This line doubles as a potential moment of autobiographical poetry for Johnston. In her autobiography, published in the same book as "The Last Sark," she writes that even though the abuses of her youth left her suicidal many a time:

"I did not, however, feel inclined to die when I could no longer conceal what the world falsely calls a woman’s shame. No, on the other hand, I never loved life more dearly and longed for the hour when I would have something to love me-and my wish was realised by becoming the mother of a lovely daughter on the 14th of September, 1852."

After the birth of her daughter, her tone toward her personal death in her autobiography shifts, no longer claiming suicidal ideation, and instead a will to live.

Johnston keeps up a strict rhyme scheme throughout the poem - aabbccbb, etc. However, the speaker's somewhat fourth wall breaking exclamation here tips that rhyme scheme on its head. Blin', in the Scots dialect, is a near rhyme with the word him, though that rhyme is lost some in other accents. Beyond the loose rhyme here, the outburst also changes the otherwise even flow of the rhythm through the poem.

The thought of her child falling to the floor forces the speaker out of her careful patterns, highlighting the mother's love and care for her children.

This line could either be referring to money itself as a curse or, more likely, saying that the amount of wealth that the upper classes hoard is the actual curse. This could also perhaps be the poem's speaker herself placing a curse upon that money.

"Unco": Scots for "unknown or unfamiliar"

Bean: Scots for "in good condition," "comfortable," or "well-stocked"

Puir in modern Scots (from 1700 onward) can mean either a "pauper or beggar", or "someone in considerable need of help". While this definition is also true for older Scots, there was also a secondary definition - one that meant "guiltless" or "free from moral corruption". With this older definition in mind, this line comes to have a similarly twofold meaning; one in which all the poor will die at the careless hands of the rich, but also one where the poor working-class are the class of purity, while the gentry are corrupt.

The refrain throughout this poem works as a sort of a war cry. The rest of the poem reads as a lament between wife and husband, something that could come from almost any middle class or lower house even to this day. However, the use of the refrain takes readers from the world of the poem back out into the wider world of working-class Scotland.

In Scots, "gude" can be a form of exclamation, similar to "God God!" or "Lord have Mercy". The phrase also shows up in works by Sir Walter Scott, such as The Antiquary and St. Ronan's Well; see entry 5

"The Last Sark" is a dialect poem, written in the Scots language. As Florence S. Boos notes: "The everyday speech of all classes of Victorian Scotland was probably some version of Scots" (55). While it was common for Scottish authors to write in Standardized English, dialect poetry tended to be looked down upon and efforts of Scottish poets to write in traditionally English poetic forms, such as blank verse, removed them from the common Scot (54). As such, Scottish (and especially Glaswegian) working-class poets "expected no wider English audience" (56) and instead wrote more towards an audience of their peers.