aise aed beret ee i i ve Hrs Oo \54'7 BT 4 Vy ‘ons oducts _ CORNELL.. UNIVERSITY LIBRARY STEPHEN E. WHICHER MEMORIAL BOOK COLLECTION GIFT OF MRS. ELIZABETH T. WHICHER UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY Cornell University Library PR 4300 1897.B7 ‘iii 192 init 013 446 681 Ke PRINTED IN/U. S. A. +{|NO. 23233 Che Cambridge Edition of the Poets EDITED BY HORACE E,. SCUDDER BURNS DRAWN FROM HENLEY AND HENDERSON THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS Cambridge Cdition par . Fa EA 6, alliage. ince hed Hirppiad MMA pes a: BOSTON: AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, | Che Bivergide Press, Cambridge / &\ URIS LIBRARY ete Pr 4300 1677 i} iho E ft i. her Mompad 2 obs Ottectin, LES j Aff « Hiss Sobek Mhecber, Copyright, 1897, By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. All rights reserved. 3%6034 B 340 PUBLISHERS’ NOTE Tue present edition of Burns’s Complete Poetical Works conforms with the other volumes in the Cambridge series — Longfellow, Whittier, Browning, Holmes, and Lowell —as regards mechanical features and general treatment, but its edito- rial equipment is drawn entirely from the Centenary Burns edited by Messrs. W. E. Henley and T. F. Henderson. By arrangement with Messrs. T.C. & E. C. Jack of Edinburgh, the publishers of that work, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. assumed the publication of the four volumes in America, and also secured the right of issuing the work in one volume in general uniformity with their Cambridge edi- tions. The plan of the Centenary Burns was that of a definitive edition. The editors not only reprinted all of the known poems of Burns, but were able to collect some poems not before included. They used a careful judgment in the choice of texts, and accompanied each poem with a minute record of other readings, so that the edition is a variorum one. Not only this ; they traced the origin of each poem and gave a full history of its evolution, where, as in many cases, Burns had adapted an existing song to his own use. ‘They explained, moreover, in prefatory and other notes, the personal, historical, and local references, and they supplied a glos- sary of terms as well as copious indexes. Finally, Mr. Henley summed up the editorial judgment in an essay at once critical and biographical. This full and minute treatment presents the poetical achievement of Robert Burns in the most scholarly form, and the Centenary is likely long to remain the ‘most thorough-going edition. It will readily be seen by any one familiar with the several volumes of the Cambridge series that the scheme of that series is of a more condensed order, and the Editor of the Cambridge Burns has sought, therefore, to use the equipment of the Centenary Edition in such a manner as to make it agree in the main with that of the other volumes of the Cambridge series. In place of the customary brief biographic sketch, he has reprinted the whole of Mr. Henley’s Essay. 'The headnotes both to groups of poems and to the individual poems and songs are of the same nature as those provided in other volumes of the series, but more elaborate and detailed. The variorum notes have been omitted, as also a number of the more critical and exhaustive examinations of origins which would be out of place in a condensed, handy, one-volume edition, but all explanatory notes, including the most trivial by Burns himself, have been retained. In brief, it has been the purpose of the Editor to give the general reader all he would ask from the Centenary Edition, leaving out what would appeal only to a special student. The very slight interpolations required in condensation are indicated by brackets [’]. The glossary has been reprinted, but the opportunity has been taken to give it addi- tional careful revision. The indexes are the same as in the Centenary Burns. The portrait is from the painting by Alexander Nasmyth in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The vignette on the title-page represents the Poet’s birthplace and is after a drawing by A. Donaldson. Boston: 4 Parx Srreet, September 1, 1897. TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ROBERT BURNS: LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT . ‘ . « xii POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOT- TISH DIALECT. 1 Tue Twa Dogs i % si » 2 Scorcu Drink. ‘ 4 Tse AvtTHoR’s EARNEST Cry AND PRAYER. ‘ . 3 . 6 Postscript * 4 é z 8 Tue Houy Farr. % ‘ ae) ADDREss TO THE Del. ‘ 12 -ernE DrataH anp DyiIne Worps or Poor Maine ‘ “ . 14 -~Poor Marie’s Eveey . : ri 15 Epistte To JAmxs SMITH ‘i . 1 A Dream. ‘ é * é 18 Tse Vision . ° - ‘i . 19 HALLOWEEN . ‘ 23 Tue AvuLD Pinnis Naw Yuan Morning SALUTATION TO HIS AvuLp Marg, Macciz . ‘ - 26 Tue Correr’s Saturpay Nicut 28 ~To a Mouse . 5 31 Epistie To DaviE, A Brorner Porr 382 Toe Lament Ff ‘ ‘ ‘ 34 DESPONDENCY . ‘ e - 385 MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN . é 36 WintTER . 37 A PRaveR IN THE “BRoseuge OF DratH ‘ 3 . 387 To a Mountain Darsy , 3 . 38 To Row i a 39 EPiIsTtLE TO A Youne eens . 89 On a ScorcH Barp GONE TO THE West Inpizs . A 40 A Depication To GaAvIN ‘Hanon. ron, Esq. . ‘ C 7 . 4 ~ To a Louse . ‘ 43 EristLe to J. aman, AN en Scortish BarRp . ‘ . 44 Srconp EpistLe ro J. Tamar, 46 “To WILLIAM SIMPSON OF OCHILTREE 47 Postscript . 5 F 49 EristLe To JoHN Rawxrne - . 50 ~ Sone: ‘Ir was upon a Lammas NIGHT” s , Sone, Comsean i IN Aetna A 3 Sone: From Tues, Exiza . 3 Tue FAREWELL: TO THE BRETHREN or Sr. James’s Lopez, Tarsor- TON - - 7 : ‘ - EpirarH on A HENPECKED SQUIRE Epicram on Sam Occasion ANOTHER . Fi 5 Eprrapys. On a CELEBRATED Rune ELDER. On a Noisy Poruac On WEE JoHNIE For tHe AUTHOR’s Farner, For Rosperr Amen, Esq. For Gavin Hasntron, Ese. A Barp’s Eprrarn : ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 - DeatH AND Doctor Hornsoox . Tue Brics or Arr. ‘ : 7 Tue ORDINATION . THe Carr. ~ ADDRESS TO THE Gos Goin Tam Samson’s ELEGY A Winter Nicut STANZAS WRITTEN IN Prosper « OF DeatH . * ¥ Prayer: O Trou ties Pownit PARAPHRASE OF THE First Psaum PRAYER UNDER THE PRESSURE OF VioLENT ANGUISH 3 Tas NinetietaH Psatm Venes To Miss Logan ~ADDREss TO A Hacais AppREss TO EDINBURGH Sones. - JouHN BARLEYCORN . A Fracment: WHEN Guirorp Goop . ‘ My Nanir, O é GREEN GROW THE Rasuns, oO PAGE 53 53 53 54 54 54 54 54 54 55 55 vi CONTENTS Comprosep 1n SPRING ‘ ~ UT “A HIGHLAND LAD MY LOVE Tar Guoomy NicHT Is GATH- WAS BORN” . - : . 104 ERING FAST . . 2 "8 ‘““LET ME RYKE UP TO DIGHT No Cuurcuman amI_.. » 18 THAT TEAR” . - 105 “My sonze ass, I work IN ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH BRASS” . ‘ . 105 EDITION OF 17928. , s 80 os AM A BARD, OF NO REGARD” 106 Wrirten iw Friars Carsz Her- “SEE THE SMOKING BOWL BE- MITAGE, ON NITHSIDE . 5 80 FORE us” . s ‘ . 107 Opz, SacRED To THE Memory oF SatTrrEs AND VERSES. Mrs. Oswaup or AucHENcRuUIvE 81 Tse Twa Herps: or, THE Exeey on Captain MartrHew Hoty Tutyie : ; - 107 HENDERSON ‘ : F ‘ 82 Hoty Wit11e’s PRAYER - 109 Tre Erirara a . 83 Tae Krex’s ALARM. ‘ - 110 Lament or Mary, Quzex OF Soors 84 A Porr’s WELCOME TO HIS To Ropert Grauam or Finrry, Ese. 85 Love-BEGOTTEN DauGHTER 113 Lament FoR JAmeés, EARL oF GLEN- THE INVENTORY . : . 114 CAIRN . a 87 A Mavucariwe Weppine . . 114 Lines To Sm Jeux Wiirmrconn, Apam Armour’s Prayer . 115 Bart. . : 7 ‘ ‘ . 88 Narure’s Law . zi . 116 Tam o’ SHANTER . . 88 LINES ON MEETING WITH Lorp On sEEING A WounpDED Hage LIMe Darr . : 117 BY ME WHICH A FELLOW HAD JUST ADDRESS TO THE Toormacne . 118 SHOT AT. 5 e 93 LaMEntT FOR THE ABSENCE OF ADDRESS TO THE Snape | or Troi: Wii Crescs, Pususxer 118 sON . 93 Verses In Friars Carsze Her- ON THE Litnsi Capra Guess MITAGE ‘ 120 PEREGRINATIONS THRO’ Scornanp 94 ELEGY ON THE DEranvap Yar To Miss CruicKSHANK, A VERY 1788 , 5 ‘ : - 120 Youne Lapy 3 z . 95 CastLe GorDOoN . 121 Sone: ANNA, THY Cuanus . . 6 On roe DucHess oF Gorpon’s On READING IN A NEWSPAPER THE Reet Dancine. ¥ . 121 Death or Jonn M‘Lrop . - 96 On Captain GRosE 5 - 122 Tue Homesite Peririon or Bruar New Yrar’s Day, 1791 . . 122 WATER . 3 96 From Esopus ro Magma .—s- 128 ON SCARING SOME Whrskiows ; IN Nores anp Epistxes. Locu Torir . ‘ . OT To Joun Ranxine, in RepPty VERSES WRITTEN WITH A Pantin TO AN ANNOUNCEMENT . . 124 at Kenmorsz, TaymoutH - 98 To Jomn GoLpiE . . 125 Lines on THE Fatt oF FYERS, NEAR To J. Larram: Tamp Erws- Loca Nzss ‘ 98 TLE . . 125 On THE Birr or Aa Posraumous To THE Rev. Joun MMarx 126 CHmp . 3 3 ” , . 99 To Davie: Sreconp EristtE 127 Tux WHistte . . . . 99 To Jomn Kennepy, DumFrims House. . 128 POSTHUMOUS PIECES .... . 102 To Gavin Hasnzox, Ese., Tae Jotty Becears: a Cantata 102 MavucHLinE . . 129 “Tam a son or Mars” . 102 To Mr. M‘Apam or " Ceatmy- “T oncE WAS A MADD, THOUGH GILLAN 5 » 129 J CANNOT TELL WHEN” . 108 REPLY TO AN Inversion . 130 “Sire Wispom’s A FOOL WHEN To Dr. Mackenzize . . 130 HE’s Fou” . . é . 104 To Joun Kennepy . : . 183 CONTENTS vii To Wau CHAumers’ SwEET- HEART . . . To an Otp Soratmreieaiva Exremporse to Gavin Hamir- ton: Sranzas on NAETHING Repty ro A Trimmine EpistTiE RECEIVED FROM A TAILOR To Masor Logan. To rae GumDWwIFE oF Wav- cHOPE HousE. s é To Wituam TytTLer, Esq. .) OF WoopDHOUSELEE . : To Mr. Renton or Tue TON. To Miss Takancnal Mieumon To Symon Gray . ° To Miss Ferrer . SYLVANDER TO CLARINDA To CLaRINDA To Hues Parker To Auex. CUNNINGHAM . To Rogerr Granam, Es@., or Fintry ImpRomPtu TO Ciscann R- DELL ReEpPiy To A ome aoa “Car- TAIN RIDDELL To James TENNANT OF Gxmx- CONNER . - A 7 To Joun M‘Morpo ‘ Sonnet to Rosert GRaHam, Esq., or Fintry ‘ Episrtz to Docror Brack- LOCK . ‘ : 3 : To A GENTLEMAN . 4 é To Perser Sruart To Joun Maxwe tt, Esq, oF TERRAUGHTIE 3 To Wii11am Srewart InscrirTion To Miss GRAHAM or Fintry . ‘ * REMORSEFUL Arotocy To Coxitector MircHEenL To Cotonen Dz PrysterR . To Miss Jess: Lewars. INscRIPTION TO CHLORIS _ THEATRICAL PrEcEs. PRoLOGUE SPOKEN BY Mr. Woops on His BENEFIT NicHt PROLOGUE SPOKEN AT THE THEATRE OF DuMFRIES . 140 130 131 131 . 182 183 134 135 - 136 . 137 187 "137 - 139 139 140 . 142 142 . 142 143 . 144 144 145 146 . 146 146 146 147 - 147 147 - 148 148 . 149 150 Scors ProtoguE FoR Mags. SUTHERLAND . 3 : - 150 Tae Ricurs or Woman: AN OccasionaAL ADDRESS . 1651 ADDRESS SPOKEN By Miss FoNTENELLE ON HER BENE- rir Niecnt . F 3 . 152 Pouirican Pieces. ADDREss OF BEELZEBUB . 153 Brerapay Ope ror 31st Dr- CEMBER, 1787 . 3 . 153 Opr to tHe DrpartzeD Re- eEncy Bint - zi 154 A New Psam ror THE Cait oF Ki~MaRNock . ‘ . 155 InscRiBED TO THE RIGHT Hon. C. J. Fox. : 156 Own GLENRIDDELL’s Fox Bia ING HIs CHAIN. . ‘ . 157 On THE ComMEMORATION OF Ropney’s Victory . - 158 OvE ror GENERAL WASHING- Ton’s BIRTHDAY . 2 - 158 Tur Fire CHAmMPftRe . 159 Tue Five CaRruins . - 160 Exection BaLtap FoR Wexs- TERHA’ ‘ 161 As I cam poon THE "Banas o’ Nira . : . 162 ELEcTIoN BALLAD: Teacuns Bureus, 1790 . : - 162 Batuaps on Mr. Heron's Exxction, 1795. Bauuap First . % . 164 Battap Ssconp: THE ELEction . « , » 165 Bautap Tump: Jon Busuey’s LamENTATION 166 Tue Troccer . 5 ‘ . 167 Tae Dean or tHE Facotry 168 MiscELLANIES. Tue TaRpoutton Lasses . 169 Tue Ronatps oF THE Bennats 169 I’Lt Go AND BE A SopceR ... 170 APOSTROPHE TO Fergusson 170 Tue BELiEs or Mavcnuine = 171 AH, WOE Is ME, My MorHEeR DEAR . ‘ 171 INSCRIBED ON A " Wore OF Hannan More's . 3 - 171 Lines WRITTEN ON A BANK Nore . ‘ s - « 172 viii CONTENTS Tar FAREWELL . 172 Atv InVERARAY 185 ELEGY ON THE Draw OF Ar Carron IRoNWORKS . 185 Roserr RvuissEaAvx . 172 ON SEEING THE RoyaL PALACE VERSES INTENDED TO BE WRIT- avr SriruineG in Runs 185 TEN BELOW A NoBLE EARL’s AppitionaL Linges at STiR- Picture . ‘ . 178 LING ‘ . 186 ELEGY ON THE ‘Thicaaris OF Sin REPLY TO THE Taeay OF A James Honter Briain 173 Crnsorious CRITIC 186 On tHe Derata or Lorp A Hiegauann WELCOME . 186 Presipent Dunpas . 174 Ar WuicnHaw’s Inn, SANQUHAR 186 ELrey on WILLIE NIcow’s VERSICLES ON SIGN-POSTS 186 Mare . 175 On Miss Jean Scortr 186 Linzs on Firoisson . 176 On CapraiIn Francis Grose 186 ELEGY on THE LatE Miss ON BEING APPOINTED TO AN Burnet or Monsoppo 176 Excise Drvision ‘ - 187 Preasus AT WANLOCKHEAD . 177 On Miss Davies 187 On SomE COMMEMORATIONS OF On A BEAUTIFUL CountTRY ‘Stax 187 THomson 17 Tue Tyvranr WIFE 187 On GENERAL Dustonen’s Ar Brownaity Inn. . 187 DEsERTION ‘ « ATT Toe TosADEATER 187 On Joun M‘Murpo 178 In Lamincron Kirk 187 ON HEARING A THRUSH SING Tue Keexin Guass 188 in A Morning Wak IN At THE GLOBE TAVERN, Dew JANUARY . 178 FRIES 188 Impromptu on Mrs. RinpRits Yr TRUE Lowa: Nisin 188 Brrerapay . 178 On Commissary GOLDIE’s SonNET ON THE Dear OF BRAINs . 188 Rogsert RippELL oF GLEN- In a Lapy’s Poommr Hoax 188 RIDDELL . . 179 AGAINST THE EArt OF GaALLo- A SoNNET UPON Sonwurs 180 WAY . ‘ P 3 189 FRAGMENTS. On THE Same . . : - 189 Tracic FRAGMENT . r . 180 On THE SAME e 189 REMORSE 181 On roe Same, ON THE AepHOR Rusticity’s Useaucr ‘Ronis. 181 BEING THREATENED WITH On WiturAmM CREECH 181 VENGEANCE . 189 On WiviiAm SMELLIE . 181 On roe LairD oF Lacsan » 189 SKETCH FOR AN ELEGY 182 On Maria Rope. . . 189 Passion’s Cry . . 182 On Miss FonrTENELLE . 189 In VAIN WOULD PRopewer . 188 Kirk anp Sratre ExcisEMEn . 190 Tus Cares 0’ Love - 183 On THANKSGIVING FOR A EricRAms. Nationa VicrorY . 190 ExTEMPORE IN THE COURT OF Pinnep TO Mrs. WatreR Rip- SEssion 183 DELL’s CARRIAGE . - 190 At Rosurw Inv. . 184 To Dr. Maxwet. 190 To an ARTIST i . 184 To ruse Breavrirun Miss Eurza Tas Boox-Worms . ‘ . 184 J—n . - 190 On Exrurinsrone’s TRANSLA- On CHtoris . 3 190 TION OF MARTIAL 184. To THE Hon. Wm. R. ‘Mauze On Jounson’s OPINION OF or PANMURE . . 191 HamMppEN 2 - 184 On sEEING Mrs. Kewicy IN UNDER THE Porrrarr OF "Misa Yarico 191 Burns. 2 185 On Dr. Pasmevon'd Lows . 191 On Miss Riven IN Gacuen 4 185 On ANDREW TURNER . 191 CONTENTS ix THe Soremn LeacGuE AND For GasrieL Ricnarpson . 198 CovENANT . 191 On rue AUTHOR . 198 To Jonn Syme or Branaee 191 On a GoBLET - 192 | SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “ MUSI- Apology To JOHN ee . 192 CAL MUSE ” AND THOM- On Mr. James GRACIE 192 SON’S “SCOTTISH AIRS” . 199 Ar Friars Carse HeErmir- Young Praey 201 AGE. . 5 7 . 192 Bowie DunpEE « 2U1 For an Aurar or INDEPEND- To rae WEAVER’s GIN YE GO . 202 ENCE s 192 O, wHisrLe an’ I’LL COME TO YE, VERSICLES TO Jusem Tema my Lap. - 202 Tae Toast . 192 I’m o’eR YOUNG TO MARRY YET 203 THe MENAGERIE . 192 Tae Brrxs or ABERFELDIE 203 JEssiz’s ILLNESS 4 - 198 M‘PHERson’s FAREWELL . 203 Her Recovery 193 My Hicuianp Lassiz, O - 204 On MARRIAGE . ¥ 3 . 198 Tuo’ Crue Fate . . 205 GRACES. Stay, my CHARMER - 205 A Poxrr’s GRACE . » 198 STRaTHALLAN’s LAMENT. - 205 At THE GLOBE TAVERN . . 198 My Hoecisz . . 206 EPirapHs. JumPin JoHN ‘ . 206 On James GRIEVE, Larrp oF Up in THE MORNING EARLY 206 Boeurap, TARBOLTON 198 Tue Youne HigHuanp Rover. 207 On Wma. Morr iw Tarporiton Tue Dusty MILLER - 207 MILL . . 194 I pream’p I tay . 207 On JonNn Renews » 104 Duncan Davison. 207 On Tam THE CHAPMAN . 194 Tuenm. Menzies’ Bonre Many » 208 On Hoty Witte . 194 Lapy Onuiz, Honest Lucky 208 On Joun Dove, Paniematan 195 Tue Banks oF THE DEVON . . 209 On A Wace in Mavcauine ... 195 Duncan Gray - 209 On Roserr FERGussoNn 195 Tue ProucHMaNn . 210 ADDITIONAL STANZAS, NoT In- LANDLADY, COUNT THE Taran - 210 SCRIBED . . 195 Ravine WINDS AROUND HER BLOW- For Wri1am Nicoz 195 ING. - 5 : ‘ ‘ . 210 For Mr. Witu1am MicHie . 196 How Lane anp DREARY IS THE For Witi1am CRUICKSHANK, Nicut 211 A.M. . x 196 MusineG ON THE Roum Oona 211 Qn Rosert Muir . 196 BLYTHE WAS SHE 211 On a Lap-poe ‘ 196 To DAUNTON ME . = 212 Monopy on a Lapy FAMED O'ER THE WATER TO Crante 212 FOR HER CAPRICE . 196 A Ross-Bup, py my Earty Wark 213 For Mr. Watrer RippELL 197 Anp I’LL KISS THEE YET 213 On a Norep Coxcoms . 197 Ratrum, Roarin WILLIE . 213 On Capt. LAscELLES ‘ . 197 WHERE, BRAVING ANGRY Win- On a Gattoway Larrp 197 TER’s STORMS 214 On Wm. GranAam oF Moss- O Trssie, I HAE SEEN THE De 214 KNOWE . 198 CuARINDA, MistRESs or My Sout 215 On Joun BusHsBy oF Spey Tae WINTER iT Is Past 215 Downs 198 I rove my Love# IN SECRET . . 216 On a SurcipE . 198 Swezer Tippin Dunsar . 216 On A SWEARING Coxcomn . 198 HicHianp Harry . 216 On AN INNKEEPER NICKNAMED Tue TaILoR FELL THRO’ THE Be 217 “rE MARQUIS” . 198 Ay Waukin, O » BIT On GrizzeL GROMME 198 BrwaReE 0’ Bonie eee, . 217 ° VV AV ELV LO LappIi£, LIE NEAR ME. ‘ : Tae GARD’NER WI’ HIs PAIDLE . On a Bank or FLOWERS Tuer Day RETURNS My ee SHE’S BUT A “Tieaate YET : JAMIE, COME TRY ME , 7 3 Tue Sitver Tassie. ; 7 ‘ Tue Lazy Mist . = 3 “s Tae Caprain’s Lapy . 7 Or a’ THE AIRTS . - CarRL, AN THE KING COME WBHISTLE O'ER THE LAvVE O'T O, were I on Parnassus Hun . Tae Captive RisBaNnD a Tuere’s A YOUTH IN THIS Crry My Hearr’s in THE HIGHLANDS. JoHN ANDERSON my JO Awa’, Wuics, awa’ Ca’ roe YOWES TO THE Knows 7 O, Merry HAE I BEEN 7 i A Moruer’s Lament. 4 Tae Waite CocKAbE . 2 ‘ Tue Brass 0’ BALLOCHMYLE > Tue Rantiw Doe, trae Dapp o'r Trou Lincerine Star a é Epriz ADAIR Tue BartLEe oF Sunweannaen Youne Jock was THE BLYTHEST Lap é ‘ - - 3 ‘ A Wavxrire Minniz . 7 i Txo’ Women’s Minps Wut BREW’D A PEcK 0’ Mavr KILLIECRANKIE .. s 7 Tue Biuxn-erep Lasse . : Tae Banks or Nite . ‘i 3 Tam GLEN CRAIGIEBURN Woop. FRAE THE FRIENDs AND Lanp I Love O JoHN, COME KISS ME NOW . Cock up your BEAVER i rp My TocuEr’s tHe JEWEL. . GuIDWIFE, CouUNT THE LAWIN . THERE’LL NEVER BE PEACE TILL JAMIE COMES HAME f Waar can A Youne Lassie Tae Bone Lap THAT’s FAR AWA I po conFgess THOU ART SAE Farr SEnsIBILITY HOW CHARMING . Yor Wiup Mossy Mountains . I AE BEEN AT CROOKIEDEN . Ir 18 NA, JEAN, THY Bonte Face My Eprrz Macnas 218 218 - 218 219 - 219 219 220 220 » 220 221 . 221 221 222 222 » 222 223 . 223 223 224 224 « 225 225 225 226 226 » 227 227 228 228 228 229 229 230 280 - 280 231 231 - 232 232 232 232 - 238 233 234 234 . 234 235 . 235 235 236 Waa 1s THAT AT my Bower Door 236 Bone Wee Taine . af : . 236 Tae TirseR Morn. ‘ . 237 Az Fonp Kiss . : 5 ‘ . 237 Lovety Davizs . 4 . 287 Tue Weary Pounp o’ Tow i - 238 I war A WIFE 0’ mY AIN . 238 WHEN sHE CAM BEN, SHE BOBBED . 239 O, FoR ANE-AN-TWENTY, Tam . 239 O, Kenmure’s oN AND AWA, WILLIE 239 O, LEEZE ME ON my Sprinnin-WHEEL 240 My CotnierR Lappie ‘ - 240 NitHsDALE’s WELCOME Hao . 241 In Sommer, WHEN THE Hay was MAWN . P . : ‘ . 241 Fam Evia . . ‘ . 242 Ye JACOBITES BY Name. - » 242 Tae Posie . i - 242 Tae Bangs 0’ Doon ‘s : . 243 Wie WastTLe . ‘i - . 244 Lavy Mary Ann . . s . 244 Sucw a ParceL or RoGuEs IN A Nation oi . ' . 245 KELLYEURN Beans - q , « 245 Tae Suave’s LAMENT . 5 . 246 Tse Sone or DeatH . F - 246 Sweet Arron. ‘ : . 247 Bonm Bett. ‘ E : » 247 THe GaLLAnt WEAVER J - 248 Hey, ca’ THRO’ . ‘ r . 248 O, can yE LABOUR LEA - 248 Tue Drvk’s DANG O'ER My Dappre 249 Sne’s Fam anp Fause . - . 249 Tue Dem’s Awa wl TH’ Exciseman 249 Tse Lovety Lass or Inverness 250 A Rep, Rep Roszt 250 As I stoop sy Yon Roorixss TowER . 3 . 250 O, AN YE WERE Dzap, Gommax 251 — Lane Syne 2 - 251 Lovis, wHat RECK I BY THEE « 252 Hap I rae Wrrt , 3 . 252 Comin THRO’ THE Rye . 7 » 252 Youne Jamie , 3 . 258 Our OVER THE Forrn - > . 258 WANTONNESS FOR Evermarm . 253 CHARLIE HE’s My DaRLING . . 258 Tae Lass 0’ EccLeFEcHAN . . 254 Tae CooPperR 0’ Cuppy . p » 254 For THE Saxe 0’ SomEBopDy . 254 Tse CaRDIN o'r. ‘ : . 255 Taere’s THREE TrRuE Gui Fs. Lows . 7 “ # p - 265 CONTENTS xi Saz FLAXEN WERE HER RINc- LETS . ‘ ‘ ze 255 Tue Lass THAT MADE THE Bep . 256 SAE FAR AWA : \ a . 256 Tue Regu o’ Srumrig . ‘ . 257 I’un ay ca’ In BY Yon Town . 257 O,.waT YE wHA’s In Yon Town . 257 WHEREFORE SIGHING ART THOU, PHILLIS % ‘ Fi . . 258 O May, ray Morr. ‘ 5 . 258 As I cams 0’ER THE CaIRNEY Mount 258 HicuHianp Lappie z é . 259 Witt tHov BE My Dearin? . . 259 Lovety Potty Stewart . . 259 Tue HicHianp Batov . % . 260 Bannocgs 0’ Bear MEAL . - 260 Wake is my Heart. 4 A . 260 Here’s ars Hearts 1w Water 260 Tse Winter or Lire - . 261 Toe Tarmor . z - 261 THERE GROWS A Bore Baer Buss 261 HERE’s TO THY eae my Boniz Lass . : F - 262 Iv was A’ FOR OUR Hicsary Kine 262 Tse Hichtanp Wimow’s Lament 263 Tsou Gioomy DEcEMBER. . 263 My Praey’s Face, my Peeey’s Form 263 O, STEER HER UP, AN’ HAUD HER Gaun . ‘ J ‘ . 264 Were Wie Gray Z < 5 . 264 WE’RE A’ NODDIN ‘ . 264 O, ax my WIFE SHE DANG ME. 265 Scroceam . Z . 8 . 265 O, Guip ALE comEs ‘ : . 265 Rosin sHoRE In Harstr . . 266 Dozrs Haueuty Gaui Invasion THREAT ? . . 266 O, once I Ltov’p A Bonk aes 266 My Lorp a-HUNTING. ‘ . 267 Sweerest May . i A - 268 Mee o’ THE Mitt . ; . 268 JOCKIE’s TA’EN THE Plage Kiss 268 O, LAY Tay Loor rn mine, Lass 269 CAULD Is THE E’enrn Buast . 269 Tere was A Bonz Lass . . 269 TueEre’s News, Lasses, News . 269 O, THat I HAD NH’ER BEEN MAR- RIED . ‘ ‘ 5 . . 270 Mauiy’s Meex, Matty’s Sweet . 270 WANDERING WILLIE . A . 270 Braw Laps 0’ Gacua Water... 271 Avutp Ros Morris ‘ ¥ . 271 Oren THE Door To mz, O . ~ 271 Waen WIitp War’s Deapty Buast 272 Duncan Gray. i 272 Dr.upep SWAIN, THE Priaawee . 278 Here 1s tHE GLEN. ‘ 278 Let not WomEN H’ER COMPLAIN . 273 Lorp GREGORY . ei ‘i - 274 O PoortitH CauLp. ‘ « 274 O, stay, SwEET WaRrsiine Woop. LARK... B - 215 Saw ye Bone Lier ‘ % . 275 Sweet ra’s THE Eve . ‘ - 276 Youne Jessie . : é 7 . 276 Avown Winpine Nira 5 - 276 A Lass wr A TocHER . ~ 277 BiyTHeE HAE I seen on Yon ‘Hut 277 By Auwan Stream. . - 278 CANST THOU LEAVE ME . ‘ . 278 Coms, LET ME TAKE THEE. . 279 ContTENTED wi’ LitTLe . 5 . 279 FAREWELL, THOU STREAM . . 279 Hap I a Cave. Z ‘i F . 280 Here’s «a Hearta : a 280 How CRUEL ARE THE Pienane . 281 Huspanp, HusBaND, CEASE YOUR STRIFE é 281 Iv was THE Guikcewines Mone . 281 Last May a Braw Woorr . 282 My Nanin’s awa . : 3 . 283 Now Rosy May . 2 é - 283 Now Spring HAS CLAD . . 284 O, THIS Is NO My AIN Tixweae . 284 O, wAT YE WHA THAT LO’ES ME . 284 Scots, WHA HAE . . 285 THER GROVES 0’ Susie Myr- TLE : ‘ ‘ - 286 THINE AM I. ‘ - . 287 TuHou HAST LEFT ME oe isi 287 Higuuanp Mary . . - 287 My Ca#uoris, Mark r ‘ . 288 Farrest Marp on Devon Banks 288 Lassie wl tHE Lint-wHITE Locks 289 Lone, tone THE Nient . - 290 Locan WaTER i ‘ . . 290 Yon Rosy Brizr. ; 2 - 291 WHERE ARE THE JOYS . . . 291 Brxotp tHE Hour . ‘i . 292 Fortorn, my Love 3 . 292 Ca’ tax YowEs TO THE Brows (SECOND sET) s “ . 202 How can my Poor Eiwkwe 293, Ig THERE For Honest Poverty 294 Marx Yonper Pome . . 294 O, LET ME IN THIs AE NicutT . 295 xii CONTENTS O Patty, Harpy se rHaT Day O, wERE My Love. . , SLEEP’sT THOU . 5 ‘ THERE was A Lass . i Tue Lea-Ric . 4 My Wire’s 4 WINSOME Wrr TaN Mary Morison . é ‘ MISCELLANEOUS SONGS . A Rorwep FarMer Montcomertiz’s Preey . Tae Lass or Cessnock Banks Tuo’ Ficktze Fortuns ‘ i Racine Fortune My FatHer was A Pawns 3 O LEAVE Novexs Tuer Mauceune Lapy One Nicur as I pip WANDER Tuere was A Lap ‘ WILL YE GO TO THE Tirorns, MY Mary Her Frowine Leena ‘ Tuer Lass 0’ BALLOCHMYLE . ¥ Tue Nicut was STiLu = * Masonic Sone . Tuer Bone Moor-HEN Here’s A Bottle . Tue Bonre Lass oF Repawie 3 AMANG THE TREES. ‘ Tae CHEVALIER’s LAMENT. Yestreen I wap A Prinr 0’ WINE SwEET ARE THE Banks - Yr Frowery Banks CALEDONIA You ’RE aise Waam Sraw- ART WHEN FIRST i SAW Fam JEANIE’S Face . BEHOLD THE Hour eres SET) Here’s A HEALTH TO THEM THAT’S AWA . 296 296 . 297 297 - 298 298 299 . 299 300 "| 300 301 302 - 3802 302 . 803 3803 . 304 304 » 804 305 305 306 - 806 306 "| 307 307 - 808 308 308 . 809 310 . 810 . 311 811 . 312 312 Aug, CHLORIS Pretry Pre. Msc o’ tHE MILL (ezconn ‘anr) Paituis THE Farr 7 O saw YE my Drak, My Paige °T was NA HER Bone Buus WE Way, way TELL THY LovER THE PRIMROSE. O, WERT THOU IN THE exci Bast INTERPOLATIONS. Your FRIENDSHIP For THEE IS LAUGHING Warose ‘ No Corp ArproacH . - ALTHO’ HE HAS LEFT ME Ler LOovE SPARKLE . As DOWN THE Burn IMPROBABLES. 5 On Rover Roaps % ELEGY ON STELLA . ‘ a 3 Porm on PastoraL POETRY On tHe Destruction or Drum- LANRIG Woops Tae JoyrcvL WMowER Why SHOULD WE IDLY WASTE OUR PRIME 3 Tue TREE OF Lrsrrry To a Kiss Dexia: AN ODE To tae OwL Toe VowELs: Aa TALE On THE ILLNESS OF A ovouRvEx CuHmp . Fi On tHe Ds&aTH OF A Pevouniis CHILD. NOTES GLOSSARIAL INDEX | INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES INDEX OF FIRST LINES . : INDEX OF TITLES . . 313 313 . 313 313 . 314 314 314 . 314 315 315 315 "| 316 323 . 825 349 37T . 882 3889 ROBERT BURNS LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT By W. E. HENLEY TO T. F. HENDERSON IN MEMORY OF MUCH DIFFICULT YET SATISFYING WORK, HIS FELLOW IN BURNS W. E, H. Muswe i Hituz, 8¢2 Fuly, 1897 In 1759 the Kirk of Scotland, though a less potent and offensive tyranny than it had been in the good old times, was still a tyranny, and was still offensive and still potent enough to make life miserable, to warp the characters of men and women, and to turn the tempers and affections of many from the kindly, natural way. True it is that Hutcheson (1694-1746) had for some years taught, and taught with such authority as an University chair can give, a set of doctrines in absolute antagonism with the principles on which the Kirk of Scotland’s rule was based, and with the ambitions which the majority in the Kirk of Scotland held in view. But these doctrines, sane and invigorating as they were, had not reached the general ; and in all departments of life among the general the Kirk of Scotland was a paramount influence, and, despite the intrusion of some generous intelligences, was largely occupied with the work of narrowing the minds, perverting the instincts, and constraining the spiritual and social liberties of its subjects. In 1759, how- ever, there was secreted the certainty of a revulsion against its ascendency; for that year saw the birth of the most popular poet, and the most anti-clerical withal, that Scotland ever bred. He came of the people on both sides; he had a high courage, a proud heart, a daring mind, a matchless gift-of speech, an abundance of humour and wit and fire; he was a poet in whom were quintessentialized the elements of the Vernacular Genius, in whose work the effects and the traditions of the Vernacular School, which had struggled back into being in the Kirk’s despite, were repeated with surpassing brilliancy ; and in the matter of the Kirk he did for the people a piece of service equal and similar to that which was done on other lines and in other spheres by Hutcheson and Hume and Adam Smith. He was apostle and avenger as well as maker. He did more than give Scotland songs to sing and rhymes to read: he showed that laughter and the joy of life need be no crimes, and that freedom of thought and sentiment and action is within the reach xiv of him that will stretch forth his hand to take it. He pushed his demonstration to extremes; often his teaching has been grossly misread and misapprehended ; no doubt, too, he died of his effort — and himself. But most men do as they must — not as they will. It was Burns’s destiny, as it was Byron’s in his turn, to be “the passionate and dauntless soldier of a forlorn hope;” and if he fell in mid- assault, he found, despite the circumstances of his passing, the best death man can find. He had faults and failings not a few. But he was ever a leader among men; and if the manner of his leading were not seldom reckless, and he did some mischief, and gave the Fool a great deal of what passes for good Scripture for his folly, it will be found in the long-run that he led for truth — the truth which “ mak- eth free ;” so that the Scotland he loved so well and took such pride in honouring could scarce have been the Scotland she is, had he not been. I His father, William Burness (or Burnes), and his mother, Agnes Brown, came both of yeoman stock—native the one to Kincardineshire, the other to Ayrshire. William Burness began life as a gardener, and was plying his trade in the service of one Fergusson, the then Provost of Ayr, when, with a view to setting up for himself, he took a lease of seven acres in the parish of Alloway, with his own hands built a two-roomed clay cottage — still standing, but in use asa Burns Museum — and in the December of 1757 married Agnes Brown, his junior by eleven years. She was red-haired, dark-eyed, square-browed, well-made, and quick-tempered. He was swarthy and thin; a man of strong sense, a very serious mind, the most vigilant affections,! and a piety not even the Calvinism in which he had been reared could ever make brooding and inhumane. And in the clay cottage to which he had taken his new-married wife, Robert, the first of seven children, was born to them on the 25th January, 1759. . The Scots peasant lived havi, toiled incessantly, and fed so cheaply that even on high days and holidays his diet (as set forth in The Blithesome Bridal) con- sisted largely in preparations of meal and vegetables and what is technically known as “offal.” But the Scots peasant was a creature of the Kirk ; the noblest ambition of Knox? was an active influence in the Kirk; and the Parish Schools enabled his part in it like the stark and fearless oppo- site that he was. But he was a humourist, he 1 In times of storm, he would seek out and stay with his daughter, where she was herding in the fields, because he knew that she was afraid of lightning; or, when it was fair, to teach her the names of plants and flowers. tle theological treatise for his children’s guidance, too, and was, it is plain, an exemplary father, , and.so complete a husband that there is record of but a’ single unpleasantness ‘between him and Agnes his wife. 2 The Reformer hada. vast deal more. in: ‘com- - ; > through his keyhole would have got short shrift mon with Burns than with the sour John Knox” of Browning’ s ridiculous verses.’ He was the man of a‘crisis, and a desperate one; and he played He wrote a lit-: _Joved his glass of wine, he. abounded in human- ity and intelligence, he married two wives, he ‘was as well beloved as he was extremely hated and. feared. He could not foresee what the col- lective stupidity of posterity would make of his teaching and example, nor how the theocracy at -whose establishment he aimed would presently assert itself as largely a system of parochial in- quisitions. The minister’s man who had looked from him; and in the Eighteenth Century he had as certainly stood with Burns against the Kirk LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xv the Kirk to provide its creatures with such teaching as it deemed desirable. Wil- liam Burness was “a very poor man” (R. B.). But he had the right tradition ; he was a thinker and an observer; he read whatever he could get to read; he wrote English formally but with clarity ;1 and he did the very best he could for his children in the matter of education. Robert went to school at six ;? and in the May of the same year (1765) a lad of eighteen, one John Murdoch, was “ engaged by Mr. Burness and four of his neighbours to teach, and accordingly began to teach, the little school at Alloway: ” his “five employers” undertaking to board him “by turns, and to make up a certain salary at the end of the year,” in the event of his “quarterly payments” not amounting to a specified sum. He was an intelligent pedagogue— he had William Burness behind him — especially in the matter of grammar and rhetoric; he trained his scholars to a full sense of the meaning and the value of words; he even made them “ turn verse into its natural prose order,” and “ substitute synonymous expressions for poetical words and . . . supply all the ellipses.””* One of his school-books was the Bible, another Masson’s Collection of Prose and Verse, excerpted from Addison* and Steele and Dryden, from Thomson and Shenstone, Mallet and Henry Mackenzie, with Gray’s Elegy, scraps from Hume and Robertson, and scenes from Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and Hamlet. And one effect of his method was that Robert, according to him- self, ““ was absolutely a critic in substantives, verbs, and participles,” and, according to Gilbert, “soon became remarkable for the fluency and correctness of his expres- sion, and read the few books that came in his way with much pleasure and im- provement.” It is very characteristic of Murdoch that when, his school being broken up, he came to take leave of William Burness at; Mount Oliphant, “he brought us,” Gilbert says, “a present and memorial of him, a small English gram- of Scotland, as represented by Auld and Russell and the like, as in the Sixteenth he stood with Moray and the nobles against the Church of Rome, as figured in David Beaton and the ‘‘twa. infernal monstris, Pride and Avarice.”’ 1 See the aforesaid treatise: ‘(4 Manual of Religious Belief, in a Dialogue between Father and Son, compiled by William Burnes, farmer at Mount Oliphant, and transcribed, with grammat- ical corrections; by John Murdoch, teacher.” 2 ‘'T was a good deal noted at these years,”’. says the Letter to Moore, “for a retentive mem- ory, a stubborn, sturdy something in my disposi- tion, and an enthusiastic idiot-piety. . . . In my infant and boyish days, too, I owed much to an old maid of my mother’s, remarkable for her ig- norance, credulity, and superstition,” who had, “T suppose, the largest collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf- candles, death-lights, wraiths, apparitions,- cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and. other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds. of Poesy,’? etc. 8 As Robert Louis Stevenson has remarked (Some Aspects of Robert Burns): ‘We are sur-~ prised at the prose style of Robert; that of Gil- bert need surprise us no less.’? 4 “The earliest thing of composition I recollect taking pleasure in, was The Vision of Mirza, and ahymn of Addison’s beginning, ‘How are thy servants blessed, O Lord.’” (R. B., Letter to Moore.) “The first two books,’’ he adds, “Tever read in private, and which gave me more plea- sure than any two books I ever read again; were the Life of Hannibal and the History of Sir Wil- liam Wallace. Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough that I might be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins which will boil along there oe till the meee of life shut in eternal rest,”? xvi mar and the tragedy of Titus Andronicus,” and that “by way of passing the evening ” he “ began to read the play aloud.” Not less characteristic of all con- cerned was the effect of his reading. His hearers melted into tears at the tale of Lavinia’s woes, and, “in an agony of distress,’ implored him to read no more. Ever sensible and practical, William Burness remarked that, as nobody wanted to hear the play, Murdoch need not leave it. Robert —ever a sentimentalist and ever an indifferent Shakespearean,’ — “ Robert replied that, if it was left, he would burn it.” And Murdoch, ever the literary guide, philosopher, and friend, was so much affected by his pupil’s “sensibility,” that “he left The School for Love (translated, I think, from the French) ” in Shakespeare’s place.” At this time Burns had but some two and a half years of Murdoch. William Burness liked and believed in the young fellow; for when, still urged by the desire to better his children’s chance, he turned from gardening to cultivation on a larger scale, and took, at a £40 rental, the farm of Mount Oliphant, his two sons went on with Murdoch at Alloway, some two miles off. The school once broken up, however, Robert and his brother fell into their father’s hands, and, for divers rea- sons, Gilbert says, “we rarely saw anybody but the members of our own family,” so that “ my father was for some time the only companion we had.” It will scarce be argued now that this sole companionship was wholly good for a couple of lively boys; but it is beyond question that it was rather good than bad. For “he con- versed on all subjects with us familiarly, as if we had been men,” and further, *‘ was at great pains, as we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the con- versation to such subjects as might tend to increase our knowledge or confirm our virtuous habits.” Also, he got his charges books —a Geographical Grammar, a Physico and Astro-Theology, Stackhouse’s History of the Bible, Ray’s Wisdom of God in the Creation ; and these books Robert read “ with an avidity and indus- try scarcely to be equalled.” * None, says Gilbert, “‘ was so voluminous as to slacken It is therefore probable that what Gilbert meant was The School for Lovers: ‘‘A Comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. By William Whitehead, Esq.; Poet Laureat. Lon- 1 If we may judge him from his extant work. Cé£. the absurd line: ‘Here Douglas forms wild Shakespeare into plan.’ He cribs but once from Shakespeare, and the hap- piest among his few quotations is prefixed to one of the most felicitous —and therefore the least publishable — of his tributes to the Light-heeled Muse. ‘‘Sing me a bawdy song,’’ he says with Sir John Falstaff, ‘‘to make us merry.” And he adds this note, in which he is Shakespearean once again: ‘‘There is —there must be —some truth in original sin. My violent propensity to b—dy convinces me of it. Lack aday! If that species of composition be the special sin never-to- be-forgotten in this world nor in that which is to come, then I am the most offending soul alive. Mair for token,’’ etc. (R. B. to Cleghorn, 25th October, 1793.) 2 There is no trace of any School for Love. don: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall; and sold by J. Hinxman, in Pater-noster-row. mpccuxul.’”’ The first sentence of the author’s Advertisement runs thus: ‘The following Com- edy is formed on a plan of Monsieur de Fonte- nelle’s, never intended for the stage, and printed in the eighth volume of his works, under the title of Le Testament.”” The names of the chief “persons represented’? are Sir John Dorilant, Modely, Belmour, Lady Beverley, Celia, and Araminta —an unlikely lot, one would say, for an Ayrshire farmstead, even though it sheltered the youthful Burns. 3 Robdert’s list (Letter to Moore) includes Guth- rie and Salmon’s Geographical Grammar; The Spectator ; Pope; ‘“‘some plays of Shakespear” LIFE, GENLUS, ACHIEVEMENT xvii his industry or so antiquated as to damp his research ;” with the result that he was n’t very far on in his teens ere he had “a competent knowledge of ancient history,” with “something of geography, astronomy, and natural history.” Then, owing to the mistake of an uncle, who went to Ayr to buy a Ready Heckoner or Tradesman’s Sure Guide, together with a Complete Letter-Writer, but came back with “‘a collection of letters by the most eminent writers,” he was moved by “a strong desire to excel in letter-writing.” At thirteen or fourteen he was sent (“week about” with Gilbert) to Dalrymple Parish School to better his hand-writ- ing; “about this time” he fell in with Pamela, Fielding, Hume, Robertson, and the best of Smollett ; and “about this time” Murdoch set up as a schoolmaster in Ayr, and “sent us Pope’s Works and some other poetry, the first that we had an opportunity of reading, excepting what is contained in the Hnglish Collection and in the volume of the Edinburgh Magazine for 1772.”1 The summer after the _ writing-lessons at Dalrymple, Robert spent three weeks with Murdoch at Ayr, one over the English Grammar, the others over the rudiments of French. The latter language he was presently able to read,” for the reason that Murdoch would go over to Mount Oliphant on half-holidays, partly for Robert’s sake and partly for the pleasure of talking with Robert’s father. Thus was Robert schooled; and ’t is plain that in one, and that an essential particular, he and his brother were excep- tionally fortunate in their father and in the means he took to train them.® (acting editions ? or odd volumes ?); ‘Tull and Dickson on Agriculture;’’ The Pantheon ; Locke On the Human Understanding; Stackhouse; with “ Justice’s British Gardener, Boyle’s Lectures, Allan Ramsay’s Works, Dr. Taylor’s Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin, A Select Collection of English Songs, and Harvey’s Meditations.’’ Later he knew Thomson, Shenstone, Beattie, Gold- smith, Gray, Fergusson, Spenser even ; with The Tea-Table Miscellany and many another song- book, Adam Smith’s Theory of the Moral Sen- timents, Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind, Bunyan, Boston (The Fourfold State), Shake- speare, John Brown’s Self- Interpreting Bible, and The Wealth of Nations, which last he is found reading (at Ellisland) with a sense of won- der that so much wit should be contained be- tween the boards of a single book. One favour- ite novel was Tristram Shandy; another, the once renowned, now utterly forgotten Man of Feeling. At Ellisland, again, he is found order- ing the works of divers dramatists —as Jonson, Wycherley, Moli¢re — with a view to reading and writing for the stage. But you find no trace of them in his work; nor is there any evidence to show that he could ever have written a decent play, though there is plenty of proof that he could not. No doubt, The Jolly Beggars will be quoted against me here. But the essential interests of that masterpiece are character and description. Now, there go many more things to the making of a play than character, while as for description, the less a play contains of that the better for the play. 1 The English Collection I take to be Masson’s aforesaid. At alleventsIcan find no other. So far as verse is concerned, another exception was found in “those Eacellent new Songs that are hawked about the country in baskets or spread on stalls in the streets’? (G. B.). They were prob- ably as interesting to Robert as Pope’s Works or the poetry in The Edinburgh Magazine. Atany rate, his first essays in song were imitated from them, and he had the trick of them, when he listed, all his life long. 2 Currie saw his Moliére at Dumfries. There is no question but he would have got on excellent well with Argan and Jourdain and Pourceaugnac; but could he have found much to interest him in Arnolphe and Agnés, in Philinte and Alceste and Céliméne ? I doubt it. .On the other hand, he would certainly have loved the jlon-flons which Collé wrote for the Regent’s private theatre; and Ihave always regretted that he knew nothing of La Fontaine — especially the La Fontaine of the Contes, a Scots parallel to which he was exactly fitted to imagine and achieve. 3 Robert mastered, besides, the first six books XNili In another respect — one of eminent importance — their luck was nothing like . so good. Mount Oliphant was made up of “ the poorest land in Ayrshire; Wil: liam Burness had started it on a borrowed hundred; he was soon in straits; onl by unremitting diligence and the strictest economy could he hope to make ends’ meet ; and the burden of hard work lay heavy on the whole family — heavier, as T think, on the: growing lads than on the made man and woman. “For several years,” says Gilbert, “‘butcher’s meat was a stranger to the house.” Robert was his father’s chief hand at fifteen — “for we kept no hired servant’ —and could after- 5 wards describe his life at this time as a combination of “the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing toil of a galley-slave.” The mental wear was not less than the physical strain; for William Burness grew old and broken, and his family was seven strong, and of money there was as little as there seemed of hope. The wonder is, not that Robert afterwards broke out, but that Robert did not then break down ; that he escaped with a lifelong tendency to vapours and melancholia, and at the time of trial itself with that “dull headache” of an evening, which “at a future period . . . was exchanged,” says Gilbert, “for a palpitation of the heart and a threatening of fainting and suffocation in his bed in the night-time.” William Burness is indeed.a pathetic figure; but to me the Robert of Mount Oliphant is a figure more pathetic still. Acquired or not, stoicism was habitual with the father. With the son it was not so much as acquired; for in that son was latent a world of appetites and forces and potentialities the reverse of stoical. And, even had this not been — if Robert had n’t proved a man of genius, with the temperament which genius sometimes entails — he must still have been the worse for the experience. He lived in circumstances of unwonted harshness and bitterness for a lad of his” degree ; with a long misery of anticipation, he must endure a quite unnatural strain on forming muscle and on nerves and a brain yet immature; he had perforce to face the necessity of diverting an absolute example of the artistic temperament to | laborious and squalid ends, and to assist in the repression of all those natural instincts — of sport and reverie and companionship — the fostering of which is for most boys, have they genius or have they not, an essential process of development ; and the experience left him with stooping shoulders and a heavy gait, an ineradica- ble streak of sentimentalism, what he himself calls “the horrors of a diseased ner- vous system,” and that very practical exultation in the joie de vivre, once it was known, which, while it is brilliantly expressed in much published and unpublished verse and prose, is nowhere, perhaps, so naively signified as in a pleasant paren- thesis addressed, years after Mount Oliphant, to the highly respectable Thomson: “Nothing (since a Highland wench in the Cowgate once bore me three bastards at a birth) has surprised me more than,” etc. The rest is not to my purpose — which is to argue that, given Robert Burns and the apprenticeship at Mount Oli- phant, a violent reaction was inevitable, and that one’s admiration for him is largely increased by the reflection that it came no sooner than it did. William Burness of Euclid, and even dabbled a little in Latinnow bert) when he was crossed in love, or had tiffed and then, reverting to his rudiments (says Gil- with his sweetheart. Lif, GENLUS, ACHIEVEMENT xix knew that it must come ; for, as he lay dying, he confessed that it troubled him to think of Robert’s future. This, to be sure, was not at Mount Oliphant — when Robert had done no worse than insist on going to a dancing-school — but, years after, at Lochlie, when Robert had begun to assert himself. True it is that at Kirkoswald—a smuggling village, whither he went, at seventeen, to study men- suration, “dialling,” and the like — he had learned, he says, “to look unconcern- edly on a large tavern bill and mix without fear in a drunken squabble.” True it is, too, that at Lochlie the visible reaction had set in. But, so far as is known, that reaction was merely formal; and one may safely conjecture that, as boys are not in the habit of telling their fathers everything; William Burness knew little or nothing of those gallant hours at Kirkoswald. Be this as it may, he seems to have discerned, however dimly and vaguely, some features of the prodigious creature he had helped into the world ; and that he should not have discerned them till thus late is of itself enough to show how stern and how effectual a discipline Mount Oliphant had proved. | II The Mount Oliphant period lasted some twelve years, and was at its hardest for some time ere it reached its term. ‘About 1775 my father’s generous master died,” 1 says Robert; and “to clench the curse we fell into the hands of a factor, who sat for the picture? I have drawn of one in my tale of ‘Twa Dogs.’... My father’s spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken. There was a freedom in his lease in two years more, and to weather these we retrenched expenses”? — to the purpose and with the effect denoted! Then came easier times. In 1777 William Burness removed his family to Lochlie, a hundred-and-thirty-acre farm, in Tarbolton Parish. “The nature of the bargain,” Robert wrote to Moore, “ was such as to throw a little ready money in his hand in the commencement,” or “the affair would have been impracticable.” At this place, he adds, “for four years we lived comfortably ;” and at this place his gay and adventurous spirit began to free itself, his admirable talent for talk to find fit opportunities for exercise and display. The reaction set in, as I have said, and he took life as gallantly as his innocency might, wore the only tied hair in the parish, was recognisable from afar by his 1 This was that Fergusson (of Ayr), in whose service William Burness had been at the time of his marriage with Agnes,Brown, and (apparent- ly) for some years after it—in fact, till he took on Mount Oliphant. This he did on a hundred pounds borrowed from his old employer; and one may conjecture that the. legal proceedings which Robert thus resented were entailed upon Fergusson’s agents by the work of winding up the estate. 2 “Sat for the picture I have drawn of one’? is precise and definite enough. But surely the Factor verses in The Twa Dogs are less a picture than a record of proceedings, a note on the genus Factor : — ‘He ’ll stamp and threaten, curse and swear, He ’ll apprehend them, poind their gear, While they must stand, wi’ aspect humble, An’ hear it a’, and fear and tremble.” The statement is accurate enough, no doubt, but where is the ‘‘picture’? ?_ Compare the effect of any one of Chaucer’s Pilgrims, or the sketches of Cesar and Luath themselves, and the Factor as indtvidual is found utterly wanting. XX ROBEKL BURIND fillemot plaid, was made a “Free and Accepted Mason,” + founded a Bachelors’ Club,? and took to sweethearting with all his heart and soul and strength. He had begun with a little harvester at fifteen; and at Kirkoswald he had been enamoured of Peggy Thomson to the point of sleepless nights. Now, says his brother Gilbert, “he was constantly the victim of some fair enslaver ”” — sometimes of two or three at a time; and “the symptoms of his passion were often such as nearly to equal those of the celebrated Sappho,” so that “the agitation of his mind and body ex- ceeded anything I know in real life.” Such, too, was the quality of what he him- self was pleased to call “un penchant & (sic) l’adorable moitié du genre humain,” in combination with that “particular jealousy ” he had “of people that were richer than himself, or who had more consequence in life,” that a plain face was quite as good as a pretty one — especially and particularly if it belonged to a maid of a lower degree than his own. To condescend upon one’s women— to some men that is an ideal. It was certainly the ideal of Robert Burns. ‘His love,” says Gilbert, “rarely settled upon persons of this description” — that is, persons “ who were richer than himself, or who had more consequence in life.” He must still be Jove — still stoop from Olympus to the plain. Apparently he held it was an honour to be admired by him; and when a short while hence (1786) he ventured to celebrate, in rather too realistic a strain, the Lass of Ballochmyle, and was rebuffed for his impertinence — it was so felt in those unregenerate days! -——~ he was, ’tis said, extremely mortified. In the meanwhile, his loves, whether plain or pretty, were goddesses all; and the Sun was “entering Virgo, a month which is always a carnival in my imagination” the whole year round; and the wonder is that he got off so little of it all in verse which he thought too good for the fire. Rhyme he did (of course), and copiously, as at this stage every coming male must thyme, who has instinct enough to “couple but Jove and dove.” But it was not till the end of the Lochlie years that he began rhyming to any purpose. Indeed, the poverty of the Lochlie years is scarce less “ wonderful past all whooping ” than the fecundity of certain memorable months at Mauchline; especially if it be true, as Gilbert and himself aver, that the Lochlie love-affairs were “governed by the strictest rules of modesty and virtue, from which he never deviated till his twenty- third year.” * For desire makes verses, and verses rather good than bad, as surely as fruition leaves verses, whether bad or good, unmade. 1 Burns was always an enthusiastic Mason. The Masonic idea— whatever that be —went home to him; and in honour of the Craft he wrote some of his poorest verses. One set, the “ Adieu, Adieu,’’ efc., of the Kilmarnock Vol- ume, was popular outside Scotland. At all events, I have seen a parody in a Belfast chap, which is to the tune of Burn’s Farewell. 2 Tt was, in fact, part drinking-club and part debating-society. But Rule X. of its constitu- tion insisted that every member must have at least one love-affair on hand ; and if potations were generally thin, and debates were often seri- ous, there can be no question that the talk ran on all manner of themes, and especially on that one theme which men have ever found fruitful above all others. The club was so great a suc- cess that an offshoot was founded, by desire, on Robert’s removal to Mossgiel. 8 Saunders Tait, the Tarbolton poetaster, in- sists that, long before Mossgiel, Burns and Sillar — “Davie, a Brother Poet ’? — were the most in- continent youngsters in Tarbolton Parish ; and, LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xxt It was natural and honourable in a young man of this lusty and amatorious habit to look round for a wife and to cast about him for a better means of keeping one than farm-service would afford. In respect of the first he found a possibility in Elison Begbie, a Galston farmer’s daughter, at this time a domestic servant, on whom he wrote (they say) his “Song of Similes,” and to whom he addressed some rather stately, not to say pedantic, documents in the form of love-letters. For the new line in life, he determined that it might, perhaps, be flax-dressing; so, at the midsummer of 1781 (having just before been sent about his business by, as he might himself have said, “le doux objet de son attachement’”’) he removed to Irvine, a little port on the Firth of Clyde, which was also a centre of the industry in which he hoped to excel. Here he established himself, on what terms is not known, with one Peacock, whom he afterwards took occasion to describe as “a scoundrel of the first water, who made money by the mystery of Thieving;”? here he saw some- thing more of life and character and the world than he had seen at. Mount Oliphant and Lochlie; here, at the year’s end, he had a terrible attack of vapours (it lasted for months, he says, so that he shuddered to recall the time); here, above all, he formed a friendship with a certain Richard Brown. According to him, Brown, being the son of a mechanic, had taken the eye of “a great man in the neighbour- hood,” and had received “a genteel education, with a view to bettering his situa- after asseverating, in terms as solemn as he can make them, that in all Scotland “There ’s none like you and Burns can tout The bawdy horn,’ goes on to particularise, and declares that, what with ‘Moll and Meg, Jean, Sue, and Lizzey, a’ decoy’t, There ’s sax wi’ egg.’ Worse than all, he indites a ‘poem,’ a certain B—ns in his Infancy, which begins thus : — “Now I must trace his pedigree, Because he made a song on me, And let the world look and see, Just wi’ my tongue, How he and Clootie did agree When he was young: ”? — and of which I shall quote no more. But Robert and his brother are both explicit on this point; and, despite the easy morals of the class in which the Bard sought now and ever “to crown his flame,’’ it must be held, Iethink, as proven that he was déniaisé by Richard Brown at Irvine and by Betty Paton at Lochlie. This is the place to say. that I owe my quota- tions from Saunders Tait to Dr. Grosart, who told me of the copy (probably unique) of that wor- thy’s Poems and Songs: “Printed for and Sold by the Author Only, 1796 :’? in the Mitchell Li- brary, Glasgow, and at the same time communi- cated transcripts which he had made from such numbers in it as referred to Burns. As my col- laborator, Mr. T. F. Henderson, was then in Scot- land, I asked him to look up Tait’s volume. It was found at last, after a prolonged search; was duly sent to the Burns Exhibition; and in a while was pronounced ‘‘a discovery.” Tait, who was pedlar, tailor, soldier in turn, had a ribald and scurrilous tongue, a certain rough cleverness, and a good enough command of the vernacular; so that his tirades against Burns—he was one of the very few who dared to attack that satirist — are still readable, apart from the interest which attaches to gheir theme. It is a pity that some Burns Club or Burns Society has not reprinted them in full, coarse as they are. : 1 Nobody knows what this may mean. It seems to be only Robert’s lofty way of saying that Peacock swindled him. What follows is explicit (Letter to Moore) :— “ To finish the whole, while we were giving a welcome carousal to the New Year, our shop, by the drunken carelessness of my partner’s wife, took fire, and burned to ashes, and I was left, like a true poet, not worth six- pence.” How much is here of fact, how much of resentment, who shall say ? What is worth not- ing in it all is that Burns, despite his “penchant a l’adorable,” etc., is first and last a peasant so far as “‘ adorable moitié”’ is concerned, and, for all his sentimentalism, can face facts about it with all the peasant’s shrewdness and with all the peasant’s cynicism. : xxii . ROBERT BURNS tion in life.” His patron had died, however, and he had had perforce to go for a sailor (he was afterwards captain of a West-Indiaman). He had known good luck and bad, he had seen the world, he had the morals of his calling, at the same time that “his mind was fraught with courage, independence, and magnanimity, and every noble, manly virtue;” and Burns, who “loved him,” and “admired him,” not only “strove to imitate him” but also “in some measure succeeded.” “I had,” the pupil owns, “the pride before;” but Brown “taught it to flow in proper channels.” Withal, Brown “was the only man I ever saw who was a greater fool than myself when Woman was the presiding star.” Brown, however, was a prac- tical amorist; and he “spoke of a certain fashionable failing with levity, which hitherto I had regarded with horror.” In fact, he was Mephisto to Burns’s Faust ; 1 and “here,” says the Bard, “his friendship did me a mischief, and the consequence was, that soon after I assumed the plough, I wrote the enclosed Welcome.” This enclosure (to Moore) was that half-humorous, half-defiant, and wholly delightful Welcome to His Love-Begotten Daughter,” through which the spirit of the true Burns — the Burns of the good years: proud, generous, whole-hearted, essentially natural and humane — thrills from the first line to the last. And we have to recall the all-important fact, that Burns was first and last a peasant,® and first and last a peasant in revolt against the Kirk,.a peasant resolute to be a buck, to forgive the really scandalous contrast presented in those versions of the affair — versions done in the true buckish style: the leer and the grin and the slang in full blast — which he has given in The Fornicator, the Hpistle to John Rankine, and — apparently — the Reply to a Trimming Epistle from a Tailor. At the same time we must clearly understand that we recall all this for the sake of our precious selves, and not in any way, nor on any account, for the sake of Burns. He was absolutely of his station and his time; the poor-living, lewd, grimy, free-spoken, ribald old Scots peasant-world‘ came to a full, brilliant, even majestic close in his work; and, if we would appreciate aright the environment in which he wrote, and the audience to which such writings were addressed, we must transliterate into the Vernacular Brantéme and the Dames Gilantes and Tallemant and the Historiettes. As for reading them in Victorian terms — Early-Victorian terms, or Late — that way madness lies: madness, and a Burns that by no process known to gods or men could ever have existed save in the lubber-land of some Pious Editor’s dream. 1 Brown denied it. “Tllicit love!’ quoth he. of paternity were absolutely sincere throughout “Levity of a sailor! When I first knew Burns his life. he had nothing to learn in that respect.’ It is a case of word against word; and I own that I prefer the Bard’s. 2 “The same cheap self-satisfaction finds a yet uglier vent when he plumes himself on the scan- dal at the birth of his first bastard 'child.”” Thus Stevenson. But Stevenson, as hath been said, had in him ‘‘something of the Shorter Cate- chist ;’? and either he did not see, or he would not recognise, that Burns’s rejoicings in the fact 8 Here and elsewhete the word is used not op- probriously but literally. Burns was specifically a peasant, as Byron was specifically a peer, and as Shakespeare was specifically a man of the burgess class. 