The Deils Awa Wi The Exciseman - Analysis

The devil as folk hero

Burns’s central joke is also his central claim: when the exciseman disappears, the town feels as if evil itself has left—and the poem dares you to enjoy that reversal. The opening image is gleefully theatrical: The deil cam fiddlin' and danc’d awa with the Exciseman, as if a public nuisance is being escorted offstage to music. The townspeople’s reaction—ilka wife cries and wishes luck o’ the prize—treats the exciseman as the true “prize” the devil has won, not a soul the devil has stolen. That inversion makes the exciseman feel less like a worker and more like an oppressive force that the community can only imagine removing through a supernatural prank.

Refrain as communal chant

The repeated chorus—The deil’s awa, He’s danc’d awa—works like a chant spreading through the town. Because it returns after each verse, the poem doesn’t develop toward a moral conclusion; it develops toward collective certainty, the way a crowd convinces itself of a shared feeling by repeating it. The tone is boisterous and triumphant, but the repetition also carries a sharp edge: it’s not just celebration, it’s insistence, as if the community must keep saying the exciseman is gone to make that freedom feel real.

Illicit drink and public joy

The exciseman’s absence immediately becomes material: We’ll mak our maut, and we’ll brew our drink. Burns ties authority to the regulation of ordinary pleasures—grain, brewing, singing—and imagines liberation as the return of local control over daily life. The town doesn’t merely relax; it plans to laugh, sing, and rejoice, then offers mony braw thanks to the meikle black deil. Here’s the poem’s key tension: the speaker thanks the devil for making room for happiness. It’s funny, but it also hints that the law’s intrusion has felt so predatory that even the devil looks like an ally by comparison.

The “best dance” is a disappearance

The final verse lists respectable Scottish dances—threesome reels, foursome reels, hornpipes, strathspeys—only to crown a new “dance” above them all: the ae best dance is the exciseman being carried off. Burns turns civic resentment into choreography; the community’s dream of political relief becomes something you can clap to. The poem ends where it began, looping back into the refrain, as if the town wants this single wish—authority removed, pleasure restored—to keep spinning like music that won’t stop.