declares they fight not for glory or riches but for freedom alone.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The English king brings chains and slavery; true Scots will not be traitors or cowards; so they must fight, and die if needed, to break the usurpers and win freedom.

Rhetorical device: rhetorical question. Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a Slave?

Debate: Resolved: that Scots Wha Hae glorifies war more than it honours liberty.

Memory Work

Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed, Or to Victorie!
Stanza 1. The opening stanza is the most famous patriotic stanza in Scots.

Liberty’s in every blow!— Let us Do or Die!
Stanza 6. A short battle cry for courage.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Analyse how the song persuades, stanza by stanza, as a speech before battle.

Comparison with A Man’s a Man for A’ That: Compare Burns's two political songs: what does each say about freedom and human worth?

Creative Prompts

Classroom
Read a short account of the battle of Bannockburn, then decide which stanza fits which moment.
Essay
Is Scots Wha Hae about 1314 or about 1793? Use the text and its date.
Dialogue
Write a dialogue between a soldier who wants to flee and one who stays after hearing Bruce's address.