The Earn Rins Doun

The Earn Rins Doun
A Ballad o’ William Drummond, Viscount Strathallan
DANIIL LAZKO

I
The frost lay grey on Earn’s black flow,
The wind blew snell ower moor an’ lea,
Whan Helen rocked her youngest, slow,
An’ sang him saft upon her knee.
But preachers thundered through the land,
An’ kirk an’ king were set at strife;
The bairn wad tak a sword in hand
An’ wear it a’ his lang, lang life.

II
He learned his Latin by the sea
Whaur auld Sanct Andrews fronts the faem,
He focht in Ireland’s weet countrie
For Ormonde, far frae kin an’ hame.
In Forty-Aucht, ahint the flag
O’ them that marched tae save the King,
He saw the weary columns lag,
An’ rain ran rust on bit an’ ring.

III
At Worcester, by the Severn side,
The day gaed doun in smoke an’ flame;
They took him whaur the wounded cried,
They took his sword, they speired his name.
Syne irons clashed on prison stane,
An’ mirk lay thick at noon an’ nicht;
An’ Drummond coonted, ane by ane,
The bars atween him an’ the licht.

IV
Nae man can tell hoo it was dune,
Nor wha left open door or yett;
But Drummond saw anither mune
Abune the heather, black an’ wet.
He socht the hills wi’ Highland men,
Whaur rain an’ hunger held the post,
Till weary lads gaed hame again
Whan a’ the Stewart cause was lost.

V
In Fifty-Five, wi’ Tam Dalyell,
He turned his face awa frae hame;
He heard nae piper, nor kirk-bell,
Nor ony voice that cried his name.
The road ran east through fir an’ birk,
Through fords an’ snaw, frae day tae day;
The forests closed baith lang an’ mirk —
An’ aye the Earn rins doun tae Tay.

VI
Whaur Moscow’s wa’s rase red an’ braid,
An’ gowden domes shone ower the snaw,
The Tsar’s clerk wrote, an’ thus it read:
’A colonel. Drummond. Scot.’ That’s a’.
He drilled the Tsar’s men, file an’ row,
In foreign fashion, rank on rank,
Through spring-thaw mire that sooked them low,
Through frost that bound the river-bank.

VII
He rade against the Polish lance,
He rade against the Tatar bow;
He saw the lang grass fire advance,
An’ byres gang up in reek an’ lowe.
Year efter year the war-drums spak
Frae Smolensk road tae Dnieper’s shore,
An’ ilka spring they sent him back
Tae tread whaur he had trod before.

VIII
At Chausy, in the Sixty-Twa,
The Poles cam doun wi’ mony mair;
Their horse cam thick as winter snaw,
Their kettledrums shook a’ the air.
He set his pikes like bristlin’ wood,
He held his shot till they drew near;
Syne fire — an’ whaur their squadrons stood
Lay nocht but horse an’ broken spear.

IX
Nae trumpet blew, nae banner flew,
But in the year o’ Sixty-Three
The clerk’s pen scartit, stiff an’ true:
Lieutenant-Gen’ral — Drummond, he.
Near ten lang winters cam an’ went;
He drew a stranger’s bread an’ pay;
The Moscow bells, the frontier tent —
An’ aye the Earn rins doun tae Tay.

X
Then letters cam wi’ Charles’s seal,
An’ cam again, an’ cam ance mair;
The Tsar was laith tae lose sic steel,
But gied him leave at last tae fare.
In Sixty-Five he turned his reins
Tae Scotland an’ the western sea;
But Moscow’s frost was in his veins,
Whatever hame his hame micht be.

XI
In Sixty-Six they gied him rank,
A Major-Gen’ral in his land;
Syne at the Council, paper blank
Was filled an’ sealed by ither hand.
A twalmonth on Dumbarton Rock
He watched the Clyde rin doun tae sea;
The sodger heard the gaoler’s lock,
An’ kent it for an auld, auld key.

XII
They styled him Viscount, lang an’ late,
Whan a’ his heid was frosty grey;
He bore the title, bore the weight,
Nae lichter than a battle-day.
In Eichty-Aucht, whan March blew snell,
They bore him doun the lang, lang brae
Tae Innerpeffray’s auld kirk-bell —
An’ aye the Earn rins doun tae Tay.

