Jeremiah might not recognise his own complaint here. The opening line borrows the prophet's cry from the Book of Jeremiah, "woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife", and then does something mischievous with it. In the Bible the lament swells to the scale of the whole earth. Here the speaker's trouble shrinks to something far more everyday: he has no money, and everyone despises him for it.
That is the poem's central idea, and the second stanza lays it out like a neat trap. He cannot lend "on bill or band", so no "five per cent." comes his way. Nor can he borrow, because "the deil a ane wad trust me". The idiom means "not a single soul", but the literal picture is funnier: even the devil, presumably the lender of last resort, turns him down. The word "blest" is a small joke too. A religious word for divine favour is used for interest on a loan, as if a decent rate of return were a kind of grace. The speaker is shut out on both sides of the ledger, and the poem implies that this is how a community sorts people. If you have money, you are blessed. If you lack it, you are scorned.
The sound of the verse supports the complaint. Each stanza rhymes ABAB, and the lines alternate between eight syllables and seven. The shorter lines end on an unstressed syllable: "born me", "scorn me", "blest me", "trust me". Those soft endings make the voice trail off into a sigh, and nearly every one lands on the word "me". The rhyme scheme circles back to the speaker himself, which suits a man convinced the world is arranged against him. The first stanza also builds its grievance in steps. The verbs "hate, revile, and scorn" intensify as they go, and "sair contention I maun bear" makes the burden sound physical, like a load hauled uphill. The Scots words "sair" (sore) and "maun" (must) give the line a plain, blunt weight that the more formal English of "ye've born me" does not.
The final stanza turns more playful. "Wight" is an old word for a person, slightly grand and out of date, and it sits comically beside the invented compound "coin-deny'd". The speaker dresses his poverty in a mock-dignified title. Fortune is personified as someone who has "quite discarded" him, and the word may carry a hint of card-playing, of a useless card tossed aside. The rhyme of "discarded" with "blackguarded" is deliberately heavy. Both words have the same lumbering rhythm, and the second lands like a slammed door. After the biblical dignity of the opening, "blackguarded" is a rough street word for being called a scoundrel. It is also fitting that the abuse comes from "lad and lass". These are not prophets' enemies or kings but ordinary young villagers, the whole community reduced to a chorus of name-callers. Even "day and night" suggests a grievance that never lets up.
The speaker also turns to his mother, "Ye see how I am", as if she could stand witness. That small domestic appeal keeps the poem warm. We hear a man half genuinely hurt and half aware of how theatrical his misery sounds, and the poem seems to enjoy both attitudes at once. You do not need any knowledge of the poet's life to feel this. The tone does the work.
What makes the poem significant is how much it does in twelve short lines. It sets scriptural grandeur against the language of bills, bonds and percentages, and the clash is both funny and pointed. The joke deflates the prophet's lofty suffering, but it also suggests that being friendless for want of cash is a real wound, and that a society quick to trust the wealthy and mock the poor deserves a little of the laughter itself. The poem also shows how easily Scots speech can move between solemn and comic registers, sometimes within a single line.