Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Songs of Scotland prior to Burns

HERE 'S TO THE KING, SIR.
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lack o' grace, Wi' un - co gear and
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sin' he claimed my dad - dy's place, I dow
bide the
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HERE'S TO THE KING, SIR.
Burns entertained a great admiration for a simple old air
which, passed by the name of Tuttie Taittie, but which, up to
his time, had never been printed. He said in a letter to Mr
George Thomson : ' I am delighted with many little melodies
which the learned musician despises as silly and insipid. I do
not know whether the old air, Hey Tuttie Taittie, may rank
among this number ; but well I know that with Fraser's haut-
boy it has often filled my eyes with tears. There is a tradition
which I have met with in many places of Scotland, that it was
Robert Bruce's march at the Battle of Bannockburn.' The
patriotic enthusiasm of Burns led him afterwards to compose
his noble ode, entitled Bruce's Address to his Troops at Bannock-
burn, to this tune ; which necessarily has given it a high
celebrity and importance in our codex of national music.
There is, of course, little importance to be attached to such
a tradition as that mentioned by Burns. It may, indeed, be
questioned if there be a possibility of transmitting such a fact
for five hundred years by tradition. All that we know with any
certainty of the history of Tuttie Taittie is, that it was the
spirited air of a certain Jacobite song, which, from a historical