Scottish Quotations from James Hogg

"The Ettrick Shepherd" Scottish poet (1770 - 1835)

Up with the flowers of Scotland,
The emblems of the free
Their guardians for a thousand years,
Their guardians still we'll be,
A foe had better brave the devil
Within his reeky cell,
Than our thistle's purple bonnet,
Or bonny heather bell.
- The Flowers of Scotland

She saw a sun on a summer sky,
And clouds of amber sailing bye;
A lovely land beneath her lay,
And that land had glens and mountains gray;
And that land had values and hoary piles;
And marlèd seas, and a thousand isles;
Its fields were speckled, its forests green,
And its lakes were all of a dazzling sheen,
Like magic mirrors, where slumbering lay
The sun and the sky and the cloudlet gray;
Which heaved and trembled and gently swung,
On every shore they seemed to be hung;
For there they were seen on their downward plain
A thousand times and a thousand again;
In winding lake and placid firth,
Little peaceful heavens in the bosom of earth.

Kilrneny sighed and seemed to grieve,
For she found her heart to that land did cleave;
She saw the corn wave on the vale,
She saw the deer run down the dale;
She saw the plaid and the broad claymore,
And the brows that the badge of freedom bore;
And she thought she had seen the land before.
James Hogg

We'll o'er the water, we'll o'er the sea,
We'll o'er the water to Charlie;
Come weel, come wo, we'll gather and go,
And live or die wi' Charlie.
'O'er the Water to Charlie' in Jacobite Relics of Scotland Second Series ( (1821) James Hogg

The daisy is fair, the day-lily rare,
The bud o' the rose as sweet as it's bonnie.
- Auld Joe Nicolson's Nannie

Where the pools are bright and deep
Where the gray trout lies asleep,
Up the river and o'er the lea
That's the way for Billy and me.
- A Boy's Song

Oh, why should vows so fondly made,
Be broken ere the morrow,
To one who loves as never maid
Loved in this world of sorrow?
- The Broken Heart

O, love, love, love!
love is like a dizziness;
It winna let a poor body
Gang about his biziness!
- Love is like a Dizziness

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