Help me interpret or discuss this poem by Robert Burns?

Question

http://www.bartleby.com/6/292.html

What do you think it means? What information can you help me find about this poem? What is this poem about? Thank you.

Answer 1

Burns did not fit the stereotype of the Highlander in his own life or in the image he projected to literary society. However, hthis poem he penned sings about a displaced Scot.

It's better to know the context first.

My Heart's in the Highlands was written in the year 1790. Burns was then living at Ellisland Farm, although by this time he had been appointed a post in the Excise and was contributing to Johnsons Scots Musical Museum.

Because of the Jacobite Rebellion the English had so repressed the Scots that old songs were forbidden to be sung and were dying out. Burns collected these old fragments from people that he met on his tour. Sometimes only a tune was remembered and sometimes only a line or two. Johnson had the idea that he would publish these with the music and Burns wholeheartedly joined in this cause, so much so that he later became editor for Johnson. Not all the songs in the Museum were written by Burns although the majority were.
.

Answer 2

292. Song—Farewell to the Highlands


Tune—“Failte na Miosg.”


FAREWELL to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

Chorus.—My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here, 5
My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Farewell to the mountains, high-cover’d with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below; 10
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart’s in the Highlands, &c.

I dont understand what you are doing.
Bartly i a bookstore.
This poem doesnt pose any problems does it?
the speaker in the poem is leaving his home
to go off to a wider world, like a young man
seeking adventure -- or going off to college
or something.

Burns was Scots, a highlander is from the more
rural part ... he will always miss it. That's all.