The verse runs, in the form usually quoted, "This thorn-tree, as lang as it stands, Earlstoun sall possess a' her lands." It was attached to a thorn tree at Earlston, Thomas's home village, and the tree was reported to have been blown down in a storm, with the year given as 1814 or 1821 depending on the account.
The verse cannot be traced to Thomas himself. By the sixteenth century prophecies were routinely fathered on him to give them weight, and Scott and Robert Chambers both noted rhymes passing among ordinary people as his sayings. The date of the tree's fall varies between sources, so I have kept it vague. The pin is placed at Earlston and is not the site of the tree.
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