Nobody in this poem gets to be a hero, and that is why it works. The speaker has been let down and cornered ("my back be at the wa'"), and the whole district is talking about it. Even so, the speaker raises a glass, filled with nothing stronger than water, to the person responsible. Burns writes in Scots, and the grammar carries the idea: "Altho'... and tho'... yet." The poem is one long concession, a sentence that admits every grievance and then insists on the toast anyway.
The grievance itself is sketched in just a few strokes. "Fautor" points at the one in the wrong, the culprit. The middle four lines say how the speaker got here: "Sae brawlie's he could flatter." *Brawlie* means splendidly or finely, a bright, bouncy word, as if the speaker still half-admires the skill with which he or she was charmed. The consequences are described very differently: "slighted sair," "dree the kintra clatter." *Dree* means to endure, and *clatter* is the noisy gossip of the neighbourhood, a word that sounds like the thing it names. The poem never says what the man did. Judging by "wanton sides" and all that flattery, the speaker may be a lover or a close friend who was drawn into disgrace by someone's charm. The exact sense of "O wae gae by his wanton sides" is hard to pin down, but the tone of rueful exclamation comes through clearly.
The structure is neat. Twelve lines fall into three groups of four, and the first and last groups are almost identical, so the complaint sits inside a refrain like a stone inside a ring. The longer lines have four beats ("ALtho' my BACK be at the WA'"). The indented lines are a little shorter and end on an unstressed syllable: *fautor*, *water*, *flatter*, *clatter*. That gives the poem a lilting, song-like movement, and the poem looks built to be sung, though that is an inference from its shape. The rhymes matter too. *Fautor* chimes with *water*, which sets the grand word for blame against the humblest of drinks. The effect is half-comic, as if the poem were quietly aware of how little it has to toast with. In the middle, *flatter* rhymes with *clatter*, so the sound itself makes the cause-and-effect point: the flattery came first, the gossip followed. The other two middle lines ("sides" and "sair") don't rhyme, and the section feels looser and more ragged than the tidy refrain around it.
The small changes in the last four lines are the most telling. "Altho'" becomes "But tho'," and the final line gains an exclamation mark: "Yet here's his health in water!" After hearing the complaint, the repeated lines no longer sound like a polite habit. The "But" turns them into a decision, and the exclamation mark makes it almost defiant. The same words come back with more weight because of what has been said between them.
Then there is the water. A toast is usually raised in wine or ale, so water feels bare, even a little rueful. It might suggest the speaker has nothing left to celebrate with, or that the speaker is now sober and clear-eyed about the man. Either way, the loyalty here is not blind. The speaker knows exactly who he is, since the poem has just listed his faults, and drinks to him regardless. Forgiveness is not quite claimed either. The toast stands in a narrow space between resentment and affection, and the poem lets both be true.
That balance is what makes this small piece worth reading. In twelve lines, with a handful of Scots words that carry feeling more sharply than their English equivalents ("sair," "dree," "wae"), Burns gives us a whole character: wounded, humiliated, stubborn and generous. The refrain could have been mere decoration, but it works as the speaker's backbone, repeating the one thing that won't bend. It suggests that real loyalty is not a matter of thinking well of someone, but of standing by them when it costs you.