Tuapse · 16 September 2026

;
LITERARY ANALYSIS
Form and metre
The ballad consists of twelve octaves, ninety-six lines in all, of iambic tetrameter rhymed ABABCDCD — the eight-line stanza that Burns favoured for narrative song and that allows each octave to fall into two quatrains: the first usually states the event, the second turns it into an image. Every line carries eight syllables; more importantly, every line carries four strong beats, which is what a Scots ballad is heard by. Two stress-clashes are kept deliberately as marks of a living voice rather than a counted one: “nor k;rk-b;ll” (V) and “k;ttledrums sh;ok” (VIII).
Refrain and ring composition
The refrain “An’ aye the Earn rins doun tae Tay” closes stanzas V, IX and XII — departure, the height of the Muscovite career, and burial. Its present tense stands against the past tense of the narrative: whatever Drummond does in Muscovy, the river of his birth goes on flowing. The line is also literal geography. The Earn runs past Innerpeffray, where he was buried, and joins the Tay; the refrain therefore ends where the life ends, and the title, taken from it, is justified only by the last line of the poem.
A second ring binds the first and last stanzas: “his lang, lang life” (I) returns as “the lang, lang brae” (XII), down which he is carried. “Grey” and “snell” also recur, so that the March wind of his burial answers the frost of his cradle. Within stanza XII the verb “bore” is repeated on purpose: the man who “bore the title, bore the weight” is now himself borne.
Architecture
The narrative runs Scotland ; Worcester ; escape ; the eastern road ; Moscow ; the Polish and Tatar wars ; Chausy ; promotion ; return ; Dumbarton ; grave. Moscow is reached only after the road (V), so that distance is felt before arrival. Stanzas VII–X form the centre of gravity: service, battle, rank, and the difficult release. Stanza X gives the psychological turn — “But Moscow’s frost was in his veins, / Whatever hame his hame micht be” — which presents the return not as a simple homecoming but as the return of a changed man.
The motif of the document
A quiet chain of paper runs through the second half of the poem. A Muscovite clerk enters the newcomer in the rolls (VI); a clerk’s pen “scartit” the new rank (IX); letters under Charles’s seal set him free (X); and in Scotland a blank paper is “filled an’ sealed by ither hand” to imprison him (XI). One seal releases, another confines. The motif lets the poem speak of political fortune without abstract statement, and it avoids naming any particular accuser the sources do not name.
Imagery and concreteness
The poem is built on objects rather than declarations: the yett left open, the heather black and wet, fords and snow, spring-thaw mire, pikes like a bristling wood, kettledrums, broken spears, the gaoler’s lock that Drummond recognises as “an auld, auld key” from Worcester, the Clyde running to sea below Dumbarton Rock. Military glory is never named; the promotion comes with “nae trumpet” and “nae banner”. Mercenary service is stated plainly — “He drew a stranger’s bread an’ pay” — without either romance or reproach.
Language
The Scots is literary and moderate, clear to a modern reader but recognisably Scots in vocabulary and morphology: snell, speired, yett, mune, mirk, birk, braid, sooked, lowe, spak, laith, twalmonth, scartit, nocht, eichty-aucht. Rhymes follow Scots pronunciation (faem / hame, stane / ane, braid / read, snaw / a’). Standard English forms are used only where Scots itself uses them, and no pseudo-medieval spelling is introduced.
Tradition
The poem draws on the chronicle directness of Barbour and Blind Harry (action, march, capture, battle), on Scott’s historical landscape and movement between places, on Hogg’s fatal undertone (“Nae man can tell hoo it was dune”), and on Burns’s song-like octave and plain Scots. From the oral ballad come the abrupt transitions, repeated names, formulaic numbers (“In Fifty-Five”, “the Sixty-Twa”), the half-told escape, and the refrain. The social edge characteristic of Burns appears in understatement rather than in sermon.
Historical tact and poetic reconstruction
The poem does not put invented words into the mouths of the Tsar, Charles II or Drummond. The following details are poetic reconstruction and are not documented: the frost at his birth and his mother’s lullaby (I); the prison irons at Worcester (III); the manner of the escape, left deliberately untold (IV); the wording of the clerk’s entry (VI); the tactical sequence of pikes and held fire at Chausy (VIII); the paper and seal of the Council (XI); and the kirk-bell at Innerpeffray (XII). The Engagement of 1648 is evoked without placing Drummond at any particular battle.
;
HISTORICAL NOTE
William Drummond of Cromlix, 1st Viscount of Strathallan
c. 1617 – 23 March 1688
Origins and education
