Scots Wha Hae

[1] According to tradition, the same theme was played in 1429 by the Franco-Scots army at the siege of Orléans in front of Joan of Arc.

The tune tends to be played as a slow air, but certain arrangements put it at a faster tempo, as in the Scottish Fantasy by Max Bruch, the concert overture Rob Roy by Hector Berlioz, and the Real McKenzies' punk rock rendition on their 1998 album Clash of the Tartans.

This is seen as a covert reference to the Radical movement, and particularly to the trial of Glasgow lawyer Thomas Muir of Huntershill, whose trial began on 30 August 1793 as part of a government crackdown, after the French Revolutionary Wars led to France declaring war on the Kingdom of Great Britain on 1 February 1793.

When Burns notably agreed to let the Morning Chronicle, of 8 May 1794, publish the song, it was on the basis of "let them insert it as a thing they have met with by accident, and unknown to me."

In 1881, The New York Times, reviewing Our Familiar Songs and Those Who Made Them by Helen Kendrick Johnson, asserted that no song was "more glorious" than "Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled", explaining that once Burns' poem had been set to the tune of Hey Tuttie Tatie, it "marched through the land forever, loud, and triumphant.