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 every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!
Let us do or die!

The other class of exceptions is the group of songs on Jacobite
themes. The rebellion led by Prince Charles Edward in 1745 had
produced a considerable quantity of campaign verse, almost all without
poetic value; but after the turmoil had died down and the Stuart cause
was regarded as finally lost, there appeared in Scotland a peculiar
sentimental tenderness for the picturesque and unfortunate family that
had sunk from the splendors of a throne that had been theirs for
centuries into the sordid misery of royal pauperism. Burns, whose
ancestors had been "out" in the '45, shared this sentiment, as Walter
Scott later shared it, both realizing that it had nothing to do with
practical politics. Out of this feeling there grew a considerable body
of poetry, a poetry full of idealism, touched with melancholy, and
atoning for its lack of reality by a richness of imaginative emotion.
Burns led the way in this unique movement, and was worthily followed
by such writers as Lady Nairne, James Hogg, and Sir Walter himself. He
followed his usual custom of availing himself of fragments of the
older lyrics, but as usual he polished the pebbles into jewels and set