Lyric Poem · Life
A Tippling Ballad—When Princes and Prelates, etc
by Robert Burns
1WHEN Princes and Prelates,
2 And hot-headed zealots,
3A’ Europe had set in a low, a low,
4 The poor man lies down,
5 Nor envies a crown,
6And comforts himself as he dow, as he dow,
7And comforts himself as he dow.
8 The black-headed eagle,
9 As keen as a beagle,
10He hunted o’er height and o’er howe,
11 In the braes o’ Gemappe,
12 He fell in a trap,
13E’en let him come out as he dow, dow, dow,
14E’en let him come out as he dow.
15· · · · · · · But truce with commotions,
16 And new-fangled notions,
17A bumper, I trust you’ll allow;
18 Here’s George our good king,
19 And Charlotte his queen,
20And lang may they ring as they dow, dow, dow,
21And lang may they ring as they dow.
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“A Tippling Ballad—When Princes and Prelates, etc” by Robert Burns — quilloak.com/poems/a-tippling-ballad-when-princes-and-prelates-etc
Quick facts
- Poem
- A Tippling Ballad—When Princes and Prelates, etc
- Poet
- Robert Burns
- Length
- 21 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Life
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 21 lines · 2 stanzas of 7–14 lines
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Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Robert Burns1759–1796
- Source record
- PoetryDBA Tippling Ballad—When Princes and Prelates, etc by robert-burns, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 9b5aaee9cf8c8cea…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.