AMANG THE TREES.
Tune—“The King of France, he rade a race.”
[Burns wrote these verses in scorn of those, and they are many, who prefer
“The capon craws and queer ha ha’s!”
of emasculated Italy to the original and delicious airs, Highland and Lowland, of old Caledonia: the song is a fragment—the more’s the pity.]
I.
Amang the trees, where humming bees
At buds and flowers were hinging, O,
Auld Caledon drew out her drone,
And to her pipe was singing, O;
’Twas pibroch, sang, strathspey, or reels,
She dirl’d them aff fu’ clearly, O,
When there cam a yell o’ foreign squeels,
That dang her tapsalteerie, O.
II.
Their capon craws and queer ha ha’s,
They made our lugs grow eerie, O;
The hungry bike did scrape and pike,
’Till we were wae and weary, O;
But a royal ghaist wha ance was cas’d
A prisoner aughteen year awa,
He fir’d a fiddler in the north
That dang them tapsalteerie, O.