William Drummond was born about 1617, the fifth and youngest son of John Drummond, 2nd Lord Maderty (Madderty), and of a daughter of Patrick Leslie, 1st Lord Lindores. English sources name his mother Helen; some Russian sources give her name as Margaret. He belonged to the Drummond kindred of Strathearn in Perthshire and was educated at the University of St Andrews. His later titles were Viscount of Strathallan, Lord Drummond of Cromlix, and — through succession in his family — Lord Madderty.
Royalist service
During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms Drummond fought on the royalist side. He served in Ireland under the Marquis of Ormonde and held a command in the Engagement of 1648, the Scottish attempt to restore Charles I. He was taken prisoner at the Battle of Worcester in 1651, escaped, and rejoined the royalist resistance in the Highlands during the Commonwealth, until that cause collapsed.
In Muscovite service
In 1655, together with his friend Thomas Dalyell of the Binns, Drummond entered the service of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. He began as a colonel and commanded troops of the new, Western-drilled type during the Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667, serving against Polish-Lithuanian and Tatar forces.
In May 1662 his regiment was ordered to escort a convoy of grain, money and munitions to the fortress of Bykhov, which was blockaded by Polish-Lithuanian forces. Smolensk companies under the rotmistr Denis Shveikovsky were attached to him; the detachment numbered 3,119 men with four guns. A force of about 6,000 under Statkiewicz was sent to intercept the convoy and attacked it near Chausy, between the rivers Pronya and Basya. Drummond won the engagement against superior numbers, and for this victory he was promoted in 1663 to general-poruchik — lieutenant-general — one of the first to hold that rank in Russian service.
Return to Scotland
Drummond was highly valued in Moscow, and his release required repeated requests from Charles II. He returned in 1665. In 1666 he was appointed Major-General of the forces in Scotland. He sat as a commissioner for Perthshire in the Scottish Parliaments of 1669–74, 1681–82 and 1685–86 and in the Convention of Estates of 1678. His career was interrupted by twelve months’ imprisonment in Dumbarton Castle. After his return he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord Warriston, and widow of Thomas Hepburn of Humbie; they had a son, William, later 2nd Viscount, and a daughter, Elizabeth, who married Thomas, 6th Earl of Kinnoull.
Later career and death
He became General of the Ordnance in 1684 and later general of the forces in Scotland, and on the accession of James VII he was made a Lord of the Treasury. In 1686 he was created Viscount of Strathallan and Lord Drummond of Cromlix. He also compiled a genealogy of the House of Drummond. He died at the end of March 1688 and was buried at Innerpeffray, on the river Earn, on 4 April. His funeral sermon was preached by Principal Alexander Monro of Edinburgh. His male line ended in 1711 with the death of his grandson, the 3rd Viscount, at the age of sixteen.
;
GLOSSARY OF SCOTS WORDS
All Scots forms used in the poem, with their English equivalents and the stanzas in which they occur. Apostrophes mark omitted letters (an’ = and, wi’ = with, o’ = of, a’ = all).
Scots English Stanzas
a’ all I, IV, VI, VIII, XII
abune above IV
ahint behind II
an’ and I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII
ance once X
ane one III
anither another IV
atween between III
auld old II, XI, XII
awa away V
aye always V, IX, XII
bairn child I
baith both V
birk birch V
brae slope, hillside XII
braid broad VI
byres cow-sheds VII
cam came VIII, IX, X
coonted counted III
doun down III, V, VIII, IX, XI, XII
dune done IV
efter after VII
eichty-aucht eighty-eight XII
faem foam II
fare to travel, journey X
focht fought II
frae from II, V, VII
gaed went III, IV
gang go VII
gied gave X, XI
gowden golden VI
hame home II, IV, V, X
heid head XII
hoo how IV
ilka every, each VII
kent knew, recognised XI
kirk church I, V, XII
laith loath, unwilling X
lang long I, V, VII, IX, XII
licht light III
lichter lighter XII
lowe flame, blaze VII
mair more VIII, X
micht might X
mirk dark, darkness III, V
mony many VIII
mune moon IV
nae no IV, V, IX, XII
nicht night III
nocht nothing VIII
o’ of II, IX
ony any V
ower over I, VI
rade rode VII
rase rose VI
reek smoke VII
rins runs V, IX, XII
saft soft I
sanct saint II
scartit scratched IX
sic such X
snaw snow V, VI, VIII
snell keen, biting (of wind) I, XII
socht sought IV
sodger soldier XI
sooked sucked VI
spak spoke VII
speired asked III
stane stone III
syne then, afterwards III, VIII, XI
tae to II, V, VII, IX, X, XI, XII
tak take I
twa two VIII
twalmonth twelvemonth, a year XI
wa’s walls VI
wad would I
weet wet II
wha who IV
whan when I, IV, XII
whaur where II, III, IV, VI, VII, VIII
wi’ with IV, V, VIII, X
yett gate IV
Sources
Äðàììîíä, Óèëüÿì (1-é âèêîíò Ñòðåòòåëàí). Wikipedia (Russian). William Drummond, 1st Viscount Strathallan. Wikipedia (English). Dictionary of National Biography, article “Drummond, William, first Viscount of Strathallan”.
Malcolm, David. Genealogical Memoir of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Drummond. Edinburgh, 1808.

DANIIL LAZKO

Tuapse · 16 September 2026