"Strae" is one of those quintessential agricultural words that grounds Scots poetry in the reality of rural life. It appears in contexts of poverty, harvest, and the humble materials of the countryside, and Burns uses it to anchor his verse in the actual textures of the world he knew. "Death and Doctor Hornbook" and the agricultural poems use such vocabulary to insist on the dignity of plain life. The word's brevity and plain vowel make it metrically easy, and it contributes to the textured, earthy fabric of Scots pastoral verse.

Strae is part of the basic agricultural vocabulary that underlies so much of Scots poetry's material world. Straw — the dried stalks left after threshing — was the substance of bedding, animal feed, thatching, and countless rural uses. In verse it appears in images of poverty (sleeping on straw), of harvest and plenty, and of the fragility of human constructions. The phrase "worth a strae" (worth nothing at all) reflects how straw's very ubiquity made it the currency of worthlessness. For students studying Burns and the rural tradition, straw's symbolic range — from the bed where children are born to the thatch overhead — gives "strae" resonances that reach well beyond its literal meaning.