Let Friendship and Honor Unite

What's the Spring, breathing Jessamine and Rose,
What's the Summer, with all its Gay train;
What's the Plenty of Autumn to those
Who have bartered their freedom for Gain.


Let the Love of your King's Sacred right,
To the Love of your Country Succeed,
Let Friendship & Honour unite
And Flourish on Both Sides the Tweed.

No Sweetness those Senses can share
Which Corruption & Bribery bind:
No calmness that Heart e'er can cheer
For Honour's the Sun of the Mind.

Let the Love of your King's Sacred right,
To the Love of your Country Succeed,
Let Friendship & Honour unite
And Flourish on Both Sides the Tweed.

Let Virtue distinguish the brave
place riches in lowest degree,
Think him poorest who can be a Slave,
Him richest who dares to be free.

Let the Love of your King's Sacred right,
To the Love of your Country Succeed,
Let Friendship & Honour unite
And Flourish on Both Sides the Tweed.

Let us think how our Ancestors rose,
Let us think how our Ancestors fell,
'twas their rights they defended, 'twas those
They bought with their Blood which we Sell.

Let the Love of your King's Sacred right,
To the Love of your Country Succeed,
Let Friendship & Honour unite
And Flourish on Both Sides the Tweed.

 - Anglo-Scottish border ballad, as found in English Jacobite Ballads, Songs, & Satires, Etc., ed. Grossart, Alexander Balloch, 1877; the original text is almost certainly 18th c. In 1979 Dick Gaughan adapted the words into the form usually heard today and added a new melody. I've left the capitalization as it appears in the original, but fixed a few spelling errors.

"Both Sides the Tweed" is neither a whig song nor one which embraces conflict, a comparative rarity among all the Jacobite ballads which survive - it celebrates the Act of Union (1707), which created the United Kingdom, but its words will continue to have resonance as a celebration of friendship regardless of the outcome of today's referendum.