I came across this song, and was struck with how nearly every part of it could quite legitimately be read in different ways.
Here’s a very nice (if ‘modernized’) version of it:
The original lyrics:
Some background: Burns was re-writing a previous song, one that was a clear anti-Jacobite polemic. By the time Burns was writing the song, in 1791, Jacobianism (that is, the desire to set the Stewarts on the throne in place of the Hanoverians) had been dead for a long time.
There is no question that the song uses irony (“right and wrong” is compared to force - “a short sword and a long”; “heroic strife” = “the assassin’s knife”; etc.). To my mind, the question is - how much irony? Is the song intended to be anti-Jacobian, or is it really (as some commentators have suggested) really pro-Jacobian?
To my mind, the song is ultimately sincere: it is, essentially, a sorrowful acknowledgement that, in some situations, ‘heroism’ (i.e., support for the Jacobian cause) simply is not worth it; that it may become mere fanaticism, intended to bolster the ego.