The Scottish songs - National Library of Scotland

457
! :
Lay the pioud usurpers low !
Tyrants fall in every foe
Liberty's in every blow !
Let us do or die ! *
* Bums conceived this most spirited lyric while riding, along with Mr
Syrae of Dumfries, on a stormy night, (July or August 1793.) through the
wilds which intervene betwixt Kenmure and Gatehouse, in Galloway. He
adopted the air of " Hey tuttie taittie," because he had heard a tradition
in different parts of Scotland, and especially near Stirling, that that was the
air to which the Scottish troops marched, in going forward to encounter the
English at the battle of Bannockburn,
The air of " Hey tuttie taltie" seems to be alluded to in the following
curious poem, which appears to have been published, for the first and only
time, in Watson's Collection of Scots Poems, 1711. It is one of a series of
comic doggrels, which the collector represents as having been written upon
a public-house, kept by one Peter Butter, at the gite of the Earl of Errol's
Castle of Slaines, Aberdeenshire; which public-house was called, by the
classical wits that frequented it, " Collegium Butterense." This particular
individual of the set, which itself bears some resemblance to a song, is the
address of a set of candidates to Alexander Crookshanks, patron of the
College :—
Most worthy patron, we,
Praefati candidati.
With th' old schoolmen agree,
As we shall let you see,
O Tite, Tute, Tati.
'Twas Aristotle's wish.
Who glampet at the truth.
And tippled like a fish.
To drink well and to ,
And not to die for drouth.
The best of our great guns
Refresh'd himself when dry
To wit, John Scot of Duns,
Swept off so many ounce.
And gave his reasons why.
Both Cartes and Le Grand,
Though they did break no glasses.
To tipple did not stand
So did Pope Hildebrand,
As every man confesses.
Mes. George Buchanan, yea
Et multi recentiores.
At ale and usquefcae.
Sat sometimes night and day.
And told Jus Regni stories.
Since Cartes took his glass.
And so did Aristotle,
Let's call the College Lass
When tliirsty, he's an ass,
With's friend will baulk a bottle*
2q
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