4 I do not, of course, forget its many solid and admirable virtues ; but its elements were mixed, and it was to the grosser that the Burns of these and other rhymes appealed. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xxii At Lochlie, whither he seems to have returned in the March of 1782, the studi- ous years? and the old comparative prosperity had come, or were coming, to a close. There had been a quarrel between William Burness and his landlord, one M'‘Clure, a merchant in Ayr; and this quarrel, being about money, duly passed into the Courts. Its circumstances are obscure; but it is history that arbitration went against the tenant of Lochlie, that he was ordered to “quite possession,” that he was strongly suspected of “preparing himself accordingly by dispoeseasing ‘of his stock and crops,” and that a certain “application at present craving” resulted, on shrieval authority, in the “sequestration” of all the Lochlie stock and plenish- ing and gear. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the affair, an end came to it with the end of William Burness. By this time his health was broken — he was far gone in what Robert calls “a phthisical consumption ;” and he died in the February of the next year (1784), when, as the same Robert romantically puts it in his fine, magniloquent fashion, “his all went among the rapacious hell-hounds that growl in the Kennel of Justice.” * The fact that Robert and Gilbert were able (Martinmas, 1783), when their father’s affairs were “ drawing to a crisis,” to secure another farm — Mossgiel —in Mauchline Parish, some two or three miles off Lochlie,-is enough to show that neither errors nor crosses, neither sequestrations nor lampoons, had impaired the family credit. 1 Jt was parish gossip that, if you called on William Burness at meal-time, you found the whole family with a book in one hand and a horn spoon inthe other, 2 M‘Clure’s ‘answers’? and ‘counter - an- swers,’’ together with the sheriff’s officer’s ac- count of the seizure at Lochlie, were published in The Glasgow Herald early in the present year (1897). I need scarce say that Saunders Tait produced a Burns at Lochly, in which he fell on his enemy tooth and claw. His statements are as specific as M‘Clure’s, and are substantially in agreement with some of them, besides : “To Lochly ye came like a clerk, And on your back was scarce a sark, ‘The dogs did at your buttocks bark, But now ye ’re bra’, Ye pouch’t the rent, ye was sae stark, Made payment sma’.’’ In another stanza, “‘M‘Clure,’’ he says — “Ye scarcely left a mite To fill his horn. You and the Lawyers gied him a skyte, Sold a’ his corn.” In a third he appears to record the particulars of a single combat between Robert and his father’s landlord: — “His ain gun at him he did cock, An’ never spared, Wi’t owre his heid came a clean knock © Maist killed the laird.’’ And in the last of all, after bitterly reproaching Robert and the whole Burns race with ingrati- tude: , “M‘Clure he put you in a farm, And coft you coals your a—— to warm ; And meal and matt, ... He likewise did the mailin stock, And built you barns,” he sets forth explicitly this charge: ““M‘Clure’s estate has ta’en the fever, And heal again it will be never, The vagabonds, they ‘ca’ you clever, Ye’re sicasprite, ' To rive fra’ him baith ga’ and liver, | And baith the feet.” ~ The fact of the Laird’s generosity is reaffirmed with emphasis in A Compliment: ; ' “The horse, corn, pets, kail, kye, and ewes, Cheese, pease, beans, rye, wool, house and flours, Pots, pans, crans, tongs, bran-spits, and skewrs, The milk and barm, - Each, thing they had was a’ M‘Clure’s, He stock’d the farm.” .. . And with the remark that “ Five hundred. ids they, were behind,’ the undaunted Saunders brings his libel to a close. NVDLNI DUYUIIVD TIt William Burness had paid his children wages during his tenancy of Lochlie; and the elder four, by presenting themselves as his creditors for wages due, were enabled to secure a certain amount of “plenishing and gear” wherewith to make a start at Mossgiel. It was a family venture, in whose success the Burnesses were interested all and severally, and to which each one looked for food and clothes and hire (the brothers got a yearly fee of £7 apiece) ; and, as all were well and thor- oughly trained in farming work, and had never lived other than sparely, it was reasonable in them to believe that the enterprise would prosper. That it did not begin by prospering was no fault of Robert’s. He made excellent resolutions, and, what was more to the purpose, he kept them — fora time. He “read farming books” (thus he displays himself), he “ calculated crops,” he “attended markets ; ” he worked hard in the fields, he kept his body at least in temperance and soberness, and, as for thrift, there is Gilbert’s word for it, that his expenses never exceeded his income of £7 a year. It availed him nothing. Gilbert is said to have been rather a theorist than a sound practician; and Robert, though a skilled farmer, cared nothing for business, and left him a free hand in the conduct of affairs. Luck too, was against them from the first; and very soon the elder’s genius was revealed to him, and he had other than farmer’s work todo. ‘In spite of the Devil,” he writes, “the world, and the flesh, I believe I should have been a wise man; but the first year, from unfortunately buying in bad seed, the second, from a late harvest, we lost half of both our crops.” Naturally, “this” (and some other things) “overset. all my wisdom, and I returned, ‘like the dog to his vomit ’ — be it remembered, it is Robert Burns who speaks, not I — ‘and the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.’” That the confession, with its rather swag- gering allusion to the Armour business, was true, is plain. But we do not need Burns’s assurance to know that, though he could do his work, and prided himself on the straightness of his furrows, he was scarce cut out for a successful farmer — except, it may be, in certain special conditions. Endurance, patience, diligence, a devout attention to one’s own interest and the land’s, an indomitable constancy in labour to certain ends and in thought on certain lines — these are some of the qualities which make the husbandman; and, this being so, how should Mossgiel have prospered under Rab the Ranter? His head was full of other things than crops and cattle. He was bursting with intelligence, ideas, the consciousness of capacity, the desire to take his place among men ; and in Mauchline he found live- lier friends? and greater opportunities than he had found elsewhere. Being a 1 As his landlord, the lawyer Gavin Hamilton, to whom he dedicated the Kilmarnock Volume, and the story of whose wrangle with the Mauch- line Kirk-Session (see post, pp. 41-43, 55, etc.) is to some extent that of Burns’s assault upon the Kirk (see post, pp. 109, 110, Holy Willie’s Prayer). Another was Robert Aiken, also a law- yer, by whom he was ‘‘read into fame,” to whom he dedicated The Cotter’s Saturday Night, and whom he celebrated in an Epitaph (post, p. 54). Yet another was Richmond, the lawyer's clerk, whose room he was afterwards to share in Edinburgh, and who appears to be partly re- sponsible for the preservation of The Jolly Beg- LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT XXV Scot, he was instinctively a theologian; being himself, he was inevitably liberal- minded; born a peasant of genius, and therefore a natural rebel, he could not choose but quarrel with the Kirk — especially as her hand was heavy on his friends and himself — and it was as a Mauchline man that the best of his anti-clerical work was done.1 Then, too, he was full of rhymes, and they must out of him ; his call had come, and he fell to obeying it with unexampled diligence. More than all, perhaps, he had the temperament of the viveuwr — the man who rejoices to live his life; and his appetites had been intensified, his gift of appreciation made ab- normal (so to say), by a boyhood and an adolescence of singular hardship and quite exceptional continence. It is too late in the world’s history to apologise for the primordial instinct ; and to do so at any time were sheer impertinence and un- reasoning ingratitude. To apologise in the case of a man who so exulted in its manifestations and results, and who so valiantly, not to say riotously, insisted on the fact of that exultation, as Robert Burns, were also a rank and frank absurdity. On this point he makes doubt impossible. The “ white flower of a blameless life ” was never a button-hole for him:* his utterances, published and unpublished, are there to show that he would have disdained the presumption that it ever could have been. And it is from Mauchline, practically, that, his affair with Betty Paton over and done with, and, to anticipate a little, his affair with Jean Armour left hanging in the wind, he starts on his career as amorist at large. gars. Again, there was the Bachelors’ Club, on the model of that he had founded at Tarbolton, invincibly a Jacobite. His Jacobitism was, he said, ‘‘by way of vive la bagatelle.’” He told for whose edification, and in explanation of whose function, he appears to have written The For- nicator and The Court of Equity. This last is Burns’s idea of what the proceedings of the Kirk-Session ought, in certain cases, to have been. It is capital fun, hut something too frank and too particular for latter-day print. 1 He was ever a theological liberal and a theo- logical disputant — a champion of Heterodoxy, in however mild a form, whose disputations made him notorious, so that his name was as a stumbling-block and an offence to the Orthodox. For the series of attacks which he delivered against the Kirk — The Holy Fair, the Address to the Deil, The Twa Herds, The Ordination, Holy Willie's Prayer, The Kirk’s Alarm, the Address to the Unco Guid, and the Epistle To John Goldie —see post. There is no record of an appear- ance on the stool with Paton ; but the circum- stances of this his initial difficulty appear to be set forth in the Epistle to John Rankine (post, p. 50) and the Reply to a Trimming Epistle (post, p. 182), with the Prefatory Notes thereto ap- pended. All these read, considered, and digested, what interest remains in Burns’s quarrel with the Kirk consists in the fact that, being a person naturally and invincibly opposed to the ‘ sour- featured Whiggism’’ on which the Stuarts had wrecked themselves, Burns was naturally and Ramsay of Auchtertyre that he owed it to the plundering and unhousing (1715) of his grand- father, who was gardener to Earl Marischal at Inveraray. But it came to him mainly through Gavin Hamilton (who was Episcopalian by de- scent) and his own resentment of clerical tyranny. 2 Tt is true that he wrote thus ‘To a Young Friend :” “The sacred lowe 0’ weel-plac’d love, Luxuriantly indulge it ; But never tempt th’ illicit rove, Tho’ naething should divulge it: I waive the quantum o’ the sin, The hazard of concealing ; But, och ! it hardens a’ within, And petrifies the feeling !”" But there is plenty to show that the writer was a great deal better at preaching than at practice. And he owns as much himself in his own epi- taph :— “Ts there a man, whose judgment clear Can others teach the course to steer, Yet runs, himself, life’s mad career Wild as the wave ? — Here pause — and, thro’ the starting tear, Survey this grave.” xxvi - ‘ROBERT. BURNS And now for 4 little narrative. In the November of 1784 Elizabeth Paton bore him a daughter — “the First Instance,” so he wrote above his Welcome, “that en- titled him to the Venerable Appellation of Father.” The mother is described as “very plain-looking,” but of “an exceedingly handsome figure;” “rude and un- cultivated to a great degree,” with a “strong masculine understanding, and a thor- ough, though unwomanly, contempt for any sort of refinement ;” withal, “so active, honest, and independent a creature” that Mrs. Burns would have had Robert marry her, but “both my aunts and Uncle Gilbert opposed it,” in the belief that “the faults of her character would soon have disgusted him.’ There had been no promise on his part; and though the reporter (his niece, Isabella Begg) has his own sister’s warrant — Mrs. Begg, by the way, was rather what her brother, in a mood of acute fraternal piety, might possibly have called “a bletherin’ b—tch” —for saying that “woman never loved man with a more earnest devotion than that poor woman did him,” he is nowise sentimentalized about her. She is identi- fied with none of his songs; and while there is a pleasant reference to her in the Welcome : “Thy mither’s person, grace, and merit,” she is recognisably the “ paitrick” of the Epistle to Rankine, she is certainly the heroine of The Fornicator, she probably does duty in the Reply to a Trimming Epistle, none of which pieces shows the writer’s “penchant 4 l’adorable,”’ etc., to advantage. No doubt, they were addressed to men. No doubt, too, they were, first and last, satirical impeachments of the Kirk: impeachments tinctured with the peasant’s scorn of certain existing circumstances, and done with all the vigour and the furia which one particular peasant —a peasant who could see through shams and was intolerant of them — could with both hands bestow. And that the women did not resent their share in such things is shown by the fact that such things got done. It was “the tune of the time’ —in the peasant-world at least. Still, as Diderot says somewhere or other, “On aime celle & qui on le donne, on est aimé de celle & qui on le prend.’’ And one can’t help regretting that there are few or none but derisive references to Betty Paton in her lover’s work. Iv Of vastly greater importance than his mistresses, at this or any period of his life, is the entity, which, with an odd little touch of Eighteenth Century, formality, he loved to call his Muse. That entity was now beginning to take shape and sub- stance as a factor in the sum of the world’s happiness; and the coming of that other entity in whose existence he took ‘so high a pride and so constant a delight — I mean “the Bard ” — was but a matter of time. Burns had been ever a rhyme- ster; and Burns, who, as Stevenson observed, and as the Notes to [this Volume and more especially those to the Centenary Edition show], “was always ready to borrow the hint of a design, as though he had some difficulty in commen- cing,” had begun by borrowing his style, as well as divers hints of designs, from stall-artists and. neighbour-cuckoos. But, once emancipated, once a man, once XXVil LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT practically assured of the primal concerns of life, once conscious that (after all) he might have the root of the matter in him, the merely local poet begins to waver and dislimn, and the Burns of Poor Mailie (written at Lochlie) and the Epistle to Davie reigns — intermittently, perhaps, but obviously — in his stead. It is all over with stall - artists and neighbour - cuckoos. Poor Fergusson’s book ? has fallen into his hands, and (as he says in his ridiculous way) has “caused him to string anew his wildly-sounding rustic lyre with emulating vigour.” At last the hour of the Vernacular Muse has come; and he is hip to haunch with such adepts in her mystery as the Sempills, and Hamilton of Gilbertfield, and Allan Ramsay, and Robert Fergusson, and the innominates whose verses, decent or not, have lived in his ear since childhood — catching their tone and their sentiment; mastering their rhythms; copying their methods; considering their effects in the one true language of his mind.? He could write deliberate English, and, when he wanted to be not so much sincere as impressive and “fine,” he wrote English deliberately, as the worse and weaker part of his achievement remains to prove. He could even write English, as Jourdain talked prose, “ without knowing it’? —as we know from Scots Wha Hae. He read Pope, Shenstone, Beattie, Gold- smith, Gray, and the rest, with so much enthusiasm that one learned Editor has made an interesting little list of pilferings from the works of these distinguished beings. But, so far as I can see, he might have lived and died an English-writing Scot, and nobody been a thrill or a memory the better for his work. It is true that much of the Saturday Night and the Vision and the Mountain Daisy is written in English ;* but one may take leave to wonder if these pieces, with so much else 1 Robert Fergusson (1750-1774) was certainly | Churchyard; got leave from the managers to put @ prime influence in Burns’s poetical life. Nev- ertheless — or shall I say consequently? — he has had less than justice from the most of Burns’s Editors. Yet in his way he was so remarkable a creature that there canbe no question but in his death, at four-and-twenty, a great loss was in- flicted on Scottish literature. He had intelli- gence and an eye, aright touch of humour, the gifts of invenlion and observation and style, to- gether with a true feeling for country and city alike; and his work in the Vernacular (his Eng- lish verse is rubbish), with its easy expressive- ness, its vivid and unshrinking realism, and a merit in the matter of character and situation which makes it not readable only but interest- ing as art, at the same time that it is valuable as history, is nothing less than memorable; es- “pecially in view of the miserable circumstances -—the poor lad was a starveling scrivener, and died, partly of drink, in the public madhouse — in which it was done. Burns, who learned much ‘from Fergusson, was an enthusiast in his regard for him; bared his head and shed tears over ‘‘the green mound and the scattered gowans’’ under which he found his exemplar lying in Canongate up a headstone at his own cost there, and wrote . an epitaph to be inscribed upon it, one line of -which — “No storied urn nor animated bust,” is somehow to be read in Gray’s Elegy in a Coun- try Churchyard. Fergusson was as essentially an Edinburgh product (the old Scots capital — gay, squalid, drunken, dirty, lettered, venerable— lives.in his verses muchas Burns knew it twelve years after his death) as the late R. L. 8. him- self; and, while I write, old memories come back to me of the admiring terms — terms half-playful, half-affectionate —in which the later artist was wont to speak of his all but forgotten ancestor. 2 [do not forget that Dugald Stewart noted the correctness of his speech and the success with which he avoided the use of Scotticisms. But in his:day Scots was not an accent but a living tongue; and he certainly could not have talked at Mauchline and at Dumfries as he did in a more or less polite and Anglified Edinburgh. 8 He contrives a compromise, to admirable purpose, too, in Tam o’ Shanter, which is written ‘partly in English and partly in the Vernacular. xxviii ROBERT BURNS of Burns’s own, would have escaped the “iniquity of Oblivion,” had they not chanced, to their good fortune, to be companioned with Halloween, and Holy Willie, and The Auld Farmer to his Auld Mare, and a score of masterpieces besides, in which the Vernacular is carried to the highest level —in the matter of force and fire, and brilliancy of diction, and finality of effect, to name but these — it has ever reached in verse. Let this be as it may, there can be no question that when Burns wrote English he wrote what, on his own confession, was practically a for- eign tongue — a tongue in which he, no more than Fergusson or Ramsay, could express himself to any sufficing purpose ; but that, when he used the dialect which he had babbled in babyhood, and spoken as boy and youth and man — the tongue, too, in which the chief exemplars and the ruling influences of his poetical life had wrought — he at once revealed himself for its greatest master since Dunbar.” But (1) Tam o’ Shanter is in a rhythmus classical in Scotland since the time of Barbour’s Bruce; (2) the English parts of Tam o’ Shanter are of no particular merit as poetry —that is, ‘‘the only words in the only order;’’ and (8) the best of Tam o’ Shanter is in the Vernacular alone. Con- trast, for instance, the diabolical fire and move- ment and energy of these lines: “They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit, Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, And coost her duddies to the wark, And linket at it in her sark,’’ with another famous — perhaps too famous — passage: “But pleasures are like poppies spread: You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed,’ etc. In the second the result is merely Hudibrastic. In the first the suggestion — of mingled fury and stink and motion and heat and immitigable ar- dour — could only have been conveyed by the Vernacular Burns. ; 1 It was Wordsworth’s misfortune that, being in revolt against Augustan ideals and a worn- out poetic slang, he fell in with Burns, and sought to make himself out of common English just such a vocabulary as Burns’s own. For he forgot that the Vernacular, in which his exemplar achieved such surprising and delectable results, had been a literary language for centuries when Burns began to work in it —that Burns, in fact, was handling with consummate skill a tool whose capacity had been long since proved by Ramsay and Fergusson and the greater men who went before them; and, having no models to copy, and no verbal inspiration but his own to keep him straight, he came to immortal grief, not once but many times. It is pretended, too, that.in the matter of style Burns had a strong influence on Byron. But had he? Byron praises Burns, of course; but is there ever a trace of Burns the lyrist in the Byron songs? Again, the Byron of Childe Harold and the tales was as it were a Ba- bel in himself, and wrote Scott plus Coleridge plus Moore plus Beattie and Pope and the Augus-~ tan Age at large; while the Byron of Beppo and the Vision and Don Juan approves himself the master of a style of such infernal brilliancy and variety, of such a capacity for ranging heaven- high and hell-deep, that it cannot without ab- surdity be referred to anything except the fact that he also was a born great writer. 2 For that is what it comes to in the end. He may seem to have little to do with Catholic and Feudal Scotland, and as little with the Scotland of the Early Reformation and the First Covenant. Also, it is now impossible to say if he knew any more of Scott and Dunbar and’ the older makers (Davie Lindsay and Barbour excepted) than he found in The Ever Green, which Ramsay garbled out of The Bannatyne MS., if he were read in Pinkerton (1786), or if he got any more out of Gawain Douglas than the verse which serves as a motto to Tam o’ Shanter (which, after all, may have been found for him by some adept in old Scots poetry — Glenriddell or another). The Scotland he represents, and of which his verses are the mirror, is the Scotland out of which the “wild Whigs’? had crushed the taste for every- thing but fornication and theology and such ex- pressions of derision and revolt as Jenny M‘Craw and Errock Brae— the Scotland whose literary beginnings date, you’d fancy, not from Henry- son, not from Dunbar and Douglas and the Lyon King-at-Arms, but from Sempill of Beltrees and the men who figure in the three issues of Watson’s Choice Collection. But Ramsay and his fellows were a revival — not a new birth. The Vernacu- lar School is one and indivisible. There are breaks in the effect ; but the tradition remains LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xxix More, much more, than that: his bearings once found, he marked his use of it by the discovery of a quantity hitherto unknown in literature. Himself, to wit — the amazing compound of style and sentiment with gaiety and sympathy, of wit and tenderness with radiant humour and an admirable sense of art, which is Robert Burns. He could write ill, and was capable of fustian. But, excepting in his “ Epi- grams” and “ Epitaphs ” and in his imitations of poets whose methods he did not understand, he was nearly always a great writer, and he was generally (to say the least) incapable of fustian in the Vernacular. In essaying the effects of Pope and Shenstone and those other unfamiliars, he was like a man with a personal hand set to imitate a writing-master’s copy: he made as good a shot as he could at it, but there was none of himself in the result. It was otherguess work when he took on the methods and the styles in which his countrymen had approved themselves ; these he could compass so well that he could far surpass his exemplars technically, and could adequately express the individual Burns besides. The Death and Dy- -ing Words of Poor Mailie (written at Lochlie, and therefore very early work) trace back to Gilbertfield’s Bonnie Heck; but the older piece is realistic in purpose and brutal in effect, while in the later — to say nothing of the farce in Hughoc — the whole philosophy of life of a decent mother-ewe is imagined with delightful humour, and set forth in terms so kindly in spirit and so apt in style, that the Death and Dying Words is counted one of the imperishables in English letters. Contrast, again, the Elegy, written some time after the Death and Dying Words, on this immortal beast, with its exemplars in Watson and Ramsay: ‘“‘ He was right nacky in his way, An’ eydent baith be night and day ; He wi’ the lads his part could play When right sair fleed, He gart them good bull-sillar pay ; But now he’s dead... .” “Wha ’ll jow Ale on my drouthy Tongue, To cool the heat of Lights and Lung ? Wha ’ll bid me, when the Kaile-bell’s rung, To Buird me speed? . . . Wha’ll set me by the Barrel-bung ? Since Sanny’s dead?. . .” “He was good Company at Jeists, And wanton when he came to Feasts He scorn’d the Converse of great Beasts [F Jor a Sheep’s-head ; He leugh at Stories about Ghaists — Blyth Willie ’s dead,” unbroken. And Burns, for all his comparative the last of that noble line which begins with modernity, descends directly from, and is, infact, Robert Henryson. XXX KUBDLRL DURING and you shall find the difference still more glaring. Cleverness apart — cleverness and the touch of life, the element of realism — the Laments for Hab Simson and Sanny Briggs, for John Cowper and Luckie Wood and the Writer Lithgow,’ are merely squalid and cynical; while in every line the Elegy, in despite of realism and the humorous tone and intent (essential to the models and therefore inevitable in the copy) is the work of a writer of genius, who is also a generous human being.” Very early work, again, are Corn Rigs and Green Grow the Rashes; in sugges- tion, inspiration, technical quality, both are unalterably Scots; and in both the effect of mastery and completeness is of those that defy the touch of Time. To compare these two and any two of Burns’s songs in English, or pseudo-English, is to realise that the poet of these two should never have ventured outside the pale of his supremacy. English had ten thousand secrets which he knew not, nor could ever have known, except imperfectly ; for he recked not of those innumerable tra- ditions, associations, connotations, surprises, as it were ambitions, which make up the romantic and the literary life of words — even as he was penetrated and pos- sessed by the sense of any such elements as may have existed in the Vernacular. Thus, if he read Milton, it was largely, if not wholly, with a view to getting himself up as a kind of Tarbolton Satan. He was careless, so I must contend, of Shakespeare. With such knowledge as he could glean from song-books, he was altogether out of touch with the Elizabethans and the Carolines. Outside the Vernacular, in fact, he was a rather unlettered Eighteenth Century Englishman, and the models which he must naturally prefer before all others were academic, stilted, artificial, and unexemplary to the highest point. It may be that I read the verse of Burns, and all Scots verse, with something of that feeling of “ pre- ciousness ” which everybody has, I take it, in reading a language, or a dialect, not his own — the feeling which blinds one to certain sorts of defect, and gives one an uncritical capacity for appreciating certain sorts of merit. However this be, I can certainly read my mother-tongue ; and most Englishmen — with, I should imagine, many Scots — will agree with me in the wish that Burns, for all the brilliant com- promise between Scots and English which is devised and done in Tam o’ Shanter and elsewhere, had never pretended to a mastery which assuredly he had not, nor in his conditions ever could have had. 1 All five, together with Ramsay’s on Luckie Spence (an Edinburgh bawd) and Last Words of a Wretched Miser, should be read for the sake of their likeness, and at the same time their un- likeness, to not a little in Burns, and in illustra- tion of the truth that the Vernacular tradition was one of humorous, and even brutal realism. T have cited R. L. 8. in connexion with Fergus- son. He had a far higher esteem for that maker than he had for that maker’s ancestor, Allan Ramsay. Yet he quoted to me one day astanza from the. John Cowper, a certain phrase in which: —a phrase obscenely significant of death — was, we presently agreed, as good an example of “the Squalid-Picturesque”’ as could be found out of Villon. 2 His suppression of such an old-fashioned touch in the first draft as this one : “Now Robin greetan chows the hams Of Mailie dead,” is significant. It is quite in the vein of Bonnie Heck, as indeed are the first four stanzas. Butit would have ruined the Elegy as the world has known it since 1786. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xxxi I have stressed this point because I wish to stress another, and with a view to making clear, and to setting in its proper perspective, the fact that, genius apart, Burns was no miracle but a natural development of circumstance and time. The fact is patent enough to all but them that, for a superstition’s sake, insist. on ignor- ing history, and decline to recognise the unchanging processes of natural and social Law. Without the achievement of AXschylus, there can be no such perfection as Sophocles: just as, that perfection achieved, the decline of Tragedy, as in Eurip- ides, is but a matter of time. But for the Middle Ages and the reaction against the Middle Ages there could have been no Ronsard, no Rabelais, no Montaigne in France. Had there been no Surrey and no Marlowe, no Chaucer and no Ovid (to name no more than these in a hundred influences), who shall take on himself to say the shape in which we now should be privileged to regard the greatest artist that ever expressed himself in speech? It is in all departments of human energy as in the eternal round of nature. There can be no birth where there is no pre-- paration. The sower must take his seedsheet, and go afield into ground prepared - for his ministrations; or there can be no harvest. The Poet springs from a com- post of ideals and experiences and achievements, whose essences he absorbs and: assimilates, and in whose absence he could not be the Poet. This is especially true of Burns. He was the last of a school. It culminated in him, because he had more genius, and genius of a finer, a rarer, and a more generous quality, than all his immediate ancestors put together. But he cannot fairly be said to have con- tributed anything to it except himself. He invented none of its forms; its spirit was none of his originating; its ideals and standards of perfection were discovered and partly realised by other men; and he had a certain timidity as it were a fainéantise, in conception —a kind of unreadiness in initiative — which makes him more largely dependent upon his exemplars than any other great poet has ever been. Not only does he take whatever the Vernacular School can give in such matters as tone, sentiment, method, diction, phrase; but also, he is content to run in debt to it for suggestions as regards ideas and for models in style. Hamilton of Gilbertfield and Allan Ramsay conventionalise the Rhymed Epistle; and he accepts the convention as it left their hands, and produces epistles in rhyme which are glorified Hamilton-Ramsay. Fergusson writes Caller Water, and Leith Races, and The Farmer’s Ingle, and Planestanes and Causey, and the Ode to the Gowd- spink ; and he follows suit with Scotch Drink, and the Saturday Night, and The Holy Fair, and The Brigs of Ayr, and the Mouse and the Mountain Daisy. Sempill of Beltrees starts a tradition with The Piper of Kilbarchan ; and his effect is plain in the elegies on Tam Samson and Poor Mailie. Ramsay sees a Vision, and tinkers old, indecent songs, and writes comic tales in glib octo-syllabics ; and instinctively and naturally Burns does all three. It is as though some touch of rivalry were needed to put him on his mettle:* as though, instead of writing 1 It was with ‘‘emulating vigour’? that he imitation”? but ‘‘to kindle at their flame.’’? An- strung his ‘‘wildly-sounding rustic lyre ;*’ and _ other instance, or rather another suggestion, from he read Ramsay and Fergusson not “for servile himself, and I have done. It “exalted,” it “en- XXxii ROBERT BURNS and caring for himself alone, as Keats and Byron did, and Shelley — new men all, and founders of dynasties, not final expressions of sovranty —to be himself he must still be emulous of some one else. This is not written as a reproach: it is stated as a fact. On the strength of that fact one cannot choose but abate the old, fantastic estimate of Burns’s originality. But originality (to which, by the way, he laid no claim) is but one element in the intricately formed and subtly ordered plexus which is called genius; and I do not know that we need think any the less of Burns for that it is not predominant in him. Original or not, he had the Ver- nacular and its methods at his fingers’ ends. He wrote the heroic couplet (on the Dryden-Pope convention) clumsily, and without the faintest idea of what it had been in Marlowe’s hands, without the dimmest foreshadowing of what it was pre- sently to be in Keats’s; he had no skill in what is called “blank verse ” — by which I mean the metre in which Shakespeare triumphed, and Milton after Shake- speare, and Thomson and Cowper, each according to his lights, after Shakespeare and Milton; he was a kind of hob-nailed Gray in his use of choric strophes and in his apprehension of the ode. But he entered into the possession of such artful and difficult stanzas as that of Montgomerie’s Banks of Helicon and his own favourite sextain as an heir upon the ownership of an estate which he has known in all its details since he could know anything. It was fortunate for him and for his book, as it was fortunate for the world at large —as, too, it was afterwards to be fortu- nate for Scots song — that he was thus imitative in kind and thus traditional in practice. He had the sole ear of the Vernacular Muse; there was not a tool in her budget of which he-was not master; and he took his place, the moment he moved for it, not so much, perhaps, by reason of his uncommon capacity as be- cause he discovered himself to his public in the very terms — of diction, form, style, sentiment even — with which that public was familiar from of old, and in which it was waiting and longing to be addressed. It was at Mossgiel that the enormous possibilities in Burns were revealed to Burns himself ; and it was at Mossgiel that he did nearly all his best and strongest work. The revelation once made, he stayed not in his course, but wrote master- piece after masterpiece, with a rapidity, an assurance, a command of means, a brilliancy of effect, which make his achievement one of the most remarkable in English letters. To them that can rejoice in the Vernacular his very titles are enough to recall a little special world of variety and character and delight — the raptured’”’ him “to walk in the sheltered side of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day,’’ and hear the wind roaring in the trees. Then was his “best season for devotion,” for then was his mind “rapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him who . .. ‘ walks on the wings of the wind.’ ” The ‘‘rapture’’ and the “exaltation”? are but dimly and vaguely reflected in his Winter. But if some ancestor had tried to express a kindred feeling, then had Winter been a masterpiece. 1 In the same way, Byronsold four or five edi- tions of the English Bards, because it was written on a convention which was as old as Bishop Hall, and had been used by every satirist from the time of that master down to Matthias and Gifford. If he had cast his libellus into the octaves of Don Juan, the strong presumption is that it would have fallen still-born from the press. Other cases in point are Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Browning; the manner of each was new, and not all have reached the general yet. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xxxiil world, in fact, where you can take your choice among lyrical gems like Corn Rigs and Green Grow the Rashes and Mary Morison and masterpieces of satire like Holy Willie and the Address to the Unco Guid. To this time belong The Jolly Beggars and Halloween and The Holy Fair; to this time the Louse and the Mouse, the Auld Mare and the Twa Dogs ; to this time, Scotch Drink and the Address to the Deil, the Harnest Cry and the Mountain Daisy, the Epistles to Smith and Rankine and Sillar and Lapraik, the Zlegies on Tam Samson and the never-to-be-forgotten Mailie, the Reply to a Tailor and the Welcome and the Sut- urday Night. In some, as The Ordination, The Holy Tulyie, and, despite an unrivalled and inimitable picture of drunkenness, Hornbook itself, with others in a greater or less degree, the interest, once you have appreciated the technical quality as it deserves, is very largely local and particular.} In others, as the Saturday Night and The Vision (after the first stanzas of description), it is also very largely sentimental; and in both these it is further vitiated by the writer’s “falling to his English,” to a purpose not exhilarating to the knower of Shakespeare and Milton and Herrick. But all this notwithstanding, and notwithstanding quite a little crowd of careless rhymes, the level of excellence is one that none but the born great writer can maintain. Bold, graphic, variable, expressive, packed with obser- vations and ideas, the phrases go ringing and glittering on through verse after verse, through stave after stave, through poem after poem, in a way that makes the read- ing of this peasant a peculiar pleasure for the student of style.? And if, with an eye for words and effects in words, that student have also the faculty of laughter, then are his admiration and his pleasure multiplied ten-fold. For the master- quality of Burns, the quality which has gone, and will ever go, the furthest to make him universally and perennially acceptable — acceptable in Melbourne (say) ‘a hundred years hence as in Mauchline a hundred years syne — is humour. His sentiment is sometimes strained, obvious, and deliberate — as might be expected of 1 There is a sense in which the most are local —are parochial even. In Holy Willie itself the typeis not merely the Scots Calvinistic pharisee: it is a particular expression of that type; the thing is a local satire introducing the “‘kail and potatoes’? of a local scandal. Take, too, The Holy Fair: the circumstances, the manners, the characters, the experience —all are local. Apply the test. to almost any —not forgetting the Tam .o’ Shanter which is the top of Burns’s achieve- ment — and the result is the same. 2 It is not, remember, for ‘‘the love of lovely words,’’ not for such perfections of human utter- ance as abound in Shakespeare: “Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy,” in Milton: “Now to the moon in wavering morrice move,’ in Keats: “ And hides the green hill in an Aprilshroud,” in Herrick: “Ye have been fresh and green, Ye have been filled with flowers, And ye the walks have been Where maids have spent their hours,” that we revert to Burns. Felicities he has — felicities innumerable; but his forebears set them. selves to be humorous, racy, natural, and he could not choose but follow their lead. The Colloquia] triumphs in his verse as nowhere outside the Vision and Don Juan; but for Beauty we must go elsewhither. He has all manner of qualities — wit, fancy, vision of a kind, nature, gaiety, the richest humour, a sort of homespun verbal magic. But, if we be in quest of Beauty, we must e’en ignore him, and “ fall to our English” — of whose secrets, as I’ve said, he never so much as sus- pected the existence, and whose supreme capaci-- ties were sealed from him until the end. ROBERT BURNS XXxiV the poet who foundered two pocket-copies of that very silly and disgusting book, The Man of Feeling ; and it often rings a little false, as in much of the Saturday Night. But his humour — broad, rich, prevailing, now lascivious or gargantuan and now fanciful or jocose, now satirical and brutal and now instinct with sympathy, —is ever irresistible. Holy Willie is much more vigorously alive in London, and Melbourne, and Cape Town to-day than poor drunken old Will Fisher was in the Mauchline of 1785. That “pagan full of pride,” the vigilant, tricksy, truculent, familiar, true-blue Devil lives ever in Burns’s part pitying and fanciful, part humor- ous and controversial presentment; but he has long since faded out of his strong- holds in the Kirk: — “But fare-you-weel, Auld Nickie-Ben ! O, wad ye tak’ a thought an’ men’! Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — Still hae a stake : I’m wae to think upo’ yon den, Ev’n for your sake !” Lockhart, ever the true Son of the Manse, was so misguided —so mansified, to coin a word — as to wish that Burns had written a Holy Fair in the spirit and to the purpose of The Cotter’s Saturday Night. But the bright, distinguishing qual- ities of The Holy Fair are humour and experience and sincerity; the intent of the Saturday Night is idyllic and sentimental, as its effect is laboured and unreal ; and I, for my part, would not give my Holy Fair, still less my Halloween or my Jolly Beggars — observed, selected, excellently reported — for a wilderness of Saturday Nights. It is not hard to understand that (given the prestance of its author) the Saturday Night was doomed to popularity from the first;1 being of its essence sentimental and therefore pleasingly untrue, and being, also of its es- sence, patriotic — an assertion of the honour and the glory and the piety of Scot- land. But that any one with an eye for fact and an ear for verse should prefer its tenuity of inspiration and its poverty of rhythm and diction before the sincere and abounding humour and the notable mastery of means, before the plenitude of life and the complete accord of design and effect, by which Halloween and The Holy Fair, and nine tenths of the early pieces in the Vernacular are distinguished, ap- pears inexplicable. In these Burns is an artist and a poet, in the Saturday Night he is neither one nor other. In these, and in Tam o’ Shanter, the Scots School culminates —as English Drama, with lyrical and elegiac English, culminates in Othello and the Sonnets, in Antony and Cleopatra and the Adonis and The Rape of Luerece — more gloriously far than the world would ever have wagered on its beginnings. It is the most individual asset in the heritage bequeathed by “the ‘1 And such popularity! ‘Poosie Nancy’s’? — (thus writes a friend, even as these sheets are passing through the press) — “‘or rather a house on the site of Poosie Nancy’s, is, as you know, ‘still a tavern. There is a large room (for par- ties) at the back. And what, think you, is the poem that, printed and framed and glazed, is hung in the place of honour on its walls? ‘ The Jolly Beggars— naturally?’ Not a bit of it. The Cotter’s Saturday Night! Surrounded, too, by engravings depicting its choicest moments and its most affecting scenes.” LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT XXXV Bard;” and still more, perhaps,’ than the Songs, it stamps and keeps him the National Poet. The world it pictures —the world of “Scotch morals, Scotch Religion, and Scotch drink” — may be ugly or not (as refracted through his tem- perament, it is not). Ugly or not, however, it was the world of Burns; to paint it was part of his mission; it lives for us in his pictures; and many such attempts at reconstruction as The Earthly Paradise and The Idylls of the King will “fade far away, dissolve,” and be quite forgotten, ere these pictures disfeature or dislimn. He had the good sense to concern himself with the life he knew. The way of real- ism? lay broadly beaten by his ancestors, and was natural to his feet; he followed it with vision, with humour, with “inspiration and sympathy,” and with art; and in the sequel he is found to be one in the first flight of English poets after Milton, Chaucer, Shakespeare. v I take it that Burns was not more multifarious in his loves than most others in whom the primordial instinct is of peculiar strength. But it was written that Eng- lish literature — the literature of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Fielding — should be turned into a kind of schoolgirls’ playground; so that careful Editors have done their best to make him even as themselves, and to fit him with a suit of practical 1 I say, ‘‘perhaps,’’ because Burns, among the general at least, is better sung than read. But if the Songs, his own and those which are effects of a collaboration, be the more national, the Poems are the greater, and it is chiefly to the Poems that Burns is indebted for his place in ‘literature. 2 It is claimed for him, with perfect truth, that he went straight to Nature. But the Vernacular makers seldom did anything else. An intense and abiding consciousness of the common circum- stances of life was ever the distinguishing note of Scots Poetry. It thrills through Henryson, through Dunbar and the Douglas of certain “Prolougs’’? to Eneados, through Lindsay and Scott, through the nameless lyrist of Peeblis at the Play and Christ’s Kirk on the Green, through much of The Bannatyne MS., the Sempill of the Tulchene Bischope, the Montgomerie of the Fly- ting with Polwarth and of certain sonnets: ‘Raw reid herring reistit in the reik.’’ It is even audible in the Guid and Godlie Ballats ; and after the silence it is heard anew in the verse which was made despite the Kirk, and in the verse which proceeded from that verse —the verse, that is, of Ramsay and Fergusson and Burns. This vivid and curious interest in facts is, as I think, a characteristic of the ‘‘perfervid ingyne.’”? Com- pare, for instance, Pitscottie and Knox on the murder of Cardinal Beaton. The one is some- thing naive, the other as it were Shakespearean; but in both the element of particularity is vital to the complete effect. These are two instances only; but I could easily give two hundred. (See post p. lvii, Note 1.) To return to Burns and his treatment of weather (say) and landscape. His verse is full of realities : “When lyart leaves bestrow the yird, Or, wavering like the bauckie-bird, Bedim cauld Boreas’ blast; When hailstanes drive wi’ bitter skyte.”.. . The burn stealing under the long yellow broom : “When, tumbling brown, the burn comes down.” ... “The speedy gleams the darkness swal- lowed.” ... “Yon murky cloud is foul with rain.” ... “November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh,”’ all exactly noted and vividly recorded (a most instructive instance is the ‘“burnie’’ stanza in Halloween; for he had, they say, a peculiar de- light in running water). But for great, imagina- tive impressions: — “Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks branch-charméd by the earnest stars,’’ you turn to other books than his. XXXVi ROBERT BURNS and literary morals, which, if his own verse and prose mean anything, he would have refused, with all the contumely of which his “Carrick lips” were capable, to wear. Nothing has exercised their ingenuity, their talent for chronology, their capacity for invention (even), so vigoreusly as the task of squaring their theory of Burns with the story of his marriage and the legend of his Highland Lassie. And now is the moment to deal with both. Elizabeth Paton’s child was born in the November of 1784. In the April of that year, a few weeks after the general settlement at Mossgiel, he made the ac- quaintance of Armour the mason’s daughter, Jean. She was a handsome, lively girl; the acquaintance ripened into love on both sides; and in the end, after what dates approve a prolonged and serious courtship, Armour fell with child. Her condition being discovered, Burns, after some strong revulsions of feeling against — not Jean, I hope, but the estate of marriage, gave her what he presently had every reason to call “an unlucky paper,” recognising her as his wife; and, had things been allowed to drift in the usual way, the world had lacked an unforgotten scandal and a great deal of silly writing. This, though, was not to be. Old Ar- mour — “a bit mason body, who used to snuff a guid deal, and gey af’en tak’ a bit dram” — is said to have “hated” Burns; so that he would “reyther hae seen the Deil himsel’ comin’ to the hoose to coort his dochter than him.” Thus a contemporary of both Armour and Burns; and in any case Armour knew Burns for a needy and reckless man, the father of one by-blow, a rebel at odds with the Orthodox, of whom, in existing circumstances, it would be vain to ask a comfort- able living. So he first obliged Jean to give up the “unlucky paper,” with a view to unmaking any engagement it might confirm,! and then sent her to Paisley, to be out of her lover’s way. In the meanwhile Burns himself was in straits, and had half-a-dozen designs in hand at once. Mossgiel was a failure; he had resolved to deport himself to the West Indies; he had made up his mind to print, and the Kilmarnock Edition was setting, when Jean was sent into exile. Worst of all, he seems to have been not very sure whether he loved or not. When he knew that he and she had not eluded the Inevitable, he wrote to James Smith that “against two things — staying at home and owning her conjugally ” — he was “fixed as fate.” ‘The first,” he says, “by heaven I will not do!” Then, in a burst of Don-Juanism — Don-Juanism of the kind that protests too much to be real — “the last, by hell I will never do.” Follows a gush of sentimentalism (to Smith), which is part nerves and part an attempt— as the run on the g’s and the w’s shows — at literature: “A good God bless you, and make you happy up to the warmest weeping wish of parting friendship.’ And this is succeeded by a message to the poor, pregnant creature, of whom, but two lines before, he has sworn “ by hell ”’ 1 I take it that the paper was ‘“‘unlucky,”’ be- cause it became a weapon in old Armour’s hands, not, Auld (who probabiy had a strong objection to the marriage) was guilty of an illegal act in and was the means of inflicting on the writer the worst and the most painful experience of his life. At the same time there seems to be no doubt that it made Jean Mrs. Burns, so that, consciously or certifying Burns a bachelor. Burns, in fact, was completely justified in his anger with the Kirk and in the scorn with which he visited the tyr- anny of her ministers. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT XXXViil that he will never make her honest: “If you see Jean, tell her I will meet her, so help me God in my hour of need.” This scrap is undated, but it must have been written before 17th February, 1786, when he wrote thus to Richmond: “I am extremely happy with Smith; he is the only friend I have now in Mauchline.” Well, he does meet Jean ; and, his better nature getting the upper hand, the “un- lucky paper ” is written. Then on the 20th March he writes thus to Muir: “I intend to have a gill between us or a mutchkin stoup,” for the reason that it “ will be a great comfort and consolation’? — which seems to show that Jean has repu- diated him some time between the two letters. Before the 2d April, on which day the Kirk-Session takes cognisance of the matter, Jean has gone to Paisley ; the “unlucky paper”’ is cancelled (apparently about the 14th April, the names were cut out with a penknife) ; so that Don Juan finds himself planté-du, and being not really Don Juan —as what sentimentalist could be?—he does not affect Don Juan any more. The prey has turned upon the hunter; the deserter becomes the deserted, the privilege of repudiation, “ by hell” or otherwise, has passed to the other side. The man’s pride, inordinate for a peasant, is cut to the quick ; and his unrivalled capacity for “battering himself into an affection” or a mood has a really notable opportunity for display. In love before, he is ten times more in love than ever; he feels his loss to desperation ; he becomes the disappointed lover — even the true-souled, generous, adoring victim of a jilt: “A jillet brak his heart at last That ’s owre the sea.” In effect, his position was sufficiently distracting. He had made oath that he would not marry Jean ; then he had practically married her; then he found that nobody wanted her married to him — that, on the contrary, he was the most abso- lute “ detrimental ” in all Ayrshire ; when, of course, the marriage became the one thing that made his life worth living. He tried to persuade old Armour to think better of his resolve ; and, failing, ran “nine parts and nine tenths out of ten stark staring mad.” Also he wrote the Lament, in which he told his sorrows to the moon } (duly addressing that satellite as “O thou pale Orb” ), and took her pub- licly into his confidence, in the beautiful language of Eighteenth Century English Poetry, and painted what is in the circumstances a really creditable picture of the effects upon a simple Bard of “‘a faithless woman’s broken vow.” Further, he produced Despondency in the same elegant lingo; and, in Despondency, having called for “ the closing tomb,” and pleasingly praised “the Solitary’s lot,’ — “Who, all-forgetting, all-forgot, Within his humble cell — The cavern, wild with tangling roots — Sits o’er his newly gather’d fruits, Beside his crystal well! ” ete. — 2 Is it worth noting that, later, when he comes to sing of Mary Campbell, his confidant is no longer the Moon but the Morning Star ? XXXVill ROBERT BURNS he addressed himself to Youth and Infancy in these affecting terms : — “O enviable early days, When dancing thoughtless pleasure’s maze, To care, to guilt unknown ! How ill exchang’d for riper times, To feel the follies or the crimes Of others, or my own! Ye tiny elves that guiltless sport, Like linnets in the bush, Ye little know the ills ye court, When manhood is your wish ! The losses, the crosses That active man engage ; The fears all, the tears all Of dim declining Age !”1 Moreover, he took occasion to refer to Jean (to David Brice; 12th June, 1786) as “poor, ill-advised, ungrateful Armour ;” vowed that he could “have no nearer idea of the place of eternal punishment” than “ what I have felt in my own breast on her account;” and finally confessed himself to this purpose: ‘‘I have tried often to forget her: I have run into all kinds of dissipation and riot . . . to drive her out of my head, but all in vain.” Long before this, however — as early, it would seem, as some time in March— his “ maddening passions, roused to tenfold fury,” having done all sorts of dreadful things, and then “sunk into a lurid calm,” he had “ subsided into the time-settled sorrow of the sable widower,” and had lifted his “ grief-worn eye to look for — another wife.” In other words, he had pined for female society, and had embarked upon those famous love-passages with High- land Mary. Little that is positive is known of Mary Campbell except that she once possessed a copy of the Scriptures (now very piously preserved at Ayr), and that she is the subject of a fantasy, in bronze, at Dunoon. But to consider her story is, almost inevitably, to be forced back upon one of two conclusions — either (1) she was something of a lightskirts; or (2) she is a kind of Scottish Mrs. Harris. The theory in general acceptance — what is called the Episode Theory —is that she was “an innocent and gentle Highland nursery - maid” (thus, after Chambers, 1 I cannot attach any great importance to these exercises in Poetic English. Burns wrote to a very different purpose when he wrote from his to which he was satisfied with his achievement in what must certainly have seemed to him real poetry. None of your Vernacular (that is), bul heart and in his native tongue : — “Had we never loved sae kindly... ” “Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw I dearly like the west :’? — and so on, and so on. Still, there can be no doubt that they mean something. At any rate they are designed to be impressive and ‘‘fine;’? and probably the Bard believed in them to the extent downright, solid, unmistakable English Verse — verse which might stand beside the works of Beattie and Shenstone and Thomson and the “elegantly melting Gray.’? That life departed them long since is plain. But it is just as plain that they meant something to Burns, for (appar- ently) he took much pains with them, saw not their humorous aspect, and included them in his first (Kilmarnock) Volume LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT XXxix R. L. §.) “in the service of a neighbouring family ” (Gavin Hamilton’s) ; that she consoled Burns — mais pour le bon motif — for Jean’s desertion ; that they agreed to marry; that, on her departure for the West to prepare for the event, “ Ayr, gurgling, kissed his pebbled shore,” and they exchanged vows and Bibles; and that she died, of a malignant fever, some few months after her return to Greenock. Another identifies her (on Richmond’s authority) with a serving-maid in Mauch- line, who was the mistress of a Montgomerie, and had withal such a hold upon Burns that for a brief while he was crazy to make her his wife; and some have thought that this may be the Mary Campbell who, according to the Dundonald Session Records, fathered a child on one John Hay. This last hypothesis is, of course, most hateful to the puzzle-headed puritans who cannot, or will not, believe, despite the fact that the world has always teemed with Antonies, each of them mad for his peculiar Cleopatra, that Burns, particularly in his present straits, might very well have been enamoured of a gay girl to the point of marriage. So, for the consolation of these, there has been devised a third, according to which her name was either Mary Campbell or something unknown; but, whatever she was called, she was so far and away the purest and sweetest of her sex — the one “ white rose,” in fact, which grew up among “the passion flowers” of the Bard’s career — that she must, had she married him, have entirely “rectified” his character, and have transformed him into a pattern Kirk-of-Scotland puritan of the puritans. On: the other hand, it has become obvious to some whole-hearted devotees of the Ma- rian Ideal that a “young person” of this sort could scarce have been of so coming a habit as to skip with alacrity into Jean’s old shoes, and — shutting her innocent eyes to the fact that Burns, a man notoriously at war with the Kirk and the seducer of two unmarried women, was at the same time at his wits’ end for cash — con- sent to cast in her lot with his at a moment’s notice and with never a sign from the family she was to enter. If she could do that, plainly she could not, except on strong positive testimony, be made to do duty as a white rose among passion- flowers ; or if, on some unknown and inenarrable hypothesis, she could, then, says one of the devout, “the conduct of Burns was that of a scoundrel.” This is absurd! So of late (1896-97) there has come into being a wish to believe that either Mary Campbell preceded Armour in the Bard’s affections, or the Highland Lassie never existed at all, but was a creature of Burns’s brain, an ideal of womanhood to which his thought ascended from the mire of this world — the world of Ellisland, and Jean, and the children, and the songs in Johnson’s Musewm —as Dante’s to his Beatrice of dream. Given Burns’s own habit and the habit of the Scots peasant woman, there is still no earthly reason for rejecting the Episode Theory — even were rejection possible — however seriously it reflects upon the morals of the parties concerned. But it is fair to add that the subject is both complicated and obscure. Burns’s own references to his Highland Lassie are deliberately insignifi- cant and vague; for once in his life he was reticent. His statement that she went home to prepare for their marriage is heavily discounted by the fact that he did not introduce her to his family as his betrothed, in nowise prepared for marriage xl ROBERT BURNS on his own account, never dreamed, except in sporadic copies of verse, of taking her to the West Indies, and was all the while so desperately enamoured of Jean that not by any amount of self-indulgence could he rid his breast of her; by the fact, too, that, if his thought went back to the Highland Lassie in after years, his report of the journey is strongly tinctured with remorse.’ Currie’s statement is that “the banks of Ayr formed the scene of youthful passions . . . the history of which it would be improper to reveal,” eée. Gilbert Burns, after noting that Nanie Fleming’s charms were “sexual”? —‘“ which indeed was the characteristic of the greater part of his (Robert’s) mistresses” —is careful, perhaps with an eye on the heroine of Thou Lingering Star, to record the statement that Robert, at least, “was no platonic lover, whatever he might pretend or suppose of himself to the contrary.” There is Richmond’s statement, as reported by Train. There is the Mary Campbell of the Dundonald Register. There is the certainty that relations there were between Burns and a Mary Campbell. There is the strong probability that Mary Campbell and the Highland Lassie were one and the same person. There is Burns’s own witness to the circumstance that they met and parted under extremely suspicious conditions. That, really, is all. Yet, on the strength of a romantic impulse on the part of Robert Chambers, the heroine-in-chief of Burns’s story is not the loyal and patient soul whom he appreciated as the fittest to be his wife he’d ever met; not the Jean who endured his affronts, and mothered his children (her own and another’s), and took the rough and the smooth, the best and the worst of life with him, and wore his name for well-nigh forty years after his death as her sole title to regard! On the contrary, that heroine-in-chief is a girl of whom scarce anything definite is known, while what may be reasonably suspected of her, though natural and feminine enough, is so displeasing to some fanaties, that, for Burns’s sake (not hers) they would like to mythologise her out of being; or, at the least, to make her as arrant an impossibility as the tame, proper, fig- ‘mentary Burns, the coinage of their own tame, proper brains, which they have done their best to substitute for the lewd, amazing peasant of genius,” the inspired faun, whose voice has gone ringing through the courts of Time these hundred years and more, and is far louder and far clearer now than when it first broke on the ear of man ! Stevenson was an acute and delicate critic at many points; but he wrote like a novelist — like Thackeray, say, of Fielding and Sterne — when he wrote of Armour as a “facile and empty-headed girl,” and insisted, still possessed by Chambers’s vain imaginings, that she was first and last in love with another man. In truth the facility was on the other side. In 1784 Burns is willing to marry Betty Paton, and writes thus to Thomas Orr: “I am very glad Peggy [Thomson] is off my hand, as I am at present embarrassed enough without her.” In 1785 he is court- 1 He sent Thou Lingering Star to Mrs. Dunlop __ particulars, or essayed to disabuse her of the idea in a letter dated 8th November, 1789. Inacknow- _ that remorse there well might be. ledging it, the lady noted its remorseful cast, and 2 “Peculiarly like nobody rg 7 (R. B. to hoped it didn’t set forth a personal experience. Arnot, April, 1786.) There is nothing to show that he gave her any LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xli ing Jean Armour, and very early in 1786 Jean is in the family way, and “ by hell ” she shall never be his wife. But some time in March Jean is sent to Paisley ; and the “‘ maddening passions,” etc., set to work; and he can no more “se consoler de son départ”’ than Calypso could for that of Ulysses. So in a hand’s turn he be- comes the stricken deer, and, as we have seen, protests (to the Moon) that to marry Jean, and wear “The promis’d father’s tender name” are his sole ambitions. As Jean does not return, however, he seeks (and finds) such comfort as he may in exchanging vows and Bibles and what Chamfort called “ fantaisies” with Mary Campbell. On the 12th-13th May he writes The Court of Equity —a task the strangest conceivable for a lover, whether rejoicing or distraught. On the 14th “ Ayr, gurgling, kisses his pebbled shore,” and ‘The flowers spring wanton to be prest,” and Highland Mary leaves for the West to make these famous preparations. - On the 15th May he dates (at least) the Hypistle to a Young Friend: “ The sacred lowe o” weel-plac’d love, Luxuriantly indulge it,” ete. : and, as for some time past, he is still the gallant, howbeit in jest, of Betty Miller; till on the 9th June “ poor ill-advised Armour” returns to Mauchline; and on the 12th he writes that “for all her part in a certain black affair” he “still loves her to distraction,” and, with a view to forgetting her has “run into all kinds of dissi- pation and riot . .. but in vain.” On the 28th June he appears before “the Poacher Court,” acknowledges paternity, and is “ promised a certificate as a single man,” on condition that he do penance before the congregation on three successive’ Sundays. On the 9th July, the occasion of his first appearance, he has “a foolish hankering fondness” for Jean, but, calling on her and being put to the door, he remarks that she does not “show that penitence that might have been expected ;” so, on the 22d, he executes a deed by which he makes over all his property to the “wee image of his bonie Betty,” to the exclusion of whatever might come of his affair with the recusant. Then, on the 30th (Old Armour having, meanwhile, got a warrant against him, and sent him into hiding+), he adjures Richmond — who, he knows, will “pour an execration” on Jean’s head —to “spare the poor, ill- advised girl for my sake;” and on the 14th August he calls on Heaven to “bless the Sex,” for that “I feel there is still happiness for me among them.” Against this panorama of tumult and variety and adventure, enlarged in Edinburgh, and enriched at Ellisland and in Dumfries, there are to set the years of simple abnega- tion, magnanimity, and devotion with which the ‘facile and empty-headed girl” repaid the husband of her choice. The conclusion is obvious. The Novelist turned Critic is still the Novelist. Consciously or not, he develops preferences, for, consciously or not, he must still create.? 1 No doubt he retired on information sent by Jean. 2 Thus Stevenson, who himself liked ‘dressing a part’’ (so to speak), was persuaded that Burns did likewise, and accepted bodily that absurd, fantastic story (told by two Englishmen), in which Stevenson’s preferences were with Rab the Bard, in a fox-skin cap and an enormous coat, and girt with a Highland broadsword, is seen angling from a Nithside rock. Jean denied it, and said that Robert (who hated field-sports, as we know) never angled in his life. But the Nov- elist was roused; and all that was ignored. xlii ROBERT BURNS Mossgiel. And the result was a grave — but not, I hope, a lasting — injustice to an excellent and very womanly woman and a model wife.' As to Highland Mary, one of two conclusions: (1) Either she was a paragon; or (2) she was not. In the first case, her story has yet to be written, and written on evidence that is positive and irrefutable. In the second, the bronze at Dunoon bears abiding witness to the existence (at a certain time) of what can only be de- scribed as a national delusion. VI By this time the end of Mauchline, and of much besides, was nearer than Burns knew. Probably sent to press in the May of 1786, the Kilmarnock Volume was published at the end of July.2_ Most of, if not all, the numbers contained in it were probably familiar to the countryside. Some had certainly been received with “a roar of applause;” Burns, who was not the man to hide his light under a bushel (his temperament was too radiant and too vigorous for that), was given to multiplying his verses in Ms. copies for friends; he had been “read into fame ” by Aiken the lawyer: so that Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was, in a sense, as “well advertised ” as book could be. Its triumph was not less instant than well- deserved ;* the first issue, six hundred copies strong, was exhausted in a month (‘tis said that not one could be spared for Mossgiel). But Burns himself, accord- ing to himself, and he was ever punctiliously exact and scrupulous on the score of money, was but £20 in pocket by it; the Kilmarnock printer declined to strike off a second impression, with additions, unless he got the price of the paper (£27) in 1 On the 8d September Jean lay in of twins. They were presently taken by their respective grandmothers, to whom, I doubt not, they gave great joy —as in that and other stages of society the appearance of the third generation, whether its right to exist be legal or not, does always. Burns announced the event as only Burns could, by sending Nature’s Law: **Kind Nature’s care had given his share Large of the flaming current,” etc., to Gavin Hamilton; a ‘‘God bless the little dears,’’ with a snatch of indecent song, to Rich- mond; and a really heartfelt and affecting bit of prose on the subject of paternity to Robert Muir. 2 One effect of its publication was to secure him the friendship of Mrs. Dunlop (see post, p. 122). It is evident from this lady’s letters that her in- terest in him could scarce have been warmer had he been her son. She prized his correspondence as beyond rubies, and as a rule he was slower to reply than she (once, being hurt by his silence, she told him she would n’t write again till he asked her, and, failing to draw him, within a week she is found begging his pardon for her pet- ulance). She made him many gifts — apparently in money and in kind—gifts at New Year and other times, and accepted gifts from him (once he sent her a keg of old brandy). Her influence made ever for decency, and it may well have been on her remonstrances, which were strong, that he finally resolved to remove some of the coarser phrases in his earlier editions. Her last (extant) letter is dated 11th January, 1795. For some unexplained reasons she ceased from writ- ing several months before the January of 1796. It may have been that she heard of him as often in drink, or that she was told of the affair at Woodley Park. In any case she esteemed him so highly, and admired him so lavishly, that ’tis quite impossible to believe the breach in the cor- respondence due to any fault of hers. 8 “Old and young,”’ says Heron, high and low, grave and gay, learned or ignorant, all were alike delighted, agitated, transported. I was at that time resident in Galloway, contiguous to Ayr- shire ; and I can well remember, how that even the plough-boys and maid-servants would have gladly bestowed the wages which they earned the most hardly, and whigh they wanted to pur- chase necessary clothing, if they might but secure the works of Burns.’ LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xliii advance ; and for some time it seemed that there was nothing but Jamaica for the writer, Local Bard and Local Hero though he were; so that he looked to have sailed in mid-August, and again on the 1st September, and at some indeterminate date had “ conveyed his chest thus far on the road to Greenock,” and written that solemn and moving song — far and away the best, I think, and the sincerest thing he left in English — The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast. It was to be the “last effort ’’ of his “ Muse in Caledonia.” But, for one or another reason, his departure was ever deferred ; and, though on the 30th October (some ten days, it is surmised, after the death of Mary Campbell), he was still writing that, “ ance to the Indies he was wonted,” he’d certainly contrive to “mak’ the best o’ life Wi’ some sweet elf,” on the 18th November, “I am thinking for my Edinburgh expedition on Monday or Tuesday come s’ennight.” In effect, an “ Edinburgh expedition” was natural and inevitable. Ballantine of Ayr is said to have sug- gested the idea of such an adventure; Gilbert and the family are said to have ap- plauded it. But as early as the 4th September the excellent Blacklock —in “a letter to a friend of mine which overthrew all my schemes” —had called — “for the sake of the young man” — for a second edition, “‘ more numerous than the former ;” inasmuch as “it appears certain that its intrinsic merit, and the ex- ertions of the author’s friends, might give it a more universal circulation than any- thing of the kind which has been published within my memory.” Thus Blacklock ; and the “friend of mine,” who was Lawrie, the minister of Loudoun, had com- municated Blacklock’s letter to the person most concerned in Blacklock’s sugges- tion. Bold, proud, intelligent au possible, strongly possessed too (so he says, and so I believe) by the genius of paternity, Burns the Man, who had a very becoming opinion of Burns the Bard, and could fairly appreciate that worthy’s merits, must certainly have seen that in Edinburgh he had many chances of succeeding at the very point where the Kilmarnock printer failed him. I do not doubt, either, that he was tired of being the Local Poet, the Local Satirist, the Local Wit, the Local Lothario (even), and eager to essay himself on another and a vaster stage than Mauchline ; for, if he hadn’t been thus tired and thus eager, he would n’t have been Robert Burns. The fighting spirit, the genius of emulation, is so strong in us all that a man of temperament and brains must assert himself, and get accepted at his own (or another) valuation, exactly as a cock must crow. And I love to believe that Burns, being immitigably of this metal, entered upon his adventure — 27th November, on a borrowed nag, with not much money, a letter of introduc- tion to Dalrymple of Orangefield, and a visiting list consisting entirely in Dugald Stewart and Richmond, the lawyer’s clerk — with the joyous heart and the stiff neck of one who knows himself a man among men, and whose chief ambition is to “drink delight of battle with his peers’ — if he can find them. He reached the capital on the 28th November, and was hospitably entertained by Richmond — to the extent, indeed, of a bedfellow’s share in the clerk’s one little room in Baxter’s Place, Lawnmarket. Through Dalrymple of Orangefield he got access to Lord Glencairn and others — among them Harry Erskine, Dean of Fac- xliv ROBERT BURNS ulty, and that curious, irascible, pompous ass, the Earl of Buchan, and Creech, the publisher, who had been Glencairn’s tutor, and who advertised the Edinburgh Edition on the 14th December. He was everywhere received as he merited, and he made such admirable use of his vogue that, five days before Creech’s advertise- ment was printed, he could tell his friend and patron, Gavin Hamilton, that he was rapidly qualifying for the position of Tenth Worthy and Eighth Wise Man of the World. He saw everybody worth seeing, and talked with everybody worth talking to ; he was made welcome by “ heavenly Burnett” and her frolic Grace of Gordon, and welcome by the ribald, scholarly, hard-drinking wits and jinkers of the Cro- challan Fencibles, for whose use and edification he made the unique and precious collection now called The Merry Muses of Caledonia ; he moved and bore himself as easily at Dugald Stewart’s as in Baxter’s Place, in Creech’s shop, with Henry Mackenzie and Gregory and Blair, as at that extraordinary meeting of the St. Andrew’s Lodge, where, at the Grand Master’s bidding, the Brethren assembled drank the health of “‘ Caledonia and Caledonia’s Bard — Brother Burns,” a toast received with “ multiplied honours and repeated acclamations.” To look at, “he was like a farmer dressed to dine with the laird; ” his manners were “ rustic, not clownish ;”’ he had “a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity.” Then, “his address to females was always extremely deferential, and always” —this on the authority of the Duchess of Gordon — “ with a turn to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly.” For the rest, “I never saw a man in company with his superiors in station and information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment.”” Thus, long afterwards, Sir Walter, who noted also, boy as he was, “the strong expression of sense and shrewd- ness in all his lineaments,” and who, long afterwards, had never seen such an eye as Burns’s “in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men ” — Byron among them; and Byron’s eye was one of Byron’s points — “of my time.” It is not wonderful, perhaps, that Burns, with his abounding temperament, his puissant charm, his potency in talk, his rare gifts of eye and voice,! should have strongly affected Edinburgh Society, brilliant in its elements and distinguished in its effect as it was. There has been no Burns since Burns; or history would pretty certainly have repeated itself. What is really wonderful is the way in which Burns kept his head in Edinburgh Society, and stood prepared for the inevitable reaction. Through all the “thick, strong, stupefying incense smoke ” (and there was certainly a very great deal of it), he held a steady eye upon his future. He saw most clearly that the life of a nine-days’ wonder is at most nine days, and that now was his time or never. But if he expected preferment. he was neither extravagantly elated in anticipation, nor unduly depressed by disappointment; and, for all his self- consciousness — “and God had given his share” —he was not too platonic to solicit the favours of at least one servant-girl (he was arrested, August, 1787, on 1 Thus Maria Riddell: ‘‘His voice alone could be remembered that children used to speak of improve upon the magic of his eye. Sonorous, Byron as “the gentleman with the beautiful replete with the finest modulations,’’ etc. It will voice.’ LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xlv a warrant In meditatione fuga), nor too punctilious to make love to “a Lothian farmer’s daughter, a very pretty girl, whom I’ve almost persuaded to accompany me to the West Country, should I ever return,” ete., nor too philosophical not to regret his Jean, and reflect (in this very letter to Gavin Hamilton) that he ’d never “meet so delicious an armful again.” In the long-run his magnanimity suffered a certain change. The peasant at work scarce ever goes wrong; but abroad and idle, he is easily spoiled, and soon. Edinburgh was a triumph for Burns; but it was also a misfortune. It was a cen- tre of conviviality — a city of clubs and talk and good-fellowship, a city of harlotry and high jinks, a city (above all) of drink : — “Whare couthy chiels at e’enin meet, Their bizzin craigs and mou’s to weet: An’ blythely gar auld Care gae by Wi’ blinket and wi’ bleering eye :” — a dangerous place for a peasant to be at large in, especially a peasant of the con- ditions and the stamp of Burns. He was young, he was buckishly given, and he was — Burns. He had, as certain numbers in The Merry Muses witness, an entirely admirable talent of a kind much favoured by our liberal ancestors. To hear him talk was ever a privilege; while to hear him make such use as he might of this peculiar capacity cannot but have constituted an unique experience. After all, a gift ’s a gift, and a man must use the gifts he has. No reasonable being can question that Burns used this one of his. In those days he could scarce be buckish — or even popular — and do other. Even in the country, says Heron, in his loose yet lofty way, “the votaries of intemperate joys, with persons to whom he was recommended by licentious wit . . . had begun to fasten on him, and to seduce him to embellish the gross pleasures of their looser hours with the charms of his wit and fancy.” These temptations — he was known, be it remembered, for the tibald of The Fornicator and The Court of Equity as well as for the poet of the 1 This is noted neither in praise nor in dis- praise. It is noted to show that Burns was essen- tially a man of his time, —as how, peasant of genius that he was, could he be anything else? Our fathers loved sculduddery, and Burns, who came from Carrick — where, as Lockhart has re- marked, the Vernacular was spoken with peculiar gaiety and vigour — was the best gifted of them all in this respect by virtue of his genius, his turn of mind, his peasanthood, and his wonderful ca- pacity for talk. Josiah Walker notes of Burns that his conversation was ‘not more licentious ’’ than the conversation heard at the tables of the great; Lockhart regrets that he can give but few of Burns’s mots, for the reason that the most of those preserved and handed down were unquota- dle. Itwas a trick of the time, and long after — (remember Colonel Newcome’s indignant retreat before old Costigan) — so that Lord Cork of The Bumper Toast, and Captain Morris at Carlton House, and Burns among the Crochallan Fenci- bles are but expressions of the same fashion in humour, the same tendency in the human mind to apprehend and rejoice in the farce of sex. I do not know that Burns and M‘Queen of Brax.. field (Stevenson’s Weir of Hermiston) ever met. But it was said of M‘Queen that he had never read anything but sculduddery and law; and to Ramsay of Ochtertyre, in whom Sir Walter found some elements of Monkbarns, the two men seemed cast in the same mould. Burns, in any case, was a man of the later Eighteenth Century (he sent one of his best-known facetie to Graham of Fin- try, with a view to correcting some illiberal report about his politics); and to take him out of it, and essay to make hima smug, decent, Late Victorian journalist is, as I think, to essay a task at once discreditable in aim and impossible of execution. xlvi ROBERT BURNS Mountain Daisy and the Saturday Night — he was by no means incapable of putting by. Mr. Arthur Bruce, indeed, “a gentleman of great worth and dis- cernment,” assured Heron that he had “seen the Poet steadily resist such solicita- tions and allurements to convivial enjoyment, as scarcely any other person could have withstood.” But — thus this author, intelligent, not unfriendly on the whole, on the whole competent —“‘the bucks of Edinburgh accomplished . . . that in which the boors of Ayrshire! had failed. After residing some months in Edin- burgh he began to estrange himself, not altogether, but in some measure, from the society of his graver friends. . . . He suffered himself to be surrounded by a race of miserable beings who were proud to tell that they had been in company with Burns, and had seen Burns as loose and as foolish as themselves.” 2 One result of this condescension was this: always the best man in the room, “the cock of the company,” as Heron puts it, “he began to contract something of new arrogance in conversation ;” till in the long-run “ he could scarcely refrain from indulging in similar freedom and dictatorial decision of talk, even in the presence of persons ® who could less patiently endure his presumption.” Heron’s detail is vague — not to say indefinite ; his effect may be misleading. But, as I said, the peasant at large —the peasant without hard work to keep him straight — must, almost of necessity, run to waste. And it is plain that, treading thus closely on the heels of “the dis- sipation and riot,” the ‘‘ mason-meetings, drinking-matches, and other mischief,” of the year before, the distractions and the triumphs of Edinburgh continued the work which the mistakes and follies of Dumfries were to finish ten years after. At last, however, the First Edinburgh Edition appeared (21st April, 1787). The issue ran to 2800 copies, and 1500 of these were subscribed in advance. What Burns got for it is matter of doubt. Creech informed Heron that it was £1100 — which is a plain untruth; Chambers says £500; Burns himself told Mrs. Dunlop (25th March, 1789) that he expected to clear some £440 to £450. (Other impres- sions were called for in the course of the year, but the Bard had sold his copyright, and had no interest in them.) Whatever the amount,‘ Creech was a slow pay- 1 This appears to be a polite description, by a staunch (though drunken) Churchman, of those desperate spirits, Gavin Hamilton and Robert Aiken. 2 J give all this for what it is worth. Heron himself was something of a wastrel. Yet he had a clerical habit and a clerical bias which made him easily censorious in the case of so hardened. and so militant an anti-cleric as the Bard. He was personally acquainted, however, with that hero; and his little biography (1797) is neither unintelligent nor ill-written. 8 Heron himself, no doubt. He ‘had the tongues,”’ and thought himself the better man. 4 At the instancing of Henry Mackenzie, Creech paid Burns (23d April, 1787) a hundred guineas for the copyright of the Poems, besides subscrib- ing five hundred copies. The Caledonian Hunt subscribed another hundred ; and Burns sent sev- enty to Ballantine for ‘‘a proper person ”’ in Ayr, and wrote from Dunse (17th May) to acknowledge the receipt, from Pattison, the Paisley bookseller, of ‘‘ Twenty-two pounds, seven shillings sterling, payment in full, after carriage deducted for ninety copies’? more. Twenty-four copies went to the Earl and Countess of Glencairn, twenty to Pren- tice of Conington Mains, forty to Muir of Kilmar- nock, twenty-one to Her Grace of Gordon, forty- two to the Earl of Eglintoun, and a certain number tothe Scots Benedictionaries at Maryborough and Ratisbon, and the Scots Colleges at Douay, Paris, and Valladolid. The subscription price was five, the price to non-subscribers six, , shillings — the extra shilling being (Burns to Pattison, ut sup.) “ Creech’s profit.’ LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xlvii master; and, as Edinburgh was bad for Burns, and Creech was responsible for Burns’s detention in Edinburgh, it is impossible not to regret that Burns had not another publisher. Burns in effect, his Second Edition once published, had nothing to do but pocket his receipts,! and be gone. This, however, was what Creech could not let him do; so that he went and came, and came and went, and it was not until the March of 1789 that the two men squared accounts.? The Edition floated, comes a jaunt to the Border (begun 5th May) with Robert Ainslie. Then, by the 9th June, Burns is back at Mauchline, a much richer and a vastly more important person than he left it — able to lend his brother £180 ; recon- ciled, too, with Jean and her people, but disgusted, or feigning himself disgusted (for, after the repudiation, he is ever the superior and the injured party in regard to Jean), with the “ mean, servile compliance”? with which his advances are met. Follows a tour to the West Highlands, which seems to be largely an occasion for drink and talk; and in July you find him back at Mauchline, boasting how he, “ an old hawk at the sport,” has brought “a certain lady from her aerial towerings, pop, down at my foot, like Corporal Trim’s hat” — which means that Jean is presently with child by him for the second time. In August he is at Edinburgh, intent on a settlement with Creech, but on the 25th he starts for the Highland tour with his friend Nicol. After a couple of excursions more — one to Ayrshire, to look at certain holdings — he is resolved on quitting Edinburgh, settlement or no settlement, to farm or go to the Indies, as circumstances shall dictate. 1 Heron ‘‘ had reason to believe that he had consumed a much larger proportion of these gains than prudence could approve ; while he superin- tended the impression, paid his court to his pa- trons, and wasted the full payment of the subscrip- tion money.” In effect, it is hard to see how, coming to Edinburgh with next to nothing in his pocket (the £20 from Wilson could not have gone very far), he could otherwise have lived. It would have been natural enough for him to have accepted gratuities, for the Age of Patronage was still afoot, and relief in this kind would have come as easily (to say the least) to the ‘ plough- ing poet,” howbeit he was the proudest and in some respects the most punctilious of men, as to any other. I find it hard to believe that there were none. But there is no record of any ; and a letter (unpublished) of this period in acknow- ledgment of a gift of money from Mrs. Dunlop is almost painful in its embarrassment of gratitude and discomfort. On the whole, I take it that, however cheaply he lived in Edinburgh, he must of necessity have had to discount his profits, though not to anything like the extent suggested by Heron. Moreover, it is like enough that he spent a certain amount upon his tours, and it is certain that Mossgiel was a dead loss to him. 2 Of the work he did about this time the best But it is is to be found in the Haggis and the Epistles to Creech and the Guidwife of Wauchope House. What is very much more to the purpose is that he made Johnson’s acquaintance, and at once be- gan contributing to the Musical Museum. 8 Heron describes Nicol as a man who “in vigour of intellect, and in wild yet generous im- petuosity of passion, remarkably resembled . . . Burns ;”? who ‘by the most unwearied and ex- traordinary professional toil, in the midst of as persevering dissipation . . . won and accumulated an honourable and sufficient competence ;’’ and who died of ‘‘a jaundice, with a complication of other complaints, the effects of long-continued intemperance.” Burns admired Nicol, named a son after him, and immortalised him as the ‘ Willie”? who ‘‘brew’d a peck o’ maut.”” He had a generous heart and a brutal temper, with plenty of brains, a great contempt for custom and the Kirk, and what Lockhart calls “a rapturous admiration of Burns’s genius.” The violent vulgarity of his behaviour at Castle Gordon is typical of the man. He bought a little property not far from Ellisland, and, what with pride and vanity and republican independence (so called) and an immitigable turn for liquor, was certainly as bad a neighbour as the Bard could possibly have had. xlvili ROBERT BURNS written that his life shall have another disputable episode and the world an immor- tal scrap of song : — «Had we never lov’d sae kindly, Had we never lov’d sae blindly, Never met — or never parted — We had ne’er been broken-hearted.” So in the beginning of December he falls in with Mrs. M‘Lehose ; he instantly pro- poses to “cultivate her friendship with the enthusiasm of religion; ” and the two are languishing in Arcady in the twinkling of a cupid’s wing. She was a handsome, womanly creature — “of a somewhat voluptuous style of beauty,” a style the Bard appreciated — lively but devout, extremely sentimental yet inexorably dutiful: a grass widow with children (nine times in ten a lasting safeguard) and the strictest notions of propriety — a good enough defence for a time; but young (she was the Bard’s own age), clever, ‘‘of a poetical fabric of mind,” and all the rest. The upsetting of a hackney coach disabled Burns from calling on her for some weeks. But he wrote her letters, and she answered them ; and he was Sylvander, and she signed herself Clarinda; and they addressed each other in verse as well as prose; and she said it could never be; and he said that at least he must know her heart was his; and Religion was her “balm in every woe;” and he gave her his ideas of Deity; and, when they could meet, Clarinda was ever afraid lest she had let Sylvander go too far; and Sylvander, for his part, was monstrous eloquent about “ Almighty Love” — he was sometimes dreadfully like his favourite Man of Feeling — and was “ready to hang himself” about “a young Edinburgh widow.” -Widow she was not; but her husband, who cared not a snap of the fingers for her, was away in the West Indies; and it may perhaps have suited her lover — who never, so far as is known, was trained to the compro- mises and the obsequiences of adultery —to soothe his conscience by making be- lieve that the affair was at the most a simple, everyday amour. Clarinda was of another make. In the prime of life, deserted, sentimental, a tangle of simple instincts and as simple pieties, she had the natural woman’s desire for a lover and the religious woman’s resolve to keep that lover’s passion within bounds. It is scarce questioned that she succeeded, though there is a legend that a certain gal- lant and insinuating little lyric, — “O May, thy morn was ne’er sae sweet As the mirk night 0’ December ! For sparkling was the rosy wine, And private was the chamber, And dear was she I dare na name But I will ay remember,” — commemorates, not only their final meeting (December 6th, 1791), but also, the triumph of the Bard.’ In any event she was plainly an excellent creature, bent on 1 Both Ae Fond Kiss and O May, thy Morn the legend is all-too obviously an effect of the were sent to Clarinda after the final parting; but © very common human sentiment in deference to LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT xlix keeping herself honest and her lover straight; and it is impossible to read her letters to Sylvander without a respect, a certain admiration even, which have never been awakened yet by the study of Sylvander’s letters to her. For Sylvander’s point of view, as M‘Lehose was still alive, and an open intrigue with a married woman would have been ruin, only one inference is possible: that he longed for the shepherd’s hour to strike for the chime’s sake only; so that, when he thought of his future, as he must have done anxiously and often, he cannot ever have thought of it as Clarinda’s, even though in a moment of peculiar exaltation he swore to keep single till that wretch, the wicked husband, died.} Very early in 1788, Jean Armour — brought some time in the preceding summer “pop, down at my feet, like Corporal Trim’s hat” — was expelled her parents’ house and took refuge at Tarbolton Mill. There Burns found her on his return, and thence he removed her to a house in “ Mauchline toun,” to the particular joy, a short while after, of Saunders Tait : — “ The wives they up their coats did kilt, And through the streets so clean did stilt, Some at the door fell wi’ a pelt Maist broke their leg, To see the Hen, poor wanton jilt ! Lay her fourth egg.” ? Follows what is perhaps the most perplexing sequence of circumstances in a per- plexing life. To Clarinda, who knew of the affair with Armour, pitied the victim — this does not mean that she wished her married to Burns — and had sped her shepherd on his homeward way with “twa wee sarkies” for the victim’s little boy: a mistress, be it remembered, to whom he had written (14th February) in such terms as these — “I admire you, I love you as a woman beyond any one in the circle of creation :”” — he wrote, a few days after his arrival at Mauchline, that he had “this morning” (23d February, 1788) “called for a certain woman,” and been “disgusted with her,” so that he could not “endure her.” Though his heart which so many novels end happily. For the rest, in Mauchline, Saunders (who has been likening Sir Walter Scott wrote thus on the fly-leaf of a Jean to a ship) thus notes her state: — copy of the very scarce Belfast Edition (1806) of the Letters Addressed to Clarinda by Robert Burns, now at Abbotsford, — ‘‘ Clarinda was a Mrs. Meiklehose, wife of a person in the West Indies, from whom she lived separate but with- out any blemish, I believe, on her reputation. I don’t wonder that the Bard changed her ‘thrice unhappy name’ for the classical sound of Clar- inda. She was a relative of my friend the late Lord Craig, at whose house I have seen her, old, charmless and dévote. There was no scandal at- tached to her philandering with the Bard, though the Lady ran risques, for Burns was anything but platonic in his amours,”’ etc. 1 M‘Lehose outlived him many years. 2 Some stanzas later, in B—rns’s Hen Clockin ‘Now she is sailing in the Downs, Calls at the ports of finest towns, To buy bed hangings and galloons:”’ and comments with fury on the fact that she’s got, not only “twa packs o’ human leather,’’ but also ‘CA fine cap and peacock feather, And wi’t she’s douce, With a grand besom made of heather, To sweep her house.’’ It is worth noting that he winds up his lampoon by accusing the gossips at the lying-in of talking scandal of the rankest and reading The Holy Fair! 1 ROBERT BURNS “smote him for the profanity,” he sought to compare the two; and “’t was setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun.” “Here,” the Old Hawk continues, “here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning. There, polished good sense, Heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender passion.” This to the contrary, it needs no great knowledge of life, and still less of Burns and Armour, to divine what happened ; and it needs as little of Burns at this point in his career to see why he ended his confession to Clarinda thus: “I have done with her, and she with me.” Nine days after this (8d March, 1788), in a letter to Ainslie, some parts of it too “curious” for a Victorian page, he tells a different story.! “ Jean,” says he, “I found banished like a martyr — forlorn, destitute, and friend- less; all for the good old cause. I have reconciled her to her fate; I have recon- ciled her to her mother ;? I have taken her a room; I have taken her to my arms; I have given her a mahogany bed; I have given her a guinea; and I have” — but here Scott Douglas’s garbling begins, and Burns’s inditing ends; and the original must be read, or the reader will never wholly understand what manner of man the writer was. Then comes an avowal so disconcerting that I cannot choose but dis- believe it, and conclude that it was made for some special purpose. “ But,” says the Old Hawk, “but, as I always am, on every occasion, I have been prudent and cautiotis to an astounding degree; I swore her, privately and solemnly, never to attempt any claim on me as a husband, even though anybody should persuade her she had such a claim, which she had not,* neither during my life nor after my death. She did all this like a good girl, and” ... The rest is unquotable. At first consideration, the spectacle of the Bard keeping “the wish’d, the trysted hour,” with a settled purpose of “prudence and caution” in his mind, and as it were the materials for swearing in his pocket, in nowise makes for enlightenment. On reflection, however, it becomes evident that Burns wrote thus to Ainslie, whom he had asked to call on Clarinda in his absence, simply that Ainslie might quote her his report of a second (and an entirely superfluous) act of repudiation on Jean’s part ;* to the end, as I cannot doubt, of using the fact for all it was worth, when he himself appeared upon the scene. That this is at least a possible theory is shown by the terms in which he tells (7th March) the story of his reconciliation to Brown:® “I found Jean with her cargo very well laid in. . . . I have turned 1 The letter is best described as a Crochallanism —as something written by one Fencible for the edification of another Fencible, and dealing with its subject in right Fencible style and from the correct Fencible point of view. I am afraid that, like the aforesaid letter to Clarinda, it was de- signed as what Ainslie himself, then unregenerate, might have called ‘a d——d bite.’ _ 2 Was reconciliation possible without a second offer of marriage? I doubt it. 8 This is literally true; the ‘unlucky paper’’ was destroyed. 4 There was no need of oaths from Jean; her lover had had his bachelor’s certificate in his pocket for months. And such swearing as there was — was it not all on the other side? 5 It is important to note thé difference in man- ner and tone and suggestion between Burns to Brown and Burns to Ainslie. Burns writes to Brown as friend to friend; to Ainslie as Fencible to Fencible — much, in fact, as Swiveller, Presi- dent of the Glorious Apollos, to Chuckster, Vice of the same sublime Society. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT li her into a convenient harbour where she may lie snug till she unload, and have taken the command myself, not ostensibly, but for a time in secret.” This can only mean that he purposes to marry the girl. For all that, though, he still has hopes of a practical issue to his Edinburgh affair; for in his next letter (writ the same day) to Clarinda, who has reproached him for silence, and at the same time owned that she counts “all things (Heaven excepted) but lost, that I may win and keep you,” “‘ Was it not blasphemy, then,” he asks, “against your own charms and against my feelings, to suppose that a short fortnight could abate my passion!” —with a vast deal more to the same purpose. Three days after, he starts again for Edinburgh, and plunges deeper in desire than ever for his “dearest angel” (so he calls her on the 17th March), the “dearest partner of his soul” (four days after). “ Oh Clarinda” (same date), “ what do I owe to Heaven for blessing me with such a piece of exalted excellence as you!’ He must leave for Ellisland vi@ Mauch- line, on the 24th; and “ Will you open,” he asks, “ with satisfaction and delight a letter’? —’t was all to be limited to letters soon — ‘from a man who loves, who has loved you, and who will love you to death, through death, and for ever!” They are to meet the next night, and he is to watch —right Arcady, this! — her lighted window: —“’T is the star that guides me to Paradise.” And for him “the great relish to all is that Honor — that Innocence — that Religion, are the witnesses and guarantees of our happiness.” Follows a bit of the Bible adapted to their peculiar case; and with an “ Adieu, Clarinda! I am going to remember you in my prayers,” the Old Hawk stoops to his perch for the night. Nothing is known of the last engagement; but apparently the citadel remains inviolate, for the leaguer is raised next day, and the besieger draws off his forces by way of Glasgow. Thence he writes to Brown (26th March) that “these eight days” he has been “positively crazed.” And by the 7th April he has made Jean Armour his wife. An amazing love-story? True. But that love-story it was —that Burns was first and last enamoured of the woman he made his wife —is shown, I think, by the fact that to all intents and purposes he married her twice over. As for Clar- inda, well . . .! Clarinda complicates and exhilarates the interest to this extent at least: that if words mean anything, and the Bard be judged by those he wrote, the Bard, had Clarinda been indeed a widow, might at a given moment have found himself incapable of making Jean an honest woman. And had he followed his fancy, not his heart? How had the two Arcadians fared? °T is for some future Chambers to divine and say. VII Meanwhile he had taken Ellisland, a farm in Dumfriesshire, of Miller of Dal- swinton, with an allowance from his landlord, a worthy and generous man, of £300, for a new steading and outhouses. His marriage at last made formal and public (it seems to have been celebrated by Gavin Hamilton), on the 5th August, 1788, the bride and bridegroom appeared before the Session, acknowledged its lii ROBERT BURNS irregularity, demanded its “solemn confirmation,” were sentenced to be rebuked, were “solemnly engaged to adhere faithfully to one another as husband and wife all the days of their life,” and were finally “absolved from any scandal” on the old account. ‘But the new steading was long a-building. It was not till the 6th November that Burns and Jean set up their rest in Dumfriesshire; and even so, they had to go, not to their own farmhouse — it was not ready for them till the August of 1789 — but to a place called “The Isle,” about a mile away from it. Burns had taken Ellisland on the advice of a friendly expert;+ but he had had his doubts about the wisdom of “guid auld Glen’s” decision, and these were soon justified. For a time, however, he stuck to his work like a man, conversing much, it would seem, in his leisure with his neighbour Glenriddell and others, whose honoured guest he was, making and vamping songs, paying some heed to national and local polities, and finding time for letters not a few — among them a long and elaborate criticism on some worthless verses by that crazy creature Helen Maria Williams.? But by the end of July, 1789, he had resolved to turn his holding into a dairy farm to be run by Jean and his sisters, and to take up his gaugership * in earnest; and on the 10th of August, some brief while after the completion of The Kirk’s Alarm, he learned from Graham of Fintry (whom he had met, in 1787, at the Duke of Athole’s, on his Second Highland Tour) that he was appointed Ex- ciseman for that district of Dumfriesshire in which Ellisland is situate. The work was hard, for he had charge of ten parishes and must ride two hundred miles a week to get his duty done. But by the beginning of December, “I have found,” he writes, “the Excise business go a great deal smoother with me than I ex- pected ;” and that he “sometimes met the Muses,” as he jogged through the Nithsdale hills, is shown by the fact that The Whistle, the excellent verses on Captain Grose (with whom he made acquaintance at Glenriddell’s table), and Thou Ling ring Star, with Willie Brew’d, that best of drinking-songs, and The Five Carlins (a notable piece of mimicry, if no more), all belong to the period of his probation, and were all written before the end of the year. Plainly, too, he was an officer at once humane and vigilant; since, while it is told of him that he could always wink when staring would mean blank ruin to some old unchartered alewife 1“ A lease was granted to the poetical farmer”’ (thus Heron, who knew the country) ‘at the an- nual rent which his own friends declared that the due cultivation of his farm might easily enable him to pay.”? But those friends, being Ayrshire- men, “were little acquainted with the soil, with the manures, with the markets, with the dairies, with the modes of improvement in Dumfries- shire;’’ they had estimated his rental at Ayrshire rates ; so that, ‘‘contrary to his landlord’s inten- tion,’’ he must pay more for Ellisland than Ellis- land was worth. According to the elder Cunning- ham, Ellisland was a poet’s choice, not a farmer’s. 2 Burns was not only a reader himself; he was ever the cause of reading in others. One of his occupations at Ellisland was the foundation and the management of a book-club. He took the keenest interest in the work, was especially care» ful in selection, and, according to Glenriddell, did whatever must be done himself. Like his father, he believed in education; and, like his father, he did his best to educate his kind by all the means which lay to his hand. He held that the peasant could not but be the better for good reading; and he exerted himself to the utmost to give the peasant what seemed to him the best that could be had. That he did so is as honour- able a circumstance as is shown in his career. 8 By Glencairn’s interest he had been appointed to a place in the Excise as early as 1787. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT liii (say), his first year’s “ decreet’ — his share, that is, of the fines imposed upon his information — was worth some fifty or sixty pounds. Exercise and the open air are held good for a man’s health; yet in the winter of 1789-90 this man suffered cruelly from his old ailment. As for verse, the Hlegy on Matthew Henderson and Tam o’ Shanter (1790) seem a poor year’s output for the poet of those wonderful months at Mossgiel. But work for Johnson was going steadily on; so that the results of these barren-looking times are in a sort the best known of his titles to greatness and to fame. Thus he strove, and faltered, and achieved till 1791, by the beginning of which year he had realised that Ellisland was impossible, that he could not afford his rent, which (so he told Mrs. Dunlop) was raised that year by £20, and must depend entirely on his Excisemanship — when he asked for service in a port, and, by Mrs. Dunlop’s interest, was transferred to “a vacant side-walk ” in Dumfries town. Thither, his landlord setting no manner of impediment in his way, and his crops and gear having been well and profitably sold, he removed himself in December, and established his family in a little house in the Wee Vennel. *T is a circumstance to note that, beginning at Ellisland as the Burns of Of A’ the Airts, some time before the end he was the Burns of Yestreen I Had a Pint o’ Wine.2 That is, he married Jean in the April of 1788, and some two years after he got Anne Park with child. Jean bore him his second son (in wedlock) the 9th April, 1791; and Anne Park had been delivered of a daughter by him ten days before (31st March). Some say that she died in childbed ; some that she lived to marry a soldier. Nobody knows, and, apparently, nobody cares, what became of her. She was no “ white rose” (with a legend). She was scarce a “ passion flower ;”? and though the Bard himself thought the ditty he made upon her one of his best, the “‘ Episode” in which she played a principal part is not regarded with any special interest by his biographers. She was a tavern waitress, and he was the Bard; and she pleased him; and she lived, or died — it matters not which; and there ’s an end on’t. The true interest consists, perhaps, in the magnanimity of Jean, who, lying-in a few days after the interloper, was somehow moved to re- 1 The standing crops were “‘rouped”’ in the last week of August. They realised ‘‘a guinea an acre above the average.”” But such ariot of drunk- enness was “hardly ever seen in this country.” See Burns to Sloan (Scott Douglas, v. 394) for details and for a confession: ‘‘ You will easily guess how I enjoyed the scene; as I was no farther over than you used to see me:’?— which take you back to the Burns of The Jolly Beggars. The stock and gear “were not sold till August ”’ (Scott Douglas, v. 392). “We did not come empty -handed to Dumfries,”? Mrs. Burns told M‘Diarmid. ‘The Ellisland sale was a very good one. A cow in her first calf brought eight- een guineas, and the purchaser never rued his bargain. Two other cows brought good prices. They had been presented by Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop.” 2 T have read somewhere that the first quatrain —the flower of the song —is old; but I cannot verify the description. 8 Chambers declares that, if Jean had not been away in Ayrshire, there would have been no Eliz- abeth Burns: which is surely the boldest apology for a husband’s lapse, at the same time that it is the frankest admission of this particular hus- band’s inability to cleave to his wife in absence, that has ever been offered to an admiring world. Scott Douglas knocks it on the head, and shows that Chambers’s valour is greater than Cham- bers’s sense of history, by proving that neither in the June nor the July of 1790 could Jean have been away. liv ROBERT BURNS ceive the interloper’s child, and to suckle it with her own. It is further to note that Anne Park is the last of Burns’s mistresses who has a name. That she was not the last in fact you gather from Currie ;1 but this one is innominate. So far as is known, the goddesses of the years to come, the Chlorises and Marias and Jessies : — «Tis sweeter for the despairing Than aught in the world beside :” — are all platonic in practice, if not in idea. The recipe for song-making was soon to be this: “I put myself in the regimen of adoring a fine woman, and in pro- portion to the adorability of her charms, in proportion you [Thomson] are de- lighted with my verses.” It was a mistake, so far as the world is concerned. But Burns made it ; and by the time it was made, he probably knew no better. In his last years, indeed, the irresponsible Faunus of Mossgiel and Edinburgh becomes a kind of sentimental sultan, who.changes, or rewards, his slaves of dream with a magnificence which, edifying or not, is at least amusing. Thus, you find him de- signing the publication of a book of songs, with portraits of the beauties by whom they are inspired; Maria Riddell is expelled his lyrical harem as with a fork, because she has offended him; Jean Lorimer, she of “the lint-white locks,’ — “ Bonie lassie, artless lassie!” —is the Chloris of ditty after ditty, till of a sud- den Chloris is a disgusting name, and “what you once mentioned of ‘flaxen locks ’ is just” — so just, indeed, that “ they cannot enter into an elegant descrip- tion of beauty.” * This he discovers in the February of 1796, in the July of which year he dies. And he keeps up his trick of throwing the lyric handkerchief till the end. All through his last illness he is tenderly solicitous about his wife, be it remembered ; yet the deathbed songs for Jessie Lewars are the best of those clos- ing years. In the result, then, Ellisland was a mistake ; not so much because it was a farm, as because it was not Burns’s own.’ He was essentially and unalterably a peasant ; and as a peasant-poet, a crofter taking down the best verses ever dictated by the 1 He has been roundly and deservedly reproved for the manner and the circumstances in which he published his report (of an “‘ accidental com- plaint ’’) which, by the way, was started by Heron. For another piece of scandal, whether published or not I do not know — that at Dum- fries the Bard talked openly with harlots — it is, of course, entirely unauthenticated; and I here refer to it but for the purpose of pointing out that, if it were true, the fact of such familiarities, however horrifying to respectable Dumfries, would sit lightly enough both on Burns the peas- ant and on Burns the poet of The Jolly Beggars and My Auntie Jean Held to the Shore; that, if it were true, the memory of Burns exchanging terms with the light-heels of the port were sim- ply one to set beside the memory of Burton re- joicing in the watermen at the bridge-foot at Oxford. 2 Ts it not all the Peasant and his womankind ? The peasant’s women are his equals. The senti- ment of chivalry is not included in his heritage ; and he treats his associates in that lot of penury and toil which is his birthright as the “‘ predomi- nant partner,’’ the breadwinner, the provider of children, may : he punishes, that is, and he re- wards. It is unlikely that this was Burns’s prac- tice with Jean ; but assuredly it was his practice with the ‘fine women”? of his dreams. 8 He would have liked the life well enough, he says, had he tilled his own acres, But to take care of another man’s, at the cost, too, of a horri- ble and ever-recurring charge called rent — that was the devil ! LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT dv Vernacular Muse, he might, one would like to think, what with work in the fields, and work at his desk, and the strong, persuasive inducements of home, have attained to length of days and peace of mind and the achievement of still greater fame, at the same time that he realised the ideal which he has sublimated in some famous lines: — * To mak’ a happy fireside clime For weans and wife, That ’s the true pathos and sublime Of human life.” Plainly, though, it could not be. He had too much genius, too much temperament, for it to be — with too much interest in life, which to him, however diverse and however variable his moods, meant, largely, if not wholly, Wine and Woman and Song. Also, he had been too hardly used, too desperately driven in his youth, and too splendidly petted and pampered in his manhood, to endure with constancy the work by which the tenant-farmer has to earn his bread. He had seen his father fail at Mount Oliphant and Lochlie; and he had shared his brother’s failure at Mossgiel. By no fault of his own, but owing to the circumstance that he had taken a holding out of which he could not make his rent, he failed himself at Ellisland ; and though, in his case, there was small risk of ‘“‘ afactor’s snash,” he was infinitely too honest and too proud to take undue advantage of another man’s bounty : so, to make ends meet, he turned gauger, and took charge of ten parishes, and rode two hundred miles a week in all weathers. It was a thing he’d always wanted to do, and, at the time he took to doing it, it was the only thing that could profitably be done by him. But his misfortune in having to do it was none the less for that. It took him from his home, it unsettled his better habits, it threw him back on Edin- burgh and his triumphing experience as an idler and a Bard, it led him into temp- tation by divers ways. And when Pan, his goat-foot father — Pan, whom he featured so closely, in his great gift of merriment, his joy in life, his puissant appetites, his innate and never-failing humanity — would whistle on him from the thicket, he could not often stop his ears to the call. He was the most brilliant and the most popular figure in the district; he loved good-fellowship; he needed ap- plause; he rejoiced in the proof of his own pre-eminence in talk — rejoiced, too, in the transcendentalising effect of liquor upon the talker,) as in the positive result of his name and fame, his prestance and his personality, upon adoring women. Is it not plain that Dumfries was inevitable? Or, rather, is it not plain that, first and last, the life was one logical, irrefragable sequence of preparations for the death ? That Mount Oliphant and Lochlie led irresistibly to Mauchline, as Mauchline to Edinburgh, and Edinburgh to Ellisland, and Ellisland to the house in the Mill Vennel? And is not the lesson of it all that there is none so unfortunate as the 1 He complained (to Clarinda) long ere this of | the Highlands, was the fashionable tipple, and _the ‘savage hospitality ’? he could not choose but was fast superseding ale. Born a generation accept. And, in effect, he had the ill-luck tostart earlier, when ale and claret were the staple com- drinking at a time when whisky, fire newfrom _forters, he had stood a better chance. \vi ROBERT BURNS misplaced Titan — the man too great for his circumstances? Speaking broadly, I can call none to mind who, in strength and genius and temperament, presents so close a general likeness to Burns as Mirabeau. Born a noble, and given an oppor- tunity commensurate with himself, Burns would certainly have done such work as Mirabeau’s, and done it at least as well. Born a Scots peasant, Mirabeau must, as certainly, have lived the life and died the death of Burns. In truth, it is only the fortune of war that we remember the one by his conduct of the Revolution, which called his highest capacities into action, while we turn to the other for his verses, which are the outcome (so Maria Riddell thought, and was not alone in thinking) of by no means his strongest gift. VIII Whatever the sequel, it may fairly be said for Ellisland that -Burns and Jean were happy there, and that it saw the birth of Zam o’ Shanter and the perfecting, in the contributions to Johnson’s Museum, of the Vernacular Song.t The last, as we know, was Burns’s work; but he had assistants, and they did him yeoman ser- vice. He worked in song exactly as he worked in satire and the rest — on familiar, old-established bases; but he did so to a very much greater extent than in satire and the rest, and with a great deal more of help and inspiration from without. I have said that he contributed nothing to Vernacular Poetry except himself, but, his contribution apart, was purely Scots-Traditional ; and this is especially true of his treatment of the Vernacular Song. What he found ready to his hand was, in brief, his country’s lyric life. Scotland had had singers before him; and they, nameless now and forgotten save as factors in the sum of his achievement, had sung of life and the experiences of life, the tragedy of death and defeat, the farce and the romance of sex, the rapture and the fun of battle and drink, with sincerity always, and often, very often, with rich or rich-rank humour. Among them they had observed and realised a little world of circumstance and character ; among them they had developed the folk-song, had fixed its type, had cast it into the rhythms which best fitted its aspirations, had equipped it with all manner of situa- tions and refrains, and, above all, had possessed it of a great number of true and taking lyrical ideas. Any one who has tried to write a song will agree with me, when I say that a lyrical idea — by which I mean a rhythm, a burden, and a drift. —once found, the song writes itself. It writes itself easily or with difficulty, it. writes itself well or ill; but in the end it writes itself. In this matter of lyrical ideas Burns was fortunate beyond any of Apollo’s sons. He had no need to quest for them; there they lay ready to his hand, and he had but to work his will with 1 Isay nothing of the numbers sent to Thom- son. Very many are copied from the Museum, and the others need not here be discussed with even an approach to particularity. A point to note in connexion with the contributions both to the Museum and to Scottish Avrs is that Burns was honourably and intensely proud of them. He regarded them as work done in the service of the Scotland whose ‘‘own inspired Bard’? he was, and neither asked money, nor would take it, for them. To think that he was writing for Thomson to the very end is to have at least one pleasant memory of Dumfries. