by Robert Burns (1759 - 1796)

My Heart's in the Highlands
Language: English 
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here:
My heart's in the Highlands, a chasing the deer;
[Chasing]1 the wild deer, and following the roe --
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go.
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birthplace of valour, the country of worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
 
Farewell to the mountains high [cover’d]2 with snow;
Farewell to the straths and green [valleys]3 below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a chasing the deer;
[Chasing]1 the wild deer, and following the roe --
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

View original text (without footnotes)

Confirmed with The Works of Robert Burns, London: T. Tegg, Cheapside; C. Daly, Red Lion Square, MDCCCXL, page 384.

1 Arditti: "A-chasing"
2 Arditti: "covered"
3 Gade: “vallies” (likely a typo)

Authorship:

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

Settings in other languages, adaptations, or excerpts:

  • Also set in French (Français), a translation by Anonymous/Unidentified Artist ; composed by Niels Wilhelm Gade.
  • Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by Wilhelm Christoph Leonhard Gerhard (1780 - 1858) , "Mein Herz ist im Hochland" ; composed by Otto Claudius, Wilhelm Eckardt, Alexander Fesca, Gustav Flügel, Hans Harthan, Adolf Jensen, Carl August Krebs, Friedrich Wilhelm Kücken, Henry Hugo Pierson, Carl Richter, Robert Schumann, Julius Stern.
  • Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by Friedrich Niggli (1875 - 1959) ; composed by Friedrich Niggli.
  • Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by (Johann) Philipp Kaufmann (1802 - 1846) , appears in Gedichte von Robert Burns, first published 1839 ; composed by Otto Dresel, Ferdinand von Hiller.
  • Also set in German (Deutsch), a translation by Ferdinand Freiligrath (1810 - 1876) , "Mein Herz ist im Hochland", appears in Gedichte, in Robert Burns. Elf Lieder [later 13 Lieder], no. 9[11] ; composed by Otto Baehr, Paul Claussnitzer, Robert Franz, Niels Wilhelm Gade, Wilhelm Kleinecke, Heinrich August Marschner, Henry Hugo Pierson, as Henry Hugo Pearson, Karl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke, Ferdinand Sieber, Hans Sitt, Václav Jan Křtitel Tomášek.
  • Also set in Russian (Русский), a translation by Mira Mendelson-Prokof'yeva (1915 - 1968) ; composed by Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky.

Other available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

  • CZE Czech (Čeština) (Josef Václav Sládek) , "Mé srdce je v horách"
  • POL Polish (Polski) (Jan Kasprowicz) , "Me serce jest w górach", Warsaw, first published 1907


Researcher for this text: Sharon Krebs [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 16
Word count: 131