For "Van" (19th December).   

I was in a bit of a rush, and "ambiguity" wasn't right; I'd have been better just leaving this thought until later (like now). Anyone who knows anything worthwhile about RB will recognise what his political position, with regard to egalitarianism &c, was. What I mean is this: While the last verse, beginning

"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will, for aa that..."

is clearly optimistio in expressing, very powerfully both in words and in the internal rhymes of the first and third lines, the conviction that "Man to Man, the Warld owre, shall brithers be, for aa that", the words "for all that" can be taken in two different ways. The most obvious is to see them as just colloquial ("an' aa that" is, as I mentioned, an often-heard expression in Glasgow, and probably elsewhere in Scotland too), just the words that are required by the structure of the verses and the name of the air. But, bearing in mind the times when RB was writing, and his own persecution by "the Powers that be", can they not also bear the sense "For all the things that have opposed, still are opposing, and will continue to oppose, this future state of Egalitarianism and Internationalism"? "For" in the sense of "Despite". Rather than "ambiguity", perhaps I should have written "richness" or something; given that there are only two kinds of Ambiguity (when it's intentional and when it's not), I suppose the better word would have been "Irony". Hope that makes things clear; by the way, I'm quoting from memory, not from any edition (dog-eaten, dog-eared, or no), so the spellings I've adopted are just how I sing the song.