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT \vii them. That they were there explains the wonderful variety of his humours, his effects, and his themes; that he could live and work up to so many among them is proof positive and enduring of the apprehensiveness of his humanity, his gift of right, far-ranging sympathy. It is certain that, had he not been, they had long since passed out of practical life into the Chelsea Hospital of some antiquarian publication. But it is also certain that, had they not been there for him to take and despoil and use, he would not have been —he could not have been— the master-lyrist we know. What he found was of quite extraordinary worth to him ; what he added was himself, and his addition made the life of his find perennial. But, much as are the touch of genius and the stamp of art, they are not everything. The best of many nameless singers lives in Burns’s songs; but that Burns lives so intense a lyric life is largely due to the fact that he took to himself, and made his own, the lyrical experience, the lyrical longing, the lyrical invention, the lyrical possibilities of many nameless singers. He was the last and the greatest-of them all; but he could not have been the greatest by so very much as he seems, had these innominates not been, nor could his songs have been so far-wandered as they are, nor so long-lived as they must be, had these innominates not lived their lyric life before him. In other terms, the atmosphere, the style, the tone, the realistic method and design,’ with much of the material and the humanity, of Burns’s songs are inherited. Again and again his forefathers find him in lyrical ideas, in whose absence there must certainly — there cannot but have been — a blank in his work. They are his best models, and he does not always surpass them, as he is sometimes not even their equal.? And if his effect along certain lines and in certain specified directions be so intense and enduring as it is, the reason is that they are a hundred strong behind him, and that he has selected from each and all of them that which was lyrical and incorruptible. A peasant like themselves, he knew them as none else could ever know. He sympathised from within with their ambitions, their fancies, their ideals, their derisions, even as he was master, and something more, of their methods. And, while it is fair to say that what is best in them is sublimated. Cf., too, in other styles, Toddlin Hame and Elli- banks and Ellibraesand — well, any folk-song you care to try! ' 1 As I have said (see ante, p. xxxv, Note 2), realism is the distinguishing note of the Vernac- ular School; and the folk-singers are not less curious in detail than their literary associates and forebears. Even that long sob of pain, 0, Waly, Waly, has its elements of everyday life circumstance ; — “My love was clad in the black velvet, And I myself in cramasie: ’? — its references to St. Anton’s Well and Arthur’s Seat and the sheets that ‘‘sall ne’er be pressed by me.” Cf., too, that wonderful little achieve- ment in romance, The Twa Corbies: — “Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane, And I’ll pyke out his bonie blue e’en, Wi ae lock o’ his gowden hair We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.’’ 2C£. 0, Waly, Waly and The Twa Corbies and Helen of Kirkconnel ; with Toddlin Hame, which Burns thought ‘the first bottle-song in the world,” the old sets of A Cock-Laird Fu’ Cadgie and Fee Him, Father, and, in yet another genre, O, Were My Love. Even in The Merry Muses Burns, who wrote a particular class of song with admirable gust and spirit, does no better work than some of the innominates—the poets of Erroch Brae and Johnie Scott and Jenny M‘Craw, for example; while his redaction of Ellibanks and Ellibraes (‘‘an old free-spoken song which cele- brates this locality would be enough in itself to bring the poet twenty miles out of his way to see it’) is in nowise superior to the original. Miii ROBERT BURNS and glorified by him, it is also fair to say that, but for them, he could never have approved himself the most exquisite artist in folk-song the world has ever seen. It has been complained that, thus much of his claim to be original removed, he must henceforth shine in the lyrical heaven with a certain loss of magnitude and his splendour something dimmed. And this is so far true that the Burns of fact differs, and differs considerably and at many points, from the Burns of legend. The one is an effect of certain long-lived, inexorable causes; the other — that “formidable rival of the Almighty,” who, deriving from nobody, and appearing from nowhere, does in ten years the work of half-a-dozen centuries — is an impos- sible superstition, as it were a Scottish Mumbo-Jumbo. The one comes, naturally and inevitably, at the time appointed, to an appointed end; but by no conceivable operation in the accomplishing of human destiny could the other have so much as begun to be. And, after all, however poignant the regret, and however wide-eyed and resentful the amazement of those who esteem a man’s work on the same terms as they would a spider’s, and value it in proportion as it does, or does not, come out of his own belly, enough remains to Burns to keep him easily first in the first flight of singers in the Vernacular, and to secure him, outside the Vernacular, the fame of an unique artist. I have said that, as I believe, his genius was at once imitative and emulous; and, so far as the Vernacular Song is concerned, to turn the pages of [that portion of this volume which contains his contributions to John- son’s Museum and Thomson’s Scottish Airs] is to see that, speaking broadly, his function was not origination but treatment, and that ‘in treatment it is that the finer qualities of his endowment are best expressed and displayed. His measures are high-handed enough; but they are mostly justified. He never boggles at appropriation,! so that some of his songs are the oddest conceivable mixture of Burns, Burns’s original, and somebody Burns has pillaged. Take, for instance, that arch and fresh and charming thing, For the Sake o’ Somebody. In the first place, “Somebody ” comes to Burns as a Jacobite catchword ; and in the next, the lyrical idea is found in a poor enough botch by Allan Ramsay : — “For the sake of Somebody, For the sake of Somebody, I could wake a winter’s night For the sake of Somebody.” This is pretty certainly older than The Tea-Table Miscellany, and has nothing whatever to do with the verses which the elder minstrel has tagged it withal. But it is a right lyrical idea, and in the long-run a lyrical idea is a song. So thinks 1 Besides the folk-singers and the nameless lyrists of the song-books, he is found pilfering from Sedley, Garrick, Lloyd, Ramsay, Fergusson, ‘Theobald, Carew, Mayne, Dodsley, and Sir Rob- ert Ayton (or another). See also our Prefatory Notes to Duncan Davison; Landlady, Count the Lawin; Sweetest May; The Winter it is Past; , We're A’ Noddin; to name but these; and, as a further illustration of his method, note that, ac- cording to Scott Douglas (ms. annotation), the first three lines of The Lass 0’? Ecclefechan belong to old song No. 1., the next five to Burns, and the last eight to old song No. 1. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT lix Burns; and you have but to compare the two sets to see the difference between master and journeyman ata glance. The old, squalid, huckstering littie comedy of courtship : — “ First we “Il buckle, then we ’Il tell, Let her flyte and syne come to. . I’ll slip hame and wash my feet, An’ steal on linens fair and clean, Syne at the trysting place we’ll meet, To do but what my dame has done :” — gives place to a thing as comfortable to the ear and as telling to the heart to-day as when Burns vamped it from Ramsay’s vamp from somebody unknown. What is further to note is that not all the latest vamp is Burns plus Ramsay plus Innom- inate I. plus Jacobite catchword: inasmuch as the first line of stanza ii. is con- veyed from an owlish lover in The Tea-Table Miscellany : — “Ye powers that preside over virtuous love.” Thus some solemn poetaster a good half-century at least ere Burns; and for over a hundred years “ Ye Powers that smile on virtuous love” has lived as pure Burns, and as pure Burns is now passed into the language. Yet, despite the pilferings and the hints, it were as idle to pretend that Somebody, as it stands, is not Burns, as it were foolish to assert that Burns would have written Somebody without a cer- tain unknown ancestor. Another flash of illustration comes from Jt Was A’ For Our Rightfw King, with its third stanza lifted clean from Mally Stewart, and set in a jewel of Burnsian gold, especially contrived and chased to set it off and make the lyric best of it. A third example is found in A Red, Red Rose, which is a mosaic of rather beggarly scraps of English verse; just as Jonson’s peerless Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes is a mosaic contrived in seraps of conceited Greek prose. It is exquisitely done, of course; but, the beggarly scraps of verse away, could it ever have been done at all? And Auld Lang Syne? It passes for pure Burns; but was the phrase itself—the phrase which by his time had rooted itself in the very vitals of the Vernacular — was the phrase itself, I say, not priceless to him? Something or nothing may be due to Ramsay for his telling demonstration of the way in which it should not be used as a refrain. But what of that older maker and the line which Burns himself thought worth repeating, and which the world rejoices, and will long rejoice, to repeat with Burns : — “ Should auld acquaintance be forgot, An’ never thocht upon?” Is there nothing of his cadence, no taste of his sentiment, no smack of his lyrical idea, no memory (to say the least) of his burden : — “ On old long syne, my jo, On old long syne, That thou eanst never once reflect On old long syne: — Ix ROBERT BURNS in the later masterpiece? ‘To say “No” were surely to betray criticism. And Ay Waukin, O—should we, could we ever, have had it, had there been nobody but Burns to start the tune and invent the lyrical idea? “O, wat, wat, O, wat and weary ! Sleep I can get nane For thinkin o’ my dearie. “ A’ the night I wake, A’ the day I weary, Sleep I can get nane For thinkin o’ my dearie.” Thus, it may be, some broken man, in hiding among the wet hags; some moss- trooper, drenched and prowling, with a shirtful of sore bones! Whoever he was, and whatever his calling and condition, he had at least one lyrical impulse, he has his part in a masterpiece by Burns, and his part is no small one. I might multiply examples, and pile Pelion upon Ossa of proof. But to do so were simply to [anticipate much of the editorial matter contained in this volume ]; and in this place I shall be better employed in pointing out that these double con- ceptions (so to speak), these achievements in lyrical collaboration, are for the most part the best known and the best liked of Burns’s songs, and are, moreover, those among Burns’s songs which show Burns the songsmith at his finest. The truth is that he wrote two lyric styles: (1) the style of the Eighteenth Century Song- Books,’ which is a bad one, and in which he could be as vulgar, or as frigid, or as tame, as very much smaller men; * and (2) the style of the Vernacular Folk-Song, which he handled with that understanding and that mastery of means and ends 1 He was trained in it from the first. In early youth he carried an English song-book about with him — wore it in his breeches-pocket, so to speak. This was The Lark: ‘‘ Containing a Collection of above Four Hundred and Seventy Celebrated English and Scotch Songs, None of which are contain’d in the other Collections of the same size, call’?d The Syren and The Nightingale. With a Curious and Copious Alphabetical Glos- sary for Explaining the Scotch words. London. Printed (1746) for John Osborn at the Golden Ballin Pater Noster Row.”’ ’T isa fat little book, and as multifarious a collection of Restoration and — especially — post-Restoration songs as one could wish to have : antiquated political squibs ; ballads, as Chevy Chace, with Gilderoy, the Queen’s Old Soldier, and Katherine Hayes; a number of indecencies from D’Urfey’s Pills; Scots folk-songs, like Toddlin Hame and The Ewe Bughts, and 0, Waly, Waly and John Ochil- tree and The Blithesome Bridal; current English ditties like Old Sir Simon and Phillida Flouts Me ; asong of a Begging Soldier, whose vaunt, ‘‘ With my rags upon my bum,” is echoed in The Jolly Beggars; much Allan Ramsay ; with scattered examples of Dryden, Dorset, Congreve, Alexan- der Scott, Brome, Prior, Wycherley, Rochester, Farquhar, Cibber —even Skelton ; and a wilder- ness of commonplace ditties about love and drink: on the whole, an interesting collection — particu- larly if you take it as an element in the education of the lyric Burns. 2 Cf. Their Groves of Sweet Myrtle (post, p. 286), among other things : — “The slave’s spicy forests and gold - bubbling fountains The brave Caledonian views wi’ disdain: He wanders as free as the winds of his moun- tains, Save Love’s willing fetters — the chains o’ his Jean.” Such achievements in what Mr. Meredith calls “the Bathetic,”’ are less infrequent in Burns than could be wished. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT Ixi which stamp the artist. To consider his experiments in the first is to scrape ac- quaintance with Clarinda, Mistress of My Soul, and Fair Eliza, and On a Bank of Flowers, and Sensibility, How Charming, and Castle Gordon, and No Church- man am I, and Strathallan’s Lament, and Raving Winds Around Her Blowing, and The Banks of the Devon, and A Rose-bud, By My Early Walk,! and many a thing besides, which, were it not known for the work of a great poet, would long since have gone down into the limbo that gapes for would-be art. In the other are all the little masterpieces by which Burns the lyrist is remembered. He had a lead in The Silver Tassie? and in Auld Lang Syne, in Is There for Honest Poverty and Duncan Davison, in A Waukrife Minnie and Duncan Gray and Wha is That at My Bower Door? in I Hae a Wife and It Was A’ For Our Rightfw King and A Red, Red Rose, in Macpherson’s Lament, and Ay Waukin, O, and ‘For the Sake o Somebody, and Whistle an’ I’ll Come to Ye—in all, or very nearly all, the numbers which make his lyrical bequest as it were a little park apart — an unique retreat of rocks and sylvan corners and heathy spaces, with an abundance of wildings, and here and there a hawthorn brake where, to a sound of running water, the Eternal Shepherd tells his tale — in the spacious and smiling demesne of English literature. And my contention —that it is to Burns the artist in folk-song that we must turn for thorough contentment — is proved to the hilt by those lyrics in the Vernacular for which, so far as we know, he found no hint else- where, and in which, so far as we know, he expressed himself and none besides. He had no suggestions, it seems (but I should not like to swear), no catchwords, no lyrical material for Zam Glen and Of A’ the Airis, for Willie Brewed and The Banks o’ Doon, for Last May a Braw Wooer and O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast, and Mary Morison—to name no more. But, if they be directly referable to nobody but himself, they feature his whole ancestry. They are folk- songs writ by a peasant of genius, who was a rare and special artist; and they show that the closer he cleaved to folk-models, and the fuller and stronger his possession by the folk-influence, the more of the immortal Burns is there to-day. Suggested or not, the songs of Burns were devised and written by a peasant, devising and writing for peasants. The emotions they deal withal are the simplest, the most elemental, in the human list, and are figured in a style so vivid and direct as to be classic in its kind. Romance there is none in them, for there was none in 1 It is understood that Scots Wha Hae is an the work of an Eighteenth Century Scotsman essay in the Vernacular (I gather, by the way, writing in English, and now and then propitiat- that it is one of the two or three pieces by “the Immortal Exciseman nurtured ayont the Tweed” which are most popular in England). But, even so, one has but to contrast it with Js There for Honest Poverty, to recognise that in the one the writer’s technical and lyrical mastery is complete, while in the other it is merely academic — aca- demic as the lyrical and technical mastery of (say) Rule Britannia. Now, Is There for Honest Pov- erty is calqué on a certain disreputable folk-song; while Scots Wha Hae is for all practical purposes ing the fiery and watchful Genius of Caledonia by spelling a word as it is spelt in the Vernacular. 2 “The first four lines are old,’ he says, ‘‘the rest is mine.’? And, in effect, the quatrain is unique in his work. 3 It is oddly and amusingly illustrative of Burns’s trick of mosaic that a line in this charm- ing song: — “The brightest jewel in my crown: ’? — comes bodily from — The Court of Equity ! Ixii ROBERT BURNS Burns ! — ’tis the sole point, perhaps, at which he was out of touch with the unre- nowned generations whose flower and crown he was. But of reality, which could best and soonest bring them home to the class in which their genius was developed, and to which themselves were addressed : — “Grain de musc qui git invisible Au fond de leur éternité: ” — there is enough to keep them sweet while the Vernacular is read. They are for all, or nearly all, the peasant’s trades and crafts: so that the gangrel tinker shares them with the spinner at her wheel, the soldier with the ploughman, the weaver with the gardener and the tailor and the herd. Morals, experiences, needs, love and liquor, the rejoicing vigour and unrest of youth, the placid content of age — there is scarce anything he can endure which is not brilliantly, and (above all) sincerely and veraciously, set forth in them. That old-world Scotland, whose last and greatest expression was Burns, either has passed or is fast passing away. In language, manners, morals, ideals, religion, substance, capacity, the theory and practice of life —in all these the country of Burns has changed; in some, has changed “beyond report, thought, or belief.” But that much of her which was known to her poet is with us still, and is with us in these songs. For man and woman change not, but endure for ever: so that what was truly said a thousand years ago comes home as truth to-day, and will go home as truth when to-day is a thousand years behind. To the making of these things there went the great and generous humanity of Burns, with the humanity, less great but still generous and sincere, of those unknowns, whose namelessness was ever a regret to him.” They are art in their kind. And there is no reason why this “little Valclusa fountain ” should lack pilgrims, or run dry, for centuries.’ 1 None, or so little that if his Jacobitisms seem romantic, it is only by contrast with the realities in which they occur. The interest of even Jt Was A’ For Our Rightfw King is centred in the vamper’s sympathy, not with the romantic situ- ation :— “He turn’d him right and round about Upon the Irish shore,”’ etc. : — but with that living, breathing, palpitating ‘‘ac- tuality ”’ of sentiment developed in both hero and heroine by the disastrous turn of circumstances: “Now a’ is done that men can do, And a’ is done in vain: ’? — and the position created by those circumstances at the end :— “But I hae parted frae my love Never to meet again: ’? — which places this lvric somewhere near the very top of homely and familiar song. 2 “ Are you not quite vexed to think that these men of genius, for such they certainly were, who composed our fine ScottishMyrics, should be un- known? It has given me uiany a heartache.’ (R. B. to Thomson, 19th November, 1794.) And see his Journal for a more heart-felt recognition still. 8 They lived not long the limited life of John- son’s Musical Museum and Thomson’s Scottish Airs. Thus, in a collection of North of England chap-books (c. 1810-20) which I owe to the kind- ness of the Earl of Crawford, I find at least two Burns “‘Songsters ’’ (they are the same, but one is called “‘The Ayrshire Bard’s Songster,’’ the other something else) both “Printed by J. Mar- shall in the Old Fleshmarket,’? Newcastle. In a third —a miscellany, this one —is Scots Wha Hae, “ As sung by Mr. Braham at the Newcastle Theatre Royal” (Carlyle thought this famous lyric should be ‘‘ sung by the throat of the whirl- wind;”’ but it had better luck than that). The great Jew tenor further warbled a couple of stanzas of The Winter It is Past at a concert in LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT Ixiii Ix I purpose to deal with the Dumfries period with all possible brevity. The story is a story of decadence ; and, even if it were told in detail, would tell us nothing of Burns that we have not already heard or are not all too well prepared to learn. In a little town, where everybody ’s known to everybody, there is ever an infinite deal of scandal; and Burns was too reckless and too conspicuous not to become a peculiar cock-shy for the scandal-mongers of Dumfries. In a little town, especially if it be a kind of provincial centre, there must of necessity be many people with not much to do besides talking and drinking; and Burns was ever too careless of consequences, as well as ever too resolute to make the most of the fleeting hour — it may be, too, was by this time too princely and too habitual a boon-companion — to refrain from drink and talk when drink and talk were to be had. In the sequel, also, it would seem that that old jealousy of his betters (to use the ancient phrase) had come to be a more disturbing influence than it had ever been before. He knew, none better, that, however brilliantly the poet had succeeded, the man was so far a failure as an investment, that, with bad health and a growing family, he had nothing to look forward to but promotion in the Excise; and his discontent with the practical outcome of his ambition and the working result of his fame was certainly not soothed, and may very well have been exacerbated, by his rather noisy sympathy with the leading principles of the French Revolution. He was too fear- less and too proud to dissemble that sympathy, which was presently (1794) to find expression in one of his most vigorous and telling lyrics ; he was, perhaps, too pow- erful a talker not to exaggerate its quality and volume; and, though it was com- mon, in the beginning at least, to many Scotsmen, its expression got him, as was inevitable, into trouble with his superiors, and in the long run was pretty certainly intensified, to the point at which resentment is translated into terms of indiscretion and imprudence, by the reflection, whether just or not,’ that it had damaged his chances of promotion. That he fought against temptation is as plain as that he proved incapable of triumph, and that, as Carlyle has wisely and humanely noted, the best for him, certain necessary conditions being impossible, was to die. Syme,” the same city, when Miss Stephens was responsi- ble for Charlie He’s My Darling. Yn other chaps ing anything once the page was read and the bottle done; and Fox, to whom Burns looked for Burns is found rubbing shoulders with Moore and Campbell and Tom Dibdin, and a hundred others, among them Allan Ramsay. In these Of A’ the Airts is sandwiched between The Twopenny _ Postman and the Wedding at Ballyporeen, while For the Sake o’ Somebody is kept in countenance by Paddy Carey and The Wounded Hussar, The most popular, perhaps, are Of A’ the Airts, and Scots Wha Hae, and Willie Brew’d; but On a Bank of Flowers lacks not admirers. 1 It seems to have been unjust. Pitt, though he loved the poetry of Burns, did nothing for him — was probably, indeed, too busy to think of do- advancement, was ever out of office, and could do nothing, even had he been minded to do some- thing, which we are not told that he was. But the Bard had a sure stay in Graham of Fintry; and, though Glencairn was dead, and he was sometimes reprimanded (et pour cause), there is no reason to believe that he would have missed preferment had he lived to be open to it. 2 Tt has been said, I believe, that Syme’s evi- dence is worthless, inasmuch as it tends to dis- credit Burns. But one eye-witness, however dull and prejudiced (and Syme was neither one nor other) is worth a wilderness of sentimental his- Ixiv ROBERT BURNS who knew and loved him, said that he was “burnt to a cinder” ere Death took him; we can see for ourselves that the Burns of the Kilmarnock Volume and the good things in the Museum had ceased to be some time before the end; there is evidence that some time before the end he was neither a sober companion nor a self-respecting husband. And the reflection is not to be put by, that he left the world at the right moment for himself and for his fame. There is small doubt that the report of his misconduct was at best unkindly framed; there is none that certain among his apologists have gone a very great deal too far in the opposite direction. We may credit Findlater, for instance, but it is impossible, having any knowledge of the man, to believe in the kind of Excise- man-Saint of Gray — impeccable in all the relations of life and never the worse for liquor —even as it is impossible to believe in the bourgeois Burns of the latest apotheosis. As Lockhart says, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes ; and one is glad to agree with Lockhart. Even so,-however, tradition, as reported by friends and enemies alike, runs stronger in his disfavour than it does the other way.! And, though we know that party feeling ran high in Dumfries, and that Burns — with his stiff neck, and his notable distinction, and his absolute gift of speech — did certainly damn himself in the eyes of many by what, in the cireum- stances, must have seemed a suicidal intemperance of feeling and expression, we know also that, once extremely popular, he was presently cut by Dumfries society ; that after atime his reputation was an indifferent one on other counts than politics ; and that more than once — as in the case of Mrs. Riddell, and again, when he had to apologise for a toast no reasonable or well-bred man would have proposed in the presence of a King’s officer unless he were prepared to face the consequences — he behaved himself ill, according to the standard of good manners then and now. The explanation in these and other cases is that he was drunk; and, as matter of fact, drink and disappointment were pretiy certainly responsible between them for torians; and Syme’s phrase, howbeit it is so pic- his character were forgotten by those among turesque that it conveys what is, perhaps, too whom he lived.”? This was written within twenty violent an impression, probably means no more than that Burns had damaged himself with drink. That much Burns admitted time and again; and Currie — who cannot but have got his informa- tion from Maxwell — remarks that for over a year before the end ‘there was an evident decline of our Poet’s personal appearance, and, though his appetite continued unimpaired, he was himself sensible that his constitution was sinking.” It was all, the doctor thought, the effect of alcohol on a difficult digestion and a sensitive nervous system; and, though he was something of a fanatic in this matter, I see no reason, as he was also an honest man, to question his diagnosis. 1 “We are raising a subscription (horrid word) ’’ — thus Sir Walter, to Morritt, 15th Jan- uary, 1814— “for a monument to Burns, an honour long delayed, perhaps till some parts of years of Burns’s death, when the grievance of the Revolution was lost in the shadow cast by the tremendous presence of Napoleon. And, if it be urged that Burns’s offending against Tory- ism must have been rank indeed to be recalled thus bitterly and thus late, it may be retorted that by no possibility can it have been an hun- dredth part so indecent as the conduct of the Par- liamentary Whigs during the life and long after the death of Pitt. Of all men living Burns was entitled to an opinion; of all men living he had the best gift of expression. Well, he had his opinion, and he used his gift; and Dumfries could not forgive him. It is again a question of cireum- stances. Fox and the rest were honoured Mem, bers of His Majesty’s Opposition. Burns was only-an exciseman. LIFE, GENIUS, ACHIEVEMENT Ixv the mingled squalor and gloom and pathos of the end. There is nothing like liquor to make a strong man vain of his strength and jealous of his prerogative — even while it is stealing both away ; and there is nothing like disappointment to confirm such a man in a friendship for liquor. Last of all, there needs but little knowledge of character and life to see that to apologise for Burns is vain, that we must accept him frankly and without reserve for a peasant of genius perverted from his peas- anthood, thrust into a place for which his peasanthood and his genius alike unfitted him, denied a perfect opportunity, constrained to live his qualities into defects, and in the long run beaten by a sterile and unnatural environment. We cannot make him other than he was, and, especially, we cannot make him a man of our own time: a man born tame and civil and unexcessive — “he that died 0’ Wednes- day,” and had obituary notices in local prints. His elements are all too gross, are all too vigorous and turbulent for that. “God have mercy on me,” he once wrote of himself, “a poor, damned, incautious, duped, unfortunate fool! the sport, the miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imaginations, agonising sensi- bility and bedlam passions.” Plainly he knew himself as his apologists have never known him, nor will ever know. That his intellectual and temperamental endowment was magnificent we know by the way in which he affected his contemporaries, and through the terms in which some of them — Robertson, Heron, Dugald Stewart, and, especially, Maria Riddell — recorded their impression of him; yet we know also that, for all its magnificence, or, as I prefer to think, by reason of its magnificence, it could not save him from defeat and shame. Where was the lesion? What was the secret of his fall? Lord Rosebery, as I think, has hit the white in saying that he was “reat in his strength and great in his weaknesses.” 1 His master-qualities, this critic very justly notes, were “inspiration and sympathy.” But if I would add “and character’? — which, to be sure, is largely an effect of conditions — how must the commentary run? There is pride —the pride of Lucifer: what did it spare him in the end? There is well-nigh thé finest brain conceivable; yet is there a certain curious intolerance of facts which obliges the owner of that brain, being a Government officer and seeing his sole future in promotion, to flaunt a friendship with roaring Jacobins like Maxwell and Syme, and get himself nick- named a “Son of Sedition,” and have it reported of him, rightly or not, that he has publicly avowed disloyalty at the local theatre.?_ There is a passionate regard for 1] note with pleasure that Lord Rosebery knows too much of life, and is too good a judge of evidence, to think of putting a new complexion on the facts of these last, unhappy years. But has he been explanatory enough? What, after all, but failure is possible for strength misplaced and misapplied ? 2Ido not for an instant forget that here is more circumstance: that he was a true Briton at heart, and that in the beginning his Jacobinism was chiefly, if not solely, an effect of sympathy with a tortured people. But there are ways and ways of favouring an unpopular cause; and Burns’s were alike defiant and unwise. Thus Maxwell was practically what most people then called a “‘ murderer ’’ — of the French King; yet it was while, or soon after, the enormities of the Terror were at their worst, that he became a chief associate of Burns. To some this seems a “noble imprudence.”? Was it not rather pure inconti- nence of self ? Ixvi ROBERT BURNS women ; with, as Sir Walter noted, a lack of chivalry, which is attested by those lampoons on living Mrs. Riddell and on dead Mrs. Oswald. There is the strongest sense of fatherhood, with the tenderest concern for “ weans and wife;” and there is that resolve for pleasure which not even these uplifting influences can check. There is a noble generosity of heart and temper ; but there is so imperfect a sense of conduct, so practical and so habitual a faith in a certain theory : — “ The heart ay ’s the part ay That makes us right or wrang :” — that in the end you have a broken reputation, and death at seven or eight and thirty is the effect of a discrediting variety of causes. Taking the precisian’s point of view, one might describe so extraordinary a blend of differences as a bad, well- meaning man, and one might easily enough defend the description. But the pre- cisian has naught to do at this grave-side; and to most of us now it is history that, while there was an infinite deal of the best sort of good in Burns, the bad in him, being largely compacted of such purely unessential defects as arrogance, petulance, imprudence, and a turn for self-indulgence, this last exasperated by the conditions in which his lot was cast, was not of the worst kind after all. Yet the bad was bad enough to wreck the good. The little foxes were many and active and greedy enough to spoil a world of grapes. The strength was great, but the weaknesses were greater; for time and chance and necessity were ever developing the weak- nesses at the same time that they were ever beating down the strength. That is the sole conclusion possible. And to the plea, that the story it rounds is very piti- ful, there is this victorious answer: that the Man had drunk his life to the lees, while the Poet had fulfilled himself to the accomplishing of a peculiar immortality ; so that to Burns Death came as a deliverer and a friend.? W. E. H. [: Burns died 21st July, 1796.] POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT For some time before 1786, Burns had cher- ished a desire for “ guid black prent ; ” and its fulfilment was hastened in the end by the thought of his removal to Jamaica. ‘ Before leaving my native country,” he says, “I re- solved to publish my poems.” [He issued a prospectus, and after securing a sufficient num- ber of subscribers, the book with the above title was issued by John Wilson, Kilmarnock, appearing July 31,1786. It was a handsome octavo, bound, except for a few copies in paper covers, in blue boards, with a white back and neat label. It was issued by subscription, and six hundred copies were printed. It con- tained the following meetacs.] The following trifles are not the production of the Poet, who, with all the advantages of learned art, and perhaps amid the elegancies and idlenesses of upper life, looks down for a rural theme, with an eye to Theocrites or Vir- gil. To the Author of this, these and other celebrated names (their countrymen) are, in their original languages, “a fountain shut up, and a book sealed.’? Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing Poet by rule, he sings the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him, in his and their native language. Though a Rhymer from his earliest years, at least from the earliest impulses of the softer passions, it was not till very lately that the ap- plause, perhaps the partiality, of Friendship, wakened his vanity so far as to make him think anything of his was worth showing ; and none of the following works were ever com- posed with a view to the press. To amuse himself with the little creations of his own fancy, amid the toil and fatigues of a laborious life; to transcribe the various feelings, the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears, in his own breast ; to find some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of a world, always an alien scene, a task uncouth to the poetical mind; these were his motives for courting the Muses, and in these he found Poetry to be its own re- ward. Now that he appears in the public character of an Author, he does it with fear and trem- bling. So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe, that even he, an obscure, nameless Bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded. as “An impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and because he can make a shift to jingle a few doggerel Scotch rhymes together, looks upon himself as a Poet of no small consequence forsooth.” It is an observation of that celebrated Poet 1 — whose divine Elegies do honor to our lan- guage, our nation, and our species — that ** Humility has depressed many a genius to a hermit, but never raised one to fame.” If any Critic catches at the word genius, the Author tells him, once for all, that he certainly looks upon himself as possest of some poetic abil- ities, otherwise his publishing in the manner he has done would be a mancuvre below the worst character which, he hopes, his worst enemy will ever give him: but to the genius of a Ramsay, or the glorious dawnings of the poor, unfortunate Ferguson, he, with equal unaffected sincerity, declares that, even in his highest pulse of vanity, he has not the most distant pretensions. These two justly admired Scotch Poets he has often had in his eye in the following pieces; but rather with a view to Kindle at their flame, than for servile imita- tion. To his Subscribers the Author returns his most sincere thanks. Not the mercenary bow over a counter, but the heart-throbbing grati- tude of the Bard, conscious how much he is indebted to Benevolence and Friendship for gratifying him, if he deserves it, in that dear- est wish of every poetic bosom— to be dis- tinguished. He begs his readers, particularly the Learned and the Polite, who may honor him with a perusal, that they will make every allowance for Education and Circumstances of Life: butif, after a fair, candid, and impartial criticism, he shall stand convicted of Dulness and. Nonsense, let him be done by, as he would in that case do by others—let him be con- demned without mercy, to contempt and ob- livion. 1 Shenstone. 2 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT THE TWA DOGS A TALE According to Gilbert Burns, this Tale was “composed after the resolution of publishing was nearly taken.” During the night be- fore the death of William Burness, Robert’s favorite dog, Luath, was killed by some per- son unknown. He thought at first of certain Stanzas to the Memory of a Quadruped Friend —a true Eighteenth-Century inspiration — “but this plan was given up for the Tale as it now stands.” “I have,” he says, in a letter to John Richmond, 17th February, 1786, “ like- wise completed [since he saw Richmond in November] my poem on the Dogs, but have not shown it to the world.” It was Luath’s successor — inheriting his name or not — whose appearance at the ‘‘ penny dance ’’ at Mauch- line led Burns to remark, in Jean Armour’s hearing, that ‘‘he wished he could get any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.” *T was that place o’ Scotland’s isle That bears the name of auld King Coil, Upon a bonie day in June, When wearing thro’ the afternoon, Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame, Forgathered ance upon a time. The first I’ll name, they ca’d him Cesar, Was keepit for “his Honor’s ” pleasure: His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs, Shew’d he was nane o’ Scotland’s dogs; But whalpit some place far abroad, Whare sailors gang to fish for cod. His lockéd, letter’d, braw brass collar Shew’d him the gentleman an’ scholar; But tho’ he was o’ high degree, The fient a pride, nae pride had he; But wad hae spent an hour caressin, Ev’n wi’ a tinkler-gipsy’s messin; At kirk or market, mill or smiddie, Nae tawted tyke, tho’ e’er sae duddie, But he wad stan’t, as glad to see him, An’ stroan’t on stanes an’ hillocks wi’ him. The tither was a ploughman’s collie, A rhyming, ranting, raving billie, Wha for his friend an’ comrade had him, And in his freaks had Luath ca’d him, After some dog in Highland sang, Was made lang syne —Lord knows how lang. He was a gash an’ faithfu’ tyke, As ever lap a sheugh or dyke. His honest, sonsie, baws’nt face Ay gat him friends in ilka place; His breast was white, his tousie back Weel clad wi’ coat o’ glossy black; His gawsie tail, wi’ upward curl, Hung owre his hurdies wi’ a swirl. Nae doubt but they were fain o’ ither, And unco pack an’ thick thegither; Wi’ social nose whyles snuff’d an’ snowkit; Whyles mice an’ moudieworts they howkit; Whyles scour’d awa’ in lang excursion, An’ worry’d ither in diversion; Till tir’d at last wi’ monie a farce, They sat them down upon their arse, An’ there began a lang digression - About the “lords o’ the creation.” CZSAR I’ve aften wonder’d, honest Luath, What sort 0’ life poor dogs like you have; An’ when the gentry’s life I saw, What way poor bodies liv’d ava. Our laird gets in his rackéd rents, His coals, his kain, an’ a’ his stents: He rises when he likes himsel; His flunkies answer at the bell; He ca’s his coach; he ca’s his horse; He draws a bonie silken purse, As lang’s my tail, whare, thro’ the steeks, The yellow letter’d Geordie keeks. Frae morn to e’en it’s nought but toil- ing, At baking roasting, frying, boiling; An’ tho’ the gentry first are stechin, Yet ev’n the ha’ folk fill their pechan Wi’ sauce, ragouts, an sic like trashtrie, That ’s little short o’ downright wastrie: Our whipper-in, wee, blastit wonner, Poor, worthless elf, it eats a dinner, Better than onie tenant-man His Honor has in a’ the lan’; An’ what poor cot-folk pit their painch in, I own it’s past my comprehension. LUATH Trowth, Cesar, whyles they ’re fash’t eneugh: A cotter howkin in a sheugh, Wi dirty stanes biggin a dyke, Baring a quarry, an’ sic like; THE TWA DOGS 3 Himsel, a wife, he thus sustains, A smytrie o’ wee duddie weans, An’ nought but his han’ darg to keep Them right an’ tight in thack an’ rape. An’ when they meet wi’ sair disasters, Like loss 0’ health or want o’ masters, Ye maist wad think, a wee touch langer, Av’ they maun starve o’ cauld and hunger: But how it comes, I never kend yet, They ’re maistly wonderfu’ contented; An’ buirdly chiels, an’ clever hizzies, Are bred in sie a way as this is. CHSAR But then to see how ye ’re negleckit, How huff’d, an’ cuff’d, an’ disrespeckit ! Lord, man, our gentry care as little For delvers, ditchers, an’ sic cattle; They gang as saucy by poor folk, As I wad by a stinking brock. I’ve notie’d, on our laird’s court-day, (An’ monie a time my heart ’s been wae), Poor tenant bodies, scant o’ cash, How they maun thole a factor’s snash: He ‘ll stamp an’ threaten, curse an’ swear He ’ll apprehend them, poind their gear; While they maun staun’, wi’ aspect humble, An’ hear it a’, an’ fear an’ tremble ! I see how folk live that hae riches; But surely poor-folk maun be wretches ! LUATH They ’re nae sae wretched’s ane wad think: Tho’ constantly on poortith’s brink, They ’re sae aceustom’d wi’ the sight, The view o’t gies them little fright. Then chance an’ fortune are sae guided, They ’re ay in less or mair provided; An’ tho’ fatigu’d wi’ close employment, A blink o’ rest ’s a sweet enjoyment. The dearest comfort o’ their lives, Their grushie weans an’ faithfu’ wives; The prattling things are just their pride, That sweetens a’ their fire-side. An’ whyles twalpennie worth o’ nappy Can mak the bodies unco happy: They lay aside their private cares, To mind the Kirk and State affairs; They ’1l talk o’ patronage an’ priests, Wi’ kindling fury i’ their breasts, Or tell what new taxation ’s comin, An’ ferlie at the folk in Lon’on. As bleak-fac’d Hallowmass returns, They get the jovial, ranting kirns, When rural life, of ev’ry station, Unite in common recreation; Love blinks, Wit slaps, an’ social Mirth Forgets there ’s Care upo’ the earth. That merry day the year begins, They bar the door on frosty win’s; The nappy reeks wi’ mantling ream, An’ sheds a heart-inspiring steam ; The luntin pipe, an’ sneeshin mill, Are handed round wi’ right guid will; The cantie auld folks crackin crouse, The young anes ranting thro’ the house — My heart has been sae fain to see them, That I for joy hae barkit wi’ them. Still it’s owre true that ye hae said Sic game is now owre aften play’d; There ’s monie a creditable stock O’ decent, honest, fawsont folk, Are riven out baith root an’ branch, Some rascal’s pridefu’ greed to quench, Wha thinks to knit himsel the faster In favor wi’ some gentle master, Wha, aiblins thrang a parliamentin’, For Britain’s guid his saul indentin’ — CESAR Haith, lad, ye little ken about it: For Britain’s guid! guid faith! I doubt it. Say rather, gaun as Premiers lead him: An’ saying aye or no’s they bid him: At operas an’ plays parading, Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading: Or maybe, in a frolic daft, To Hague or Calais taks a waft, To mak a tour an’ tak a whirl, To learn bon ton, an’ see the worl’. There, at Vienna or Versailles, He rives his father’s auld entails; Or by Madrid he taks the rout, To thrum guitars an’ fecht wi’ nowt; Or down Italian vista startles, Whore-hunting amang groves o’ myrtles Then bowses drumlie German-water, To mak himsel look fair an’ fatter, 4 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT An’ clear the consequential sorrows, Love-gifts of Carnival signoras. For Britain’s guid! for her destruction ! Wi’ dissipation, feud an’ faction. LUATH Hech,man ! dear sirs! is that the gate They waste sae monie a braw estate ! Are we sae foughten an’ harass’d For gear ta gang that gate at last ? O would they stay aback frae courts, An’ please themsels wi’ countra sports, It wad for ev’ry ane be better, The laird, the tenant, an’ the éotter ! For thae frank, rantin, ramblin billies, Fient haet o’ thems ill-hearted fellows: Except for breakin o’ their timmer, Or speakin lightly o’ their limmer, Or shootin of a hare or moor-cock, The ne’er-a-bit they ’re ill to poor folk. But will ye tell me, master Cesar: Sure great folk’s life’s a life o’ pleas- ure ? Nae cauld nor hunger e’er can steer them, The vera thought o’t need na fear them. CZSAR Lord, man, were ye but whyles whare I am, The gentles, ye wad ne’er envy ’em! It’s true, they need na starve or sweat, Thro’ winter’s cauld, or simmer’s heat; They ‘ve nae sair wark to craze their banes, Av’ fill auld-age wi’ grips an’ granes: But human bodies are sic fools, For a’ their colleges an’ schools, That when nae real ills perplex them, They mak enow themsels to vex them; An’ ay the less they hae to sturt them, In like proportion, less will hurt them. A countra fellow at the pleugh, His acre’s till’d, he ’s right eneugh; A countra girl at her wheel, Her dizzen’s done, she’s unco weel; But gentlemen, an’ ladies warst, Wi’ ev’n down want o’ wark are curst: They loiter, lounging, lank an’ lazy; Tho’ deil-haet ails them, yet uneasy : Their days insipid, dull an’ tasteless; Their nights unquiet, lang an’ restless. An’ ev’n their sports, their balls an’ races, Their galloping through public places, There ’s sie parade, sic pomp an’ art, The joy can scarcely reach the heart. The men east out in party-matches, Then sowther a’ in deep debauches; Ae night they ’re mad wi’ drink an’ whor- ing, Niest day their life is past enduring. The ladies arm-in-arm in clusters, As great an’ gracious a’ as sisters; But hear their absent thoughts o’ ither, They ’re a’ run deils an’ jads thegither. Whyles, owre the wee bit cup an’ platie, They sip the scandal-potion pretty; Or lee-lang nights, wi’ crabbit leuks i Pore owre the devil’s pictur’d beuks; Stake on a chance a farmer’s stackyard, An’ cheat like onie unhang’d blackguard. There ’s some exceptions, man an’ woman; But this is Gentry’s life in common. By this, the sun was out o’ sight, An’ darker gloamin brought the night; The bum-clock humm’d wi’ lazy drone; The kye stood rowtin i’ the loan; When up they gat, an’ shook their lugs, Rejoie’d they were na men, but dogs; An’ each took aff his several way, Resolv’d to meet some ither day. SCOTCH DRINK Gie him strong drink until he wink, That ’s sinking in despair ; An’ liquor guid to fire his bluid, That ’s prest wi’ grief an’ care: There let him bowse, and deep carouse, Wi’ bumpers flowing o’er, Till he forgets his loves or debts, An’ minds his griefs no more. Sotomon’s PRoverss, xxxi. 6, 7. Composed some time between the beginning of November, 1785, and 17th February, 1786 (letter of Burns to Richmond). On 20th March Burns sent a copy to his friend Rob- ert Muir, wine-merchant, Kilmarnock: “ May the follow with a blessing for your edifi- cation.” The metre, which has come to be regarded as essentially Scottish (see Prefatory Note to the Address to the Deil, p. 12), is that of Fergusson’s Cauler Water, of which Scotch Drink is a kind of parody. SCOTCH DRINK 5 I Let other poets raise a fracas *Bout vines, an’ wines, an’ drucken Bacchus, An’ crabbit names an’ stories wrack us, An’ grate our lug: I sing the juice Scotch bear can mak us, Tn glass or jug. II O thou, my Muse! guid auld Scotch drink ! Whether thro’ wimplin worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream owre the brink, In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp an’ wink, To sing thy name! Ii Let husky wheat the haughs adorn, An’ aits set up their awnie horn, An’ pease an’ beans, at e’en or morn, Perfume the plain: Leeze me on thee, John Barleycorn, Thou king o’ grain ! Iv On thee aft Scotland chows her cood, In souple scones, the wale o’ food ! Or tumbling in the boiling flood Wi?’ kail an’ beef; But when thou pours thy strong heart’s blood, There thou shines chief. Vv Food fills the wame, an’ keeps us livin; Tho’ life’s a gift no worth receivin, When heavy-dragg’d wi’ pine an’ grievin; But oil’d by thee, The wheels o’ life gae down-hill, scrievin, Wy rattlin glee. VI Thou clears the head o’ doited Lear, Thou cheers the heart o’ drooping Care; Thou strings the nerves o’ Labor sair, At’s weary toil; Thou ev’n brightens dark Despair Wi gloomy smile. VII Aft, clad in massy siller weed, Wi’ gentles thou erects thy head; Yet, humbly kind in time o’ need, The poor man’s wine: His wee drap parritch, or his bread, Thou kitchens fine. VIII Thou art the life o’ public haunts: But thee, what were our fairs and rants ? Ev’n godly meetings o’ the saunts, By thee inspir’d, When, gaping, they besiege the tents, Are doubly fir’d. Ix That merry night we get the corn in, O sweetly, then, thou reams the horn in! Or reekin on a New-Year mornin In cog or bicker, An’ just a wee drap sp’ritual burn in, An’ gusty sucker ! x When Vulcan gies his bellows breath, An’ ploughmen gather wi’ their graith; O rare ! to see thee fizz an’ freath I’ th’ lugget caup ! Then Burnewin comes on like death At ev’ry chaup. XI Nae mercy, then, for airn or steel: The brawnie, bainie, ploughman chiel, Brings hard owrehip, wi’ sturdy wheel, The strong forehammer, Till block an’ studdie ring an’ reel, Wi?’ dinsome clamour. XII When skirlin weanies see the light, Thou maks the gossips clatter bright, How fumbling cuifs their dearies slight; Wae worth the name ! Nae howdie gets a social night, Or plack frae them. XIII When neebors anger at a plea, An’ just as wud as wud can be, How easy can the barley-brie Cement the quarrel ! It’s aye the cheapest lawyer’s fee, To taste the barrel. XIV * Alake ! that e’er my Muse has reason, To wyte her countrymen wi’ treason ! a9 6 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT But monie daily weet their weason Wi?’ liquors nice, An’ hardly, in a winter season, Wer spier her price. XV Wae worth that brandy, burnin trash ! Fell source 0’ monie a pain an’ brash ! Twins monie a poor, doylt, drucken hash, O’ half his days; Aw’ sends, beside, auld Scotland’s cash To her warst faes. XVI Ye Scots, wha wish auld Scotland well ! Ye chief, to you my tale I tell, Poor, plackless devils like mysel ! It sets you ill, Wi bitter, dearthfu’ wines to mell, Or foreign gill. XVII May gravels round his blather wrench, An’ gouts torment him, inch by inch, Wha twists his gruntle wi’ a glunch O’ sour disdain, Out owre a glass o’ whisky-punch WY honest men! XVIII O Whisky! soul o’ plays an’ pranks ! Accept a Bardie’s gratefu’ thanks ! When wanting thee, what tuneless cranks Are my poor verses ! Thou comes — they rattle i’ their ranks At ither’s arses ! XIX Thee, Ferintosh! O sadly lost! Scotland lament frae coast to coast ! Now colic grips, an’ barkin hoast May kill us a’; For loyal Forbés’ chartered boast Is taen awa ! xx Thae curst horse-leeches o’ th’ Excise, Wha mak the whisky stells their prize ! Haud up thy han’, Deil! ance, twice, thrice ! 5 There, seize the blinkers ! An’ bake them up in brunstane pies For poor damn’d drinkers. XXI Fortune ! if thou ’Il but gie me still Hale breeks, a scone, an’ whisky gill, An’ rowth o’ rhyme to rave at will, Tak a’ the rest, An’ deal *é about as thy blind skill Directs thee best. THE AUTHOR’S EARNEST CRY AND PRAYER TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE AND HONOR- ABLE THE SCOTTISH REPRESENTATIVES IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS Dearest of distillation ! last and best — — How art thou lost ! — Parody on Milton. I Ye Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires, Wha represent our brughs an’ shires, An’ doucely manage our affairs In Parliament, To you a simple Bardie’s prayers Are humbly sent. II Alas ! my roupet Muse is haerse! Your Honors’ hearts wi’ grief ’t wad pierce, To see her sittin on her arse Low i’ the dust, And scriechin out prosaic verse, An’ like to brust ! I Tell them wha hae the chief direction, Scotland an’ me’s in great affliction, Ever sin’ they laid that curst restriction On aqua-vite; An’ rouse them up to strong conviction, An’ move their pity. Iv Stand forth, an’ tell yon Premier youth The honest, open, naked truth: Tell him o’ mine an’ Scotland’s drouth, His servants humble: The muckle deevil blaw you south, If ye dissemble ! Vv Does onie great man glunch an’ gloom ? Speak out, an’ never fash your thumb ! THE AUTHOR’S EARNEST CRY AND PRAYER a Let posts an’ pensions sink or soom Wi? them wha grant ’em: If honestly they canna come, ; Far better want ’em. VI In gath’rin votes you were na slack; Now stand as tightly by your tack: Ne’er claw your lug, an’ fidge your back, Av’ hum an haw; But raise your arm, an’ tell your crack Before them a’. VII Paint Scotland greetin owre her thrissle; Her mutchkin stowp as toom ’s a whissle; An’ damn’d excisemen in a bustle, Seizin a stell, Triumphant, crushin ’t like a mussel, Or lampit shell ! VIII Then, on the tither hand, present her — A blackguard smuggler right behint her, An’ cheek-for-chow, a chuffie vintner Colleaguing join, Pickin her pouch as bare as winter Of a’ kind coin. Ix Is there, that bears the name o’ Scot, But feels his heart’s bluid rising hot, To see his poor auld mither’s pot Thus dung in staves, An’ plunder’d o’ her hindmost groat, By gallows knaves ? x Alas! I’m but a nameless wight, Trode i’ the mire out o’ sight ! But could I like Montgomeries fight, Or gab like Boswell, There ’s some sark-necks I wad draw tight, An’ tie some hose well. XI God bless your Honors ! can ye see’t, The kind, auld, cantie carlin greet, An’ no get warmly to your feet, An’ gar them hear it, An’ tell them wi’ a patriot-heat, Ye winna bear it ? XII Some o’ you nicely ken the laws, * To round the period an’ pause, An’ with rhetéric clause on clause To mak harangues: Then echo thro’ Saint Stephen’s wa’s Auld Scotland’s wrangs. xUI Dempster, a true blue Scot I’se warran; Thee, aith-detesting, chaste Kilkerran; An’ that glib-gabbet Highland baron, The Laird 0’ Graham; An’ ane, a chap that’s damn’d auldfarran, Dundas his name : XIV Erskine, a spunkie Norland billie; True Campbells, Frederick and Ilay; An’ Livistone, the bauld Sir Willie; An’ monie ithers, Whom auld Demosthenes or Tully Might own for brithers. xV Thee, sodger Hugh, my watchman stented, If Bardies e’er are represented; I ken if that your sword were wanted, Ye ’d lend your hand; But when there ’s ought to say anent it, Ye ’re at a stand. XVI Arouse, my boys! exert your metile, To get auld Scotland back her kettle; Or faith! Ill wad my new pleugh-pettle, Yell see ’t or lang, She ’Il teach you, wi’ a reekin whittle, Anither sang. XVIT This while she’s been in crankous mood, Her lost Militia fir’d her bluid; (Deil na they never mair do guid, Play’d her that pliskie !) An’ now she’s like to rin red-wud. About her whisky. XVIII An’ Lord ! if ance they pit her till ’t, Her tartan petticoat she “Il kilt, An’ durk an’ pistol at her belt, She Il tak the streets, An’ rin her whittle to the hilt, I’ the first she meets ! xIxX For God-sake, sirs ! then speak her fair, An’ straik her cannie wi’ the hair, 8 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT An’ to the Muckle House repair, Wi instant speed, An’ strive, wi’ a’ your wit an’ lear, To get remead. XX Yon ill-tongu’d tinkler, Charlie Fox, May taunt you wi’ his jeers an’ mocks; But gie him ’t het, my hearty cocks ! Hen cowe the cadie ! An’ send him to his dicing box An’ sportin lady. XXI Tell yon guid bluid of auld Boconnock’s, I’ll be his debt twa mashlum bonnocks, An’ drink his health in auld Nanse Tin- nock’s Nine times a-week, If he some scheme, like tea an’ winnocks, Wad kindly seek. XXII Could he some commutation broach, I'll pledge my aith in guid braid Scotch, He needna fear their foul reproach Nor erudition, Yon mixtie-maxtie, queer hotch-potch, The Coalition. XXIII Auld Scotland has a raucle tongue; She ’s just a devil wi’ a rung; An’ if she promise auld or young To tak their part, Tho’ by the neck she should be strung, She ’1l no desert. XXIV And now, ye chosen Five-and-Forty, May still your mither’s heart support ye; Then, tho’ a minister grow dorty, Av’ kick your place, Ye ‘ll snap your fingers, poor an’ hearty, Before his face. XXV God bless your Honors, a’ your days, ‘Wi’ sowps o’ kail and brats o’ claes, In spite o’ a’ the thievish kaes, That haunt St. Jamie’s ! Your humble Bardie sings an’ prays, While Rab his name is. POSTSCRIPT XXVI Let half-starv’d slaves in warmer skies See future wines, rich-clust’ring, rise; Their lot auld Scotland ne’er envies, But, blythe and frisky, She eyes her freeborn, martial boys Tak aff their whisky. XXVII What tho’ their Phebus kinder warms, While fragrance blooms and Beauty charms, When wretches range, in famish’d swarms, The scented groves; Or, hounded forth, dishonor arms In hungry droves! XXVIIE Their gun ’s a burden on their shouther; They downa bide the stink o’ powther; Their bauldest thought ’s a hank’ring swither To stan’ or rin, Till skelp — a shot — they ’re aff, a’ throw’- ther, To save their skin. XxXIX But bring a Scotsman frae his hill, Clap in his cheek a Highland gill, Say, such is royal George’s will, An’ there ’s the foe ! He has nae thought but how to kill Twa at a blow. XXX Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings tease him; Death comes, wi’ fearless eye he sees him; Wy bluidy han’ a welcome gies him; An’ when he fa’s, His latest draught o’ breathin lea’es him In faint huzzas. XXXI Sages their solemn een may steek Aw’ raise a philosophic reek, An’ physically causes seek In clime an’ season; But tell me whisky’s name in Greek: Ill tell the reason. THE HOLY FAIR 9 XXXII Scotland, my auld, respected mither ! Tho’ whiles ye moistify your leather, Till whare ye sit on craps o’ heather Ye tine your dam, Freedom and whisky gang thegither, Tak aff your dram! THE HOLY FAIR A robe of seeming truth and trust Hid crafty observation; And secret hung, with poison’d crust, The dirk of defamation: A mask that like the gorget show’d, Dye-varying on the pigeon; And for a mantle large and broad, He wrapt him in Religion. Hypocrisy &-la-mode. “© Holy Fair’ is a common phrase in the West of Seotland for a sacramental occasion ’’ (R. B., im Edinburgh Editions). The satire is chiefly concerned with the “ tent -preach- ing” outside the church while the Communion services went on within. In Mauchline the preaching tent was pitched in the churchyard, whence a back entrance gave access to Nanse Tinnock’s tavern; and the ‘‘ Sacrament” was observed once a year, on the second Sunday in August. Critics have classed the piece among the later ones in the Kilmarnock Edition; but in the MS. at Kilmarnock it is dated “ Autumn, 1785,” and it probably records the events of that year. This ascription supports the tra- dition that Burns recited it in the tavern where the scene is laid, to an audience which in- eluded Jean Armour, with whom there was no quarrel till the spring of 1786. I Upon a simmer Sunday morn, When Nature’s face is fair, I walkéd forth to view the corn, An’ snuff the caller air. The rising sun, owre Galston Muirs, Wi? glorious light was glintin; The hares were hirplin down the furs, The lav’rocks they were chantin Fw’ sweet that day. Ir As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad, To see a scene sae gay, Three hizzies, early at the road, Cam skelpin up the way. Twa had manteeles o’ dolefw’ black, But ane wi’ lyart lining; The third, that gaed a wee a-back, Was in the fashion shining Fu’ gay that day. III The twa appear’d like sisters twin, In feature, form, an’ claes;_ , Their visage wither’d, lang an’ thin, An’ sour as onie slaes: The third cam up, hap-step-an’-lowp, As light as onie lambie, An’ wi’ a curchie low did stoop, As soon as e’er she saw me, Fw’ kind that day. Iv Wi’ bonnet aff, quoth I, “ Sweet lass, I think ye seem to ken me; I’m sure I’ve seen that bonie face, But yet I canna name ye.” Quo’ she, an’ laughin as she spak, An’ taks me by the han’s, “Ye, for my sake, hae gi’en the feck Of a’ the Ten Comman’s A screed some day. Vv “My name is Fun — your cronie dear, The nearest friend ye hae; An’ this is Superstition here, An’ that ’s Hypocrisy. I’m gaun to Mauchline Holy Fair, To spend an hour in daffin: Gin yell go there, yon runkl’d pair, We will get famous laughin At them this day.” VI Quoth I, “ Wi’ a’ my heart, I'll do’t; I'll get my Sunday’s sark on, An’ meet you on the holy spot; Faith, we’se hae fine remarkin !” Then I gaed hame at crowdie-time, Aw’ soon I made me ready; For roads were clad, frae side to side, Wi’ monie a wearie body, ’ In droves that day. VII Here farmers gash, in ridin graith, Gaed hoddin by their cotters; There swankies young, in braw braid-claith, Are springin owre the gutters. 