My Heart's in the Highlands
Robert Burns · 1789 · 13 lines · Tune: Failte na Miosg.
“My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here”
This is a song, not a poem. Burns wrote it to an existing air and meant it sung, which is why the lines are the length they are.
Burns was an Ayrshire man, a Lowlander, and had toured the Highlands only briefly in 1787. This is therefore homesickness for a place that was never home — which turns out to be the more portable feeling, and is why the song travelled with Scots who emigrated and never came back.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
Chorus.—My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains, high-cover’d with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart’s in the Highlands, &c.