Context: When the old minstrel pauses during the telling of his tale of love and war on the English-Scottish border, his hearers, a duchess and her attendant ladies, ask him why he plods around Scotland to sing his songs; his harp would be much more appreciated in the south, in England, and the wealthy English would reward him more highly than the poor Scots are able to. The aged harper, although his harp is dear to him, rather resents the slight of putting his harp music above his poetry. He begins his next canto with what is probably the most famous expression of patriotism in poetry. He asks if there is a man who cannot say to himself that this is his own, his native land, whose heart has not been stimulated by a return home from foreign lands. If such an unenviable creature exists, take note of him, because he is a wretch who will die unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Scott's expression here is reminiscent of Achilles' characterization of the dead Hector (in Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad); he said that the fallen warrior, lying on the plain, was "unwept, unhonor'd, uninterred."