Regarding Lighter's first post, I don't think Burns meant - even ironically - by "adore the rising sun" that you should bow to King George. Given what he wrote in the previous verses, and in the last two lines of the final verse, I think it's more likely that he's just urging Jacobites to accept the things they cannot change, and appreciate that the world, though not as they'd ideally like it to be, is still a beautiful place. All the rest of the poem seems to be saying that he's sympathetic to the Jacobite cause in principle, but not to there being any more insurrections, so your interpretation of that line doesn't make sense to me in that context.


I think you may be half right about the "Right and Wrang" verse - I think he may well have been saying that the law in those days was determined by might, whether you like it or not - although if so, he's not saying that what's right or wrong is determined by might, but rather that what is right or wrong by the law is determined by might.

However, I disagree with what you wrote about the divinely appointed King. The theme of the whole of rest of the poem seems to me to be that fighting over a lost cause, however worthy it may be in principle, just leads to pointless death and suffering (a plea against fanaticism.) So if he's saying that the law is determined by might, then I think his underlying message would have been that one might not like that, but the alternative to accepting it is to "haunt a parent's life wi' bluidy war".

Dave