A man about to be hanged says goodbye to his prison, and then, astonishingly, he dances. That is the whole situation of Burns's "M'Pherson's Farewell," and its energy comes from the gap between the grim scene and the swagger of the telling. The poem names no crime and no courtroom. We get a condemned man, a gallows-tree and a flat refusal to be pitied.
The form is that of a song. Lines of four beats alternate with lines of three, and the rhymes land neatly: "strong" with "long," "destinie" with "tree." Burns adds a steady chime of rhymes inside the lines: "death" and "breath," "bands" and "hands," "heart" and "depart," "light" and "bright," "shame" and "name." Nearly every stanza has one. These echoes work like a drumbeat, so the speaker sounds unshaken even when what he says is bleak. The chorus is the most musical part. "Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, / Sae dauntingly gaed he" strings three adverbs together, each ending in the same lilt, so the line almost skips. The first suggests noisy high spirits, the second recklessness, and the third, judging by the context, a refusal to be frightened. The Scots "sae" and "gaed" keep the voice earthy and close to speech.
Two voices share the poem. The verses are spoken by M'Pherson, but the chorus talks about him from outside: "gaed he." Even in the first stanza he refers to himself by name ("M'Pherson's time will not be long"), as if he were already watching his own legend form. The effect is of a man performing his death for an audience, and of the audience, in the refrain, applauding him.
The imagery is that of a battlefield, with death cast as an opponent. "On many a bloody plain / I've dared his face, and in this place / I scorn him yet again." The question "what is death but parting breath?" deflates the fear of dying by making it almost small. Then the poem shows the bravado's limits. "Untie these bands from off my hands, / And bring me to my sword" is a bound man challenging everyone: "there's no a man in all Scotland / But I'll brave him at a word." The boast is magnificent, but the first line of the stanza reminds us that his hands are tied. The courage is real, and so is the helplessness.
The fifth stanza is where the cracks show. "I've liv'd a life of sturt and strife; / I die by treacherie." He was not beaten in fair fight but betrayed, and that is what stings. "It burns my heart I must depart, / And not avengèd be." The cool scorn of the earlier stanzas turns to heat. What he fears is not death but leaving a wrong unanswered. The slow, stressed "avengèd" lets the line close on that grievance.
The ending mirrors the opening. The poem begins by saying farewell to "dungeons dark and strong" and finishes with "farewell light, thou sunshine bright, / And all beneath the sky." The world widens just as he is about to lose it, and the loss feels larger for it. Then comes the curse: "May coward shame distain his name, / The wretch that dares not die!" "Wretch" appeared in the first stanza for the prisoner, "the wretch's destinie." By the end the word has been turned around. The true wretch is not the man on the gallows but anyone who would flinch from it. The poem defines courage as the way a person meets the end, not as success or survival.
That is what makes the poem memorable. It could have been a lament, but it is a celebration, and the lively refrain asks whoever sings it to share in the man's nerve. The cheerful tune also makes the situation more moving. We hear the dance and see the gallows in the same moment, and the poem never lets us forget either.