Scottish and Northern English dialectal form of 'go'; to move or travel.
From Old English gān 'to go,' related to Old Norse ganga and German gehen. The form 'gae' represents a regional preservation of an older pronunciation that survived in Scottish dialects when standard English adopted 'go.'
This little word is a linguistic time capsule, preserving how English sounded centuries ago in the Scottish highlands. When Robert Burns wrote 'gae,' he was keeping alive an ancient form that connects us directly to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.
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