Is Scotland a nation, or not?
is a question that troubles the Scot,
since our banknotes and laws,
our religion and tawse
don’t add up to self-confident thought.
Where’s the What for which Scots keep on yearing?
We strike when we ought to be earning;
An Assembly! we shout,
then vote the thing out
and get back to the business of girning.
Yet no matter how deeply one delves
through what history’s stacked on our shelves,
at least we still joke
of the pig in the poke
we buy when we treat with ourselves.
Anonymous, late twentieth-century. The title is borrowed from that of a well-known satirical review.