"Lilting" describes a bright, flowing style of vocalisation common in Scots folk music, often without words or with improvised syllables. In Elliot's poem, the opening memory of "lasses a' lilting" establishes the prelapsarian joy that war destroys. The term evokes spontaneity, youth, and communal harmony, contrasting sharply with the subsequent "moaning." In Scots verse, lilting appears in work songs and courting ballads, embodying the vitality of rural life. Its musicality makes it a self-referential poetic device, as the sound of the word itself echoes the light, rising cadence it names. Its loss in the poem becomes the loss of music itself.

"Lilting" is a richly evocative Scots term that describes light, rhythmic, cheerful singing, often without words or with improvised syllables, and it carries connotations of spontaneity, joy, and communal harmony. The word itself mimics the sound it describes—the light, rising and falling cadence of a lilting tune—and its use in poetry often serves to establish a prelapsarian world of happiness before grief or loss intrudes. In Elliot's "A Lament for Flodden," the opening memory of "lasses a' lilting before dawn o' day" establishes the idyllic past that war destroys, and the final pronouncement that "we'll hear nae mair lilting" makes the loss permanent and irreparable. For poetry students, "lilting" offers a powerful example of how sound and meaning can work together in poetry; the word's phonetic qualities make it almost impossible to say without a slight rise and fall of the voice, mirroring the musical quality it describes. The term appears throughout Scots folk tradition, often in work songs and courtship ballads, and its association with milking and pastoral labour roots it in the rhythms of rural life. In teaching, encouraging students to read lines containing "lilting" aloud can help them appreciate how the word's sound contributes to its emotional impact, and how its absence in the poem's final stanza creates a devastating silence that is more powerful than any direct description of loss.