10 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT The lasses, skelpin barefit, thrang, In silks an’ searlets glitter; Wi’ sweet-milk cheese, in monie a whang, An’ farls, bak’d wi’ butter, Fw’ crump that day. Vul When by the plate we set our nose, Weel heapéd up wi’ ha’pence, A greedy glowr black-bonnet throws, An’ we maun draw our tippence. Then in we go to see the show: On ev’ry side they ’re gath’rin; Some carryin dails, some chairs an’ stools, An’ some are busy bleth’rin Right loud that day. Ix Here stands a shed to fend the show’rs, An’ screen our countra gentry; There Racer Jess, an’ twa-three whores, Are blinkin at the entry. Here sits a raw o’ tittlin jads, Wi’ heavin breasts an’ bare neck; An’ there a batch o’ wabster lads, Blackguardin frae Kilmarnock, For fun this day. x Here some are thinkin on their sins, An’ some upo’ their claes; Ane curses feet that fyl’d his shins, Anither sighs an’ prays: On this hand sits a chosen swatch, Wi’ screw’d-up, grace-proud faces; On that a set o’ chaps, at watch, Thrang winkin on the lasses To chairs that day. XI O happy is that man an’ blest ! Nae wonder that it pride him ! Whase ain dear lass, that he likes best, Comes clinkin down beside him ! ‘Wi’ arm repos’d on the chair back, He sweetly does compose him; Which, by degrees, slips round her neck, An’s loof upon her bosom, Unkend that day. XII Now a’ the congregation o’er Is silent expectation; For Moodie speels the holy door, Wi’ tidings o’ damnation: Should Hornie, as in ancient days, *Mang sons o’ God present him; The vera sight 0’ Moodie’s face To’s ain het hame had sent him Wi? fright that day. XIII Hear how he clears the points o’ Faith Wi rattlin and thumpin ! Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, He’s stampin, an’ he’s jumpin ! His lengthen’d chin, his turn’d-up snout, His eldritch squeel an’ gestures, O how they fire the heart devout — Like cantharidian plaisters On sic a day. XIV But hark! the tent has chang’d its voice; There ’s peace an’ rest nae langer; For a’ the real judges rise, They canna sit for anger: Smith opens out his cauld harangues, On practice and on morals; An’ aff the godly pour in thrangs, To gie the jars an’ barrels A lift that day. xv What signifies his barren shine, Of moral pow’rs an’ reason ? His English style, an’ gesture fine Are a’ clean out 0” season. Like Socrates or Antonine, Or some auld pagan heathen, The moral man he does define, But ne’er a word o’ faith in That ’s right that day. XVI In guid time comes an antidote Against sie poison’d nostrum; For Peebles, frae the water-fit, Ascends the holy rostrum: See, up he’s got the word 0’ God, An’ meek an’ mim has view’d it, While Common-sense has taen the road, Aw’ aff, an’ up the Cowgate Fast, fast that day. XVII Wee Miller niest, the guard relieves, An’ orthodoxy raibles, Tho?’ in his heart he weel believes, An’ thinks it auld wives’ fables: THE HOLY FAIR Il But faith ! the birkie wants a manse: So, cannilie he hums them; Altho’ his carnal wit an’ sense Like hafflins-wise o’ercomes him At times that day. XVIIL Now butt an’ ben the change-house fills, Wi?’ yill-caup commentators; Here’s crying out for bakes an’ gills, An’ there the pint-stowp clatters; While thick an’ thrang, an’ loud an’ lang, Wi’ logic an’ wi’ Scripture, They raise a din, that in the end Is like to breed a rupture O’ wrath that day. XIX Leeze me on drink! it gies us mair Than either school or college; It kindles wit, it waukens lear, It pangs us fou o’ knowledge: Be ’t whisky-gill or penny wheep, Or onie stronger potion, Tt never fails, on drinkin deep, To kittle up our notion, By night or day. xXx The lads an’ lasses, blythely bent To mind baith saul an’ body, Sit round the table, weel, content, An’ steer about the toddy: On this ane’s dress, an’ that ane’s leuk, They ’re makin observations ; While some are cozie i’ the neuk, An’ formin assignations To meet some day. XXI But now the Lord’s ain trumpet touts, Till a’ the hills are rairin, And echoes back return the shouts; Black Russell is na spairin: His piercin words, like Highlan’ swords, Divide the joints an’ marrow; His talk o’ Hell, whare devils dwell, Our verra “sauls does harrow” Wi? fright that day ! XXII A vast, unbottom’d, boundless pit, Fill’d fou o’ lowin brunstane, Whase ragin flame, an’ scorchin heat, Wad melt the hardest whun-stane ! The half-asleep start up wi’ fear, An’ think they hear it roarin; When presently it does appear, °T was but some neebor snorin Asleep that day. XXIII °T wad be owre lang a tale to tell, How monie stories past; An’ how they crouded to the yill, When they were a’ dismist; How drink gaed round, in cogs an’ caups, Amang the furms an’ benches; An’ cheese an’ bread, frae women’s laps, Was dealt about in lunches, An’ dawds that day. XXIV In comes a gawsie, gash guidwife, An’ sits down by the fire, Syne draws her kebbuck an’ her knife; The lasses they are shyer: The auld guidmen, about the grace, Frae side to side they bother; Till some ane by his bonnet lays, An’ gies them ’t, like a tether, Fw’ lang that day. xXXV Waesucks ! for him that gets nae lass, Or lasses that hae naething ! Sma’ need has he to say a grace, Or melvie his braw claithing ! O wives, be mindfu’, ance yoursel, How bonie lads ye wanted, An’ dinna for a kebbuck-heel Let lasses be affronted On sic a day! XXVI Now Clinkumbell, wi’ rattlin tow, Begins to jow an’ croon; Some swagger hame the best they dow, Some wait the afternoon. At slaps the billies halt a blink, Till lasses strip their shoon: Wi’ faith an’ hope, an’ love an’ drink, They ’re a’ in famous tune For crack that day. XXVII How monie hearts this day converts O” sinners and o’ lasses ! Their hearts o’ stane, gin night, are gane As saft as onie flesh is: 12 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT There ’s some are fou o’ love divine; There ’s some are fou o’ brandy; An’ monie jobs that day begin, May end in houghmagandie Some ither day. ADDRESS TO THE DEIL O Prince! O Chief of many thronéd pow’rs ! That led th’ embattl’d seraphim to war. Mitton. Gilbert Burns states that his brother first repeated the Address to the Deil in the winter “following the summer of 1784,” while they “ were going together with carts of coal to the family fire ;” but itis clear from Burns’s letter to Richmond, 12th February, 1786, that he mis- dates the poem by a year. The Address is, in part, a good-natured burlesque of the Miltonic ideal of Satan ; and this is effected “ by the in- troduction,” to use the words of Gilbert Burns, ‘of ludicrous accounts and representations,” from “ various quarters,” of that “august per- sonage.” Burns in his despairing moods was accustomed to feign the strongest admiration for Milton’s Arch-Fiend and his dauntless su- periority to his desperate circumstances ; and his farewell apostrophe, although it takes the form of an exclamation of pity— and was ac- cepted merely as such by the too-too senti- mental yet austere Carlyle—is in reality a satiric thrust at the old Satanic dogma. The six-line stave in rime coude, built on two rhymes, used in the Address to the Deil, was borrowed from the troubadours, and freely used in medieval English during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. There is small doubt that it was known to medieval Scotland, but the first Scotsman whose name is attached to it is Sir David Lindsay (1540). It fell into disuse with the decline of popular poetry after the Reformation [but was revived in the Piper of Kilbarchan and other ballads, rendered more familiar by Allan Ramsay, and] it so took the Scottish ear that by Fergusson’s time, as may be seen in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine (1768-1784), it had become the common inheritance of all such Scotsmen as eould rhyme. Through Fergusson, who did his sprightliest work in it, and John Mayne (1759- 1836) — author of The Siller Gun (1777), who wrote it by cantos— it passed into the hands of Burns, who put it to all manner of uses and informed it with all manner of senti- ments: in ambitious and serious poetry like The Vision; in Addresses —to a Louse, a Mountain Daisy, the Toothache, the Devil, a Haggis, Scotch Drink, to name but these; in Elegies — upon Tam Samson and Poor Mailie and Captain Matthew Henderson; in such satires as Death and Dr. Hornbook and Holy Willie's Prayer ; and in a series of Epistles of singular variety and range. His thoughts and fancies fell naturally into the pace which it im- poses: as Dryden’s into the heroic couplet, as Spenser’s into the stanza of The Faérie Queen. Indeed, he cannot keep it out of his head, and his Alexandrines often march to the tune of it: — ‘‘ And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounced By Heaven’s command ’? — “ And ‘Let us worship God,’ he says With solemn air’? — *¢ And curse the ruffian’s aim, and mourn Thy hapless fate.” °Tis small wonder, therefore, that a very large proportion of his non-lyrical achieve- ment is set forth in it, or that Wordsworth should choose it for the stave of his memorial verses. I O tHov! whatever title suit thee — Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie — Wha in yon cavern grim an’ sootie, Clos’d under hatches, Spairges about the brunstane cootie, To seaud. poor wretches ! II Hear me, Auld Hangie, for a wee, An’ let poor damnéd bodies be; I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie, Ev’n to a deil, To skelp an’ scaud poor dogs like me An’ hear us squeel. III Great is thy pow’r an’ great thy fame; Far kend an’ noted is thy name; An’ tho’ yon lowin heugh’s thy hame, Thou travels far; An’ faith! thou’s neither lag, nor lame, Nor blate, nor seaur. Iv Whyles, ranging like a roarin lion, For prey, a’ holes an’ corners trying; Whiyles, on the strong-wing’d tempest flyin, Tirlin the kirks; Whyles, in the human bosom pryin, Unseen thou lurks. Vv I’ve heard my rev’rend graunie say, In lanely glens ye like to stray; ADDRESS TO THE DEIL 13 Or, where auld ruin’d castles grey Nod to the moon, Ye fright the nightly wand’rer’s way Wi eldritch croon. VI When twilight did my graunie summon, To say her pray’rs, douce, honest woman ! Aft yont the dyke she ’s heard you bum- min, Wi’ eerie drone; Or, rustlin, thro’ the boortrees comin, Wi’ heavy groan. vil Ae dreary, windy, winter night, The star shot down wi’ sklentin light, Wi’ you mysel, I gat a fright: Ayont the lough, Ye, like a rash-buss, stood in sight, Wi’ waving sugh. VII The cudgel in my nieve did shake, Each bristl’d hair stood like a stake; en wi’ an eldritch, stoor “quaick, quaick,” Amang the springs, Awa ye squatter’d like a drake, On whistling wings. Ix Let warlovks grim, an’ wither’d hags, Tell how wi’ you, on ragweed nags, They skim the muirs an’ dizzy crags, Wi’ wicked speed; « And in kirk-yards renew their leagues, Owre howkit dead. x Thence, countra wives, wi’ toil an’ pain, May plunge an’ plunge the kirn in vain; For O ! the yellow treasure’s taen By witching skill; An’ dawtit, twal-pint hawkie ’s gaen As yell’s the bill. XI Thence, mystic knots mak great abuse On young guidmen, fond, keen an’ croose; When the best wark-lume i’ the house, By cantraip wit, Is instant made no worth a louse, Just at the bit. XII ‘When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord, An’ float the jinglin icy boord, Then, water-kelpies haunt the foord, By your direction, An’ nighted trav’llers are allur’d To their destruction. XIII And aft your moss-traversing spunkies Decoy the wight that late an’ drunk is: The bleezin, curst, mischievous monkies Delude his eyes, Till in some miry slough he sunk is, Ne’er mair to rise. XIV When Masons’ mystic word an’ grip In storms an’ tempests raise you up, Some cock or cat your rage maun stop, Or, strange to tell! The youngest brother ye wad whip Aff straught to hell. XV Lang syne in Eden’s bonie yard, When youthfu’ lovers first were pair’d, Aw’ all the soul of love they shar’d, The raptur’d hour, Sweet on the fragrant flow’ry swaird, In shady bow’r: XVI Then you, ye auld, snick-drawing dog ! Ye cam to Paradise incog, Ay’ play’d on man a cursed brogue (Black be your fa’ !), An’ gied the infant warld a shog, *Maist ruin’d a’. XVII D’ ye mind that day when in a bizz Wi reekit duds, an’ reestit gizz, Ye did present your smoutie phiz *Mang better folk; An’ sklented on the man of Uzz Your spitefu’ joke ? XVIII An’ how ye gat him i’ your thrall, An’ brak him out 0’ house an’ hal’, While scabs an’ botches did him gall, W? bitter claw; 14 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT An’ lows’d his ill-tongu’d wicked seaul — Was warst ava ? XIX But a’ your doings to rehearse, Your wily snares an’ fechtin fierce, Sin’ that day Michael did you pierce Down to this time, Wad ding a Lallan tongue, or Erse, In prose or rhyme. XxX An’ now, Auld Cloots, I ken ye ’re thinkin, A certain Bardie’s rantin, drinkin, Some luckless hour will send him linkin, To your black Pit; But, faith! he ’ll turn a corner jinkin, An’ cheat you yet. XXI But fare-you-weel, Auld Nickie-Ben ! O, wad ye tak a thought an’ men’! Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — Still hae a stake: I’m wae to think upo’ yon den, Ev’n for your sake ! THE DEATH AND DYING WORDS OF POOR MAILIE, THE AUTHOR’S ONLY PET YOWE: AN UNCO MOURNFU’ TALE One of the few pieces written before 1784. Burns “ had, partly by way of frolic, bought a.ewe and two lambs from a neighbour, and she was tethered in a field adjoining the house at Lochlie. He and I were going out with our teams, and our two younger brothers to drive for us, at mid-day, when Hugh Wilson, a cu- rious-looking, awkward boy, clad in plaiding, eame to us with much anxiety in his face, with the information that the ewe had entangled herself in the tether, and was lying in the ditch. Robert was much tickled with Huoe’s appearance and postures on the occasion. Poor Mailie was set to rights, and when we returned from the plough in the evening he repeated to me her Death and Dying Words pretty much in the way they now stand.’’— GILBERT Borns. As Mailie, an’ her lambs thegither, Was ae day nibblin on the tether, Upon her cloot she coost a hitch, An’ owre she warsl’d in the ditch: There, groanin, dying, she did lie, When Hughoc he cam doytin by. Wi’ glowrin een, an’ lifted han’s Poor Hughoc like a statue stan’s; He saw her days were near-hand ended, But, wae’s my heart! he could na mend it ! He gapéd wide, but naething spak. At length poor Mailie silence brak: — “O thou, whase lamentable face Appears to mourn my woefw’ case ! My dying words attentive hear, An’ bear them to my Master dear. “ Tell him, if e’er again he keep As muckle gear as buy a sheep — O, bid him never tie them mair, Wi?’ wicked strings o’ hemp or hair ! But ca’ them out to park or hill, An’ let them wander at their will: So may his flock increase, an’ grow To scores 0’ lambs, an’ packs 0’ woo’ ! “Tell him, he was a Master kin’, An’ ay was guid to me an’ mine; An’ now my dying charge I gie him, My helpless lambs, I trust them wi’ him. “QO, bid him save their harmless lives, Frae dogs, an’ tods, an’ butchers’ knives ! But gie them guid cow-milk their fill, Till they be fit to fend themsel; An’ tent them duly, e’en an’ morn, Wi’ teats o’ hay an’ ripps o’ corn. « An’ may they never learn the gaets, Of ither vile, wanrestfu’ pets — To slink thro’ slaps, an’ reave an’ steal, At stacks o’ pease, or stocks o’ kail ! So may they, like their great forbears, For monie a year come thro’ the sheers: So wives will gie them bits o’ bread, An’ bairns greet for them when they ’re dead. “My poor toop-lamb, my son an’ heir, O, bid him breed him up wi’ care ! An’ if he live to be a beast, To pit some havins in his breast ! An’ warn him — what I winna name — To stay content wi’ yowes at hame; An’ no to rin an’ wear his cloots, Like other menseless, graceless brutes. EPISTLE TO JAMES SMITH 15 “ An’ niest, my yowie, silly thing; Gude keep thee frae a tether string ! O, may thou ne’er forgather up, Wi’ onie blastit, moorland toop; But ay keep mind to moop an’ mell, Wi’ sheep o’ credit like thysel ! “ And now, my bairns, wi’ my last breath, I lea’e my blessin wi’ you baith: An’ when you think upo’ your mither, Mind to be kind to ane anither. “ Now, honest Hughoe, dinna fail, To tell my master a’ my tale; An’ bid him burn this cursed tether, An’ for thy pains thou ’se get my blether.” This said, poor Mailie turn’d her head, An’ clos’d her een amang the dead ! POOR MAILIE’S ELEGY I Lament in rhyme, lament in prose, Wi’ saut tears tricklin down your nose; Our Bardie’s fate is at a close, Past a’ remead ! The last, sad cape-stane of his woes; Poor Mailie’s dead ! 11 It’s no the loss of warl’s gear, That could sae bitter draw the tear, Or mak our Bardie, dowie, wear € mourning weed: He’s lost a friend an’ neebor dear In Mailie dead. III Thro’ a’ the toun she trotted by him; A lang half-mile she could desery him; Wi’ kindly bleat, when she did spy him, She ran wi’ speed: A friend mair faithfu’ ne’cr cam nigh him, Than Mailie dead. IV I wat she was a sheep o’ sense, An’ could behave hersel wi’ mense: I'll say ’t, she never brak a fence, Thro’ thievish greed. Our Bardie, lanely, keeps the spence Sin’ Mailie’s dead. v Or, if he wanders up the howe, Her livin image in her yowe Comes bleatin till him, owre the knowe, For bits 0’ bread; An’ down the briny pearls rowe For Mailie dead. VI She was nae get o’ moorlan tips, Wi’ tawted ket, an’ hairy hips; For her forbears were brought in ships, Frae ’yont the Tweed: A bonier fieesh ne’er crpss’d the clips Than Mailie’s dead. VII Wae worth the man wha first did shape That vile, wanchancie thing —a rape ! It maks guid fellows girn an’ gape, Wi’ chokin dread; An’ Robin’s bonnet wave wi’ crape For Mailie dead. VIII O a’ ye bards on bonie Doon ! An’ wha on Ayr your chanters tune ! Come, join the melancholious croon O’ Robin’s reed ! His heart will never get aboon ! His Mailie ’s dead ! EPISTLE TO JAMES SMITH Friendship, mysterious cement of the soul! Sweet’ner of Life, and solder of Society ! I owe thee much — Bia. The recipient of this epistle was the son of Robert Smith, merchant, Mauchline. He was born Ist March, 1765, and was thus six years younger than the poet. He lost his father early, and, perhaps by reason of his stepfather’s rigid discipline, grew something regardless of restraint. He was, however, clever, affection- ate, and witty ; secured the poet’s especial es- teem by his loyalty during the Armour trou- bles; was a member of the Court of Equity (or Bachelors’ Club, which met at the White- foord Arms), and the subject of a humorous epitaph (see post,p. 195) which need not be in- terpreted too literally; for some time kept a small draper’s shop in Mauchline ; in 1787 be- came partner in the Avon Printworks, Linlith- gowshire; and about 1788 went to Jamaica, where he died. Several letters to him are in- 16 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT eluded in Burns’s correspondence. His sister’s “wit ” is celebrated in The Belles of Mauchline. The Epistle was probably written early in 1786, before Burns had quite decided to at- tempt publication. I Dear Smirtu, the slee’st, pawkie thief, That e’er attempted stealth or rief ! Ye surely hae some warlock-breef Owre human hearts; For ne’er a bosom yet was prief Against your arts. II For me, I swear by sun an’ moon, And ev’ry star that blinks aboon, Ye ’ve cost me twenty pair o’ shoon, Just gaun to see you; And ev’ry ither pair that’s done, Mair taen I’m wi’ you. III That auld, capricious carlin, Nature, To mak amends for scrimpit stature, She’s turn’d you off, a human-creature On her first plan; And in her freaks, on ev’ry feature She’s wrote the Man. IV Just now I’ve taen the fit o’ rhyme, My barmie noddle’s working prime, My fancy yerkit up sublime, Wi’ hasty summon: Hae ye a leisure-moment’s time To hear what ’s comin ? P Vv Some rhyme a neebor’s name to lash; Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu’ cash; Some rhyme to court the countra clash, An’ raise a din; For me, an aim I never fash; I rhyme for fun. VI The star that rules my luckless lot, Has fated me the russet coat, An’ damn’d my fortune to the groat; But, in requit, Has blest me with a random-shot O’ countra wit. Vil This while my notion’s taen a sklent, To try my fate in guid, black prent; But still the mair I’m that way bent, Something cries, “ Hoolie ! I red you, honest man, tak tent ! Ye ’ll shaw your folly: VII “There *s ither poets, much your betters, Far seen in Greek, deep men o’ letters, Hae thought they had ensur’d their debtors, A’ future ages; Now moths deform, in shapeless tatters, Their unknown pages.” Ix Then farewell hopes 0’ laurel-boughs To garland my poetic brows ! Henceforth Ill rove where busy ploughs Are whistling thrang; An’ teach the lanely heights an’ howes My rustic sang. x I'll wander on, wi’ tentless heed How never-halting moments speed, Till Fate shall snap the brittle thread; Then, all unknown, Ill lay me with th’ inglorious dead, Forgot and gone ! xI But why o’ death begin a tale ? Just now we’re living sound an’ hale; Then top and maintop crowd the sail, Heave Care o’er-side ! And large, before Enjoyment’s gale, Let’s tak the tide. XII This life, sae far’s I understand, Is a’ enchanted fairy-land, Where Pleasure is the magic-wand, That, wielded right, Maks hours like minutes, hand in hand, Dance by fu’ light. XIII The magic-wand then let us wield; For, ance that five-an’-forty ’s speel’d, See, crazy, weary, joyless Kild, ‘Wi’ wrinkl’d face, EPISTLE TO JAMES SMITH 17 Comes hostin, hirplin owre the field, i’ creepin pace. XIV When ance life’s day draws near the gloamin, Then fareweel vacant, careless roamin; An’ fareweel chearfu’ tankards foamin, An’ social noise: An’ fareweel dear, deluding Woman, The joy of joys! xv O Life ! how pleasant, in thy morning, Young Fancy’s rays the hills adorning ! Cold-pausing Caution’s lesson scorning, We frisk away, Like school-boys, at th’ expected warning, To joy an’ play. XVI We wander there, we wander here, We eye the rose upon the brier, Unmindful that the thorn is near, Among the leaves; And tho’ the puny wound appear, Short while it grieves. XVII Some, lucky, find a flow’ry spot, For which they never toil’d nor swat; They drink the sweet and eat the fat, But care or pain; And haply eye the barren hut With high disdain. XVIII With steady aim, some Fortune chase; Keen Hope does ev’ry sinew brace; Thro’ fair, thro’ foul, they urge the race, And seize the prey: Then cannie, in some cozie place, They close the day. XIX And others, like your humble servan’, Poor wights ! nae rules nor roads observin, To right or left eternal swervin, They zig-zag on; Till, curst with age, obscure an’ starvin, They aften groan. xX Alas ! what bitter toil an’ straining — But truce with peevish, poor complaining ! Is Fortune’s fickle Luna waning ? E’en let her gang ! Beneath what light she has remaining, Let’s sing our sang. XXI My pen I here fling to the door, And kneel, ye Pow’rs ! and warm implore, “ Tho’ I should wander Terra o’er, In all her climes, Grant me but this, I ask no more, Ay rowth o’ rhymes. XXII “ Gie dreeping roasts to countra lairds, Till icicles hing frae their beards; Gie fine braw claes to fine life-guards And maids of honor; And yill an’ whisky gie to cairds, Until they sconner. XXIII “A title, Dempster merits it; A garter gie to Willie Pitt; Gie wealth to some be-ledger’d cit, In cent. per cent.; But give me real, sterling wit, And I’m content. XXIV “ While ye are pleas’d to keep me hale, I'll sit down o’er my scanty meal, Be ’t water-brose or muslin-kail, Wi’ cheerfu’ face, As lang ’s the Muses dinna fail To say the grace.” XxXV An anxious e’e I never throws Behint my lug, or by my nose; I jouk beneath Misfortune’s blows As weel ’s I may; Sworn foe to sorrow, care, and prose, I rhyme away. XXVI O ye douce folk that live by rule, Grave, tideless-blooded, calm an’ cool, Compar’d wi’ you— O fool! fool! fool ! How much unlike ! Your hearts are just a standing pool, Your lives a dyke ! XXVII Nae hair-brained, sentimental traces In your unletter’d, nameless faces ! 18 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT In arioso trills and graces Ye never stray; But gravissimo, solemn basses Ye hum away. XXVIII Ye are sae grave, nae doubt ye ’re wise; Nae ferly tho’ ye do despise The hairum-scairum, ram-stam boys, The rattling squad: I see ye upward cast your eyes — Ye ken the road ! XXIX Whilst I — but I shall haud me there, Wi’ you I’ll scarce gang onie where — Then, Jamie, I shall say nae mair, But quat my sang, Content wi’ you to mak a pair, Whare’er I gang. A DREAM Thoughts, words, and deeds, the Statute blames with Teason ; But surely Dreams were ne’er indicted Treason. The outspokenness of this address — partly traceable to the poet’s latent Jacobitism — was distasteful to some of his loyal patrons, who advised that, unless it were modified, it should not be retained inthe 1787 Edition. But, as he wrote to Mrs. Dunlop (30th April), he was “ not ‘very amenable to counsel” in such a matter ; and, his sentiments once published, he scorned either to withdraw them or to dilute his ex- pression. The author of the Ode here ridiculed was Thomas Warton. [Burns introduced A Dream with the following preface]: — On reading in the public papers, the Laure- ate’s Ode with the other parade of June 4th, 1786, the Author was no sooner dropt asleep, than he imagined himself transported to the Birth-day Levee: and, in hig dreaming fancy, made the following Address: — I GuID-MoRNIN to your Majesty ! May Heaven augment your blisses, On ev’ry new birth-day ye see, A humble Poet wishes ! My Bardship here, at your Levee, On sie a day as this is, Is sure an uncouth sight to see, Amang thae birth-day dresses Sae fine this day. II I see ye ’re complimented thrang, By monie a lord an’ lady; God Save the King ’s a cuckoo sang That ’s unco easy said ay: The poets, too, a venal gang, Wi’ rhymes weel-turn’d an’ ready, Wad gar you trow ye ne’er do wrang, But ay unerring steady, On sic a day. III For me ! before a Monareh’s face, Ev’n there I winna flatter; For neither pension, post, nor place, Am I your humble debtor: So, nae reflection on your Grace, Your Kingship to bespatter; There ’s monie waur been 0’ the race, And aiblins ane been better Than you this day. Iv °T is very true my sovereign King, My skill may weel be doubted; But facts are chiels that winna ding, And downa be disputed: Your royal nest, beneath your wing, Is e’en right reft and clouted, And now the third part o’ the string, An’ less, will gang about it Than did ae day. Vv Far be ’t frae me that I aspite To blame your legislation, Or say, ye wisdom want, or fire To rule this mighty nation: But faith ! I muckle doubt, my sire, Ye ’ve trusted ministration To chaps wha in a barn or byre Wad better fill’d their station, Than courts yon day. VI And now ye ’ve gien auld Britain peace, Her broken shins to plaister; Your sair taxation does her fleece, Till she has scarce a tester: For me, thank God, my life ’s a lease, Nae bargain wearin faster, Or faith ! tron, that wi’ the geese, I shortly boost to pasture I’ the craft some day. THE VISION 19 VII I’m no mistrusting Willie Pitt, When taxes he enlarges, (Av’ Will’s a true guid fallow’s get, A name not envy spairges), That he intends to pay your debt, An’ lessen a’ your charges; But, God sake ! let nae saving fit Abridge your bonie barges An’ boats this day. VII Adieu, my Liege ! may Freedom gectk Beneath your high protection; An’ may ye rax Corruption’s neck, And gie her for dissection ! But since I’m here I Il no neglect, In loyal, true affection, To pay your Queen, wi’ due respect, My fealty an’ subjection This great birth-day. Ix Hail, Majesty most Excellent ! While nobles strive to please ye, Will ye accept a compliment, A simple Bardie gies ye ? Thae bonie bairntime Heav’n has lent, Still higher may they heeze ye In bliss, till Fate some day is sent, For ever to release ye Frae care that day. x For you, young Potentate o’ Wales, I tell your Highness fairly, Down Pleasure’s stream, wi’ swelling sails, I’m fauld ye’re driving rarely; But some day ye may gnaw your nails, Aw’ curse your folly sairly, That e’er ye brak Diana’s pales, Or rattl’d dice wi’ Charlie By night or day. xI Yet aft a ragged cowte ’s been known, To mak a noble aiver; So, ye may doucely fill a throne, For a’ their clish-ma-claver: There, him at Agincourt wha shone, Few better were or braver; And yet, wi’ funny, queer Sir John, He was an unco shaver For monie a day. XII For you, right rev’rend Osnaburg, Nane sets the lawn-sleeve sweeter, Altho’ a ribban at your lug Wad been a dress completer: As ye disown yon paughty dog, That bears the keys of Peter, Then swith ! an’ get a wife to hug, Or trowth, ye ’Il stain the mitre Some luckless day ! XII Young, royal Tarry-breeks, I learn, Ye ’ve lately come athwart her — A glorious galley, stem an’ stern Weel rigg’d for Venus’ barter; But first hang out that she ‘Il discern Your hymeneal charter; Then heave aboard your grapple-airn, An’, large upon her quarter, Come full that day. XIV Ye, lastly, bonie blossoms a’, Ye royal lasses dainty, Heav’n mak you guid as weel as braw, Aw’ gie you lads a-plenty ! But sneer na British boys awa! For kings are unco scant ay, An’ German gentles are but sma’: They ’re better just than want ay On onie day. xV God bless you a’! consider now, Ye ’re unco muckle dantet; But ere the course o’ life be through, It may be bitter sautet: An’ I hae seen their coggie fou, That yet hae tarrow’t at it; But or the day was done, I trow, The laggen they hae clautet Fw’ clean that day. THE VISION The division into “ Duans” was borrowed from Ossian: ‘‘ Duan, a term of Ossian’s for the different divisions of a digressive poem. See his Cath-Loda, vol. ii. of M’Pherson’s Translation.” (R.B.) To Duan L, as it ap- pears in the 1786 Edition, seven stanzas were added in that of 1787, and one to Duan II. 20 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT DUAN FIRST “I TuE sun had clos’d the winter day, The curlers quat their roaring play, And hunger’d maukin taen her way To kail-yards green, While faithless snaws ilk step betray Whare she has been. IL The thresher’s weary flingin-tree, The lee-lang day had tired me; And when the day had clos’d his e’e, Far i’ the west, Ben i’ the spence, right pensivelie, I gaed to rest. Ill There, lanely by the ingle-cheek, I sat and ey’d the spewing reek, That fill’d, wi’ hoast-provoking smeek, The auld clay biggin; An’ heard the restless rattons squeak About the riggin. IV All in this mottie, misty clime, I backward mus’d on wasted time: How I had spent my youthfu’ prime, An’ done naething, But stringing blethers up in rhyme, For fools to sing. Vv Had I to guid advice but harkit, I might, by this, hae led a market, Or strutted in a bank and clarkit My cash-account: While here, half-mad, half-fed, half-sarkit, Ts a’ th’ amount. vI I started, mutt’ring “ Blockhead ! coof !”’ An’ heav’d on high my waukit loof, To swear by a’ yon starry roof, Or some rash aith, That I henceforth would be rhyme-proof Till my last breath — VII When click ! the string the snick did draw; And jee! the door gaed to the wa’; And by my ingle-lowe I saw, Now bleezin bright, A tight, outlandish hizzie, braw, Come full in sight. VIII Ye need na doubt, I held my whisht; The infant aith, half-form’d, was crusht; I glowr’d as eerie ’s I’d been dusht, In some wild glen; When sweet, like modest Worth, she blusht, And steppéd ben. Ix Green, slender, leaf-clad holly-boughs Were twisted, gracefu’, round her brows; I took her for some Scottish Muse, By that same token; And come to stop those reckless vows, ‘Would soon been broken. x A “hair-brain’d, sentimental trace ” Was strongly marked in her face; A wildly-witty, rustic grace Shone full upon her; Her eye, ev’n turn’d on empty space, Beam’d keen with honor. XI Down flow’d her robe, a tartan sheen, Till half a leg was scrimply seen; And such a leg! my bonie Jean Could only peer it; Sae straught, sae taper, tight an’ clean ane else came near it. XII Her mantle large, of greenish hue, My gazing wonder chiefly drew; Deep lights and shades, bold-mingling, threw A lustre grand; And seem’d, to my astonish’d view, A well-known land. XIII Here, rivers in the sea were lost; There, mountains to the skies were toss’ts Here, tumbling billows mark’d the coast With surging foam; There, distant shone Art’s lofty boast, The lordly dome. THE VISION 2 XIV Here, Doon pour’d down his far-fetch’d floods; There, well-fed Irwine stately thuds: Auld hermit Ayr staw thro’ his woods, On to the shore; And many a lesser torrent scuds With seeming roar. xV Low, in a sandy valley spread, An ancient borough rear’d her head; Still, as in Scottish story read, She boasts a race To ev’ry nobler virtue bred, And polish’d grace. XVI By stately tow’r, or palace fair, Or ruins pendent in the air, Bold stems of heroes, here and there, I could discern; Some seem’d to muse, some seem’d to dare, With feature stern. XVII My heart did glowing transport feel, To see a race heroic wheel, And brandish round the deep-dyed steel In sturdy blows; While, back-recoiling, seem’d to reel Their suthron foes. XVIII His Country’s Saviour, mark him well ! Bold Richardton’s heroic swell; The chief, on Sark who glorious fell In high command; And he whom ruthless fates expel His native land. xIxX There, where a sceptr’d Pictish shade Stalk’d round his ashes lowly laid, I mark’d a martial race, pourtray’d In colours strong: Bold, soldier-featur’d, undismay’d, They strode along. xx Thro’ many a wild, romantic grove, Near many a hermit-fancied cove (Fit haunts for friendship or for love In musing mood), . An aged Judge, I saw him rove, Dispensing good. XXI With deep-struck, reverential awe, The learned Sire and Son I saw: To Nature’s God, and Nature’s law, They gave their lore; This, all its source and end to draw, That, to adore. XXII Brydon’s brave ward I well could spy, Beneath old Scotia’s smiling eye; Who call’d on Fame, low standing by, To hand him on, Where many a patriot-name on high, And hero shone. DUAN SECOND I With musing-deep, astonish’d stare, I view’d the heavenly-seeming Fair; A whisp’ring throb did witness bear Of kindred sweet, When with an elder sister’s air She did me greet. II « All hail ! my own inspiréd Bard ! In me thy native Muse regard ! Nor longer mourn thy fate is hard, Thus poorly low! I come to give thee such reward, As we bestow. Ilr “ Know, the great Genius of this land Has many a light aerial band, Who, all beneath his high command, Harmoniously, As arts or arms they understand, Their labors ply. Iv “They Scotia’s race among them share: Some fire the soldier on to dare; Some rouse the patriot up to bare Corruption’s heart; Some teach the bard — a darling care ~ The tuneful art. 22 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT Vv “Mong swelling floods of reeking gore, They, ardent, kindling spirits, pour; Or, ’mid the venal Senate’s roar, They, sightless, stand, To mend the honest patriot-lore, And grace the hand. VI « And when the bard, or hoary sage, Charm or instruct the future age, They bind the wild poetic rage In energy; Or point the inconclusive page Full on the eye. VII “Hence, Fullarton, the brave and young; Hence, Dempster’s zeal-inspiréd tongue; Hence, sweet, harmonious Beattie sung His Minstrel lays, Or tore, with noble ardour stung, The sceptic’s bays. VIII “To lower orders are assign’d The humbler ranks of human-kind, The rustic bard, the laboring hind, The artisan; All chuse, as various they ’re inclin’d, The various man. Ix “When yellow waves the heavy grain, The threat’ning storm some strongly rein, Some teach to meliorate the plain, With tillage-skill; And some instruct the shepherd-train, Blythe o’er the hill. x “ Some hint the lover’s harmless wile; Some grace the maiden’s artless smile; Some soothe the laborer’s weary toil For humble gains, And make his cottage-scenes beguile His cares and pains. XI “Some, bounded to a district-space, Explore at large man’s infant race, To mark the embryotic trace Of rustic bard; And careful note each opening grace, A guide and guard. XII “Of these am I — Coila my name: And this district as mine I claim, Where once the Campbells, chiefs of fame, Held ruling pow’r: I mark’d thy embryo-tuneful flame, Thy natal hour. XIII “With future hope I oft would gaze, Fond, on thy little early ways: Thy rudely caroll’d, chiming phrase, In uncouth rhymes; Fir’d at the simple, artless lays Of other times. XIV “T saw thee seek the sounding shore, Delighted with the dashing roar; Or when the North his fleecy store Drove thro’ the sky, I saw grim Nature’s visage hoar Struck thy young eye. XV “ Or when the deep green-mantled earth Warm cherish’d ev’ry flow’ret’s birth, And joy and music pouring forth In ev’ry grove; I saw thee eye the gen’ral mirth With boundless love. XVI “ When ripen’d fields and azure skies Call’d forth the reapers’ rustling noise, I saw thee leave their ev’ning joys, And lonely stalk, To vent thy bosom’s swelling rise, In pensive walk. XVII “When youthful Love, warm - blushing, strong, Keen-shivering, shot thy nerves along, Those accents grateful to thy tongue, Th’ adoréd Name, I taught thee how to pour in song To soothe thy flame. XVIII “Tsaw thy pulse’s maddening play, Wild-send thee Pleasure’s devious way, HALLOWEEN 23 Misled by Faney’s meteor-ray, By passion driven; But yet the light that led astray Was light from Heaven. xIX “T taught thy manners-painting strains The loves, the ways of simple swains, Till now, o’er all my wide domains Thy fame extends; And some, the pride of Coila’s plains, Become thy friends. xX “ Thou canst not learn, nor can I show, To paint with Thomson’s landscape glow; Or wake the bosom-melting throe With Shenstone’s art; Or pour, with Gray, the moving flow Warm on the heart. XXI “ Yet, all beneath th’ unrivall’d rose, The lowly daisy sweetly blows ; Tho’ large the forest’s monarch throws His army-shade, Yet green the juicy hawthorn grows Adown the glade. XXII “ Then never murmur nor repine; Strive in thy humble sphere to shine; And trust me, not Potosi’s mine, Nor king’s regard, Can give a bliss o’ermatching thine, A rustic Bard. XXIII “To give my counsels all in one: Thy tuneful flame still careful fan; Preserve the dignity of Man, With soul erect; And trust the Universal Plan Will all protect. XXIV “And wear thou this” — She solemn said, And bound the holly round my head: The polish’d leaves and berries red Did rustling play; And, like a passing thought, she fled In light away. HALLOWEEN Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain, The simple pleasures of the lowly train : To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art. GoLDsMITH. A Halloween by John Mayne, author of the Siller Gun, appeared in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine in November, 1780. It is written in the six-line stave in rime couée of The Piper of Kilbarchan (see prefatory note to Address to the Deil) and suggested little to Burns except, perhaps, his theme. Burns prefaces his verses thus: ‘The following poem will, by many readers, be well enough understood ; but for the sake of those who are unacquainted with the manners and traditions of the country where the scene is cast, notes are added, to give some account of the principal charms and spells of that night, so big with prophecy to the peas- antry in the west of Scotland. The passion of prying into futurity makes a striking part of the history of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may be some entertainment to a philosophic mind, if any such should honor the author with a perusal, to see the remains of it among the more un- enlightened in our own.” I Upon that night, when fairies light On Cassilis Downans dance, Or owre the lays, in splendid blaze, On sprightly coursers prance; Or for Colean the rout is taen, Beneath the moon’s pale beams; There, up the Cove, to stray and rove, Amang the rocks and streams To sport that night: IL Amang the bonie winding banks, Where Doon rins, wimplin, clear; Where Bruce ance ruled the martial ranks, An’ shook his Carrick spear; Some merry, friendly, country-folks Together did convene, To burn their nits, an’ pou their stocks, An’ hand their Halloween Fw’ blythe that night. IIT The lassies feat an’ cleanly neat, Mair braw than when they ’re fine; Their faces blythe fu’ sweetly kythe Hearts leal, an’ warm, an’ kin’: 24 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT The lads sae trig, wi’ wooer-babs Weel-knotted on their garten; Some unco blate, an’ some wi’ gabs Gar lasses’ hearts gang startin Whyles fast at night. IV Then, first an’ foremost, thro’ the kail, Their stocks maun a’ be sought ance; They steek their een, an’ grape an’ wale For muckle anes, an’ straught anes. Poor hav’rel Will fell aff the drift, An’ wandered thro’ the bow-kail, An’ pow’t, for want o’ better shift, A runt, was like a sow-tail, Sae bow’t that night. Vv Then, straught or crooked, yird or nane, They roar an’ ery a’ throu’ther; The vera wee-things, toddlin, rin Wi’ stocks out-owre their shouther: An’ gif the custock ’s sweet or sour, Wi joctelegs they taste them; Syne coziely, aboon the door, Wi cannie care, they ’ve plac’d them To lie that night. VI The lasses staw frae ’mang them a’, To pou their stalks o’ corn; But Rab slips out, an’ jinks about, Behint the muckle thorn: He grippet Nelly hard an’ fast; Loud skirl’d a’ the lasses; But her tap-pickle maist was lost, Whan kiutlin in the fause-house Wi’ him that night. VII The auld guid-wife’s weel-hoordet nits Are round an’ round divided, An’ monie lads’ an’ lasses’ fates Are there that night decided: Some kindle couthie, side by side, An’ burn thegither trimly; Some start awa wi’ saucy pride, An’ jump out-owre the chimlie Fw’ high that night. VIII Jean slips in twa, wi’ tentie e’e; Wha ’t was, she wadna tell; But this is Jock, an’ this is me, She says in to hersel: 2 He bleez’d owre her, an’ she owre him, As they wad never mair part; Till fuff! he started up the lum, And Jean had e’en a sair heart To see ’t that night. IX Poor Willie, wi’ his bow-kail runt, Was burnt wi’ primsie Mallie; An’ Mary, nae doubt, took the drunt, To be compar’d to Willie: Mall’s nit lap out, wi’ pridefu’ fling, An’ her ain fit, it burnt it; While Willie lap, an’ swoor by jing, °T was just the way he wanted To be that night. x Nell had the fause-house in her min’, She pits hersel an’ Rob in; In loving bleeze they sweetly join, Till white in ase they ’re sobbin: Nell’s heart was dancin at the view; She whisper’d Rob to leuk for ’t: Rob, stownlins, prie’d her bonie mou, Fw’ cozie in the neuk for ’t, Unseen that night. xI But Merran sat behint their backs, Her thoughts on Andrew Bell; She lea’es them gashing at their cracks, An’ slips out by hersel: She thro’ the yard the nearest taks, An’ to the kiln she goes then, An’ darklins grapit for the bauks, And in the blue-clue throws then, Right fear’t that night. XII An’ ay she win’t, an’ ay she swat — I wat she made nae jaukin; Till something held within the pat, Guid Lord! but she was quakin! But whether ’*t was the Deil himsel, Or whether ’t was a bauk-en’, Or whether it was Andrew Bell, She did na wait on talkin To spier that night. XIII Wee Jenny to her graunie says, “Will ye go wi’ me, graunie ? I’ll eat the apple at the glass, I gat frae uncle Johnie :” HALLOWEEN 25 She fuff’t her pipe wi’ sic a lunt, In wrath she was sae vap’rin, She notic’t na an aizle brunt Her braw, new, worset apron Out thro’ that night. XIV “Ye little skelpie-limmer’s-face ! I daur ye try sic sportin, As seek the Foul Thief onie place, For him to spae your fortune: Nae doubt but ye may get a sight! Great cause ye hae to fear it; For monie a ane has gotten a fright, An’ liv’d an’ died deleeret, On sic a night. xv “ Ae hairst afore the Sherra-moor, I mind ’t as weel’s yestreen — I was a gilpey then, I’m sure I was na past fyfteen: The simmer had been eauld an’ wat, An’ stuff was unco green; An’ ay a rantin kirn we gat, An’ just on Halloween It fell that night. XVI “Our stibble-rig was Rab M’Graen, A clever, sturdy fallow; His sin gat Eppie Sim wi’ wean, That lived in Achmachalla: He gat hemp-seed, I mind it weel, An’ he made unco light 0’t; But monie a day was by himsel, He was sae sairly frighted That vera night.” XVII Then up gat fechtin Jamie Fleck, Aw’ he swoor by his conscience, That he could saw hemp-seed a peck; For it was a’ but nonsense: The auld guidman raught down the pock, An’ out a handfu’ gied him; Syne bad him slip frae ’mang the folk, Sometime when nae ane see’d him, Av’ try’t that night. XVIII He marches thro’ amang the stacks, Tho’ he was something sturtin; The graip he for a harrow taks, And haurls at his curpin; And ev’ry now and then, he says, “ Hemp-seed I saw thee, An’ her that is to be my lass Come after me, an’ draw thee As fast this night.” xXIx He whistl’d up Lord Lenox’ March, To keep his courage cheery; Altho’ his hair began to arch, He was sae fley’d an’ eerie; Till presently he hears a squeak, An’ then a grane an’ gruntle; He by his shouther gae a keek, Av’ tumbl’d wi’ a wintle Out-owre that night. XxX He roar’d a horrid murder-shout, ~ In dreadfu’ desperation ! An’ young an’ auld come rinnin out, An’ hear the sad narration: He swoor ’t was hilchin Jean M’Craw, Or crouchie Merran Humphie — Till stop ! she trotted thro’ them a’; Aw’ wha was it but grumphie Asteer that night ? XXI Meg fain wad to the barn gaen, To winn three wechts o’ naething; But for to meet the Deil her lane, She pat but little faith in: She gies the herd a pickle nits, Aw’ twa red-cheekit apples, To watch, while for the barn she sets, In hopes to see Tam Kipples That vera night. XXII She turns the key wi’ cannie thraw, An’ owre the threshold ventures; But first on Sawnie gies a ca’, Syne bauldly in she enters: A ratton rattl’d up the wa’, An’ she ery’d, L—d preserve her! An’ ran thro’ midden-hole an’ a’, An’ pray’d wi’ zeal and fervour Fw’ fast that night. XXIII They hoy’t out Will, wi’ sair advice; They hecht him some fine braw ane; It chane’d the stack he faddom’t thrice Was timmer-propt for thrawin: 26 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT He taks a swirlie, auld moss-oak For some black gruesome carlin; An’ loot a winze, an’ drew a stroke, Till skin in blypes cam haurlin Aff’s nieves that night. XXIV A wanton widow Leezie was, As cantie as a kittlin; But och ! that night, amang the shaws, She gat a fearfw’ settlin ! She thro’ the whins, an’ by the cairn, An’ owre the hill gaed scrievin; Whare three lairds’ lands met at a burn, To dip her left sark-sleeve in Was bent that night. XXV Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, As thro’ the glen it wimpl’t; Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays, Whiyles in a wiel it dimpl’t; Whyles glitter’d to the nightly rays, Wi’ bickerin, dancin dazzle; Whyles cookit underneath the braes, Below the spreading hazel Unseen that night. XXVI Amang the brachens, on the brae, Between her an’ the moon, The Deil, or else an outler quey, Gat up an’ gae a croon: Poor Leezie’s heart maist lap the hool; Near lav’rock-height she jumpit, But mist a fit, an’ in the pool Out-owre the lugs she plumpit ‘Wi’ a plunge that night. XXVII In order, on the clean hearth-stane, The luggies three are ranged; And ev’ry time great care is taen To see them duly changed: Auld uncle John, wha wedlock’s joys Sin Mar’s-year did desire, Because he gat the toom dish thrice, He heav’d them on the fire In wrath that night. XXVIII Wi’ merry sangs, an’ friendly cracks, I wat they did na weary; And unco tales, an’ funnie jokes — Their sports were cheap an’ cheery: Till butter’d sow’ns, wi’ fragrant lunt, Set a’ their gabs a-steerin; Syne, wi’ a social glass o’ strunt, They parted aff careerin Fw’ blythe that night. THE AULD FARMER’S NEW- YEAR MORNING SALUTATION TO HIS AULD MARE, MAGGIE ON GIVING HER THE ACCUSTOMED RIPP OF CORN TO HANSEL IN THE NEW- YEAR [Probably composed about the beginning of 1786.] I A Gum New-Year I wish thee, Maggie ! Hae, there ’s a ripp to thy auld baggie: Tho’ thou ’s howe-backit now, an’ knaggie, I’ve seen the day Thou could hae gaen like onie staggie, Out-owre the lay. Il Tho’ now thou’s dowie, stiff, an’ crazy, An’ thy auld hide as white ’s a daisie, I’ve seen thee dappl’t, sleek, an’ glaizie, A bonie gray: He should been tight that daur’t to raize thee, Ance in a day. III Thou ance was i’ the foremost rank, A filly buirdly, steeve, an’ swank; An’ set weel down a shapely shank As e’er tread yird; An’ could hae flown out-owre a stank Like onie bird. IV It’s now some nine-an’-twenty year Sin’ thou was my guid-father’s meere; He gied me thee, o’ tocher clear, An’ fifty mark; Tho’ it was sma’, ’t was weel-won gear, An’ thou was stark. Vv When first I gaed to woo my Jenny, Ye then was trottin wi’ your minnie: THE AULD FARMER TO HIS AULD MARE, MAGGIE 27 Tho’ ye was trickie, slee, an’ funnie, Ye ne’er was donsie; But hamely, tawie, quiet, an’ cannie, An’ unco sonsie. VI That day, ye prane’d wi’ muckle pride, When ye bure hame my bonie bride: An’ sweet an’ gracefu’ she did ride, Wi’ maiden air ! Kyle-Stewart I could braggéd wide, For sic a pair. . VII Tho’ now ye dow but hoyte and hobble, An’ wintle like a saumont-coble, That day, ye was a jinker noble, For heels an’ win’! An’ ran them till they a’ did wauble, Far, far behin’ ! VIII When thou an’ I were young and skiegh, An’ stable-meals at fairs were driegh, How thou wad prance, an’ snore, an’ skriegh, An’ tak the road! Town’s-bodies ran, an’ stood abiegh, An’ ca’t thee mad. Ix When thou was corn’t, an’ I was mellow, We took the road ay like a swallow: At brooses thou had ne’er a fellow, For pith an’ speed; But ev’ry tail thou pay’t them hollow, Whare’er thou gaed. x The sma’, droop-rumpl’t, hunter cattle Might aiblins waur’t thee for a brattle; But sax Scotch miles thou try’t their mettle, An’ gar’t them whaizle: Nae whip nor spur, but just a wattle O’ saugh or hazle. XI Thou was a noble fittie-lan’, As e’er in tug or tow was drawn: Aft thee an’ I, in aught hours’ gaun, On guid March-weather, Hae turn’d sax rood beside our han’ For days thegither. XII Thou never braing’t, an’ fetch’t, an’ fliskit; But thy auld tail thou wad hae whiskit, An’ spread abreed thy weel-fill’d brisket, Wi’ pith an’ pow’r; Till sprittie knowes wad rair’t, an’ riskit, Av’ slypet owre. XIII When frosts lay lang, an’ snaws were deep, An’ threaten’d labour back to keep, I gied thy cog a wee bit heap Aboon the timmer: I ken’d my Maggie wad na sleep For that, or simmer. xIV In cart or car thou never reestit ; The steyest brae thou wad hae fac’t it; Thou never lap, an’ sten’t, an’ breastit, Then stood to blaw; But just thy step a wee thing hastit, Thou snoov’t awa. xv My pleugh is now thy bairntime a’, Four gallant brutes as e’er did draw; Forbye sax mae I’ve sell’t awa, That thou hast nurst: They drew me thretteen pund an’ twa, The vera warst. XVI Monie a sair darg we twa hae wrought, An’ wi’ the weary warl’ fought ! An’ monie an anxious day I thought We wad be beat ! Yet here to crazy age we ’re brought, Wi’ something yet. XVII An’ think na, my auld trusty servan’, That now perhaps thou ’s less deservin, An’ thy auld days may end in starvin; For my last fow, A heapet stimpart, Ill reserve ane Laid by for you. XVII We ’ve worn to crazy years thegither; We ’ll toyte about wi’ ane anither; Wi’ tentie care I ll flit thy tether To some hain’d rig, Whare ye may nobly rax your leather Wi’ sma’ fatigue. 28 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT THE COTTER’S SATURDAY NIGHT INSCRIBED TO R. AIKEN, ESQ. Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure ; Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. RAY. The Cotter’s Saturday Night is included in the list of poems mentioned by Burns in his letter to Richmond, 17th February, 1786 ; it was therefore composed between the beginning of November, 1785, and that date. Gilbert Burns relates that Robert first repeated it to him in the course of a walk one Sunday after- noon. He also states that the ‘‘hint of the plan, and the title of the poem,” were taken from Fergusson’s Farmer’s Ingle. This is true, but the piece as a whole is formed on English models. It is the most artificial and the most imitative of Burns’s works. Not only is the influence of Gray’s Elegy conspicu- ous, but also there are echoes of Pope, Thom- son, Goldsmith, and even Milton; while the stanza, which was taken, not from Spenser, whom Burns had not then read, but from Beattie and Shenstone, is so purely English as to lie outside the range of Burns’s experience and accomplishment. ‘‘ These English songs,” he wrote long afterwards (1794) to Thomson, “ gravel me to death. I have not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think my ideas are more barren in English than in Scottish.” This is so far true as to make one wish that here, as elsewhere, he had chosen a Scots exemplar: that he had taken (say) not merely the scheme but also the stave —a, b, a, b,c, d, c, d, d—of The Farmer’s Ingle, and sought after effects which he could accomplish in « medium of which he was absolute master. As it is, The Cotter’s Saturday Night is supposed to paint an essen- tially Scottish phase of life; but the Scottish element in the diction — to say nothing of the Scottish cast of the effect —is comparatively slight throughout, and in many stanzas is alto- gether wanting. In the 94 Edition the vernacu- lar was a little coloured by a more general sub- stitution of an’ for and, wi’ for with, and so on. But it may be that Tytler, rather than Burns, was responsible for this ; and the earlier ce being in better keeping with the general English cast, has been retained. I My lov’d, my honor’d, much respected friend ! No mercenary bard his homage pays; With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end, My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise : To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays, The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene; The native feelings strong, the guileless ways ; What Aiken in a cottage would have been; Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier there I ween! II November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh; The short’ning winter-day is near a close ; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The black’ning trains 0’ craws to their repose: The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes — This night his weekly moil is at an end, Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend, And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend. TIt At length his lonely cot appears in view, Beneath the shelter of an aged tree; Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through To meet their dad, wi’ flichterin’ noise and glee. His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie, His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie’s smile, The lisping infant, prattling on his knee, Does a’ his weary kiaugh and care beguile, And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil. Iv Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, At service out, amang the farmers roun’; Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some ten- tie rin A cannie errand to a neebor town: Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her e’e, Comes hame; perhaps, to shew a braw new gown, THE COTTER’S SATURDAY NIGHT 29 Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, To help her parents dear, if they in hard- ship be. Vv With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet, And each for other’s weelfare kindly Spiers: The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d fleet; Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears. The parents partial eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view; The mother, wi’ her needle and her sheers, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new; The father ‘mixes a’ wi’ admonition due. VI Their master’s and their mistress’s com- mand The younkers a’ are warned to obey; And mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand, And ne’er, tho’ out o’ sight, to jauk or play: * And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway, And mind your duty, duly, morn and night; Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray, Tmplore His counsel and assisting might: They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright.” VII But hark! a rap comes gently to the door; Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same, Tells how a neebor lad came o’er the moor, To do some errands, and convoy her hame. The wily mother sees the conscious flame Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek; With heart-struck anxious care, enquires his name, While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak; Weel-pleas’d the mother hears, it’s nae wild, worthless rake. VIII With kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben; A strappin’ youth, he takes the mother’s eye; Blythe Jenny sees the visit ’s no ill taen; The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy, But blate and laithfu’, searce can weel be- have; The mother, wi’ a woman’s wiles, can spy What makes the youth sae bashfu’ and sae grave; 1 Weel-p eas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave. IX O happy love! where love like this is found; O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond com- are ! I’ve pacéd much this weary, mortal round, And sage experience bids me this de- clare: — “Tf Heaven a draught of heavenly pleas- ure spare, One cordial in this melancholy vale, *Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair, In other’s arms, breathe out the tender tale Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the ev’ning gale.” x Is there, in human form, that bears a heart, A wretch! a villain! lost to love and truth ! That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art, Betray sweet Jenny’s unsuspecting youth? Curse on his perjur’d arts ! dissembling, smooth ! Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exil’d ? Is there no pity, no relenting ruth, Points to the parents fondling o’er their child ? Then paints the ruin’d maid, and their distraction wild ? XI But now the supper crowns their simple board, The healsome parritch, chief 0’ Scotia’s food; The soupe their only hawkie does afford, That ’yont the hallan snugly chows her cood; The dame brings forth, in complimental mood, 30 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck, fell; : And aft he’s prest, and aft he ca’s it guid; The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell, How ’t was a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’ the bell. XII The chearfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face, They, round the ingle, form a circle wide; The sire turns o’er, wi’ patriarchal grace, The big ha’-Bible, ance his father’s pride. His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care, And “ Let us worship God!” he says, with solemn air. XIII They chant their artless notes in simple guise, They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim; Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise. Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name; Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame, ~ The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays: Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame; The tickl’d ears no heart-felt raptures raise; Nae unison hae they, with our Creator’s praise. ; XIV The priest-like father reads the sacred age How Abram was the friend of God on high; Or, Moses bade cternal warfare wage With Amalek’s ungracious progeny; Or, how the royal Bard did groaning lie Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire; Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing ery; Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire; Or other holy Seers that tune the sacred lyre. xV Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme: How es blood for guilty man was shed; How He, who bore in Heaven the second name, Had not on earth whereon to lay His head; How His first followers and servants sped; The precepts sage they wrote to many « land: How he, who lone in Patmos banishéd, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pro- noune’d by Heaven’s command. XVI Then kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal S> The saint, the father, and the husband prays: Hope “springs exulting on triumphant 7 7 wing, That thus they all shall meet in future days, There, ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear, Together hymning their Creator’s praise, In such society, yet still more dear; While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere. XVII Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s pride, In all the pomp of method, and of art; When men display to congregations wide Devotion’s ev’ry grace, except the heart, The Power, incens’d, the pageant will desert, The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; But haply, in some cottage far apart, May hear, well-pleas’d, the language of the soul, And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll. XVIII Then homeward all take off their sev’ral way; The youngling cottagers retire to rest: The parent-pair their secret homage pay, TO A MOUSE 31 And proffer up to Heaven the warm request, That He who stills the raven’s clam’rous nest, ‘And decks the lily fair in flow’ry pride, Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best, For them and for their little ones provide; But, chiefly, in their hearts with Grace Divine preside. XIX From scenes like these, old Scotia’s gran- deur springs, That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad: Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, « An honest man’s the noblest work of God;” And certes, in fair Virtue’s heavenly road, The cottage leaves the palace far behind; What is a lordling’s pomp? a cumbrous load, Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, Studied in arts of Hell, in wickedness re- fin’d ! xX O Scotia! my dear, my native soil ! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent ! Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content ! ¢ And O! may Heaven thei” simple lives prevent From Luxury’s contagion, weak and vile ! Then, howe’er crowns and coronets be rent, A virtuous populace may rise the while, And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov’d Isle. XXI O Thou! who pour’d the patriotic tide, That stream’d thro’ Wallace’s undaunted heart, Who dar’d to, nobly, stem tyrannic pride, Or nobly die, the second glorious part: ce patriot’s God, peculiarly Thou art, is friend, inspirer, guardian, and re- ward !) : O never, never Scotia’s realm desert; But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard ! TO A MOUSE ON TURNING HER UP IN HER NEST WITH THE PLOUGH, NOVEMBER, 1785 Gilbert Burns testifies that these verses were suggested by the incident in the heading of the poem, and composed “ while the author was holding the plough.” I WEz, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie, O, what a panic ’s in thy breastie ! Thou need na start awa sae hasty Wi’ bickering brattle ! I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee, Wi’ murdering pattle ! II I’m truly sorry man’s dominion Has broken Nature’s social union, An’ justifies that ill opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor, earth-born companion Av’ fellow mortal ! OT I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve; What then ? poor beastie, thou maun live A daimen icker in a thrave *S a sma’ request; I'll get a blessin wi’ the lave, An’ never miss ’t ! Iv Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin ! Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin ! An’ naething, now, to big a new ane, O’ foggage green ! An’ bleak December’s win’s ensuin, Baith snell an’ keen ! Vv Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste. An’ weary winter comin fast, An’ cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell, Till crash ! the cruel coulter past Out thro’ thy cell. 32 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT VI That wee bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble, Has cost thee monie a weary nibble! Now thou’s turned out, for a’ thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter’s sleety dribble, An’ cranreuch cauld ! VII But Mousie, thou art no thy lane, In proving foresight may be vain: The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, For promis’d joy ! VIII Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me! The present only tuucheth thee: But och! I backward cast my e’e, On prospects drear ! An’ forward, tho’ I canna see, I guess an’ fear ! EPISTLE TO DAVIE, A BROTHER POET JANUARY The Davie of this Epistle was David Sillar, third son of Patrick Sillar, farmer at Spittle- side, near Tarbolton, born in 1760. He made the acquaintance of Burns early in 1781 ai. Lochlie; in May of that year was admitted a member of the Bachelors’ Club ; was for some time interim teacher in the parish school, Tar- bolton, and afterwards started an ‘‘ adventure,”’ school at, Commonside ; opened a grocer’s shop in Irvine towards the close of 1783; published in 1789 a volume of Poems in imitation of Burns, who helped him to get subscribers ; after an attempt to get literary work in Edin- burgh, returned to Irvine, where he took up teaching again, and ultimately became town councillor and magistrate; died 2d May, 1830. Burns, in his Second Epistle to Davie (see p. 128), with which Sillar prefaced his own Poems, thus chided him for his neglect of the Muse :— “*Sic han’s as you sud ne’er be faiket, Be hain’t wha like.” But this estimate was not justified: Sillar’s published verses are mere commonplace. A letter giving his recollections of Burns was published in Josiah Walker’s Edition (1811), and has often been reprinted. Sillar, whose skill as a fiddler may partly explain Burns’s admiration, wrote the air to which A_ Rosebud by my Early Walk was set in Jobnson’s Museum. “Tt was, I think, in the summer of 1784” writes Gilbert Burns, “ when in the intervals of harder labour Robert and I were weeding in the garden, that he repeated to me the principal part of this Epistle.” I Waite winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw, And bar the doors wi’ drivin’ snaw, And hing us owre the ingle, I set. me down to pass the time, And spin a verse or twa o’ rhyme, In hamely, westlin jingle: While frosty winds blaw in the drift, Ben to the chimla lug, I grudge a wee the great-folk’s gift, That live sae bien an’ snug: I tent less, and want less Their roomy fire-side; But hanker, and canker, To see their curséd pride. II It’s hardly in a body’s pow’r, To keep, at times, frae being sour, To see how things are shar’d; How best o’ chiels are whyles in want, While coofs on countless thousands rant, And ken na how to ware ’t; But Davie, lad, ne’er fash your head, Tho’ we hae little gear; We’re fit t¢,)7in our daily bread, As lang ’s ‘we’re hale and fier: “ Mair spier na, nor fear na,” Auld age ne’er mind a feg; The last o’t, the warst o’t, Is only but to beg. TIt To lie in kilns and barns at e’en, ‘When banes are craz’d, and bluid is thin, Is, doubtless, great distress ! Yet then content could make us blest; Ev’n then, sometimes, we ’d snatch a taste Of truest happiness. The honest heart that ’s free frae a’ Intended fraud or guile, However Fortune kick the ba’, Has ay some cause to smile; And mind still, you’Il find still, A comfort this nae sma’; EPISTLE TO DAVIE, A BROTHER POET 33 Nae mair then, we ’ll care then, Nae farther can we fa’, Iv What tho’, like commoners of air, We wander out, we know not where, But either house or hal’ ? Yet Nature’s charms, the hills and woods, The sweeping vales, and foaming floods, Are free alike to all. In days when daisies deck the ground, And blackbirds whistle clear, With honest joy our hearts will bound, To see the coming year: On braes when we please then, We'll sit an’ sowth a tune; Syne rhyme till ’t we ’ll time till ’t, An’ sing ’t when we hae done. Vv It’s no in titles nor in rank: It’s no in wealth like Lon’on Bank, To purchase peace and rest. It’s no in makin muckle, mair; It’s no in books, it’s no in lear, To make us truly blest: If happiness hae not her seat An’ centre in the breast, We may be wise, or rich, or great, But never can be blest ! Nae treasures nor pleasures a Could make us happy lang; The heart ay ’s the part ay That makes us right or wrang. vI Think ye, that sie as you and I, Wha drudge and drive thro’ wet and dry, Wi’ never ceasing toil; Think ye, are we less blest than they, Wha scarcely tent us in their way, As hardly worth their while ? Alas ! how oft, in haughty mood, God’s creatures they oppress ! Or else, neglecting a’ that’s guid, They riot in excess ! Baith careless and fearless Of either Heaven or Hell; Esteeming and deeming It a’ an idle tale ! VII Then let us chearfu’ acquiesce, Nor make our scanty pleasures less By pining at our state: And, even should misfortunes come, I here wha sit hae met wi’ some, An’s thankfu’ for them yet, They gie the wit of age to youth; They let us ken oursel; They make us see the naked truth, The real guid and ill: Tho’ losses and crosses Be lessons right severe, There’s wit there, ye "ll get there, Ye ’ll find nae other where. VIII But tent me, Davie, ace o’ hearts ! (To say aught less wad wrang the cartes, And flatt’ry I detest) This life has joys for you and I; And joys that riches ne’er could buy, And joys the very best. There ’s a’ the pleasures o’ the heart, The lover an’ the frien’: Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part, And I my darling Jean! It warms me, it charms me To mention but her name: It heats me, it beets me, And sets me a’ on flame ! 1x O all ye Pow’rs who rule above ! O Thou whose very self art love ! Thou know’st my words sincere ! The life-blood streaming thro’ my heart, Or my more dear immortal part, Is not more fondly dear ! When heart-corroding care and grief Deprive my soul of rest, Her dear idea brings relief And solace to my breast, Thou Being All-seeing, O, hear my fervent pray’r! Still take her, and make her Thy most peculiar care ! x All hail! ye tender feelings dear ! The smile of love, the friendly tear, The sympathetic glow ! Long since, this world’s thorny ways Had number’d out my weary days, Had it not been for you ! Fate still has blest me with a friend In every care and ill; And oft a more endearing band, A tie more tender still. 34 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT It lightens, it brightens The tenebrific scene, To meet with, and greet with My Davie or my Jean! XI O, how that Name inspires my style! The words come skelpin’ rank an’ file, Amaist before I ken ! The ready measure rins as fine, As Phebus and the famous Nine Were glowrin owre my pen. My spaviet Pegasus will limp, Till ance he’s fairly het; And then he ’1l hilch, an’ stilt, an’ jimp, And rin an unco fit; But least then, the beast then Should rue this hasty ride, Tl light now, and dight now | His sweaty, wizen’d hide. THE LAMENT OCCASIONED BY THE UNFORTUNATE ISSUE OF A FRIEND’S AMOUR Alas ! how oft does Goodness wound itself, And sweet Affection prove the spring of A ! (OME. “The unfortunate issue,” not of a “ friend’s,” but of his own “amour,”— when Jean Ar- mour, overborne by paternal authority, agreed to discard him,—was, Burns declares, the “ unfortunate story alluded to” in the Lament : a ‘shocking affair’’ he calls it, which had nearly given him “ one or two of the principal qualifications among those who have lost the chart and mistaken the reckoning of ration- ality.” According to Gilbert, the poem was composed “after the first distraction of his feelings had a little subsided.” I O rxHov pale Orb that silent shines While care-untroubled mortals sleep ! Thou seest a wretch who inly pines, And wanders here to wail and weep ! With Woe I nightly vigils keep, Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam; And mourn, in lamentation deep, How life and love are all a dream ! Il I joyless view thy rays adorn The faintly-marked, distant hill; I joyless view thy trembling horn Reflected in the gurgling rill: My fondly-fiuttering heart, be still ! Thou busy pow’r, Remembrance, cease ! Ah! must the agonizing thrill For ever bar returning Peace ? Ir No idly-feign’d, poetic pains My sad, love-lorn lamentings claim: No shepherd’s pipe — Arcadian strains; No fabled tortures quaint and tame. The plighted faith, the mutual flame, The oft-attested Pow’rs above, The promis’d father’s tender name, These were the pledges of my love ! Iv | Encircled in her clasping arms, How have the raptur’d moments flown ! How have I wished for Fortune’s charms, For her dear sake, and hers alone ! And, must I think it ! is she gone, My secret heart’s exulting boast ? And does she heedless hear my groan ? And is she ever, ever lost ? Vv O! can she bear so base a heart, So lost to honor, lost to truth, As‘from the fondest lover part, The plighted husband of her youth ? Alas ! Life’s path may be unsmooth ! Her way may lie thro’ rough distress ! Then, who her pangs and pains will soothe, Her sorrows share, and make them less ? VI Ye wingéd Hours that o’er us pass’d, Enraptur’d more the more enjoy’d, Your dear remembrance in my breast My fondly treasur’d thoughts employ’d: That breast, how dreary now, and void, For her too scanty once of room ! Ev’n ev’ry ray of Hope destroy’d, And not a wish to gild the gloom ! VII The morn, that warns th’ approaching day, Awakes me up to toil and woe; I see the hours in long array, That I must suffer, lingering slow: Full many a pang, and many a throe, DESPONDENCY 35 Keen Recollection’s direful train, Must wring my soul, ere Phebus, low, Shall kiss the distant western main. VIII And when my nightly couch I try, Sore-harass’d out with care and grief, My toil-beat nerves and tear-worn eye Keep watchings with the nightly thief: Or, if I slumber, Fancy, chief, Reigns, haggard-wild, in sore ae Ev’n day, all-bitter, brings relie From such a horror-breathing night. Ix O thou bright Queen, who, o’er th’ ex- panse Now highest reign’st, with boundless sway ! Oft has thy silent-marking glance Observ’d us, fondly-wand’ring, stray ! The time, unheeded, sped away, While Love’s luxurious pulse beat high, Beneath thy silver-gleaming ray, To mark the mutual-kindling eye. x O scenes in strong remembrance set ! Scenes, never, never to return! Scenes if in stupor I forget, Again I feel, again I burn ! From ev’ry joy and pleasure torn, Life’s weary vale I wander thro’; And hopeless, comfortless, I ll mourn A faithless woman’s broken vow ! DESPONDENCY AN ODE Composed, no doubt, a little after The La- ment. I Oppress’p with grief, oppress’d with care, A burden more than I can bear, I set me down and sigh; O Life! thou art a galling load, Along a rough, a weary road, To wretches such as I! Dim-backward, as I cast my view, What sick’ning scenes appear ! What sorrows yet may pierce me thro’, Too justly I may fear ! Still caring, despairing, Must be my bitter doom; My woes here shall close ne’er ut with the closing tomb ! II Happy ye sons of busy life, Who, equal to the bustling strife, No other view regard ! Ev’n when the wishéd end ’s denied, Yet while the busy means are plied, They bring their own reward: Whilst I, a hope-abandoned wight, Unfitted with an aim, Meet ev’ry sad returning night And joyless morn the same. You, bustling and justling, Forget each grief and pain; I, listless yet restless, Find ev’ry prospect vain. Ill How blest the Solitary’s lot, Who, all-forgetting, all-forgot, Within his humble cell — The cavern, wild with tangling roots — Sits o’er his newly-gather’d fruits, Beside his crystal well ! Or haply to his ev’ning thought, By unfrequented stream, The ways of men are distant brought, A faint-collected dream; While praising, and raising His thoughts to Heav’n on high, As wand’ring, meand’ring, He views the solemn sky. Iv Than I, no lonely hermit plaec’d Where never human footstep trac’d, Less fit to play the part; The lucky moment to improve, And just to stop, and just to move, With self-respecting art: But ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys, Which I too keenly taste, The Solitary can despise — Can want and yet be blest ! He needs not, he heeds not Or human love or hate; Whilst I here must cry here At perfidy ingrate ! 36 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT Vv O enviable early days, When dancing thoughtless pleasure’s maze, To care, to guilt unknown ! How ill exchang’d for riper times, To feel the follies or the crimes Of others, or my own! Ye tiny elves that guiltless sport, Like linnets in the bush, Ye little know the ills ye court, When manhood is your wish ! The losses, the crosses That active man engage; The fears all, the tears all Of dim declining Age ! MAN WAS MADE TO MOURN A DIRGE In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 10th August, 1788, Burns tells of an old grand-uncle who had gone blind :—“ His most voluptuous en- joyment was to sit down and cry, while my mother would sing the simple old song of The Life and Age of Man. The old song began us > — «oT was in the sixteenth hunder year Of God and fifty-three Frae Christ was born, that bought us dear, As writings testifie ; On January the sixteenth day, As I did lie alone, With many a sob and sigh did say, Ab! man was made to moan!” I WuHeEn chill November’s surly blast Made fields and forests bare, One ev’ning, as I wand’red forth Along the banks of Ayr, I spied a man, whose aged step Seem’d weary, worn with care, His face was furrow’d o’er with years, And hoary was his hair. II “Young stranger, whither wand’rest thou?” Began the rev’rend Sage; “ Does thirst of wealth thy step constrain, Or youthful pleasure’s rage ? Or haply, prest with cares and woes, Too soon thou hast began To wander forth, with me to mourn The miseries of Man. III “ The sun that overhangs yon moors, Out-spreading far and wide, Where hundreds labour to support A haughty lordling’s pride: I’ve seen yon weary winter-sun Twice forty times return; And ev’ry time has added proofs, That Man was made to mourn. Iv “©O Man! while in thy early years, How prodigal of time ! Mis-spending all thy precious hours, Thy glorious, youthful prime ! Alternate follies take the sway, Licentious passions burn: Which tenfold force gives Nature’s law, That Man was made to mourn. Vv “ Look not alone on youthful prime, Or manhood’s active might; Man then is useful to his kind, Supported is his right: But see him on the edge of life, With cares and sorrows worn; Then Age and Want — O ill-match’d air | — Shew Man was made to mourn. VI “ A few seem favourites of Fate, In Pleasure’s lap carest; | Yet think not all the rich and great Are likewise truly blest: But oh! what crowds in ev’ry land, All wretched and forlorn, Thro’ weary life this lesson learn, That Man was made to mourn. Vil “Many and sharp the num’rous ills Inwoven with our frame ! More pointed still we make ourselves Regret, remorse, and shame ! And Man, whose heav’n-erected face The smiles of love adorn, — Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn ! VIII ‘See yonder poor, o’erlabour’d wight, So abject, mean, and vile, A PRAYER IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH 37 Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil; And see his lordly fellow-worm The poor petition spurn, Unmindful, tho’ a weeping wife And helpless offspring mourn. Ix “Tf I ’m designed yon lordling’s slave — By Nature’s law design’d — Why was an independent wish E’er planted in my mind ? If not, why am I subject to His cruelty, or scorn ? Or why has Man the will and pow’r To make his fellow mourn ? x “ Yet let not this too much, my son, Disturb thy youthful breast: This partial view of human-kind Is surely not the last ! The poor, oppresséd, honest man Had never, sure, been born, Had there not been some recompense To comfort those that mourn ! XI “O Death ! the poor man’s dearest friend, The kindest and the best ! Welcome the hour my agéd limbs Are laid with thee at rest ! The great, the wealthy fear thy blow From pomp and pleasure torn; But, oh! a blest relief to those That weary-laden mourn !” WINTER A DIRGE Burns writes in the First Common Place Book under date April, 1784: “ There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more —I don’t know if I should call it pleasure, but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me — than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and hear a stormy wind howling among the trees and raving o’er the plain. It is my best season for devotion; my mind is rapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him who, in the pompous language of Scripture, ‘ Walks on the wings of the wind.’ In one of these seasons, just after a tract of misfortunes, I composed the follow- ing song” — Winter, to wit. Gilbert affirms it to be a “ juvenile production ;” and the poet himself, in his Autobiographic Letter to Dr. Moore, refers to it as ‘the eldest of my printed pieces,” and includes it among others composed in the interval between his return from Kirkos- wald and his residence in Irvine. It is there- fore impossible to assign it to a period so late as that conjectured by Chambers and Scott Doug- las; and the “tract of misfortunes” cannot describe, as the latter held, the disasters at Irvine, but was probably one of family losses. I THE wintry west extends his blast, And hail and rain does blaw; Or the stormy north sends driving forth The blinding sleet and snaw: Wild-tumbling brown, the burn comes down, And roars frae bank to brae: While bird and beast in covert rest, And pass the heartless day. II “The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,” The joyless winter day Let others fear, to me more dear Than all the pride of May: The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul, My griefs it seems to join; The leafless trees my fancy please, Their fate resembles mine ! IIt Thou Pow’r Supreme, whose mighty scheme These woes of mine fulfil, Here, firm I rest, they must be best, Because they are Thy will! Then all I want (O, do Thon grant This one request of mine !): Since to enjoy Thou dost deny, Assist me to resign. A PRAYER IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH First Common Place Book, under date August, 1784: “A Prayer when fainting fits, and other alarming symptoms of a pleurisy or some other dangerous disorder, which indeed still threaten me, first put nature on the alarm.” A manu- script in the Burns Monument, Edinburgh, has the heading: “A Prayer when dangerously threatened with pleuritic attacks.” The piece has been assigned to 1784, but the entry in the 38 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT Common Place Book proves it earlier than the August of that year. It was probably written during Burns’s residence in Irvine, when, as would appear from a letter to his father, 27th December, 1781, he had the prospect of “‘ per- haps very soon’’ bidding “adieu to all the pains, and uneasiness, and disquietudes of this weary life.” O Taov unknown, Almighty Cause Of all my hope and fear ! In whose dread presence, ere an hour, Perhaps I must appear! If I have wander’d in those paths Of life I ought to shun — As something, loudly, in my breast, Remonstrates I have done — Thou know’st that Thou hast forméd me With passions wild and strong; And list’ning to their witching voice Has often led me wrong. Where human weakness has come short, Or frailty stept aside, Do Thou, All-good — for such Thou art — In shades of darkness hide. Where with intention I have err’d, No other plea I have, But, Thou art good; and Goodness still Delighteth to forgive. TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY ON TURNING ONE DOWN WITH THE PLOUGH IN APRIL, 1786 Enclosed, under the title of The Gowan, in a letter of 20th April, 1786, to John Kennedy, elerk to the Earl of Dumfries, at Dumfries House, near Mauchline: “I have here like- wise enclosed a small piece, the very latest of my productions. I am « good deal pleased with some sentiments myself, as they are just the native querulous feelings of a heart which, as the elegantly melting Gray says, ‘melan- eholy has marked for her own.’” The last four stanzas conveying the moral are in undi- luted English. I WEE, modest, crimson-tippéd flow’r, Thou ’s met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem: dant To spare thee now is past my pow’r, Thou bonie gem. II Alas! it’s no thy neebor sweet, The bonie lark, companion meet, Bending thee ’*mang the dewy weet, Wi’ spreckl’d breast ! When upward-springing, blythe, to greet The purpling east. Ill Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce rear’d above the parent-earth Thy tender form. Iv The flaunting flow’rs our gardens yield, High shelt’ring woods and wa’s maun shield; But thou, beneath the random bield O’ clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane. Vv There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sun-ward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies! VI Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet flow’ret of the rural shade! By love’s simplicity betray’d, And guileless trust; Till she, like thee, all soil’d, is laid Low i’ the dust. VII Such is the fate of simple Bard, On Life’s rough ocean luckless starr’d ! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o’er! VIIT Such fate to suffering Worth is giv’n, Who long with wants and woes has striv’n, EPISTLE TO A YOUNG FRIEND 39 By human pride or cunning driv’n To mis’ry’s brink; Till, wrench’d of ev’ry stay but Heav’n, He, ruin’d, sink ! IX Ev’n thou who mourn’st the Daisy’s fate, That fate is thine — no distant date; Stern Ruin’s plough-share drives elate, Full on thy bloom, Till erush’d beneath the furrow’s weight Shall be thy doom ! TO RUIN From the lines ** For one has cut my dearest tie, And quivers in my heart’? — it would appear that this piece dates from the close of Burns’s residence at Irvine in 1782, when, to crown his misfortunes, he was, as he relates in his Autobiographical Letter, jilted “with peculiar circumstances of mortification ’’ by one “who had pledged her soul to marry him.” True, he was greatly distracted by Ar- mour’s conduct in repudiating him; but there is no evidence that he was revisited by the hypochondriacal longing for death to which expression is given in his second stanza. I ALL hail, mexorable lord ! At whose destruction-breathing word, The mightiest empires fall ! Thy cruel, woe-delighted train, The ministers of grief and pain, A sullen welcome, all! With stern-resolv’d, despairing eye, I see each aiméd dart; For one has cut my dearest tie, And quivers in my heart. Then low’ring and pouring, The storm no more I dread; Tho’ thick’ning and black’ning Round my devoted head. Il And thou grim Pow’r, by Life abhorr’d, While Life a pleasure can afford, O! hear a wretch’s pray’r! No» more I shrink appall’d, afraid; I court, I beg thy friendly aid, To close this scene of care ! When shall my soul, in silent peace, Resign Life’s joyless day ? My weary heart its throbbings cease, Cold-mould’ring in the clay ? No fear more, no tear more To stain my lifeless face, Enclaspéd and graspéd Within thy cold embrace ! EPISTLE TO A YOUNG FRIEND May 1786. The “ young friend” of this Epistle was An- drew Hunter Aiken, son of Robert Aiken of Ayr. After a successful commercial career in Liverpool, he became English consul at Riga, where he died in 1831. His son, Peter Free- land Aiken, — born 1790, died 3d March, 1877, — published in 1876 Memoirs of Robert Burns and some of his Contemporaries. William Niven of Kirkoswald — afterwards of Maybole, and finally of Kilbride — was accustomed to complain — not, however, to Burns, in so far as is known, nor till after his death —that this Epistle was originally ad- dressed to him. His claim was supported by the Rev. Hamilton Paul (Poems and Songs of Burns, 1819) ; but, as Niven had no copy to show, it would seem that, if a rhyming Epistle were sent him, he set little store by the honour. I I Lane hae thought, my youthfu’ friend, A something to have sent you, Tho’ it should serve nae ither end Than just a kind memento: But how the subject-theme may gang, Let time and chance determine: Perhaps it may turn out a sang; Perhaps, turn out a sermon. II Ye ’ll try the world soon, my lad; And, Andrew dear, believe me, Ye 71] find mankind an unco squad, And muckle they may grieve ye: For care‘and trouble set your thought, Ev’n when your end.’s attainéd: And a’ your views may come to nought, Where ev’ry nerve is strainéd. TIr I’ll no say, men are villains a’: The real, harden’d wicked, 40 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT Wha hae nae check but human law, Are to a few restricked; But, och ! mankind are unco weak An’ little to be trusted; If Self the wavering balance shake, It’s rarely right adjusted ! Iv Yet they wha fa’ in Fortune’s strife, Their fate we should na censure; For still, th’ important end of life They equally may answer: A man may hae an honest heart, Tho’ poortith hourly stare him; A man may tak a neebor’s part, Yet hae nae cash to spare him. Vv Ay free, aff han’, your story tell, When wi’ a bosom cronie; But still keep something to yoursel Ye scarcely tell to onie: Conceal yoursel as weel’s ye can Frae critical dissection: But keek thro’ ev’ry other man Wi’ sharpen’d, sly inspection. VI The sacred lowe o’ weel-plac’d love, Luxuriantly indulge it; But never tempt th’ illicit rove, Tho’ naething should divulge it: I waive the quantum o’ the sin, The-hazard of concealing; But, och ! it hardens a’ within, And petrifies the feeling ! VII To catch Dame Fortune’s golden smile, Assiduous wait upon her; And gather gear by ev’ry wile That ’s justify’d by honour: Not for to hide it in a hedge, Nor for a train-attendant; But for the glorious privilege Of being independent. Vil The fear o’ Hell’s a hangman’s whip To haud the wretch in order; But where ye feel your honour grip, Let that ay be your border: Its slightest touches, instant pause — Debar a’ side-pretences; And resolutely keep its laws, Uncaring consequences. IX The great Creator to revere : Must sure become the creature; But still the preaching cant forbear, And ev’n the rigid feature: Yet ne’er with wits profane to range Be complaisance extended; An atheist-laugh’s a poor exchange For Deity offended ! x When ranting round in Pleasure’s ring, Religion may be blinded; Or if she gie a random sting, It may be little minded; But when on Life we ’re tempest-driv’n — A conscience but a canker — A correspondence fix’d wi’ Heav’n Is sure a noble anchor ! XI Adieu, dear, amiable youth ! Your heart can ne’er be wanting ! May prudence, fortitude, and truth, Erect your brow undaunting ! In ploughman phrase, “God send you speed,” Still daily to grow wiser; And may-ye better reck the rede, Than ever did th’ adviser ! ON A SCOTCH BARD GONE TO THE WEST INDIES Probably among the latest written for the Kilmarnock Edition. While it was in progress, Burns was maturing his plans for emigration, and on 17th July, 1786, he wrote to David Brice, Glasgow: “I am now fixed to go for the West Indies in October.” I A’ YE wha live by sowps o’ drink, A’ ye wha live by crambo-clink, ( A’ ye wha live and never think, Come, mourn wi’ mi} ! Our billie ’s gien us a’ a jink, } An’ owre the sea ! A DEDICATION 41 IL Lament him a’ ye rantin core, Wha dearly like a random-splore; Nae mair he ‘ll join the merry roar In social key; For now he’s taen anither shore, An’ owre the sea! TIt The bonie lasses weel may wiss him, And in their dear petitions place him: The widows, wives, an’ a’ may bless him Wi?’ tearfu' e’e, For weel I wat they ‘Il sairly miss him That ’s owre the sea! Iv O Fortune, they hae room to grumble! Hadst thou taen aff some drowsy bummle, Wha can do nought but fyke an’ fumble, *'T wad been nae plea; But he was gleg as onie wumble, That ’s owre the sea! Vv Auld, cantie Kyle may weepers wear, An’ stain them wi’ the saut, saut tear: *T will mak her poor auld heart, I fear, In flinders flee: He was her Laureat. monie a year, That ’s owre the sea! vI He saw Misfortune’s cauld nor-west Lang-mustering up a bitter blast; A jillet brak his heart at last, Ill may she be! So, took a birth afore the mast, An’ owre the sea. VII To tremble under Fortune’s cummock, On scarce a bellyfu’ o’ drummock, Wi’ his proud, independent stomach, Could ill agree; So, row’t his hurdies in a hammock, An’ owre the sea. Vil He ne’er was gien to great misguiding, Yet coin his pouches wad na bide in: Wi’ him it ne’er was under hiding. He dealt it free 3 The Muse was a’ that he took pride in, That ’s owre the sea. Ix Jamaica bodies, use him weel, An’ hap him in a cozie biel: Ye ’ll find him ay a dainty chiel, An’ fou o’ glee: He wad na wrang’d the vera Deil, That ’s owre the sea. x Fareweel, my rhyme-composing billie ! Your native soil was right ill-willie; But may ye flourish like a lily, Now bonilie ! I'll toast you in my hindmost gillie, Tho’ owre the sea ! A DEDICATION TO GAVIN HAMILTON, ESQ. Gavin Hamilton — to whom Burns here ded- icates the First Edition of his poems, because “*T thought them something like yoursel,” was descended from an old Ayrshire family, the Hamiltons of Kype. The fifth son of John Hamilton of Kype — who was settled as a Writer in Mauchline — by his first wife, Jaco- bina King, he was born in 1751, probably in November, as he was baptized on the 20th of that month; succeeded his father as solicitor in Maucehline, oceupying a castellated mansion, now partly in ruins, hard by the churchyard ; and sublet the farm of Mossgiel to Burns and. his brother Gilbert. Like the poet, he sym- pathised with liberalism in religion, and they became warm friends. He was prosecuted in the autumn of 1784 by the Kirk-Session of Mauchline for neglect of public ordinances and other irregularities; and wrote a letter to the Session, affirming that its proceedings were dictated by “private pique and ill- nature.” The accusation is corroborated by Cromek, who states that the Rev. William Auld of Mauchline had quarrelled with Hamilton’s fa- ther (in all probability the true cause of both the quarrel with the father and the Sessional prosecution of the son was the hereditary Episcopacy of the Hamiltons). Ultimately, through the intervention of the Presbytery of Ayr, Gavin Hamilton compelled the Session, on 17th July, 1785, to grant him a certificate that he was ‘‘free from public scandal or 42 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT ground of Church censure known” to them: a triumph celebrated in Holy Willie’s Prayer. He was again prosecuted by the Session for causing his servants to dig new potatoes in his garden on the “ last Lord’s day ” of July, 1787. He died 5th February, 1805. Hamilton’s character is very fully portrayed in the Dedi- cation, and incisively in his Epitaph (p. 55). Several letters from Burns to him are pub- lished, including a Rhyming Epistle and Stanzas on Naething ; and there are references to him in Holy Willie’s Prayer, the Epistle to John M‘Math, and The Farewell. EXPECT na, sir, in this narration, A fleechin, fleth’rin Dedication, To roose you up, an’ ca’ you guid, An’ sprung o’ great an’ noble bluid, Because ye ’re surnam’d like His Grace, Perhaps related to the race: Then, when I’m tired —and sae are ye, ‘Wi’ monie a fulsome, sinfu’ lie — Set up a face how I stop short, For fear your modesty be hurt. This may do—maun do, sir, wi’ them wha Maun please the great-folk for a wamefou’; For me ! sae laigh I need na bow, For, Lord be thankit, I can plough; - And when I downa yoke a naig, Then, Lord be thankit, I can beg; Sae I shall say, an’ that’s nae flatt’rin, It ’s just sie poet an’ sic patron. The Poet, some guid angel help him, Or else, I fear, some ill ane skelp him ! He may do weel for a’ he’s done yet, But only he’s no just begun yet. The Patron (sir, ye maun forgie me; I winna lie, come what will o’ me), On ev’ry hand it will allow’d be, He’s just — nae better than he should be. I readily and freely grant, He downa see a poor man want; What ’s no his ain he winna tak it; What ance he says, he winna break it; Ought he can lend he ll no refuse ’t, Till aft his guidness is abus’d; And rascals whyles that do him wrang, Ev’n that, he does na mind it lang; As master, landlord, husband, father, He does na fail his part in either. But then, nae thanks to him for a’ that; Nae godly symptom ye can ca’ that; It’s naething but a milder feature Of our poor, sinfu’, corrupt nature: Ye ’ll get the best o’ moral works, *Mang black Gentoos, and pagan Turks, Or hunters wild on Ponotaxi, Wha never heard of orthodoxy. That he’s the poor man’s friend in need, The gentleman in word and deed, It’s no thro’ terror of damnation: It’s just a carnal inclination, And och! that’s nae regeneration. Morality, thou deadly bane, Thy tens o’ thousands thou hast slain ! Vain is his hope, whase stay an’ trust is In moral mercy, truth, and justice ! No — stretch a point to catch a plack; Abuse a brother to his back; Steal thro’ the winnock frae a whore, But point the rake that taks the door; Be to the poor like onie whunstane, And haud their noses to the grunstane; Ply ev’ry art o’ legal thieving; No matter — stick to sound believing. Learn three-mile pray’rs, an’ half-mile graces, Wi’ weel-spread looves, an’ lang, wry faces; Grunt up a solemn, lengthen’d groan, And damn a’ parties but your own; I’ll warrant then, ye ’re nae deceiver, A steady, sturdy, staunch believer. O ye wha leave the springs o’ Calvin, For gumlie dubs of your ain delvin ! Ye sons of Heresy and Error, Yell some day squeel in quaking terror, When Vengeance draws the sword in wrath, And in the fire throws the sheath; When Ruin, with his sweeping besom, Just frets till Heav’n commission gies him; While o’er the harp pale Misery moans, And strikes the ever-deep’ning tones, Still louder shrieks, and heavier groans ! Your pardon, sir, for this digression: I maist forgat my Dedication; But when divinity comes ’cross me, My readers still are sure to lose me. TO A LOUSE 43 So, sir, you see ’t was nae daft vapour; But I maturely thought it proper, ‘When a’ my works I did review, To dedicate them, sir, to you: Because (ye need na tak’ it ill), I thought them something like yoursel. Then patronize them wi’ your favor, And your petitioner shall ever I had amaist said, ever pray, But that ’s a word I need na say; For prayin, I hae little skill o’t; I’m baith dead-sweer, an’ wretched ill o’t; But I’se repeat each poor man’s pray’r, That kens or hears about you, sir: “May ne’er Misfortune’s gowling bark Howl thro’ the dwelling o’ the clerk ! May ne’er his gen’rous, honest heart, For that same gen’rous spirit smart ! May Kennedy’s far-honor’d name Lang beet his hymeneal flame, Till Hamiltons, at least a dizzen, Are frae their nuptial labors risen: Five bonie lasses round their table, And sev’n braw fellows, stout an’ able, To serve their king an’ country weel, By word, or pen, or pointed steel ! May Health and Peace, with mutual rays, Shine on the ev’ning o’ his days; Till his wee, curlie John’s ier-oe, When ebbing life nae mair shall flow, The last, sad, mournful rites bestow !” I will not wind a lang conclusion, With complimentary effusion; But, whilst your wishes and endeavours Are blest with Fortune’s smiles and fa- vours, I am, dear sir, with zeal most fervent, Your much indebted, humble servant. But if (which Pow’rs above prevent) That iron-hearted carl, Want, Attended, in his grim advances, By sad mistakes, and black mischances, While hopes, and joys, and pleasures fly him, Make you as poor a dog as I am, Your “ humble servant” then no more; For who would humbly serve the poor ? But, by a poor man’s hopes in Heav’n ! While recollection’s pow’r is giv’n, If, in the vale of humble life, The victim sad of Fortune’s strife, I, thro’ the tender-gushing tear, Should recognise my master dear; If friendless, low, we meet together, Then, sir, your hand—my FRienp and Brotuer ! TO A LOUSE ON SEEING ONE ON A LADY’S BONNET AT CHURCH I Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie ? Your impudence protects you sairly, I canna say but ye strunt rarely Owre gauze and lace, Tho’ faith ! I fear ye dine but sparely On sic a place. Ir Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner, Detested, shunn’d by saunt an’ sinner, How daur ye set your fit upon her — Sae fine a lady ! Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner On some poor body. Ill Swith ! in some beggar’s hauffet squattle: There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle, Wi’ ither kindred, jumping cattle, In shoals and nations; Whare horn nor bane ne’er daur unsettle Your thick plantations. Iv Now haud you there ! ye’re out o’ sight, Below the fatt’rils, snug an’ tight; Na, faith ye yet! ye “Il no be right, Till ye’ve got on it — The vera tapmost, tow’ring height ‘ QO’ Miss’s bonnet. Vv My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out, As plump an’ grey as onie grozet: O for some rank, mercurial rozet, Or fell, red smeddum, I’d gie ye sic a hearty dose o ’t, Wad dress your droddum. 44 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT vI I wad na been surpris’d to spy You on an auld wife’s flainen toy; Or aiblins some bit duddie boy, On ’s wyliecoat; But Miss’s fine Lunardi ! fye ! How daur ye do ’t? VII O Jenny, dinna toss your head, An’ set your beauties a’ abread ! Ye little ken what curséd speed The blastie ’s makin ! Thae winks an’ finger-ends, I dread, Are notice takin ! VIII O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us ! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion: What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us, An’ ev’n devotion ! EPISTLE TO J. LAPRAIK AN OLD SCOTTISH BARD, APRIL I, 1785 John Lapraik, whose song When I upon Thy Bosom Lean “ so thirl’d the heart-strings ” of Burns, was descended from an old Ayrshire family, which for several generations possessed the estate of Laigh Dalquhram, near Muirkirk. He was born in 1727; succeeded to the estate on the death of his father, and also rented the farm and mill of Muirsmill ; lost his estate and all his means by the failure of the Ayr Bank in 1772; was inspired by Burns’s success to publish Poems on Several Occasions (1788) ; and died 7th May, 1807. Lapraik’s song, so warmly praised by Burns, and afterwards sent by him for insertion to Johnson’s Museum, iii. 214 (1790), closely re- sembles one in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine, 11th October, 1773, When on Thy Bosom I Fe- cline, dated Edinburgh, 11th October, and signed “Happy Husband.” It has been too rashly inferred that Lapraik plagiarised from this lyric: he may have written it himself. Another, When West Winds did Blow, which Burns also sent to Johnson, is not without merit. The original Epistle was at one time in the possession of Sir Robert Jardine, and the piece is also entered in the First Common Place Book under date June, 1785. I budding Ware briers an’ woodbines green, And paitricks seraichin loud at e’en, An’ morning poussie whiddin seen, Inspire my Muse, This freedom, in an unknown frien’ I pray excuse. II On Fasten-e’en we had a rockin, To ca’ the crack and weave our stockin; And there was muckle fun and jokin, Ye need na doubt; At length we had a hearty yokin, At “sang about.” Ill There was ae sang, among the rest, Aboon them a’ it pleas’d me best, That some kind husband had addrest To some sweet wife: It thirl’d the heart-strings thro’ the breast, A’ to the life. Iv I’ve scarce heard ought describ’d sae weel, What gen’rous, manly bosoms feel; Thought I, “Can this be Pope or Steele, Or Beattie’s wark ?” They tald me ’t was an odd kind chiel About Muirkirk. Vv It pat me fidgin-fain to hear ’t, An’ sae about him there I spier’t; Then a’ that kent him round declar’d He had ingine; That nane excell’d it, few cam near ’t, It was sae fine: VI That, set him to a pint of ale, An’ either douce or merry tale, Or rhymes an’ sangs he ’d made himsel, Or witty catches, *Tween Inverness an’ Teviotdale, He had few matches. vil Then up I gat, an’ swoor an aith, Tho’ I should pawn my pleugh an’ grai‘h, Or die a cadger pownie’s death, 7 At some dyke-back, EPISTLE TO J. LAPRAIK 45 A pint an’ gill I ’d gie them baith, To hear your crack. VIII But, first an’ foremost, I should tell, Amaist as soon as I could spell, I to the crambo-jingle fell; Tho’ rude an’ rough — Yet crooning to a body’s sel, Does weel eneugh. IX I am nae poet, in a sense; But just a rhymer like by chance, An’ hae to learning nae pretence; Yet, what the matter ? Whene’er my Muse does on me glance, I jingle at her. x Your critic-folk may cock their nose, And say, “ How can you e’er propose, You wha ken hardly verse frae prose, To mak a sang ?” But, by your leaves, my learned foes, Ye ’re maybe wrang. xI What’s a’ your jargon o’ your Schools, Your Latin names for horns an’ stools ? If honest Nature made you fools, What sairs your grammers ? Ye’d better taen up spades and shools, Or knappin-hammers. XII A set o’ dull, conceited hashes Confuse their brains in college-classes, They gang in stirks, and come out asses, Plain truth to speak; An’ syne they think to climb Parnassus By dint o’ Greek ! XII Gie me ae spark o’ Nature’s fire, That ’s a’ the learning I desire; Then, tho’ I drudge thro’ dub an’ mire At pleugh or cart, My Muse, tho’ hamely in attire, May touch the heart. XIV ye O for a spunk o’ Allan’s glee, \ Or Fergusson’s, the bauld an’ slee, { \ 4 \ \ Or bright Lapraik’s, my friend to be, If I can hit it! That would be lear eneugh for me, Té I could get it. xv Now, sir, if ye hae friends enow, Tho’ real friends I b’lieve are few; Yet, if your catalogue be fow, I’se no insist: But, gif ye want ae friend that’s true, I’m on your list. xVvI I winna blaw about mysel, As ill I like my fants to tell; But friends, an’ folks that wish me well, They sometimes roose me; Tho’, I maun own, as monie still As far abuse me. XVII There ’s ae wee faut they whyles lay to me, I like the lasses — Gude forgie me ! For monie a plack they wheedle frae me At dance or fair; Maybe some ither thing they gie me, They weel can spare. XVIII But Mauchline Race or Mauchline Fair, I should be proud to meet you there: We’se gie ae night’s discharge to care, If.we forgather; And hae a swap o’ rhymin-ware Wi’ ane anither. XIX The four-gill chap, we ’se gar him clat- ter, An’ kirsen him wi’ reekin water; Syne we ’Il sit down an’ tak our whitter, To cheer our heart; An’ faith, we’se be acquainted better Before we part. XxX Awa ye selfish, warly race, Wha think that havins, sense, an’ grace, Ev’n love an’ friendship should give place To Catch-the-Plack ! I dinna like to see your face, Nor hear your crack. 46 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT XXI But ye whom social pleasure charms, Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms, Who hold your being on the terms, “«“ Each aid the others,” Come to my bowl, come to my arms, My friends, my brothers ! XXII But, to conclude my lang epistle, As my auld pen’s worn to the grissle, Twa lines frae you wad gar me fissle, ‘Who am most fervent, While I can either sing or whistle, Your friend and servant. SECOND EPISTLE TO J. LAPRAIK APRIL 21, 1785 Entered in the First Common Place Book under the first Epistle with this explanation : “On receiving an answer to the above I wrote the following.” I WHILE new-ca’d kye rowte at the stake An’ pownies reek in pleugh or braik, This hour on e’enin’s edge I take, To own I’m debtor To honest-hearted, auld Lapraik, For his kind letter. II Forjesket sair, with weary legs, Rattlin the corn out-owre the rigs, Or dealing thro’ amang the naigs Their ten-hours’ bite, My awkart Muse sair pleads and begs, I would na write. III ‘The tapetless, ramfeezl’d hizzie, She ’s saft at best an’ something lazy: Quo’ she: ‘Ye ken we ’ve been sae busy This month an’ mair, That trowth, my head is grown right dizzie, An’ something sair.” IV Her dowff excuses pat me mad: “Conscience,” says I, “ye thowless jad! I’ll write, an’ that a hearty blaud, This vera night; So dinna ye affront your trade, But rhyme it right. v “Shall bauld Lapraik, the king o’ hearts, Tho’ mankind were a pack o’ cartes, Roose you sae weel for your deserts, In terms sae friendly; Yet yell neglect to shaw your parts An’ thank him kindly ?” VI Sae I gat paper in a blink, An’ down gaed stumpie in the ink: Quoth I: “ Before I sleep a wink, I vow I’1l close it: An’ if ye winna mak it clink, By Jove, I’ll prose it !” vil Sae I’ve begun to scrawl, but whether In rbyme, or prose, or baith thegither, Or some hotch-potch that’s rightly neither, Let time mak proof; But I shall scribble down some blether Just clean aff-loof. VIII My worthy friend, ne’er grudge an’ carp, Tho’ Fortune use you hard an’ sharp; Come, kittle up your moorland harp ‘Wi’ gleesome touch ! Ne’er mind how Fortune waft an’ warp; She’s but a bitch. IX She’s gien me monie a jirt an’ fleg, Sin’ I could striddle owre a rig; But, by the Lord, tho’ I should beg W? lyart pow, I'll laugh an’ sing, an’ shake my leg, As lang’s I dow! x Now comes the sax-an-twentieth simmer I’ve seen the bud upo’ the timmer, Still persecuted by the limmer Frae year to year; But yet, despite the kittle kimmer, ” I, Rob, am here. TO WILLIAM SIMPSON OF OCHILTREE 47 XI Do ye env¥ the city gent, Behint a kist to lie an’ sklent; Or purse-proud, big wi’ cent. per cent. An’ muckle wame, In some bit brugh to represent A bailie’s name ? XII Or is’t the paughty feudal thane, Wi? ruffi’d sark an’ glancing cane, Wha thinks himsel nae sheep-shank bane, But lordly stalks; While caps an’ bonnets aff are taen, As by he walks ? XIII “0 Thou wha gies us each guid gift ! Gie me o’ wit an’ sense a lift, Then turn me, if Thou please, adrift Thro’ Scotland wide; Wi’ cits nor lairds I wadna shift, In a’ their pride!” XIV Were this the charter of our state, “On pain o’ hell be rich an’ great,” Damnation then would be our fate, Beyond remead; But, thanks to heaven, that’s no the gate We learn our creed. xV For thus the royal mandate ran, When first the human race began: “ The social, friendly, honest man, Whate’er he be, ’T is he fulfils great Nature’s plan, And none but he.” XVI O mandate glorious and divine! The followers o’ the ragged Nine — Poor, thoughtless devils! — yet. may shine In glorious light; While sordid sons o’ Mammon’s line Are dark as night ! XVII Tho’ here they scrape, an’ squeeze, an’ growl, Their worthless neivefu’ of a soul May in some future carcase howl, The forest’s fright; Or in some day-detesting owl May shun the light. XVII Then may Lapraik and Burns arise, To reach their native, kindred skies, And sing their pleasures, hopes an’ joys, In some mild sphere; Still closer knit in friendship’s ties, Each passing year ! TO WILLIAM SIMPSON OF OCHILTREE MAY, 1785 The “winsome Willie” of this Epistle was William Simpson, son of John Simpson, farmer in Ten-Pound Land, in the parish of Ochiltree. He was born 23d August, 1758; was educated at the University of Glasgow; became parish schoolmaster of Ochiltree in 1780, and in 1788 of Cumnock ; and died 4th July, 1815. It has been inferred that the piece which drew the flattering letter from him was The Twa Herds. But the inference is not supported by the evi- dence adduced — the statement of Burns him- self, that he gave a copy of that satire to ‘a particular friend ;” for Burns affirmed to this same friend that he did not know who was the author, and had got a copy by accident. I I Gar your letter, winsome Willie; Wi’ gratefu’ heart I thank you brawlie; Tho’ I maun say ’t, I wad be silly And unco vain, Should I believe, my coaxin billie, Your flatterin strain. II But I’se believe ye kindly meant it: I sud be laith to think ye hinted Tronic satire, sidelins sklented, On my poor Musie; Tho’ in sic phraisin terms ye’ve penn’d it, I searce excuse ye. III My senses wad be in a creel, Should I but dare a hope to speel, Wi’ Allan, or wi’ Gilbertfield, The braes o’ fame; 48 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT Or Fergusson, the writer-chiel, A deathless name. Iv O Fergusson ! thy glorious parts Il suited law’s dry, musty arts ! My curse upon your whunstane hearts, Ye E’nbrugh gentry ! The tythe o’ what ye waste at cartes Wad stow’d his pantry !) Vv Yet when a tale comes i’ my head, Or lasses gie my heart a screed — As whyles they ’re like to be my dead, (O sad disease !) I kittle up my rustic reed; It gies me ease. VI Auld Coila, now, may fidge fu’ fain, She ’s gotten bardies o’ her ain; Chiels wha their chanters winna hain, But tune their lays, Till echoes a’ resound again Her weel-sung praise. VII Nae Poet thought her worth his while, To set her name in measur’d style; She lay like some unkend-of isle Beside New Holland, Or whare wild-meeting oceans boil Besouth Magellan. VIII Ramsay an’ famous Fergusson Gied Forth an’ Tay a lift aboon; Yarrow an’ Tweed, to monie a tune, Owre Scotland rings; While Irwin, Lugar, Ayr, an’ Doon Nacbods sings. IX Th’ Illissus, Tiber, Thames, an’ Seine, Glide sweet in monie a tunefu’ line: But, Willie, set your fit to mine, An’ cock your crest ! We ’ll gar our streams and burnies shine Up wi’ the best. x Well sing auld Coila’s plains an’ fells, Her moors red-brown wi’ heather bells, Her banks an’ braes, her dens an’ dells, Whare glorious Wallace Aft bure the gree, as story tells, Frae Suthron billies. xI At Wallace’ name, what Scottish blood But boils up in a spring-tide flood ? Oft have our fearless fathers strode By Wallace’ side, Still pressing onward, red-wat-shod, Or glorious dy’d ! xT O, sweet are Coila’s haughs an’ woods, When lintwhites chant amang the buds, And jinkin hares, in amorous whids, Their loves enjoy; While thro’ the braes the cushat croods With wailfw’ ery ! XII Ev’n winter bleak has charms to me, When winds rave thro’ the naked tree; Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree Are hoary gray; Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, Dark’ning the day ! XIV O Nature ! a’ thy shews an’ forms To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms ! Whether the summer kindly warms, Wi life an’ light; Or winter howls, in gusty storms, The lang, dark night! XV The Muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel he learn’d to wander, Adown some trottin burn’s meander, An’ no think lang: O, sweet to stray, an’ pensive ponder A heart-felt sang ! XVI The warly race may drudge an’ drive, Hog-shouther, jundie, stretch, an’ strive; Let me fair Nature’s face descrive, And I, wi’ pleasure, Shall let the busy, grumbling hive Bum owre their treasure. TO WILLIAM SIMPSON OF OCHILTREE 49 XVII Fareweel, my rhyme-composing brither ! We ’ve been owre Jang unkend to jther: Now let us lay our heads thegither, In love fraternal: May Envy wallop in a tether, Black fiend, infernal ! XVIII While Highlandmen hate tolls an’ taxes; While moorlan’ herds like guid, fat brax- ies; While Terra Firma, on her axis, Diurnal turns; Count on a friend, in faith an’ practice, In Robert Burns. POSTSCRIPT XIX My memory ’s no worth a preen: I had amaist forgotten clean, Ye bade me write you what they mean By this New-Light, *Bout which our herds sae aft hae been Maist like to fight. XxX In days when mankind were but callans; At grammar, logic, an’ sic talents, They took nae pains their speech to balance, Or rules to gie; But spak their thoughts in plain, braid Lallans, Like you or me. XXI In thae auld times, they thought the moon, Just like a sark, or pair o’ shoon, Wore by degrees, till her last roon Gaed past their viewin; An’ shortly after she was done, They gat a new ane. XXIT This past for certain, undisputed; It ne’er cam i’ their heads to doubt it, Till chiels gat up an’ wad confute it, An’ ca’d it wrang; An’ muckle din there was about it, Baith loud an’ lang. XXIII Some herds, weel learn’d upo’ the Beuk, Wad threap auld folk the thing misteuk; For ’t was the auld moon turn’d a neuk An’ out o’ sight. An’ backlins-comin to the leuk, She grew mair bright. XXIV This was deny’d, it was affirm’d; The herds and hissels were alarm’d; The rev’rend gray-beards rav’d an’ storm’d, That beardless laddies Should think they better were inform’d Than their auld daddies. XXV Frae less to mair, it gaed to sticks; Frae words an’ aiths, to clours an’ nicks; An’ monie a fallow gat his licks, Wi hearty crunt; An’ some, to learn them for their tricks, Were hang’d an’ brunt. XXVI This game was play’d in monie lands, An’ Auld-Light caddies bure sic hands, That faith, the youngsters took the sands Wi’ nimble shanks Till lairds forbade, by strict commands, Sic bluidy pranks. XXVII But New-Light herds gat sic a cowe, Folk thought them ruin’d stick-an-stowe; Till now, amaist on ev’ry knowe Yell find ane placed; An’ some, their New-Light fair avow, Just quite barefac’d. XXVIII Nae doubt the Auld-Light flocks are bleatin; Their zealous herds are vex’d and sweatin; Mysel, I’ve even seen them greetin W? girnin spite, To hear the moon sae sadly lie’d on By word an’ write. XXIX But shortly they will cowe the louns! Some Auld-Light herds in neebor touns Are mind’t, in things they ca’ balloons, To tak a flight, 50 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT An’ stay ae month amang the moons An’ see them right. XXX Guid observation they will gie them; An’ when the auld moon’s gaun to lea’e them, The hindmost shaird, they ’ll fetch it wi’ them, Just i’ their pouch; An’ when the New-Light billies see them, I think they ‘Il crouch ! XXXI Sae, ye observe that a’ this clatter Is naething but a “moonshine matter; ” But tho’ dull prose-folk Latin splatter In logic tulzie, I hope we, Bardies, ken some better Than mind sie brulzie. EPISTLE TO JOHN RANKINE- ENCLOSING SOME POEMS Rankine was farmer at Adambhill, in the parish of Craigie, near Lochlie. His wit, his dreams (invented for the purpose of roasting his dislikes), and his practical jokes were the talk of the country side. His sister, Mar- garet, was the first wife of John Lapraik, and his daughter, Anne, afterwards Mrs. Merry, vaunted herself the heroine of The Rigs o’ Barley. Burns also addressed to Rankine a Reply to an Announcement, and complimented him in an Epitaph as the one “ honest man” in “a mixtie-maxtie motley squad.” It is to be noted that the last seven stanzas of this piece set forth an account in good vene- real slang — e.g. “ straik ” (7. e. “ stroke ’’) = subagitare ; “hen,” ‘‘ wame,” “ tail,” “ gun,” ‘¢ feathers,” and so forth — of Burns’s amour with Elizabeth Paton, by whom he had an ille- gitimate child (November, 1784), and with whom he did penance by order of the Session. I O RrovGH, rude, ready-witted Rankine, The wale o’ cocks for fun an’ drinkin! There ’s monie godly folks are thinkin’ Your dreams and tricks Will send you, Korah-like, a-sinkin Straught to Auld Nick’s. II Ye hae sae monie cracks an’ cants, And in your wicked drucken rants, Ye mak a devil o’ the saunts, An’ fill them fou’; And then their failings, flaws, an’ wants Are a’ seen thro’. III Hypocrisy, in mercy spare it! That holy robe, O, dinna tear it ! Spare ’t for their sakes, wha aften wear it — The lads in black; But your curst wit, when it comes near it, Rives ’t aff their back. Iv Think, wicked sinner, wha ye ’re skaithing: It’s just the Blue-gown badge an’ claithing O’ saunts; tak that, ye lea’e them naething To ken them by Frae onie unregenerate heathen, Like you or I. Vv I’ve sent you here some rhyming ware A’ that I bargain’d for, an’ mair; Sae, when ye hae an hour to spare, I will expect, Yon sang ye’ll sen’t, wi’ cannie care, And no neglect. VI Tho’ faith, sma’ heart hae I to sing: My Muse dow scarcely spread her wing! I’ve play’d mysel a bonie spring, An’ dane’d my fill! I’d better gaen an’ sair’t the King At Bunker’s Hill. VII °T was ae night lately, in my fun, I gaed a rovin wi’ the gun, An’ brought a paitrick to the grun’ — A bonie hen; And, as the twilight was begun, Thought nane wad ken. VIII The poor, wee thing was little hurt; I straikit it a wee for sport, Ne’er thinkin they wad fash me for ’t; But, Deil-ma-care ! SONG 5r Somebody tells the Poacher-Court The hale affair. IX Some auld, us’d hands had taen a note, That sic a hen had got a shot; I was suspected for the plot; I scorn’d to lie; So gat the whissle o’ my groat, An’ pay’t the fee. x But, by my gun, o’ guns the wale, An’ by my ponther an’ my hail, An’ by my hen, an’ by her tail, I vow an’ swear ! The game shall pay, owre moor an’ dale, For this, niest year ! xI As soon ’s the clockin-time is by, An’ the wee pouts begun to ery, Lord, I’se hae sportin by an’ by For my gowd guinea; Tho’ I should herd the buckskin kye For ’t, in Virginia ! XII Trowth, they had muckle for to blame ! *T was neither broken wing nor limb, But twa-three chaps about the wame, Scarce thro’ the feathers; An’ baith a yellow George to claim An’ thole their blethers ! XIII It pits me ay as mad.’s a hare; So I can rhyme nor write nae mair; But pennyworths again is fair, When time ’s expedient: Meanwhile I am, respected Sir, Your most obedient. SONG TUNE: Corn Rigs In an interleaved copy of Johnson’s Museum, Burns remarks: “ All the old words that ever I could meet to this were the following, which seem to have been an old chorus : — * ¢ Q corn rigs and rye rigs, O corn rigs are bonie, And whene’er you meet # bonnie lass, Preen up her cockernony.’ ”’ The last song in Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd, My Patie is a Lover Gay, to the tune Corn Rigs are Bonny, concludes as follows : — “Then I *1l comply and marry Pate, And syne my cockernony He’s free to touzle air and late Where corn rigs are bonny.’”’ Burns wrote to George Thomson: “ My Pattie is a Lover Gay—is unequal. ‘His mind is never muddy’ is a muddy expression indeed. ““¢Then I'll resign (sic) and marry Pate, And syne my cockernony,’ etc. This is surely far unworthy of Ramsay, or of your work.” With characteristic deference he added: “My song, Rigs o’ Barley, to the same tune, does not altogether please me, but if I can mend it, I will submit it to your con- sideration.” Thomson disregarded this modest offer: “ My Patie is a Lover Gay, though a little unequal, is a natural and pleasing song, and I humbly think we ought not to displace it or alter it except the last stanza.” In his Autobiographical Letter to Dr. Moore, Burns ineludes this admirable lyric among the “ phymes ” of his ‘‘ early days,” composed before his twenty-third year. But its accomplishment is finer than he had then compassed, and, as in the case of the lyric that follows, Now Westlin’ Winds, the early version was probably a mere fragmentary suggestion of the later. Burns was himself accustomed to regard the last stanza as a nearer approach to his ideal of expression and sentiment than he had achieved elsewhere. As to the heroine there is not basis enough even for conjecture, though divers Annies have claimed the honour. I Ir was upon a Lammas night, When corn rigs are bonie, Beneath the moon’s unclouded light, I held awa to Annie; The time flew by, wi’ tentless heed; Till, *tween the late and early, ‘Wi’ sma’ persuasion she agreed To see me thro’ the barley. Corn rigs, an’ barley rigs, An’ corn rigs are bonie: I'll ne’er forget that happy night, Amang the rigs wi’ Annie. II The sky was blue, the wind was still, The moon was shining clearly; I set her down, wi’ right good will, Amang the rigs o’ barley: 52 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT I ken’t her heart was a’ my ain; I lov’d her most sincerely; I kiss’d her owre and owre again, Amang the rigs o’ barley. Til I lock’d her in my fond embrace; Her heart was beating rarely: My blessings on that happy place, Amang the rigs o’ barley ! But by the moon and stars so bright, That shone that hour so clearly ! She ay shall bless that happy night Amang the rigs o’ barley. Iv I hae been blythe wi’ comrades dear; I hae been merry drinking; I hae been joyfu’ gath’rin gear; I hae been happy thinking: But a’ the pleasures e’er I saw, Tho’ three times doubl’d fairly — That happy night was worth them a’, Amang the rigs o’ barley. Corn rigs, an’ barley rigs, An’ corn rigs are bonie: I'll ne’er forget that happy night, Amang the rigs wi’ Annie. ‘ SONG: COMPOSED IN AUGUST Burns states in his “ autobiographical letter ” that this song was the ‘ebullition” of his passion for a “ charming /ilette’’ (sic), Peggy Thomson, who “overset his trigonometry” at Kirkoswald when he was in his seventeenth year. His sister, Mrs. Begg, further affirms that the passion was afterwards revived, and it has been supposed that Thomson is the Peggy of his letter to Thomas Orr (11th November, 1784): “(Iam very glad Peggy is off my hand.” But about this time he had also an “affair” with “Montgomerie’s Peggy,” “which,” as he wrote in the First Common Place Book, ‘‘it cost some heart-aches to get rid of.” Peggy Thomson became the wife of Mr. Neilson of Kirkoswald. Burns — when he was making ready for the West Indies in 1786 — presented her with a copy of his book, on which he inscribed the lines beginning : — ** Once fondly loved and still remembered dear.’” I Now westlin winds and slaught’ring guns Bring Autumn’s pleasant weather; The gorcock springs on whirring wings Amang the blooming heather: Now waving grain, wide o’er the plain, Delights the weary farmer; The moon shines bright, as I rove by night To muse upon my charmer. Il The paitrick lo’es the fruitfu’ fells, The plover lo’es the mountains; The woodcock haunts the lonely dells, The soaring hern the fountains; Thro’ lofty groves the cushat roves, The path o’ man to shun it; The hazel bush o’erhangs the thrush, The spreading thorn the linnet. IIr Thus ev’ry kind their pleasure find, The savage and the tender; Some social join, and leagues combine, Some solitary wander: Avaunt, away, the cruel sway ! Tyrannie man’s dominion ! The sportsman’s joy, the murd’ring ery, The flutt’ring, gory pinion ! Iv But, Peggy dear, the evening ’s clear, Thick flies the skimming swallow, The sky is blue, the fields in view All fading-green and yellow: Come, let us stray our gladsome way And view the charms of Nature; The rustling corn, the fruited thorn, And ilka happy creature. Vv We 'll gently walk, and sweetly talk, While the silent moon shines clearly; I’ll clasp thy waist, and, fondly prest, Swear how I lo’e thee dearly: Not vernal show’rs to budding flow’rs, Not Autumn to the farmer, So dear can be as thou to me, ' My fair, my lovely charmer ! SONG: FROM THEE, ELIZA TUNE: Gilderoy Burns, on his return to Mauchline from his Border tour, wrote to James Smith, 11th June, 1787: “Your mother, sister and brother, my EPITAPH ON A HENPECKED SQUIRE 53 quondam Eliza, etc., all, all well.” This shows that Eliza lived in Mauchline. She was Eliza- beth Miller — afterward Mrs. Templeton — celebrated in The Belles of Mauchline (post, p. 171) as the “ Miss Betty” who’s “ braw.” See also A Mauchline Wedding (post, p. 114). I From thee, Eliza, I must go And from my native shore: The cruel fates between us throw A boundless ocean’s roar; But boundless oceans, roaring wide Between my Love and me, They never, never can divide My heart and soul from thee. II Farewell, farewell, Eliza dear, The maid that I adore! A boding voice is in mine ear, We part to meet no more ! But the latest throb that leaves my heart, While Death stands victor by, That throb, Eliza, is thy part, And thine that latest sigh ! THE FAREWELL TO THE BRETHREN OF ST. JAMES’S LODGE, TARBOLTON Tune: Good-night, and joy be wi’ you a’. “At this time the author intended going to Jamaica” (mus. R. B. in a copy of the ’86 Edition in the British Museum). Burns was admitted an apprentice of the St. David’s Lodge, Tarbolton (formed by the union of the St. James’s with the St. David’s), 4th July, 1781, and, when a separation of the Lodges occurred in June, 1782, he adhered to the St. James’s, of which he was, on 22d July, 1784, elected depute master. The verses, it is sup- posed, were recited at a meeting of the Lodge held on the 23d June. I Apteu ! a heart-warm, fond adieu; Dear Brothers of the Mystic Tie! Ye favour’d, ye enlighten’d few, Companions of my social joy ! Tho’ I to foreign lands must hie, Pursuing Fortune’s slidd’ry ba’; With melting heart and brimful eye, I?ll mind you still, tho’ far awa. II Oft have I met your social band, And spent the cheerful, festive night; Oft, honour’d with supreme command, Presided o’er the Sons of Light; And by that Hieroglyphic bright, Which none but Craftsmen ever saw ! Strong Mem’ry on my heart shall write Those happy scenes, when far awa. Ill May Freedom, Harmony, and Love, Unite you in the Grand Design, Beneath th’ Omniscient Eye above — The glorious Architect Divine — That you may keep th’ Unerring Line, Still rising by the Plummet’s Law, Till Order bright completely shine, Shall be my pray’r, when far awa. Iv And You, farewell! whose merits claim Justly that Highest Badge to wear: Heawv’n bless your honour’d, noble Name, To Masonry and Scotia dear ! A last request permit me here, When yearly ye assemble a’; One round, I ask it with a tear, To him, the Bard that’s far awa. EPITAPH ON A HENPECKED SQUIRE Burns states that the subject of this epitaph was “Mr. Campbell of Netherplace,” a man- sion a little to the west of Mauchline, on the road to Mossgiel. It is probable that Campbell —or perhaps his wife — had given Burns some particular offence. As father Adam first was fool’d, A case that’s still too common, Here lies a man a woman rul’d: The Devil ruled the woman. EPIGRAM ON SAID OCCASION O Deatn, had’st thou but spar’d his life, Whom we this day lament ! 54 POEMS CHIEFLY IN THE SCOTTISH DIALECT We freely wad exchanged the wife, An’ a’ been weel content. Ev’n as he is, cauld in his graff, The swap we yet will do’t; Tak thou the carlin’s carease aff, Thou’se get the saul o’ boot. ANOTHER One Queen Artemisa, as old stories tell, ‘When depriv’d of her husband she lovéd so well, In respect for the love and affection he ’d show’d her, She redue’d him to dust and she drank up the powder. But Queen Netherplace, of a diff’rent com- lexion, When call’d on to order the fun’ral direc- tion, Would have eat her dead lord, on a slender pretence, Not to show her respect, but — to save the expense ! EPITAPHS ON A CELEBRATED RULING ELDER In the Author’s Edition the Elder’s name is indicated merely by asterisks ; in a copy of the °86 in the British Museum, ‘‘ Hood” is in- serted; and in the First Common Place Book, under the date April, 1784, the heading is, “Epitaph on Wm. Hood, senr. in Tarbolton.” Here Souter Hood in death does sleep: In hell, if he’s gane thither, Satan, gie him thy gear to keep; He ’ll haud it weel thegither. ON A NOISY POLEMIC James Humphry, «a mason in Mauchline, with no doubt of his ability to debate with Burns. He died in 1844. Betow thir stanes lie Jamie’s banes: O Death, it’s my opinion, Thou ne’er took such a bleth’rin bitch Into thy dark dominion. ON WEE JOHNIE It is common to assume that Burns meant this for his own printer, John Wilson of Kil- marnock ; but there was a bookseller in Mauch- line, also of diminutive stature, named John Wilson. Ithas further been denoted, by Cham- bers, that the trifle is a literal translation of a Latin epigram in Nuge Venales, 1663. Hic jacet wee Johnie Waoer’er thou art, O reader, know, That Death has murder’d Johnie, An’ here his body lies fu’ low — For saul he ne’er had onie. FOR THE AUTHOR’S FATHER William Burness died at Lochlie, 13th February, 1784; and this Epitaph on my Ever Honoured Father was inserted in the First Com- mon Place Book under the date April of that year. It is engraved on the tombstone in Allo- way Churchyard. O YE whose cheek the tear of pity stains, Draw near with pious rev’rence, and attend ! Here lie the loving husband’s dear remains, The tender father, and the gen’rous friend. The pitying -heart that felt for human woe, The dauntless heart that fear’d no human pride, The friend of man — to vice alone a foe; For “ev’n his failings lean’d to virtue’s. side.” FOR ROBERT AIKEN, Esq. Know thou, O stranger to the fame Of this much lov’d, much honour’d. name ! (For none that knew him need be told), A warmer heart Death ne’er made cold. A BARD’S EPITAPH 55 FOR GAVIN HAMILTON, Esq. THE poor man weeps — here Gavin sleeps, Whom canting wretches blam’d; But with such as he, where’er he be, May I be sav’d or damn’d. A BARD’S EPITAPH I Is there a whim-inspiréd fool, Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool ? — Let him draw near; And owre this grassy heap sing dool, And drap a tear. Il Is there a Bard of rustic song, Who, noteless, steals the crowds among, That weekly this aréa throng ? — O, pass not by! But with a frater-feeling strong, Here, heave a sigh. III Is there a man, whose judgment clear Can others teach the course to steer, Yet runs, himself, life’s mad career Wild as the wave ?— Here pause — and, thro’ the starting tear, Survey this grave. Iv The poor inhabitant below Was quick to learn and wise to know, And keenly felt the friendly glow And softer flame; But thoughtless follies laid him low, And stain’d his name. Vv Reader, attend ! whether thy soul Soars Fancy’s flights beyond the pole, Or darkling grubs this earthly hole In low pursuit; Know, prudent, cautious, self-control Is wisdom’s root. ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 On 30th July [1783], the eve of publication [of the Kilmarnock Edition of Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect], Burns wrote thus to Rich- mond : ‘‘ My hour is now come,” and “ youand I shall never meet in Britain more.” By the end of August nearly the whole impression was subscribed, and Burns, ‘‘ after deducting all expenses,” pocketed, according to his own statement, “nearly twenty pounds: ” a much smaller sum than is shown in the account between him and Wilson. ‘The money,” he says, ‘came in seasonably, as I was about to indent myself for want of money to pay my freight. As soon as I was master of nine guin- eas, the price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I bespoke a passage in the very first ship that was to sail — “(+ For hungry ruin had me in the wind.’ ” Divers circumstances combined to delay his departure, and although on the 14th August he booked to sail on the 1st September, Sep- tember passed and he was still in Scotland. Ou the 9th October, after settling accounts with Wilson, he offered him a second edition : “on the hazard of being paid out of the first and readiest.” Wilson declined, and the dis- appointment more strongly confirmed his de- termination to leave the country. He would inevitably have done so, if he had not chanced to see a letter from Dr. Blacklock to the Rev. Dr. Lawrie, of Newmilns, expressing a strong opinion in favour of a second edition, and affirm- ing that the book might ‘‘ obtain a more uni- versal circulation than anything of the kind ” within the writer’s memory. At this time he had taken “ the last farewell” of his friends ; his “chest was on the road to Greenock ;” he had devised a song, The Gloomy Night is Gath- ering Fast, as the “last effort” of his “ Muse in Caledonia.” But the letter upset all his schemes, and determined him to get his verse reissued by an Edinburgh publisher; so he “posted” to the capital, “without a single acquaintance in town,” or “a single letter of recommendation ’’ in his pocket. Through the Earl of Glencairn he was introduced to Creech: with the result that a new Edition (the First Edinburgh) vas ready for delivery on the 18th April. 56 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 Three thousand copies were printed, for over fifteen hundred subscribers: the book being entitled ‘‘ Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. By Robert Burns. Edinburgh. Printed for the Author and Sold by William Creech. 1787.” Many important pieces — some written while the volume was going through the press — were added; but not even in the Dedication to the Caledonian Hunt was there so much as a hint that this was a Second Edition. [The Dedication is as follows : —] DEDICATION TO THE NOBLEMEN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CALEDONIAN HUNT My Lops anp GentLemEn, — A Scottish Bard, proud of the name, and whose highest ambition is to sing in his Country’s service — where shall he so properly look for patronage as to the illustrious Names of his native Land; those who bear the honours and inherit the vir- tues of their Ancestors? The Poetic Genius of my Country found me as the prophetic bard Elijah did Elisha — at the plough, and threw her inspiring mantle over me. She bade me sing the loves, the joys, the rural scenes and rural pleasures of my natal Soil, in my native tongue: I tuned my wild, artless notes, as she inspired. She whispered me to come to this ancient metropolis of Caledonia, and lay my Songs under your honoured protection: I now obey her dictates. Though much indebted to your goodness, I do not approach you, my Lords and Gentlemen, DEATH AND DOCTOR HORN- BOOK A TRUE STORY According to Gilbert Burns, Hornbook was one John Wilson, parish schoolmaster of Tar- bolton. To eke out his salary he opened a grocer’s shop, where he ‘‘ added the sale of a few medicines to his little trade,” informing the public in a shop bill that “ advice would be given in common disorders at the shop gratis.” At a “masonic meeting at Tarbolton in the spring of 1785” Wilson happened to air “ his medical skill” in the presence of Burns, who — says Gilbert — as he parted with him in the evening at “the place where he describes the meeting with Death’ was visited by “one of those floating ideas of apparitions he mentions in his letter to Dr. meses The visitation sug- in the usual style of dedication, to thank you for past favours; that path is so hackneyed by prostituted Learning, that honest Rusticity is ashamed of it. Nor do I present this Address with the venal soul of a servile Author, looking for a continuation of those favours : I was bred to the Plough, and am independent. I come to claim the common Scottish name with you, my illustrious Countrymen; and to tell the world that I glory in the title. I come to congratu- late my Country, that the blood of her ancient heroes still runs uncontaminated; and that from your courage, knowledge, and _ public spirit, she may expect protection, wealth, and liberty. In the last place, I come to proffer my warmest wishes to the Great Fountain of Honour, the Monarch of the Universe, for your welfare and happiness. When you go forth to waken the Echoes, in the ancient and favorite amusement of your Forefathers, may Pleasure ever be of your party ; and may Social-joy await your return ! ‘When harassed in court or camps with the jost- lings of bad men and bad measures, may the honest consciousness of injured Worth attend your return to your native Seats; and may Domestie Happiness, with a smiling welcome, meet you at yourgates! May Corruption shrink at your kindling, indignant glance; and may tyranny in the Ruler and licentiousness in the People equally find you an inexorable foe ! I have the honour to be, with the sincerest gratitude and highest respect, My Lorps anp GENTLEMEN, ‘ Your most devoted, humble Servant, ROBERT BURNS. Eprxsouren, April 4, 1787. gested a train of thoughts which he began run- ‘ning into Death and Dr. Hornbook on his way home. If Lockhart may be believed, the satire ruined Wilson in Tarbolton: not only was he compelled to shut his shop, but also he had presently to close his school. But, as he con- tinued to act as Session-Clerk down to at least 8th January, 1793 (letter in Burns Chronicle, 1895, p. 138), Lockhart must have been in some sort misinformed. Nevertheless, Wilson did remove to Glasgow, where he became schoolmaster and Session-Clerk of the Gorbals parish. He died 13th January, 1839. Hately Waddell, on the authority of a “re- spected resident” in Tarbolton, brought for- ward a prototype of Death: one “ Hugh Reid of the Langlands,” a ‘‘lang ghaist-like body,” with whom Burns—’tis the Tarbolton tra- dition — forgathered, as here described, near “ Willie’s mill.”’ DEATH AND DR. HORNBOOK 57 I Some books are lies frae end to end, -And some great lies were never penn’d: Ev’n ministers, they hae been kend, In holy rapture, A rousing whid at times to vend, And nail’t wi’ Scripture. II But this that I am gaun to tell, Which lately on a night befel, Is just as true ’s the Deil’s in hell Or Dublin city: That e’er he nearer comes oursel *Sa muckle pity! hie. III The clachan yill had made me canty, I was na fou, but just had plenty: I stacher’d whyles, but yet took tent ay To free the ditches; An’ hillocks, stanes, an’ bushes, kend ay Frae ghaists an’ witches. Iv The rising moon began to glowr The distant Cumnock Hills out-owre: To count her horns, wi’ a’ my pow’r I set mysel; But whether she had three or four, I cou’d na tell. Vv I was come round about the hill, And todlin down on Willie’s mill, Setting my staff wi’ a’ my skill To keep me sicker; Tho’ leeward whyles, against my will, I took a bicker. VI I there wi’ Something does forgather, That pat me in an eerie swither; An awfw’ scythe, out-owre ae shouther, Clear-dangling, hang; A three-tae’d leister on the ither dv - Lay, large an’ lang. vil Its stature seem’d lang Scotch ells twa; The queerest shape that e’er I saw, For fient a wame it had ava; And then its shanks, They were as thin, as sharp an’ sma’ : As cheeks 0’ branks. ‘Yu '4 VII “Guid-een,” quo’ I; “Friend! hae ye been mawin, When ither folk are busy sawin ?” It seem’d to mak a kind o’ stan’, But naething spak. At length, says I: “Friend! whare ye gaun ? Will ye go back?” Ix It spak right howe: “ My name is Death, But be na’ fley’d.”” Quoth I: “Guid faith, Ye ’re may be come to stap my breath; But tent me, billie: I red ye weel, take care o’ skaith, See, there’s a gully !” x “Gudeman,”’ quo’ he, “ put up your whittle, I’m no design’d to try its mettle; But if I did, I wad be kittle Aa s To be mislear’d: *’ I wad na mind it, no that spittle Out-owre my beard.” XI “ Weel, weel!” says I, “a bargain be ’t; Come, gie’s your hand, an’ say we’re ree’t; We ’Il ease our shanks, an’ tak a seat: Come, gie’s your news: This while ye hae been monie a gate, At monie a house.” XII “ Ay, ay !’? quo’ he, an’ shook his head, “Tt ’s e’en a lang, lang time indeed Sin’ I began to nick the thread An’ choke the breath: Folk maun do something for their bread, An’ sae maun Death. XIIL “Sax thousand years are near-hand fled Sin’ I was to the butching bred, An’ monie a scheme in vain’s been laid To stap or scar me; Till ane Hornbook ’s ta’en up the trade, And faith ! he Il waur me. 58 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 XIV “Ye ken Jock Hornbook i’ the clachan ? Deil mak his king’s-hood in a spleuchan ! He’s grown sae weel acquaint wi” Buchan And ither chaps, The weans haud out their fingers laughin, An’ pouk my hips. te xV “ See, here ’s a scythe, an’ there ’s a dart, They hae pierc’d monie a gallant heart; But Doctor Hornbook wi’ his art Aw’ cursed skill, .%onk Has made them baith no worth a fart, Damn’d haet they “I kill! XVI «*T was but yestreen, nae farther gane, I threw a noble throw at ane; Wi? less, I’m sure, I’ve hundreds slain; But Deil-ma-care ! It just played dirl on the bane, But did nae mair. XVII “ Hornbook was by wi’ ready art, An’ had sae fortify’d the part, That when I lookéd to my dart, Tt was sae blunt, Fient haet o’t wad hae piere’d the heart Of a kail-runt. XVIII “TI drew my scythe in sic a fury, I near-hand cowpit wi’ my hurry, But yet the bauld Apothecary Withstood the shock: I might as weel hae try’d a quarry O’ hard whin-rock. xIX “ Ev’n them he canna get attended, Altho’ their face he ne’er had kend it, Just shit in a kail-blade an’ send it, As soon’s he smells ’t, Baith their disease and what will mend it, At once he tells ’t. XxX « And then a’ doctor’s saws and whittles Of a’ dimensions, shapes, an’ mettles, A’ kinds o’ boxes, mugs, and bottles, He’s sure to hae: Their Latin names as fast he rattles AsABC. XXI * Calces o’ fossils, earth, and trees; True sal-marinum o’ the seas; The farina of beans an’ pease, He has ’t in plenty; Aqua-fontis, what you please, He can content ye. i‘ AX hyerc ea? e ze XXII “ Forbye some new, uncommon weapons, Urinus spiritus of capons; Or mite-horn shavings, filings, scrapings Distill’d per se; Sal-alkali o’ midge-tail-clippings, And monie mae.” — XXIII “Waes me for Johnie Ged’s Hole now,” Quoth I, “if that.thae news be true ! His braw calf-ward whare gowans grew Sae white and bonie, Nae doubt they ’ll rive it wi’ the plew: They ’1] ruin Johnie!” XXIV The creature grain’d an eldritch laugh, And says: “ Ye nedna yoke the pleugh, Kirkyards will soon be till’d eneugh, Tak ye nae fear: wu They ’ll a’ be trench’d wi monie a sheugh In twa-three year. ~ XXV «“ Whare I kill’d ane, a fair strae death By loss o’ blood or want o’ breath, This night I’m free to tak my aith, That Hornbrook’s skill Has clad a score i’ their last claith By drap an’ pill. XXVI “¢ An honest wabster to his trade, Whase wife’s twa nieves were scarce weel- bred, Gat tippence-worth to mend her head, When it was sair;. The wife slade cannie to her bed, But ne’er spak mair. XXVII «A eountra laird had taen the batts, (ol Or some curmurring in his guts, THE BRIGS OF AYR 59 His only son for Hornbook sets, An’ pays him well: The lad, for twa aay gimmer-pets, 2.04 as laird himsel. XXVIII é ss See, “A bonie lass — ye kend her name — Some ill-brewn drink had hov’d her wame; She trusts hersel, to hide the shame, In Hornbook’s care; Horn sent her aff to her lang hame To hide it there. XXIX “That’s just a swatch o’ Hornbook’s way; Thus goes he on from day to day, Thus does he poison, kill, an’ slay, An’s weel paid for’t; Yet stops me o’ my lawfu’ prey Wi his damn’d dirt: XXX «But, hark! I'll tell you of a plot, Tho’ dinna ye be speakin o’t: I'll nail the self-conceited sot, As dead’s a herrin; Niest time we meet, I’ll wad a groat, He gets his fairin !” _ XXXI But just as he began to tell, The auld kirk-hammer strak the bell Some wee short hour ayont the twal, Which raised us baith: I took the way that pleas’d mysel, And sae did Death. THE BRIGS OF AYR A POEM INSCRIBED TO JOHN BALLANTINE, ESQ., AYR John Ballantine — to whom Burns dedicated this poem, and who was one of his warmest friends — was eldest son of Bailie William Ballantine, banker and merchant in Ayr, and Elizabeth Bowman; born 22d July, 1748; suc- ceeded to his father’s business; was a most active citizen, and a prime mover in the pro- ject for a new bridge; was elected provost of the burgh in 1787 ; and died 15th July, 1812. In a letter to Robert Aiken, 7th October, 1786, Burns, after narrating the failure of his attempts to persuade Wilson to publish a sec- ond edition, states that one of his chief re- grets was that he was thus deprived of an opportunity for showing his gratitude to Bal- lantine by publishing The Brigs of Ayr. The New Bridge, designed by Robert Adam of London, the most famous of the four brothers, was erected 1785-88. The boast of the ‘“ Auld Brig” that it would ‘‘be a brig” when its neighbour was a “shapeless caim™” was justi- fied in 1877, when the New Bridge was so in- jured by floods that it had to be practically rebuilt at a cost of £15,000, additional repairs being found necessary in 1881. The Brigs of Ayr, like To Robert Graham of Fintry (p. 85), is set forth in the heroic coup- let. The technical inspiration is unmistakably English in both; and, accordingly, the verse in both is handled with a certain awkwardness, ‘while the effect is often rough, and even ragged. This is the more surprising, as the couplet had a past of its own in Scottish po- etry. To say nothing of late and early chaps and tracts, it is the rhythmus of Blind Harry’s Wallace (c. 1460); of The Three Priests of Peebles (c. 1500) ; of Gavin Douglas’s Eneados (1518); of that masterly and brilliant piece of comic narrative, generally (and, no doubt, rightly) ascribed to Dunbar, The Freirs of Berwick ; of Ramsay’s Gentle Shepherd ; and of Fergusson’s Drink and Kirkyard Eclogues, of which last, and of the same poet’s Plaznstanes and Causey, the present piece is strongly remi- niscent. It was probably composed between July and October, 1786. Tae simple Bard, rough at the rustic plough, Learning his tuneful trade from ev’ry bough (The chanting linnet, or the mellow thrush, Hailing the setting sun, sweet, in the green thorn bush; The soaring lark, the perching red-breast shrill, Or deep-ton’d plovers grey, wild-whistling o’er the hill): Shall he — nurst in the peasant’s lowly shed, To hardy independence bravely bred, By early poverty to hardship steel’d, And train’d to arms in stern misfortune’s field — Shall he be guilty of their hireling crimes, The servile, mercenary Swiss of rhymes ? Or labour hard the panegyric close, With all the venal soul of dedicating prose ? No! though his artless strains he rudely sings, And throws his hand uncouthly o’er the strings, 60 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 He glows with all the spirit of the bard, Fame, honest fame, his great, his dear re- ward. Still, if some patron’s gen’rous care he trace, Skill’d in the secret to bestow with grace; When Ballantine befriends his humble name, And hands the rustic stranger up to fame, With heartfelt throes his grateful bosom swells: The godlike bliss, to give, alone excels. *T was when the stacks get on their win- ter hap, And thack and rape secure the toil-won crap; Potatoe-bings are snugged up frae skaith O’ coming winter’s biting, frosty breath; The bees, rejoicing oer their summer toils — Unnumber’d buds’ an’ flowers’ delicious spoils, Seal’d up with frugal care in massive waxen piles — Are doom’d by man, that tyrant o’er the weak, The death o’ devils smoor’d wi’ brimstone reek: The thundering guns are heard on ev’ry side, The wounded coveys, reeling, scatter wide; The feather’d field-mates, bound by Na- ture’s tie, Sires, mothers, children, in one carnage lie: (What warm, poetic heart but inly bleeds, And execrates man’s savage, ruthless deeds !) Nae mair the flower in field or meadow springs; Nae mair the grove with airy concert rings, Except perhaps the robin’s whistling glee, Proud o’ the height o’ some bit half-lang tree; The hoary morns precede the sunny days; Mild, calm, serene, widespreads the noon- tide blaze, While thick the gossamour waves wanton in the rays. *T was in that season, when a simple Bard, Unknown and poor — simplicity’s re- ward !— Ae night, within the ancient brugh of Ayr, By whim inspir’d, or haply prest wi’ care, He left his bed, and took his wayward route, And down by Simpson’s wheel’d the left about (Whether impell’d by all-directing Fate, To witness what I after shall narrate; Or whether, rapt in meditation high, He wander’d forth, he knew not where nor why): The drowsy Dungeon-Clock had number’d two, And Wallace Tower had sworn the fact was true; The tide-swoln Firth, with sullen-sounding roar, Through the still night dash’d hoarse along the shore; All else was hush’d as Nature’s closéd e’e; The silent moon shone high o’er tower and tree; The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam, Crept, gently-crusting, o’er the glittering stream. When, lo! on either hand the list’ning Bard, ; The clanging sugh of whistling wings is heard; Two dusky forms dart thro’ the midnight air, Swift as the gos drives on the wheeling hare; Ane on th’ Auld Brig his airy shape up- rears, The ither flutters o’er the rising piers: Our warlock rhymer instantly descried The Sprites that owre the Brigs of Ayr preside. (That bards are second-sighted is nae joke, And ken the lingo of the sp’ritual folk; Fays, spunkies, kelpies, a’, they can explain them, And ev’n the vera deils they brawly ken them). Auld Brig appear’d of ancient Pictish race, The vera wrinkles Gothic in his face; He seem’d as he wi’ Time had warstl’d lang, Yet, teughly doure, he bade an unco bang. New Brig was buskit in a braw new coat, That he, at Lon’on, frae ane Adams got; In’s hand five taper staves as smooth ’s a bead, Wi’ virls an’ whirlygigums at the head. THE BRIGS OF AYR 61 The Goth was stalking round with anxious search, Spying the time-worn flaws in ev’ry arch. It chane’d his new-come neebor took his e’e, And e’en a vex’d and angry heart had he ! Wi’ thieveless sneer to see his modish mien, He, down the water, gies him this guid- een: — AULD BRIG “T doubt na, frien’, yell think ye ’re nae sheep shank, Ance ye were streekit owre frae bank to bank ! But gin ye be a brig as auld as me — Tho’ faith, that date, I doubt, ye’ll never see — There ’Il be, if that day come, I’ll wad a boddle, Some fewer whigmeleeries in your noddle.” NEW BRIG « Auld Vandal! ye but show your little mense, Just much about it wi’ your scanty sense: Will your poor, narrow foot-path of a street, Where twa wheel-barrows tremble when they meet, Your ruin’d, formless bulk o’ stane an’ lime, Compare wi’ bonie brigs o’ modern time ? There ’s men of taste would tak the Ducat stream, Tho’ they should cast the vera sark and swim, Ever they would grate their feelings wi’ the view 0’ sic an ugly, Gothic hulk as you.” AULD BRIG “Conceited gowk ! puff’d up wi’ windy pride ! This monie a year I’ve stood the flood an’ tide; And tho’ wi’ crazy eild I’m sair forfairn, I'll be a brig when ye’re a shapeless cairn! As yet ye little ken about the matter, But twa-three winters will inform ye better. When heavy, dark, continued, a’-day rains Wi deepening deluges o’erflow the plains; When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, Or stately Lugar’s mossy fountains boil, Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source, Arous’d by blustering winds an’ spotting thowes, In monie a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes; While crashing ice, borne on the roaring speat, Sweeps dams, an’ mills, an’ brigs, a’ to the gate; And from Glenbuck down to the Bathon Key Auld Ayr is just one lengthen’d, tanbling sea — Then down ye ‘ll hurl (deil nor ye never rise!), And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies ! A lesson sadly teaching, to your cost, That Architecture’s noble art is lost !” NEW BRIG “ Fine architecture, trowth, I needs must say ’t o’t, The Lord be thankit that we’ve tint the gate o’t! . Gaunt, ghastly, ghaist-alluring edifices, Hanging with threat’ning jut, like preci- pices; O’er-arching, mouldy, coves, Supporting roofs fantastic — stony groves; Windows and doors in nameless sculptures drest, With order, symmetry, or taste unblest; Forms like some bedlam statuary’s dream, The craz’d creations of misguided whim; Forms might be worshipp’d on the bended knee, And still the second dread Command be free: Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea ! Mansions that would disgrace the building taste Of any mason reptile, bird or beast, Fit only for a doited monkish race, Or frosty maids forsworn the dear embrace, Or cuifs of later times, wha held the gloom - inspiring notion, That sullen gloom was sterling true de- votion: Fancies that. our guid brugh denies pro- tection, 62 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 And soon may they expire, unblest with resurrection |” AULD BRIG “OQ ye, my dear-remember’d, ancient yealings, Were ye but here to share my wounded feelings ! Ye worthy proveses, an’ monie a. bailie, Wha in the paths o’ righteousness did toil ay; Ye dance deacons, an’ ye douce conveeners, To whom our moderns are but causey- cleaners; Ye godly councils, wha hae blest this town; Ye godly brethren o’ the sacred gown, Wha meekly gie your hurdies to the smit- . eLs; And (what would now be strange), ye godly Writers; A’ ye douce folk I’ve borne aboon the broo, Were ye but here, what would ye say or do! How would your spirits groan in deep vexation To see each melancholy alteration; And, agonising, curse the time and place When ye begat the base degen’rate race ! Nae langer rev’rend men, their country’s glory, In plain braid Scots hold forth a plain, braid story; Nae langer thrifty citizens, an’ douce, Meet owre a pint or in the council-house: But staumrel, corky-headed, graceless gentry, The herryment and ruin of the country; Men three-parts made by tailors and by barbers, Wha waste your weel-hain’d gear on damn’d New Brigs and harbours !” NEW BRIG * Now haud you there! for faith ye ’ve said enough, And muckle mair than ye can mak to through. As for your priesthood, I shall say but little, Corbies and clergy are a shot right kittle: But, under favour o’ your langer beard, Abuse o’ magistrates might weel be spar’d; To liken them to your auld-warld squad, I must needs say, comparisons are odd. In Ayr, wag-wits nae mair can hae a handle To mouth ‘a Citizen,’ a term o’ scandal; Nae mair the council waddles down the street, In all the pomp of ignorant conceit; Men wha grew wise priggin owre hops an’ raisins, Or gather’d lib’ral views in bonds and seisins; If haply Knowledge, on a random tramp, Had shor’d them with a glimmer of his lamp, And would to common-sense for once be- tray’d them, Plain, dull stupidity stept kindly in to aid them.” What farther clish-ma-claver might been said. What bloody wars, if Sprites had blood to shed. No man can tell; but, all before their sight, A fairy train appear’d in order bright: Adown the glittering stream they featly dane’d; Bright to the moon their various dresses glane’d; They footed o’er the wat’ry glass so neat, The infant ice scarce bent beneath their feet; While arts ‘of minstrelsy among them rung, And soul-ennobling Bards heroic ditties sung. O, had M‘Lauchlan, thairm - inspiring sage, Been there to hear this heavenly band en- age, When fro? his dear strathspeys they bore with Highland rage; Or when they struck old Scotia’s melting airs, The lover’s raptured joys or bleeding cares; How would his Highland lug been nobler fir’d, And ev’n his matchless hand with finer touch inspir’d ! No guess could tell what instrument ap- ear’d, But all the soul of Musie’s self was heard; Harmonious concert rung in every part, While simple melody pour’d moving on the heart. The Genius of the Stream in front ap- pears, A venerable chief advane’d in years; THE ORDINATION 63 His hoary head with water-lilies crown’d, His manly leg with garter-tangle bound. Next came the loveliest pair in all the ring, Sweet Female Beauty hand in hand with Spring; Then, crown’d with flow’ry hay, came Rural Joy, And Summer, with his fervid-beaming eye; All-cheering Plenty, with her flowing horn, Led yellow Autumn wreath’d with nodding corn; Then Winter’s time-bleach’d locks did hoary show, By Hospitality, with cloudless brow. Next follow’d Courage, with his martial stride, From where the Feal wild-woody coverts hide; Benevolence, with mild, benignant air, A female form, came from the towers of Stair; Learning and Worth in equal measures trode A From simple Catrine, their long-lov’d abode; Last, white-rob’d Peace, crown’d with a hazel wreath, To rustic Agriculture did bequeath The broken, iron instruments of death: At sight of whom our Sprites forgat their kindling wrath. THE ORDINATION For sense, they little owe to frugal Heav’n : To please the mob they hide the little giv’n. In a letter to Richmond (17th February, 1786) Burns mentions that he had composed The Ordination, and describes it as “a poem on Mr. M'Kinlay’s being called to Kilmar- nock.” Probably he intended to publish it in the ’86 Edition, which he was then con- templating, and had called it The Ordination to that end; nevertheless, as appears from the letter, not only was it written before the ordi- nation, which took place 6th April, but also it was not even written in view thereof —it only celebrated the presentation. Moreover, an early copy — Ms. —in the possession of Lord Rosebery, has merely this heading, “A Scotch Poem, by Rab Rhymer.” James Mackinlay, born at Douglas, Lanark- shire, in 1756, was first presented to the second charge of the Laigh Kirk, Kilmarnock, in the August of 1785. He declined the presentation on account of certain conditions attached to it. Presentation to another was made out on 15th November, but the messenger to the Presby- tery of Irvine was despoiled of the warrant by certain parishioners. ‘Thereupon a new presen- tation was made out for Mackinlay, who was ordained on 6th April following ; was translated to the first charge, on a petition of the parish- ioners, 31st January, 1809; was made D. D., Aberdeen, 1810; died 10th February, 1841. A volume of his Sermons was published posthu- mously, with a Life by his son, Rev. James Mackinlay. Like Russell, he had a rousing voice ; but his oratory was more persuasive and less menacing than Russell’s. In a note to Tam Samson's Elegy Burns describes him “as a great favourite of the million.” In The Kirk’s Alarm he is addressed as “‘Simper James.”’ His more than partiality for the “ fair Killie dames” drew on him a presbyterial rebuke some years afterwards. In all probability the satire was composed immediately after the second presentation. I KirmMaRnock wabsters, fidge an’ claw, Av’ pour your creeshie nations; An’ ye wha leather rax an’ draw, Of a’ denominations; Swith! to the Laigh Kirk, ane an’ a’, An’ there tak up your stations; Then aff to Begbie’s in a raw, An’ pour divine libations For joy this day. Ii Curst Common-sense, that imp o’ hell, Cam in wi’ Maggie Lauder: But Oliphant aft made her yell, An’ Russell sair misea’d her: This day Mackinlay taks the flail, An’ he’s the boy will blaud her! He ’ll clap a shangan on her tail, An’ set the bairns to dand her Wi dirt this day. III Mak haste an’ turn King David owre, An’ lilt wi’ holy clangor; O’ double verse come gie us four, An’ skirl up the Bangor : This day the Kirk kicks up a stoure: Nae mair the knaves shall wrang her, For Heresy is in her pow’r, And gloriously she ’I] whang her Wi’ pith this day. 64 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 Iv Come, let a proper text be read, An’ touch it aff wi’ vigour, How graceless Ham leugh at his dad, Which made Candan a nigger; Or Phineas drove the murdering blade ‘Wi’ whore-abhorring rigour; Or Zipporah, the scauldin jad, Was like a bluidy tiger. ; I’ th’ inn that day. v There, try his mettle on the Creed, And bind him down wi’ caution, — That stipend is a carnal weed He taks but for the fashion — And gie him o’er the flock to feed, And punish each transgression; Especial, rams that cross the breed, Gie them sufficient threshin: Spare them nae day. VI Now auld Kilmarnock, cock thy tail, An’ toss thy horns fu’ canty ; Nae mair thou’lt rowte out-owre the dale, Because thy pasture ’s scanty; — For lapfu’s large o’ gospel kail Shall fill thy crib in plenty, An’ runts o” grace, the pick an’ wale, No gien by way o’ dainty, But ilka day. ' VII Nae mair by Babel’s streams we "ll weep To think upon our Zion; And hing our fiddles up to sleep, Like baby-clouts a-dryin. : Come, screw the pegs wi’ tunefu’ cheep, And o’er the thairms be tryin; O, rare! to see our elbucks wheep, And a’ like lamb-tails flyin Fw’ fast this day ! Vir Lang, Patronage, wi’ rod o’ airn, Has shor’d the Kirk’s undoin; As lately Fenwick, sair forfairn, Has proven to its ruin: Our patron, honest man! Gleneairn, He saw mischief was brewin; Av’ like a godly, elect bairn, He’s waled us out a true ane, And sound this day. IX Now, Robertson, harangue nae mair, But steek your gab for ever; Or try the wicked town of Ayr, For there they ’ll think you clever; Or, nae reflection on your lear, Ye may commence a shaver; Or to the Netherton repair, An’ turn a carpet-weaver Aff-hand this day. x Mu’trie and you were just a match, We never had sic twa drones: Auld Hornie did the Laigh Kirk watch, Just like a winkin baudrons, f And ay he catch’d the tither wretch, To fry them in his caudrons; But now his Honor maun detach, Wi’ a’ his brimstone squadrons, Fast, fast this day. XI See, see auld Orthodoxy’s faes : She ’s swingein thro’ the city ! Hark, how the nine-tailed cat she plays t I vow it’s unco pretty; There, Learning, with his Greekish face, Grunts out some Latin ditty; And Common-Sense is gaun, she says, To mak to Jamie Beattie Her plaint this day. XII But there ’s Morality himsel, Embracing all opinions; Hear, how he gies the tither yell Between his twa companions ! See, how she peels the skin an’ fell, As ane were peelin onions ! Now there, they ’re packéd aff to hell, An’ banish’d our dominions, Henceforth this day. XT | O happy day ! rejoice, rejoice ! Come bouse about the porter ! Morality’s demure decoys Shall here nae mair find quarter: Mackinlay, Russell, are the boys That Heresy can torture; They ’ll gie her on a rape a hoyse, _ And cowe her measure shorter By th’ head some day.. ADDRESS TO THE UNCO GUID XIV Come, bring the tither mutchkin in, And here ’s — for a conclusion — To ev’ry New Light mother’s son, From this time forth, confusion ! If mair they deave us wi’ their din Or patronage intrusion, 3 We'll light a spunk, and ev’ry skin We'll run them aff in fusion, Like oil some day. THE CALF To the Rev. James Steven, on his text, Malachi iv. 2: ‘And ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.’’ “A nearly extemporaneous production, on a wager with Mr. Hamilton that I would not pro- duce a poem on the subject in a given time :” —R.B., Letter to Robert Muir, 8th September, 1786. It was written on Sunday, 3d Septem- ber, after listening to a sermon by the Rev. James Steven. As originally composed and read to Gavin Hamilton and Dr. Mackenzie, it consisted of four stanzas only; but on the Sun- day evening at eight o’clock Bums sent a copy to Dr. Mackenzie with two more — the fourth and the sixth. It was printed in 1787 (presum- ably before its appearance in the Edinburgh Edition), with some other verses, in a tract called The Calf; The Unco Calf’s Answer; Virtue to a Mountain Bard; and the Deil’'s Answer to his vera worthy Frien Robert Burns, An explanation was added that The Calf had been sent to The Glasgow Advertiser, but de- clined. The same year appeared Burns’ Calf turned a Bull; or Some Remarks on his mean and unprecedented attack on Mr. S—— when preaching from Malachi iv. 2. James Steven, a native of Kilmarnock, was licensed to preach 28th June, 1786; acted for some time as assistant to Robert Dow, min- ister of Ardrossan; was ordained minister of Crown Court Chapel, London, Ist November, 1787; was one of the founders of the Lon. don Missionary Society; was admitted min- ister of Kilwinning, 28th March, 1803; and died of apoplexy 15th February, 1824. Wil- liam Burns, Robert’s younger brother, in a letter of 20th March, 1790, thus chronicles a visit to Steven’s church: “ We were at Covent Garden Chapel this forenoon to hear the Calf preach ; he is grown very fat, and is as boister- ous as ever.” 65 I Rieut, sir! your text I'll prove it true, Tho’ heretics may laugh; For instance, there ’s yoursel just now, God knows, an unco calf. II And should some patron be so kind As bless you wi’ a kirk, I doubt na, sir, but then we ‘Il find You’re still as great a stirk. III But, if the lover’s raptur’d hour Shall ever be your lot, Forbid it, every heavenly Power, You e’er should be a séot / IV Tho’, when some kind connubial dear Your but-an’-ben adorns, The like has been that you may wear A noble head of horns. Vv And, in your lug, most reverend James, To hear you roar and rowte, Few men o’ sense: will doubt your claims To rank among the nowte. VI And when ye’re number’d wi’ the dead Below a grassy hillock, With justice they may mark your head: — “Here lies a famous bullock !” ADDRESS TO THE UNCO GUID OR THE RIGIDLY RIGHTEOUS My Son, these maxims make a rule, An’ lump them ay thegither : The Rigid Righteous is a fool, The Rigid Wise anither ; The cleanest corn that e’er was dight May hae some pyles o’ caff in; So ne’er a fellow-creature slight For random fits o’ daffin. Sotomon (Eccles. vii. 16) I O YE, wha are sae guid yoursel, Sae pious and sae holy, 66 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 Ye ’ve nought to do but mark and tell Your neebours’ fauts and folly; Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, Supplied wi’ store o’ water; The heapet happer ’s ebbing still, An’ still the clap plays clatter ! II Hear me, ye venerable core, As counsel for poor mortals _, That frequent pass douce Wisdom’s door thas For glaikit Folly’s portals: I for their thoughtless, careless sakes Would here propone defences — ‘wy Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, Their failings and mischances. Tit Ye see your state wi’ theirs compared, . And shudder at the niffer; (0 Oy But cast a moment’s fair regard, What makes the mighty differ ? Discount what scant occasion gave; That purity ye pride in; And (what’s aft mair than a’ the lave) Your better art o’ hidin. Deny ay \ shea Think, when your castigated pulse Gies now and then a wallop, What ragings must his veins convulse, That still eternal gallop ! Wi’ wind and tide fair i’ your tail, Right on ye seud your sea-way; But in the teeth o’ baith to sail, ~ It makes an unco lee-way. Vv See Social-life and Glee sit down All joyous and unthinking, Till, quite transmugrify’d, they ’re grown Debauchery and Drinking: O, would they stay to calculate, Th’ eternal consequences, Or — your more dreaded hell to state — Damnation of expenses ! VI Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames, Tied up in godly laces, Before ye gie poor Frailty names, Suppose a change o’ cases: A dear-lov’d lad, convenience snug, A treach’rous inclination — But, let me whisper i’ your lug, Ye’re aiblins nae temptation. VIL Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is humai?~ One point must still be greatly dark, The moving why they do it; And just as lamely can ye mark How far perhaps they rue it. by F hy VIII Who made the heart, ’tis He alone Decidedly can try us: He knows each chord, its various tone, Each spring, its various bias: Then at the balance let ’s be mute, We never can adjust it; What ’s done we partly may compute, But know not what ’s resisted. TAM SAMSON’S ELEGY An honest man ’s the noblest work of God. Porg. “When this worthy old sportsman went out last muir-fowl season, he supposed it was to be, in Ossian’s phrase, ‘ the last of his fields,’ and expressed an ardent wish to die and be buried in the muirs. On this hint the author com- posed his Elegy and Epitaph” (R. B.). Sam- son — a nursery-gardener and seedsman in Kil- marnock, and an ardent sportsman — died 12th December, 1795, in his seventy-third year. The Epitaph is inscribed on his tombstone in the yard of the Laigh Kirk, adjoining those of the two ministers, Mackinlay and Robertson, mentioned in the first stanza. The piece is modelled — even to the use of certain lines — on Sempill’s Piper of Kilbarchan. See ante, p. 12, Prefatory Note to Address to the Deil. On 18th November, 1786, shortly before setting out for Edinburgh, Burns wrote to his friend Robert Muir: “Inclosed you have Tam Sam- son, as I intend to print him.” I Has auld Kilmarnock seen the Deil ? Or great Mackinlay thrawn his heel ? Or Rabesteon again grown weel To preach an’ read ? TAM SAMSON’S ELEGY 67 « Na’, waur than a’ !’? eries ilka chiel, “Tam Samson’s dead !” II Kilmarnock lang may grunt an’ grane, An’ sigh, an’ sab, an’ greet her lane, An’ cleed her bairns — man, wife an’ wean — In mourning weed; To Death she’s dearly pay’d the kain: Tam Samson’s dead ! qi The Brethren o’ the mystic level May hing their head in woefu’ bevel, While by their nose the tears will revel, Like onie bead; Death’s gien the Lodge an unco devel: Tam Samson’s dead ! Iv When winter muffles up his cloak, And binds the mire like a rock; When to the loughs the curlers flock, We gleesome speed, Wha will they station at the cock ? — Tam Samson’s dead ! Vv He was the king of a’ the core, To guard, or draw, or wick a bore, Or up the rink like Jehu roar In time o’ need; But now he lags on Death’s hog-score: Tam Samson ’s dead ! VI Now safe the stately sawmont sail, And trouts bedropp’d wi’ crimson hail, And eels weel-kend for souple tail, And geds for greed, Since, dark in Death’s fish-creel, we wail Tam Samson dead ! VII Rejoice, ye birring paitricks a’; Ye cootie moorcocks, crousely craw; Ye maukins, cock your fud fu’ braw Withouten dread; Your mortal fae is now awa: Tam Samson’s dead ! Vul That wofu’ morn be ever mourn’d, Saw him in shootin graith adorn’d, While pointers round impatient barn’d, Frae couples free’d; But och! he gaed and ne’er return’d: Tam Samson ’s dead ! IX In vain auld-age his body batters, In vain the gout his ancles fetters, In vain the burns cam down like waters, : An acre braid ! Now ev’ry auld wife, greetin, clatters: “Tam Samson’s dead!” x Owre monie a weary hag he limpit, An’ ay the tither shot he thumpit, Till coward Death behint him jumpit, Wi deadly feide; Now he proclaims wi’ tout o’ trumpet: “Tam Samson’s dead!” XI When at his heart he felt the dagger, He reel’d his wonted bottle-swagger, But yet he drew the mortal trigger Wy weel-aim’d heed; ‘Lord, five!” he cry’d, an’ owre did stagger — “Tam Samson ’s dead!” XII Ilk hoary hunter mourn’d a brither; Ik sportsman-youth bemoan’d a father; Yon auld gray stane, amang the heather, Marks out his head; Whare Burns has wrote, in rhyming blether: “Tam Samson’s dead!” XII There low he lies in lasting rest; Perhaps upon his mould’ring breast Some spitefu’ moorfowl bigs her nest, To hatch an’ breed: Alas! nae mair he ’ll them molest: “Tam Samson ’s dead!” XIV When August winds the heather wave, And sportsmen wander by yon grave, Three volleys let his memory crave O’ pouther an’ lead, Till Echo answers frae her cave: “Tam Samson’s dead!” 68 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 XV “ Heav’n rest his saul whare’er he be!” Is th’ wish o’ monie mae than me: He had twa fauts, or maybe three, Yet what remead ? Ae social, honest man want we: “Tam Samson ’s dead!” THE EPITAPH Tam Samson’s weel-worn clay here lies: Ye canting zealots, spare him! If honest worth in Heaven rise, Ye ll mend or ye win near him. PER CONTRA Go, Fame, an’ canter like a filly Thro’ a’ the streets an neuks o’ Killie; Tell ev’ry social honest billie To cease his grievin; For, yet unskaith’d by Death’s gleg gullie, Tam Samson’s leevin! A WINTER NIGHT Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are, That bide the pelting of this pityless storm ! How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these ? SHAKESPEARE. Probably the piece which Burns sent to John Ballantine on 20th of November, 1786: “Enclosed you have my first attempt in that irregular kind of measure in which many of our finest odes are wrote. How far I have succeeded I don’t know, but I shall be happy to have your opinion on Friday first (24th November), when I intend being in Ayr.” The irregular strophes —imitated from Gray, and strikingly inferior to the introductory stanzas —are freely paraphrased from Shakespeare’s eS Blow, thou Winter Wind, in As You ike It. I WHEN biting Boreas, fell and doure, Sharp shivers thro’ the leafless bow’r; When Phebus gies a short-liv’d glow’r, Far south the lift, Dim-dark’ning thro’ the flaky show’r Or whirling drift: IL Ae night the storm the steeples rocked; Poor Labour sweet in sleep was locked; While burns, wi’ snawy wreaths up-choked, Wild-eddying swirl, Or, thro’ the mining outlet bocked, Down headlong hurl: Il List’ning the doors an’ winnocks rattle, I thought me on the ourie cattle, Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle QO’ winter war, And thro’ the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle Beneath a scaur. Iv Ilk happing bird — wee, helpless thing! — That in the merry months o’ spring Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o’ thee ? Whare wilt thou cow’r thy chittering wing, An’ close thy e’e ? Vv Ev’n you, on murd’ring errands toil’d, Lone from your savage homes exil’d, The blood-stain’d roost and sheep -cote spoil’d My heart forgets, While pityless the tempest wild Sore on you beats! VI Now Phebe, in her midnight reign, Dark-muffi’d, view’d the dreary plain; Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train, Rose in my soul, When on my ear this plaintive strain, Slow-solemn, stole : — VII « Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust! And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost! Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows! Not all your rage, as now united, shows More hard unkindness unrelenting, Vengeful malice, unrepenting, Than heaven-illumin’d Man on brother Man bestows ! See stern Oppression’s iron grip, Or mad Ambition’s gory hand, Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip, Woe, Want, and Murder o’er a land ! STANZAS WRITTEN IN PROSPECT OF DEATH 69 Ev’n in the peaceful rural vale, Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale: How pamper’d Luxury, Flatt’ry by her side, The parasite empoisoning her ear, With all the servile wretches in the rear, Looks o’er proud Property, extended: wide; And eyes the simple, rustic hind, Whose toil upholds the glitt’ring show — A creature of another kind, Some coarser substance, unrefin’d — Plae’d for her lordly use, thus far, thus vile, below! Where, where is Love’s fond, tender throe, With lordly Honor’s lofty brow, The pow’rs you proudly own? Is there, beneath Love’s noble name, Can harbour, dark, the selfish aim, To bless himself alone ? Mark Maiden-Innocence a prey To love-pretending snares: This boasted Honor turns away, Shunning soft Pity’s rising sway, Regardless of the tears and unavailing pray’rs ! Perhaps this hour, in Misery’s squalid nest, She strains your infant to her joyless breast, And with a mother’s fears shrinks at the rocking blast ! VIII ‘OQ ye! who, sunk in beds of down, Feel not a want but what yourselves create, Think, for a moment, on his wretched fate, Whom friends and fortune quite disown ! nen keen nature’s clam’rous call 3 Stretch’d on his straw, he lays himself to sleep ; While through the ragged roof and chinky wall, Chill, o’er his slumbers piles the drifty heap ! Think on the dungeon’s grim confine, Where Guilt and poor Misfortune pine ! Guilt, erring man, relenting view ! But shall thy legal rage pursue The wretch, already crushéd low By cruel Fortune’s undeservéd blow ? Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss !” Ix I heard nae mair, for Chanticleer Shook off the pouthery snaw, And hail’d the morning with a cheer, A cottage-rousing craw. But deep this truth impress’d my mind: Thro’ all His works abroad, The heart benevolent and kind The most resembles God. STANZAS WRITTEN IN PRO- SPECT OF DEATH I Way am I loth to leave this earthly scene ? Have I so found it full of pleasing charms ? ; : Some drops of joy with draughts of ill between; Some gleams of sunshine mid renewing storms. Is it departing pangs my soul alarms ? Or death’s unlovely, dreary, dark abode ? For guilt, for guilt, my terrors are in arms: I tremble to approach an angry God, And ane smart beneath his sin-avenging rod. II Fain would I say: “Forgive my foul offence,” Fain promise never more to disobey. But should my Author health again dis- pense, Again I might desert fair virtue’s way; Again in folly’s path might go astray; Again exalt the brute and sink the man: Then how should I for heavenly mercy pray, Who act so counter heavenly mercy’s plan? Who sin so oft have mourn’d, yet to tempta- tion ran ? Ill O Thou great Governor of all below ! — If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, — 70 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 Thy nod can make the tempest cease to : blow, F ; Or still the tumult of the raging sea: With that controlling pow’r assist ev’n me Those headlong furious passions to con- fine, For all unfit I feel my pow’rs to be To rule their torrent in th’ allowéd line: O, aid me with Thy help, Omnipotence Divine ! PRAYER: O THOU DREAD POWER Lying at a reverend friend’s house one night, the author left the following verses in the room where he slept. “ The first time ever Robert heard the spinet played was at the house of Dr. Lawrie, then minister of Loudoun. . . . Dr. Lawrie (has) several daughters; one of them played; the father and mother led down the dance; the rest of the sisters, the brother, the poet, and the other guests mixed in it. It was a de- lightful family scene for our poet, then lately introduced to the world. His mind was roused to a poetic enthusiasm, and the stanzas were left in the room where he slept.” — Gilbert Burns. Robert wrote to the son on 13th No- vember, 1786: “A poet’s warmest wishes for their happiness to the young ladies, particu- larly the fair musician, whom I think much better qualified than ever David was, or could be, to charm an evil spirit out of Saul. In- deed, it needs not the feelings of the poet to be interested in the welfare of one of the sweetest scenes of domestic peace and kindred love that ever I saw; as I think the peaceful unity of St. Margaret’s Hill can only be ex- celled by the harmonious concord of the Apo- calyptie Zion.” When he paid this visit his chest ‘was on the road to Greenock;” and but for the fact that Lawrie showed him Dr. Blacklock’s letter, strongly recommending a second edition of his poems, he would have sailed in a few days for Jamaica. I O Txov dread Power, who reign’st above, I know thou wilt me hear, When for this scene of peace and love I make my prayer sincere. I The hoary Sire — the mortal stroke, Long, long be pleas’d to spare: To bless his little filial flock, And show what good men are. Ill She, who her lovely offspring eyes With tender hopes and fears — O, bless her with a mother’s joys, But spare a mother’s tears ! IV Their hope, their stay, their darling youth, In manhood’s dawning blush, Bless him, Thou God of love and truth, Up to a parent’s wish. Vv The beauteous, seraph sister-band — With earnest tears I pray — Thou know’st the snares on every hand, Guide Thou their steps alway. VI When, soon or late, they reach that coast, O’er Life’s rough ocean driven, May they rejoice, no wand’rer lost, A family in Heaven! PARAPHRASE OF THE FIRST PSALM This is probably an early composition, and dates from about the same time as the next piece, I Tue man, in life wherever plac’d, Hath happiness in store, Who walks not in the wicked’s way Nor learns their guilty lore; It Nor from the seat of scornful pride Casts forth his eyes abroad, But with humility and awe Still walks before his God! I That man shall flourish like the trees, Which by the streamlets grow: The fruitful top is spread on high, And firm the root below. THE NINETIETH PSALM VERSIFIED 71 Iv But he, whose blossom buds in guilt, Shall to the ground be cast, And, like the rootless stubble, tost Before the sweeping blast. Vv For why ? that God the good adore Hath giv’n them peace and rest, But hath decreed that wicked men Shall ne’er be truly blest. PRAYER UNDER THE PRESSURE OF VIOLENT ANGUISH Inscribed in the First Common Place Book and thus prefaced: “There was a certain period of life that my spirit was broke by re- peated losses and disasters, which threatened, and indeed effected, the utter ruin of my fu- ture. My body, too, was attacked by that most dreadful distemper, a Hypochondria, or confirmed melancholy: in this wretched state, the recollection of which makes me yet shud- der, I hung my harp on the willow trees, except in some lucid intervals, in one of which I com- posed the following.” It was probably writ- ten about the close of Burns’s residence in Ir- vine, in 1782, and, under the title, Prayer under the Presure of Bitter Anguish, is inscribed — in an early hand—at the end of a copy of Fergusson’s Poems, published that year, now in the possession of the Earl of Rosebery. I O Tuovu Great Being! what Thou art Surpasses me to know; ; Yet sure I am, that known to Thee Are all Thy works below. II Thy creature here before Thee stands, All wretched and distrest; Yet sure those ills that wring my soul Obey Thy high behest. Tit Sure Thou, Almighty, canst not act From cruelty or wrath! O, free my weary eyes from tears, Or close them fast in death! IV But, if I must afflicted be To suit some wise design, Then man my soul with firm resolves To bear and not repine ! THE NINETIETH PSALM VER- SIFIED Probably dating from the same period as the two last. I O Txov, the first, the greatest friend Of all the human race ! Whose strong right hand has ever been Their stay and dwelling place ! II Before the mountains heav’d their heads Beneath Thy forming hand, Before this ponderous globe itself Arose at Thy command: III That Power, which rais’d and still upholds This universal frame, From countless, unbeginning time Was ever still the same. Iv Those mighty periods of years, Which seem to us so vast, Appear no more before Thy sight Than yesterday that’s past. Vv Thou giv’st the word: Thy creature, man, Is to existence brought; Again Thou say’st: “Ye sons of men, Return ye into nought !” VI Thou layest them, with all their cares, In everlasting sleep; As with a flood Thon tak’st them off With overwhelming sweep. VII They flourish like the morning flower In beauty’s pride array’d, But long ere night, cut down, it lies All wither’d and decay’d. 72 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 TO MISS LOGAN WITH BEATTIE’S POEMS FOR A NEW YEAR’S GIFT, JANUARY I, 1787 The Miss Logan of these verses was the “sentimental sister Susie” of the Epistle to Major Logan ( post, p. 133). _Itis probable that Burns, when he last met her, had promised her a New Year’s gift from Jamaica; but, his prospects changing, he sent her Beattie’s vol- umes instead. I AGAIN the silent wheels of time Their annual round have driv’n, And you, tho’ scarce in maiden prime, Are so much nearer Heav’n. II No gifts have I from Indian coasts The infant year to hail; I send you more than India boasts In Edwin’s simple tale. Ill Our sex with guile, and faithless love, Is charg’d — perhaps too true; But may, dear maid, each lover prove An Edwin still to you. ADDRESS TO A HAGGIS Hogg states that this spirited extravaganza was ‘written in the house of Mr. Andrew Bruce, Castlehill, Edinburgh, where a haggis one day made part of the dinner ;” but it is unlikely that Burns set to work on it there and then. Chambers’s story, that the germ was the last stanza (as first printed) extempo- rised as grace at a friend’s house, is seemingly a variation of the same legend. The Address —‘‘never before published ’’— appeared in The Caledonian Mercury on 19th December, ee andin The Scots Magazine for January, 1787. I Farr fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race ! Aboon them a’ ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy of a grace As lang’s my arm. II The groaning trencher there ye fill, Your hurdies like a distant hill, Your pin wad help to mend a mill In time o’ need, While thro’ your pores the dews distil Like ‘amber bead. III His knife see rustic Labour dight, An’ cut ye up wi’ ready slight, . Trenching your gushing entrails bright, Like onie ditch; And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm-reekin, rich ! Iv Then, horn for horn, they stretch an’ strive: Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive, Till a’ their weel-swall’d kytes belyve Are bent like drums; Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive, “ Bethankit !”” hums. Vv Is there that owre his French ragout, Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad mak her spew Wi’ perfect sconner, Looks down wi’ sneering, scornfu’ view _On sic a dinner ? VI Poor devil ! see him owre his trash, As feckless as a wither’d rash, His spindle shank a guid whip-lash, His nieve a nit; Thro’ bluidy flood or field to dash, O how unfit ! VII But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread, Clap in his walie nieve a blade, He ’ll make it whissle; An’ legs, an’ arms, an’ heads will sned Like taps o’ thrissle. VIII Ye Pow’rs, wha mak mankind your care, And dish them out their bill o’ fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware, That jaups in luggies ; But, if ye wish her gratefu’ prayer, Gie her a Haggis ! JOHN BARLEYCORN 73 ADDRESS TO EDINBURGH This poem and another were enclosed in a letter from Edinburgh, 27th December, 1786, to William Chalmers, in which Burns stated that he ‘‘had carded and spun them” since he ‘* passed Glenbuck,” the last Ayrshire hamlet on his way to Edinburgh. I Epina! Scotia’s darling seat ! All hail thy palaces and tow’rs, Where once, beneath a Monarch’s feet, Sat Legislation’s sov’reign pow’rs: From marking wildly-scatt’red flow’rs, As on the banks of Ayr I stray’d, And singing, lone, the ling’ring hours, I shelter in thy honor’d shade. II Here Wealth still swells the golden tide, As busy Trade his labours plies; There Architecture’s noble pride Bids elegance and splendour rise: Here Justice, from her native skies, High wields her balance and her rod; There Learning, with his eagle eyes, Seeks Science in her coy abode. III Thy sons, Edina, social, kind, With open arms the stranger hail; Their views enlarg’d, their lib’ral mind, Above the narrow, rural vale; Attentive still to Sorrow’s wail, Or modest Merit’s silent claim: And never may their sources fail ! And never Envy blot their name ! Iv Thy daughters bright thy walks adorn, Gay as the gilded summer sky, Sweet as the dewy, milk-white thorn, Dear as the raptur’d thrill of joy ! Fair Burnet strikes th’ adoring eye, Heav’n’s beauties on my fancy shine: I see the Sire of Love on high, And own His work indeed divine ! Vv There, watching high the least alarms, Thy rough, rude fortress gleams afar; Like some bold vet’ran, grey in arms, And mark’d with many a seamy scar: The pond’rous wall and massy bar, | Same name, Grim-rising o’er the rugged rock, Have oft withstood assailing war, And oft repell’d th’ invader’s shock. VI With awe-struck thought and pitying tears, I view that noble, stately dome, Where Scotia’s kings of other years, Fam’d heroes! had their royal home: Alas, how chang’d the times to come! Their royal name low in the dust ! Their hapless race wild-wand’ring roam ! Tho’ rigid Law cries out: “’T was just.” VII Wild beats my heart to trace your steps, Whose ancestors, in days of yore, Thro’ hostile ranks and ruin’d gaps Old Scotia’s bloody lion bore: Ev’n I, who sing in rustic lore, Haply my sires have left their shed, And fae’d grim Danger’s loudest roar, Bold-following where your fathers led ! VII Edina! Scotia’s darling seat ! All hail thy palaces and tow’rs; Where once, beneath a Monarch’s feet, Sat Legislation’s sov’reign pow’rs: From marking wildly-scatt’red flow’rs, As on the banks of Ayr I stray’d, And singing, lone, the ling’ring hours, I shelter in thy honour’d shade. SONGS JOHN BARLEYCORN A BALLAD Entered in the First Common Place Book under date June, 1'785, with the title, John Barleycorn — A Song to its own Tune. Burns prefaces it with the remark that he had once heard the old song that goes by this name ; and that he remembered only the three first verses and “ some seraps ”’ which he had “‘ interwoven here and there in the piece.” In the ’87 Hdi- tion he inserted a note: “ This is partly com- posed on the plan of an old song known by the 7 In view of these statements, special interest attaches to a set printed in Laing’s Early Metrical Tales (1826) from a stall copy of 1781, with a few corrections on the 74 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 authority of two others of later date. are the three first stanzas : — Here ‘There came three merry men from the east, And three merry men were they, And they did sware a solemn oath That Sir John Barleycorn they would slay. “They took a plough, and plough’d him down, And laid clods upon his head ; And then they swore a solemn oath, That Sir John Barleycorn was dead. ‘* But the spring-time it came on amain, And rain towards the earth did fall : John Barleycorn sprung up again, And so subdued them all.” Robert Jamieson prints a set in his Popular Ballads and Songs (1806) as he heard it in Moray when a boy. In its first three verses it closely resembles the Burns; but Burns’s poems were in circulation before Jamieson’s boyhood was over, and may have influenced his memory. He prints another set from a black-letter copy in the Pepys Library, Cam- bridge, as well as sets of the analogous Allan- a-Maut ballad, including that in The Bannatyne Ms. There is, further, a curious chap (1757) which is not included in Jamieson. The un- grammatical ‘‘ was” in Burns’s first line was probably suggested by ‘‘ There was three ladies in a ha’,” in Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1776). I THERE was three kings into the east, Three kings both great and high, And they hae sworn a solemn oath John Barleyeorn should die. II They took a plough and plough’d him down, Put clods upon his head, And they hae sworn a solemn oath John Barleycorn was dead. III But the cheerful Spring came kindly on, And show’rs began to fall; John Barleycorn got up again, And sore surpris’d them all. Iv The sultry suns of Summer came, And he grew thick and strong: His head weel arm’d wi’ pointed spears, That no one should him wrong. Vv The sober Autumn enter’d mild, When he grew wan and pale; His bending joints and drooping head Show’d he began to fail. VI His colour sicken’d more and more, He faded into age; And then his enemies began To show their deadly rage. VII They ’ve taen a weapon long and sharp, And cut him by the knee; Then ty’d him fast upon a cart, Like a rogue for forgerie. VU They: laid him down upon his back, And eudgell’d him full sore. They hung him up before the storm, And turn’d him o’er and o’er. Ix They filléd up a darksome pit With water to the brim, They heavéd in John Barleyeorn — There, let him sink or swim ! x They laid him out upon the floor, To work.him farther woe; And still, as signs of life appear’d, They toss’d him to and fro. XI They wasted o’er a scorching flame The marrow of his bones; But a miller us’d him worst of all, For he crushed him between two stones. XII And they hae taen his very heart’s blood, And drank it round and round; And still the more and more they drank, Their joy did more abound. XII | John Barleycorn was a hero bold, Of noble enterprise; For if you do but taste his blood, *T will make your courage rise. ‘A FRAGMENT: WHEN GUILFORD GOOD 95 XIV °T will make a man forget his woe; °T will heighten all his joy: °T will make the widow’s heart to sing, Tho’ the tear were in her eye. XV Then let us toast John Barleycorn, . Each man a glass in hand; And may his great posterity Ne’er fail in old Scotland ! A FRAGMENT: WHEN GUIL- FORD GOOD TuneE: Gillicrankie This was probably the “ political ballad ”’ which Burns enclosed to Henry Erskine — on the advice of Glencairn — for his opinion as to whether he should or should not publish it. The work of some nameless Loyalist, the old song on which it is moulded is printed in David Laing’s Various Pieces of Fugitive Scottish Poetry, First Series (1826), which dates it 1689, under the title, Killychrankie [the battle was fought in that year], ‘‘ To be Sung to its Own Tune: ’? — “ Claverse and his Highland men Came down upon a Raw, then, Who, being stout, gave many a Clout, The Lads began to claw then ;” and so on for eight mortal octaves. The same volume sets forth an Answer to the same tune in as many more. I WuHeEn Guilford good our pilot stood, An’ did our hellim thraw, man; Ae night, at tea, began a plea, Within Americ4, man : Then up they gat the maskin-pat, And in the sea did jaw, man; An’ did nae less, in full Congress, Than quite refuse our law, man. It Then thro’ the lakes Montgomery takes, I wat he was na slaw, man; Down Lowrie’s Burn he took a turn, And Carleton did ca’, man: But yet, what reck, he at Quebec Montgomery-like did fa’, man, Wi?’ sword in hand, before his band, Amang his en’mies a’, man. III Poor Tammy Gage within a cage Was kept at Boston-ha’, man; Till Willie Howe took o’er the knowe For Philadelphid, man; Wi’ sword an’ gun he thought a sin Guid Christian bluid to draw, man; But at New-York wi’ knife an’ fork Sir-Loin he hackéd sma’, man. Iv Burgoyne gaed up, like spur an’ whip, Till Fraser brave did fa’, man; Then lost his way, ae misty day, In Saratoga shaw, man. Cornwallis fought as lang ’s he dought, An’ did the buckskins claw, man ; But Clinton’s glaive frae rust to save, He hung it to the wa’, man. Vv Then Montague, an’ Guilford too, Began to fear a fa’, man; And Sackville doure, wha stood the stoure The German chief to thraw, man: For Paddy Burke, like onie Turk, Nae mercy had at a’, man; : An’ Charlie Fox threw by the box, An’ lows’d his tinkler jaw, man. VI Then Rockingham took up the game, Till death did on him ca’, man; When Shelburne meek held up his cheek, Conform to gospel law, man: Saint Stephen’s boys, wi’ jarring noise, They did his measures thraw, man; For North an’ Fox united stocks, An’ bore him to the wa’, man. VII Then clubs an’ hearts were Charlie’s cartes He swept the stakes awa’, man, Till the diamond’s ace, of Indian race, Led him a sair faux pas, man : The Saxon lads, wi’ loud placads, On Chatham’s boy did ca’, man; An’ Scotland drew her pipe an’ blew : “Up, Willie, waur them a’, man !” 76 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 VIIL Behind the throne then Granville ’s gone,. A secret word or twa, man; While slee Dundas arous’d the class Be-north the Roman wa’, man: An’ Chatham’s wraith, in heav’nly graith, (Iuspiréd bardies saw, man), Wi kindling eyes, cry’d: ‘“ Willie, rise ! Would I hae fear’d them a’, man?” IX But, word an’ blow, North, Fox, and Co. Gowff’d Willie like a ba’, man, Till Suthron raise an’ coost their claise Behind him in a raw, man: An’ Caledon threw by the drone, An’ did her whittle draw, man; Aw’ swoor fu’ rude, thro’ dirt an’ bluid, To make it guid in law, man. MY NANIE, O Perhaps suggested by a poor thing of Ram- say’s: — ‘¢ While some for pleasure pawn their health "Twixt Lais and the bagnio, I°ll save myself, and without stealth Kiss and caress my Nanny, O.’’ In Hogg and Motherwell’s Edition another version — oral: communicated by Peter Bu- chan — is printed ; it begins, “ As I gaed down thro’ Embro’ town.” In the First Common Place Book, where it appears under date of April, 1784, it is headed Song (Tune, “ As I came in by London, O”). It is thus prefaced : “ As I have been all along a miserable dupe to Love, and have been led into a thousand weaknesses and follies by it, for that reason I put the more confidence in my critical skill in distinguishing foppery and conceit from real passion and nature. Whether the following song will stand the test, I will not pretend to say, because it is my own; only I can say it was, at the time, real.” According to Gilbert Burns, the heroine was Agnes Fleming. She was daughter of John Fleming, farmer at Doura, in the parish of Tarbolton. On the other hand, Mrs. Begg asserts that it was written in honour of Peggy Thomson of Kirkoswald (see ante, p. 52, Prefa- tory Note to Song: Composed in August), while Hamilton Paul champions the charms of a Kilmarnock girl. I BEHIND yon hills where Lugar flows *Mang moors an’ mosses many, O, The wintry sun the day has clos’d, And I’ll awa to Nanie, O. II The westlin wind blaws loud an’ shill, The night ’s baith mirk and rainy, O; But 1711 get my plaid, an’ out I ll steal, An’ owre the hill to Nanie, O. TI My Nanie’s charming, sweet, an’ young; Nae artfu’ wiles to win ye, O: May ill befa’ the flattering tongue That wad beguile my Nanie, O! Iv Her face is fair, her heart is true; ‘As spotless as she’s bonie, O, The op’ning gowan, wat wi’ dew, Nae purer is than Nanie, O. v A country lad is my degree, An’ few there be that ken me, O; But what care 1 how few they be ? I’m welcome ay to Nanie, O. vi My riches a ’s my penny-fee, An’ I maun guide it cannie, O; But warl’s gear ne’er troubles me, My thoughts are a’ —my Nanie, O. VII Our auld guidman delights to view His sheep an’ kye thrive bonie, O; But I’m as blythe that hauds his pleugh, An’ has nae care but Nanie, O. VIII Come weel, come woe, I care na by; I'll tak what Heav’n will send me, O: Nae ither care in life have I, But live, an’ love my Nanie, O. GREEN GROW THE RASHES, O This little masterpiece of wit and gaiety and movement was suggested either by the frag- COMPOSED IN SPRING 7 ment, Green Grow the Rashes, O in Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, or by the blackguard old song itself. Herd gives only three stanzas, of which the first is : — : ‘Green grows the rashes — O Green grows the rashes — O The feather-bed is no sae saft As a bed amang the rashes.”’ But the song (or what is left of it) is given in the unique and interesting garland called The Merry Muses of Caledonia (c. 1800), probably —almost certainly — collected by Burns for his private use, together with a second and still grosser set attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Burns himself. Entered by Burns in the First Common Place Book, under date August, 1786, the piece is preceded by a dissertation on young men, who are divided into “two grand classes — the grave and the merry,” and by the remark: “Tt will enable any body to determine which of the classes I belong to.” It was published in Johnson’s Museum, i. 77. Thomson proposed to set it to Cauld Kail in Aberdeen ; but Burns declared that it would “ never suit” that air. CHORUS Green grow the rashes, O; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e’er I spend, Are spent among the lasses, O. I THERE ’s nought but care on ev’ry han’, In every hour that passes, O: What signifies the life o’ man, An’ ’t were nae for the lasses, O. II The war’ly race may riches chase, An’ riches still may fly them, O; An’ tho’ at last they catch them fast, Their hearts can ne’er enjoy them, O. III But gie me a cannie hour at e’en, My arms about my dearie, O, An’ war’ly cares an’ war’ly men May a’ gae tapsalteerie, O ! IV For you sae douce, ye sneer at this; Ye ’re nought but senseless asses, O; The wisest man the warl’ e’er saw, He dearly lov’d the lasses, O. Vv Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O: Her prentice han’ she try’d on man, Aw’ then she made the lasses, O. CHORUS Green grow the rashes, 0; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e’er I spend, Are spent among the lasses, O. COMPOSED IN SPRING TUNE: Johnny's Grey Breeks Burns explains that the chorus is ‘‘ part of a song composed by a gentleman in Edinburgh, a particular friend of the author’s; ” and that “Menie” is the ‘‘common abbreviation of Marianne.” In all likelihood the song was composed after the rupture with Jean Armour, and the chorus added in Edinburgh by Burns himself. I AGAIN rejoicing Nature sees Her robe assume its vernal hues: Her leafy locks wave in the breeze, All freshly steep’d in morning dews. CHORUS And maun I still on Menie doat, And bear the scorn that’s in her e’e ? For it’s jet, jet-black, an’ it’s like a hawk, An’ it winna let a body be. II In vain to me the cowslips blaw, In vain to me the vi’lets spring; In vain to me in glen or shaw, The mavis and the lintwhite sing. III The merry ploughboy cheers his team, Wi’ joy the tentie seedsman stalks; But life to me ’s a weary dream, A dream of ane that never wauks. Iv The wanton coot the water skims, Amang the reeds the ducklings cry, 78 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1787 The stately swan majestic swims, And ev’ry thing is blest but I. Vv The sheep-herd steeks his faulding slap, And o’er the moorlands whistles shill; Wi’ wild, unequal, wand’ring step, I meet him on the dewy hill. vI And when the lark, ’tween light and dark, Blythe waukens by the daisy’s side, And mounts and sings on flittering wings, A woe-worn ghaist 1 hameward glide. VII Come winter, with thine angry howl, And raging, bend the naked tree; Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul, When nature all is sad like me! CHORUS And maun I still on Menie doat, And bear the scorn that’s in her e’e ? For it’s jet, jet-black, an’ it’s like a hawk, An’ it winna let a body be. THE GLOOMY NIGHT IS GATHERING FAST Tune: Roslin Castle In an interleayed copy of Johnson’s Museum Burns inscribed the following note: “I com- posed this song as I conveyed my chest so far on the road to Greenock, where I was to embark in a few days for Jamaica. I meant it as my farewell dirge to my native land.” In his Autobiographie Letter to Dr. Moore, “T had composed,” he says, “9 song, The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast, which was to be the last effort of my muse in Caledonia, when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes.” Professor Walker, on R. B.’s authority, affirms that he composed it on the way home from Dr. Law- rie’s; but, as it was to Dr. Lawrie that Black- lock wrote, we must infer that Walker was so far mistaken, and that the verses were made on the way thither. Burns gives Roslin Castle as the tune to which this passionate lyric should be sung. His use of a refrain, however, suggests that the true model was The Birks of Invermay. I TuE gloomy night is gath’ring fast, Loud roars the wild inconstant blast; Yon murky cloud is filled with rain, I see it driving o’er the plain; The hunter now has left the moor, The scatt’red coveys meet secure; While here I wander, prest with care, Along the lonely banks of Ayr. II The Autumn mourns her rip’ning corn By early Winter’s ravage torn; Across her placid, azure sky, She sees the scowling tempest fly; Chill runs my blood to hear it rave: I think upon the stormy wave, Where many a danger I must dare, Far from the bonie banks of Ayr. TIT Tis not the surging billows’ roar, *T is not that fatal, deadly shore; Tho’ death in ev’ry shape appear, The wretched have no more to fear: But round my heart the ties are bound, That heart transpiere’d with many a wound; These bleed afresh, those ties I tear, To leave the bonie banks of Ayr. Iv Farewell, old Coila’s hills and dales, Her heathy moors and winding vales; The scenes where wretched Fancy roves, Pursuing past unhappy loves ! Farewell my friends ! farewell my foes ! My peace with these, my love with those — The bursting tears my heart declare, Farewell, my bonie banks of Ayr. NO CHURCHMAN AM I Tuner: Prepare, my dear Brethren This poor performance, written probably in 1781 or 1782 for the Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club, in imitation of a popular type of English drinking song, appears to have been suggested and inspired by a far better piece, The Women all Tell Me I’m False to My Lass (c. 1740: still to be heard as Wine, Mighty Wine), the air of which may well have been in Burns’s ear when he directed his own words to be sung to the NO CHURCHMAN AM I 79 tune of Prepare, my Dear Brethren. It is quoted, according to Mr. Baring Gould (Eng- lish Minstrelsie, 1895, L. xxiii.), in The Bull- Jinch (1146), The Wreath (1753), and The Oc- casional Songster (1782); and we have found it, as Burns before us, in A Select Collection of English Songs (London, 1763)—an odd vol- ume of which, containing this very lyric, with notes in his handwriting, is before us as we write — and in Calliope (Edinburgh, 1788). Here is a stanza which must certainly have been present when he was struggling with the halting lines and the second-rate buckishness of No Churchman Am I:— ‘¢She too might have poisoned the joy of my life With nurses, and babies, and squalling, and strife ; But my wine neither nurses nor babies can bring, And a big-bellied bottle’s a mighty good thing.” The anapest with four accents has carried a bacchanalian connotation from the time of Shadwell’s Psyche (1672) at least, and the pre- sent stave has been the vehicle of innumerable drinking songs, including the English A Tank- ard of Ale, and the Irish One Bottle More. Burns himself reverts to it in The Whistle (see post, p. 99). i No churchman am I for to rail and to write, No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight, No sly man of business contriving a snare, For a big-belly’d bottle’s the whole of my care. II The peer I don’t envy, I give him his bow; I scorn not the peasant, tho’ ever so low; But a club of good fellows, like those that are here, And a bottle like this, are my glory and care. III Here passes the squire on his brother — his horse, There centum per centum, the cit with his purse, But see you The Crown, how it waves in the air ? There a big-belly’d bottle still eases my care. IV The wife of my bosom, alas! she did die; For sweet consolation to church I did fly; I found that old Solomon provéd it fair, That a big-belly’d bottle ’s a cure for all care. Vv I once was persuaded a venture to make; A letter inform’d me that all was to wreck; But the pursy old landlord just waddléd up stairs, With a glorious bottle that ended my cares. VI * Life’s cares they are comforts ” —a maxim laid down By the Bard, what d’ ye call him ? that wore the black gown; And faith I agree with th’ old prig to a hair: For a big-belly’d bottle ’s a heav’n of a care. A STANZA ADDED IN A MASON LODGE Then fill up a bumper and make it o’erflow, And honours Masonic prepare for to throw: May ev’ry true Brother of the Compass and Square Have a big-belly’d bottle, when harass’d with care ! 80 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 In April, 1792, Creech proposed another is- sue, and Burns replied with an offer of fifty new pages, and the retrenchment and correction of some old pieces. Reminding his publisher that these fifty pages were as much his own “as the thumb-skull I have just now drawn on my finger, which I unfortunately gashed in mending my pen,’’ he practically agreed to Creech’s former terms: craving as his sole recompence a few books which he very much wanted, “ with as many copies of this new edi- tion of my own works as friendship or grati- tude shall prompt me to present.” Creech was not the man to boggle at a bargain of the kind, WRITTEN IN FRIARS CARSE HERMITAGE, ON NITHSIDE This is the second version of a piece origi- nally inscribed on a window-pane of Friars Carse Hermitage in June, 1788 (see post, p. 120). Friars Carse adjoined Ellisland, and the owner, Captain Robert Riddell of Glenriddell, had given Burns a key to the grounds and the little hermitage which he had built there. It would appear from an undated letter to William Dunbar (asking him to decide between the two sets), and from the fact that Burns distributed copies of both, that he was by no means con- vinced of the superiority of the second set. Txovu whom chance may hither lead, Be thou clad in rnsset weed, Be thou deckt in silken stole, Grave these counsels on thy soul. Life is but a day at most, Sprung from night, — in darkness lost: Hope not sunshine ev’ry hour, Fear not clouds will always lour. As Youth and Love with sprightly dance Beneath thy morning star advance, Pleasure with her siren air May delude the thoughtless pair: Let Prudence bless Enjoyment’s cup, Then raptur’d sip, and sip it up. As thy day grows warm and high, Life’s meridian flaming nigh, Dost thou spurn the humble vale ? Life’s proud summits would’st thou scale ? and the new edition appeared in the February of 1793, under the title: “ Poems chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. By Robert Burns. In two volumes. The Second Edition Considerably Enlarged. Edinburgh: Printed for T. Cadell, London, and William Creech, Edinburgh. 1793.” The volumes, with nearly the same page and the same type, but with many changes in spelling, and some new readings of lines and stanzas, were reprinted early in 1794, with — excepting for the substitution of “a New Edition” for “the Second Edition” —an ex- actly similar title. No other Scots reprint ap- peared in Burns’s lifetime. Check thy climbing step, elate, Evils lurk in felon wait: Dangers, eagle-pinioned, bold, Soar around each cliffy hold; While cheerful Peace with linnet song Chants the lowly dells among. As the shades of ev’ning close, Beck’ning thee to long repose; As life itself becomes disease, Seek the chimney-nook of ease: There ruminate with sober thought, On all thou ’st seen, and heard, and wrought; And teach the sportive younkers round, Saws of experience, sage and sound: Say, man’s true, genuine estimate, The grand criterion of his fate, Is not, Art thou high or low ? Did thy fortune ebb or flow ? Did many talents gild thy span ? Or frugal Nature grudge thee one ? Tell them, and press it on their mind, As thou thyself must shortly find, The smile or frown of awful Heav’n To Virtue or to Vice is giv’n; Say, to be just, and kind, and wise — There solid self-enjoyment lies; That foolish, selfish, faithless ways Lead to be wretched, vile, and base. Thus resign’d and quiet, creep To the bed of lasting sleep: Sleep, whence thou shall ne’er awake, Night, where dawn shall never break; Till future life, future no more, ODE, SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS. OSWALD 81 To light and joy the good restore, To light and joy unknown before. Stranger, go! Heav’n be thy guide ! Quod the beadsman of Nithside. ODE, SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS. OSWALD OF AUCHEN- CRUIVE In a letter to Dr. Moore, 23d March, 1789, enclosing this Ode Burns explains its origin: “In January last, on my road to Ayrshire, I had put up at Bailie Whigham’s in Sanquhar, the only tolerable inn in the place. The frost was keen, and the grim evening and howling wind were ushering in a night of snow and drift. My horse and I were both much fatigued with the labours of the day, and just as my friend the Bailie and I were bidding defiance to the storm, over a smoking bowl, in wheels the funeral pageantry of the late great Mrs. Oswald; and poor I am forced to brave all the horrors of a tempestuous night, and jade my horse, my young favourite horse, whom I had just christened Pegasus, twelve miles further on, through the wildest moors and hills of Ayr- shire, to New Cumnock, the next inn. The powers of poesy and prose sink under me, when I would describe what I felt. Suffice it to say, that when a good fire at New Cumnock had so far recovered my frozen sinews, I sat, down and wrote the enclosed ode.” Ina letter (unpub- lished) to Mrs. Dunlop, enclosing the copy of the Ode, ‘‘ Before I reached the other stage,” he writes, “I had composed the following, and sent it off at the first post office for the Cour- ant,” by which, if this be true, it was declined. On May 7, 1789, the piece appeared in Stu- art’s Star with the following preface, here for the first time reprinted : — “ Mr. Printer, “T know not who is the author of the fol- lowing poem, but I think it contains some equally well-told and just compliments to the memory of a matron who, a few months ago, much against her private inclination, left this good world and twice five good thousands per annum behind her. “We are told by very respectable authority that ‘the righteous die and none regardeth ;’ but as this was by no means the case in point with the departed beldam, for whose memory I have the honour to interest myself, it is not easy guessing why prose and verse have both said so little on the death of the owner of ten thousand a year. “T dislike partial respect of persons, and am hurt to see the public make such a fuss when a poor pennyless gipsey is consigned over to Jack Ketch, and yet scarce take any notice when a purse-proud Priestess of Mammon is by the memorable hand of death prisoned in everlasting fetters of ill-gotten gold, and de- livered up to the arch-brother among the fin- ishers of the law, emphatically called by your bard, the hangman of creation. “Tim Nerris.” Mrs. Oswald was the widow of Richard Os- wald, second son of Rev. George Oswald, of Dunnet, Caithness. He purchased Auchen- cruive in 1772. He died at an ‘‘ advanced age,” 6th November, 1784, and in the obituary notice in The Scots Magazine is described as “an eminent merchant in London, and lately employed at Paris as a commissioner for nego- tiating a peace with the United States.” From Burns’s epithet, ‘‘Plunderer of Armies,’ he would appear to have been also an army con- tractor. In his letter to Dr. Moore, Burns states that he knew that Mrs. Oswald was detested by her tenants and servants “with the most heartfelt cordiality.” She died 6th December, 1788, at her house in Great George Street, West- minster, and when Burns was driven from his inn by her ‘‘ funeral pageantry,” the body was on its way to Ayrshire. Burns himself was proceeding in the same direction (as we learn from a letter to Mrs. Dunlop of 18th December) to the Ayr Fair, held about the 12th January. DweELLer in yon dungeon dark, Hangman of creation, mark ! Who in widow-weeds appears, Laden with unhonoured years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse ? STROPHE View the wither’d beldam’s face: Can thy keen inspection trace Aught of Humanity’s sweet, race ? Note that eye, ’t is rheum o’erflows — Pity’s flood there never rose. See those hands, ne’er stretch’d to save, Hands that took, but never gave. Keeper of Mammon’s iron chest, Lo, there she goes, unpitied and unblest, She goes, pub not to realms of everlasting rest ! melting ANTISTROPHE Plunderer of Armies ! lift thine eyes (A while forbear, ye torturing fiends), 82 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 Seest thou whose step, unwilling, hither bends ? No fallen angel, hurl’d from upper skies ! *T is thy trusty, quondam Mate, Doom’d to share thy fiery fate: She, tardy, hell-ward plies. EPODE And are they of no more avail, Ten thousand glittering pounds a-year ? In other worlds can Mammon fail, Omnipotent as he is here ? O bitter mockery of the pompous bier ! While down the wretched vital part is driven, The cave-lodg’d beggar, with a conscience clear, Expires in rags, unknown, and goes to Heaven. ELEGY ON CAPTAIN MATTHEW HENDERSON A GENTLEMAN WHO HELD THE PATENT FOR HIS HONOURS IMMEDIATELY FROM ALMIGHTY GOD ! But now his radiant course is run, For Matthew’s course was bright: His soul was like the glorious sun A matchless, Heavenly light. Matthew Henderson was the son of David Henderson, of Tannockside, and Elizabeth Brown; born 24th February, 1737; sueceeded in early youth to the estates on his father’s death; became lieutenant in the Earl of Home’s regiment; left the army to hold a government appointment in Edinburgh; was a member of the Poker and other convivial clubs, and a friend of Boswell, who has pre- served one or two samples of his wit ; died 21st November, 1788 ; and was buried in Greyfriars’ Churchyard. On 28d July, 1790, Burns sent ‘‘ a first fair copy” to Robert Cleghorn, Saughton, to whom he stated that Henderson was a man he “ much regarded.” On 2d August he sent a copy to John M’Murdo of Drumlanrig: ‘‘ You knew Henderson,” he said; “I have not flattered his memory.” And in enclosing a copy to Dr. Moore (27th February, 1791) he described the Elegy as “a tribute to the memory of a man I loved much.”’ I O Deata! thou tyrant fell and bloody ! The meikle Devil wi’ a woodie Haurl thee hame to his black smiddie O’er hurcheon hides, And like stock-fish come o’er his studdie Wi’ thy auld sides ! Il He’s gane, he’s gane! he’s frae us torn, The ae best fellow e’er was born ! Thee, Matthew, Nature’s sel shall mourn, By wood and wild, Where, haply, Pity strays forlorn, Frae man exil’d. Ill Ye hills, near neebors o’ the starns, That proudly cock your cresting cairns ! Ye cliffs, the haunts of sailing yearns, Where Echo slumbers ! Come join ye, Nature’s sturdiest bairns, My wailing numbers ! Iv Mourn, ilka grove the cushat kens ! Ye hazly shaws and briery dens ! Ye burnies, wimplin down your glens ‘Wi? toddlin din, Or foaming, strang, wi’ hasty stens, Frae lin to lin! Vv Mourn, little harebells o’er the lea; Ye stately foxgloves, fair to see; Ye woodbines, hanging bonilie In scented bowers; Ye roses on your thorny tree, The first o’ flowers ! VI At dawn, when every grassy blade Droops with a diamond at his head; At ev’n, when beans their fragrance shed IT’ th’ rustling gale; Ye maukins, whiddin through the glade; Come join my wail! VII Mourn, ye wee songsters 0’ the wood; Ye grouse that crap the heather bud; Ye curlews, calling thro’ a clud; Ye whistling plover; THE EPITAPH 83 And mourn, ye whirring paitrick brood: He’s gane for ever ! VIII Mourn, sooty coots, and speckled teals; Ye fisher herons, watching eels; Ye duck and drake, wi’ airy wheels Circling the lake; Ye bitterns, till the quagmire reels, Rair for his sake ! Ix Mourn, clam’zing craiks, at close o’ day, *Mang fields o’ flow’ring clover gay ! And when you wing your annual way Frae our cauld shore, Tell thae far warlds wha lies in clay, Wham we deplore. x Ye houlets, frae your ivy bower In some auld tree, or eldritch tower, What time the moon, wi’ silent glowr, Sets up her horn, Wail thro’ the dreary midnight hour Till waukrife morn ! xI O rivers, forests, hills, and plains ! Oft have ye heard my canty strains: But now, what else for me remains But tales of woe ? And frae my een the drapping rains Maun ever flow. XII Mourn, Spring, thou darling of the year ! Ilk cowslip cup shall kep a tear: Thou, Simmer, while each corny spear Shoots up its head, Thy gay, green, flowery tresses shear For him that’s dead ! XIII Thou, Autumn, wi’ thy yellow hair, In grief thy sallow mantle tear ! Thou, Winter, hurling thro’ the air The roaring blast, Wide o’er the naked world declare The worth we’ve lost ! XIV Mourn him, thou Sun, great source of light ! Mourn, Empress of the silent night ! And you, ye twinkling starnies bright, My Matthew mourn ! For through your orbs he’s taen his flight, Ne’er to return. xV O Henderson! the man! the brother! And art thou gone, and gone for ever ? And hast thou crost that unknown river, Life’s dreary bound ? Like thee, where shall I find another, The world around ? XVI Go to your sculptur’d tombs, ye Great, In a’ the tinsel trash o’ state ! But by thy honest turf I'll wait, Thou man of worth ! And weep the ae best fellow’s fate Ever lay in earth ! THE EPITAPH I Stop, passenger ! my story ’s brief, And truth [ shall relate, man: I tell nae common tale o’ grief, For Matthew was a great man. se If thou uncommon merit hast, Yet spurn’d at Fortune’s door, man; A look of pity hither cast, For Matthew was a poor man. TIt If thou a noble sodger art, That passest by this grave, man; There moulders here a gallant heart, For Matthew was a brave man. IV If thou on men, their works and ways, Canst throw uncommon light, man; Here lies wha weel had won thy praise, For Matthew was a bright man. Vv If thou, at Friendship’s sacred ea’, Wad life itself resign, man; Thy sympathetic tear maun fa’, For Matthew was a kind man. 84 ADDITIONS IN‘ THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 vI If thou art staunch, without a stain, Like the unchanging blue, man; This was a kinsman o’ thy ain, For Matthew was a true man. VIL If thou hast wit and fun, and fire, And ne’er guid wine did fear, man; This was thy billie, dam, and sire, For Matthew was a queer man. VII If onie whiggish, whingin sot, To blame poor Matthew dare, man; May dool and sorrow be his lot ! For Matthew was a rare man. LAMENT OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS ON THE APPROACH OF SPRING In enclosing this to Dr. John Moore, 27th February, 1791, Burns states that it was begun while he was busy with Percy’s Reliques of English Poetry : hence its antique flavouring. He sent copies to Mrs. Dunlop, to Mrs. Graham of Fintry, to Clarinda, and to Lady Winifred Constable, and was at pains to tell each of the four the reason why she was thus specially favoured. In an unpublished letter to Mrs. Dunlop (6th June, 1790), he wrote: ‘‘ You know and with me pity the miserable and unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. To you and your young ladies I particularly dedicate the following Scots stanzas.” It was probably about the same time that in an undated letter — (usually assigned to February, 1791, to accord with the date of that to Moore) — he wrote to Mrs. Graham of Fintry: ‘“‘ Whether it is that the story of our Mary Queen of Scots has a peculiar effect on the feelings of a poet, or whether I have in the enclosed ballad succeeded beyond my usual poetic success, I know not; but it has pleased me beyond any effort of my Muse for a good while past; on that account I enclose it particularly to you.” To Clarinda (in an undated letter) he thus expressed him- self: “Such, my dearest Nancy, were the words of the amiable but unfortunate Mary. Misfortune seems to take a peculiar pleasure in darting her arrows against ‘honest men and bonie lasses.’ Of this you are too, too just a proof; but may your future fate be a bright exception to the remark!” To Lady Con- stable the ode was sent at the same time that he acknowledged the present of a snuff-box, the lid of it inlaid with a miniature of Queen Mary. I Now Nature hangs her mantle green On every blooming tree, And spreads her sheets o’ daisies white Out o’er the grassy lea; Now Pheebus cheers the crystal streams, And glads the azure skies: But nought can glad the weary wight That fast in durance lies. II Now laverocks wake the merry morn, Aloft on dewy wing; The merle, in his noontide bow’r, Makes woodland echoes ring; The mavis wild wi’ monie a note Sings drowsy day to rest : In love and freedom they rejoice, Wi’ care nor thrall opprest. Tl Now blooms the lily by the bank, The primrose down the brae ; The hawthorn ’s budding in the glen, And milk-white is the slae : The meanest hind in fair Scotland May rove their sweets amang; But I, the Queen of a’ Scotland Maun lie in prison strang. Iv I was the Queen o’ bonie France, Where happy I hae been; Fw’ lightly rase I in the morn, As blythe lay down at e’en: And I’m the sov’reign of Scotland, And monie a traitor there; Yet here I lie in foreign bands And never-ending care. Vv But as for thee, thou false woman, My sister and my fae, Grim vengeance yet shall whet a sword That thro’ thy soul shall gae! The weeping blood in woman’s breast Was never known to thee; Nor th’ balm that draps on wounds of woe Frae woman’s pitying e’e. TO ROBERT GRAHAM OF FINTRY, ESQ. 85 VI My son! my son! may kinder stars Upon thy fortune shine; And may those pleasures gild thy reign, That ne’er wad blink on mine ! God keep thee frae thy mother’s faes, Or turn their hearts to thee; And where thou meet’st thy mother’s friend, Remember him for me ! VII O! soon, to me, may summer suns Nae mair light up the morn! Nae mair to me the autumn winds Wave o’er the yellow corn! And, in the narrow house of death, Let winter round me rave; And the next flow’rs that deck the spring Bloom on my peaceful grave. TO ROBERT GRAHAM OF FIN- TRY, ESQ. Burns first met Graham of Fintry at the Duke of Atholl’s during his northern tour in August, 1787; and in an undated letter in which he refers to this, solicited his influence in obtaming an appointment to a division in the Excise. In a letter dated 10th September, 1788, he made a special request in regard to a division in the Ellisland district, enclosing at the same time the poetical epistle, Requesting a Favour (see post, p. 140). Obtaining the division, he acknowledged Fintry’s exertions in the epistle on Receiving a Favour (see post, p. 144); and in an Election Ballad, made at the elose of the contest for the Dumfries Burghs in 1790 (see post, p. 162), he addressed him thus : — “Fintry, my stay in worldly strife, Friend of my Muse, friend of my life :?? — a eulogy amply justified by Fintry’s consistent and considerate kindness to him, through good and bad report, to the close of his life. The present Epistle was sent 6th October, 1791, with a letter in which he describes it as “a sheetful of groans, wrung from me in my elbow-chair, with one unlucky leg on my stool before me.” There is some poetical licence — let us call it so—in this description; not as regards his own condition, for he was then con- fined to his arm-chair by a bruised leg, but as regards the Epistle itself, for, with the ex- ception of the introductory and closing lines, it consists of two revised and retrenched frag- ments, written near three years before, and originally intended, according to his own state- ment— which need not be taken quite seri- ously —to form part of a Poet’s Progress. . Graham of Fintry was descended from Sir Robert Graham of Strathcarron and Fintry, Stirlingshire, son of Sir William Graham of Kincardine by Mary Stewart, daughter of Robert III. The Grahams acquired the lands of Mains and of Lumlethan, Forfarshire, in the sixteenth century, and the estate was then named “Fintry.” The portion with the man- sion-house was sold by Graham of Fintry — at some unknown date, but probably before 1789 — to Sir James Stirling; and another portion — Earl’s Strathdichty —in 1789 to Mr. D. Erskine, Clerk to the Signet (by the trustees of the creditors of Graham of Fintry). The part sold to Sir James Stirling was bought by Erskine’s trustees in 1801. Graham con- tinued to be designated “of Fintry;” and the name of the estate was (according to the con- ditions of sale) changed to Linlathen. He died 10th January, 1815. ' Late crippl’d of an arm, and now a leg; About to beg a pass for leave to beg; Dull, listless, teas’d, dejected, and deprest (Nature is adverse to a cripple’s rest); Will generous Graham list to his Poet’s wail (It soothes poor Misery, hearkening to her tale), And hear him curse the light he first sur- vey’d, And doubly curse the luckless rhyming trade ? Thou, Nature! partial Nature! I ar- raign; Of thy caprice maternal I complain : The lion and the bull thy care have found, One shakes the forests, and one spurns the ound; Thou giv’st the ass his hide, the snail his shell; Th’ eee d wasp, victorious, guards his cell; Thy minions kings defend, control, devour, In all th’ omnipotence of rule and power. Foxes and statesmen subtile wiles ensure; The cit and polecat stink, and are se- cure; Toads with their poison, doctors with their drug; 86 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 The priest and hedgehog in their robes, are snug; Ev’n silly woman has her warlike arts, Her tongue and eyes — her dreaded spear and darts. But O thou bitter step-mother and hard, To thy poor, fenceless, naked child — the Bard ! A thing unteachable in world’s skill, And half an idiot too, more helpless still: No heels to bear him from the op’ning dun, No claws to dig, his hated sight to shun; No horns, but those by luckless Hymen worn, And those, alas! not Amalthea’s horn; No nerves olfact’ry, Mammon’s trusty cur, Clad in rich Dulness’ comfortable fur; In naked feeling, and in aching pride, He bears th’ unbroken blast from ev’ry side : Vampyre booksellers drain him to the heart, And scorpion critics cureless venom dart. Critics — appall’d, I venture on the name; Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame; Bloody dissectors, worse than ten Monroes: He hacks to teach, they mangle to expose. His heart by causeless wanton malice wrung, By blockheads’ daring into madness stung; His well-won bays, than life itself more dear, By miscreants torn, who ne’er one sprig must wear; Foil’d, bleeding, tortur’d in th’ unequal strife, The hapless Poet flounders on thro’ life: Till, fled each hope that once his bosom fir’d, And fled each Muse that glorious once inspir’d, Low sunk in squalid, unprotected age, Dead even resentment for his injur’d page, He heeds or feels no more the ruthless crit- ic’s rage ! So, by some hedge, the gen’rous steed de- ceas’d, For half-starv’d snarling curs a dainty feast, By toil and famine wore to skin and bone, - Lies, senseless of each tugging bitch’s son. O Dulness ! portion of the truly blest ! Calm shelter’d haven of eternal rest ! Thy sons ne’er madden in the fierce ex- tremes Of Fortune’s polar frost, or torrid beams. If mantling high she fills the golden cup, With sober, selfish ease they sip it up: Conscious the bounteous meed they well deserve, They only wonder “some folks” do not starve. The grave, sage hern thus easy picks his frog, And thinks the mallard a sad, worthless dog. ‘When Disappointment snaps the clue of hope, And thro’ disastrous night they darkling grope With deaf endurance sluggishly they bear, And just conclude “ that fools are fortune’s care.” So, heavy, passive to the tempest’s shocks, Strong on the sign-post stands the stupid. ox, Not so the idle Muse’s mad-cap train; Not such the workings of their moon-struck brain: In equanimity they never dwell; By turns in soaring heav’n or vaulted hell. I dread thee, Fate, relentless and se- vere, With all a poet’s, husband’s, father’s fear f Already one strong hold of hope is lost: Glencairn, the truly noble, lies in dust (Fled, like the sun eclips’d as noon ap- pears, And left us darkling in a world of tears). O, hear my ardent, grateful, selfish pray’r ! Fintry, my other stay, long bless and spare ! Thro’ a long life his hopes and wishes crown, And bright in cloudless skies his sun go down ! May bliss domestic smooth his private path; Give energy to life; and soothe his latest breath, With many a filial tear circling the bed of death ! LAMENT FOR JAMES EARL OF GLENCAIRN 87 LAMENT FOR JAMES EARL OF GLENCAIRN James Cunningham, fourteenth Earl of Glen- eairn, second son of William, thirteenth earl, and the eldest daughter of Hugh M‘Guire, a violinist in Ayr, whose family had been adopted by Governor Macrae of the H. E. I. C., was born in 1749; succeeded to the earldom in 1775; made the acquaintance of Burns — through James Dalrymple of Orangefield — in Edinburgh in 1786, and introduced him to Creech the publisher; succeeded in obtaining for the Edinburgh Edition the patronage of the Caledonian Hunt, and also exerted himself to the utmost to secure subscriptions among the nobility; used his influence in getting Burns an appointment in the Excise, and is always referred to by the poet in terms of the warmest regard. Owing to ill-health, he went to Lisbon in 1790 to pass the winter ; but, find- ing himself rapidly failing, resolved to return, and died, after landing at Falmouth, 30th January, 1791. Learning of his death, Burns wrote thus to his factor, Alexander Dalziel : ** Dare I trouble you to let me know privately before the day of interment, that I may cross the country, and steal among the crowd, to pay a tear to the last sight of my ever revered benefactor ?” In a letter to Glencairn’s sister, Lady Eliza- beth Cunningham — conjecturally (but wrong- ly) dated by Scott Douglas ‘‘ March, 1791” (it was written not earlier than September, and most probably in October) — concerning a copy of the Lament, “If,” he wrote, “among my children I shall have a son that has a heart, he shall hand it down to his child as a family honour and a family debt that my dearest ex- istence I owe to the noble heart of Glencairn.”’ He named his fourth son (born 12th August, 1794) “ James Glencairn Burns.”’ On the 23d October he sent a copy of the poem to Lady Don (ms. now in the University of Edinburgh) with this inscription: ‘‘ To Lady Harriet Don this poem, not the fictitious creation of poetic fancy, but the breathings of real woe from a bleeding heart, is respectfully and gratefully presented by the author.” In the note enclos- ing it he wrote: “As all the world knows my obligations to the late noble Earl of Glencairn, I wish to make my obligations equally con- spicuous by publishing the poem. But in what way shall I publish it? It is too small a piece to publish alone. The way which suggests itself to me is to send it to the publisher of one of the most reputed periodical works — The Bee, for instance. Lady Betty has re- ferred me to you.” It did not appear in The Bee. I I TuE wind blew hollow frae the hills; By fits the sun’s departing beam Look’d on the fading yellow woods, That wav’d o’er Lugar’s winding stream. Beneath a craigy steep a Bard, Laden with years and meikle pain, In loud lament bewail’d his lord, Whom Death had all untimely taen. Il He lean’d him to an ancient aik, Whose trunk was mould’ring down with years; His locks were bleachéd white with time, His hoary cheek was wet wi’ tears; And as he touch’d his trembling harp, And as he tun’d his doleful sang, The winds, lamenting thro’ their caves, To echo bore the notes alang : — TIT “Ye scatter’d birds that faintly sing, The reliques of the vernal quire ! Ye woods that shed on a’ the winds The honours of the agéd year! A few short months, and, glad and gay, Again ye ’ll charm the ear and e’e; But nocht in all revolving time Can gladness bring again to me. Iv “T am a bending aged tree, That long has stood the wind and rain; But now has come a cruel blast, And my last hold of earth is gane; Nae leaf o’ mine shall greet the spring, Nae simmer sun exalt my bloom; But I maun lie before the storm, And ithers plant them in my room. Vv “I ’ve seen sae monie changefu’ years, On earth I am a stranger grown: I wander in the ways of men, Alike unknowing and unknown : Unheard, unpitied, unreliev’d, I bear alane my lade 0’ care; For silent, low, on beds of dust, Lie a’ that would my sorrows share. VI ‘* And last (the sum of a’ my griefs !) My noble master lies in clay; 88 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 The flow’r amang our barons bold, His country’s pride, his country’s stay : In weary being now I pine, For a’ the lite of life is dead, And hope has left my agéd ken, On forward wing for ever fled. VII “ Awake thy last sad voice, my harp! The voice of woe and wild despair ! Awake, resound thy latest lay, Then sleep in silence evermair ! And thou, my last, best, only friend, That fillest an untimely tomb, Accept this tribute from the Bard Thou brought from Fortune’s mirkest gloom. VII “In Poverty’s low barren vale, Thick mists obscure involv’d me round; Though oft I turn’d the wistful eye, Nae ray of fame was to be found; Thou found’st me, like the morning sun That melts the fogs in limpid air: The friendless Bard and rustic song Became alike thy fostering care. Ix “Q, why has Worth so short a date, While villains ripen grey with time ! Must thou, the noble, gen’rous, great, Fall in bold manhood’s hardy prime ? Why did I live to see that day, A day to me so full of woe ? O, had I met the mortal shaft Which laid my benefactor low! x «The bridegroom may forget the bride Was made his wedded wife yestreen; The monarch may forget the crown That on his head an hour has been; The mother may forget the child That smiles sae sweetly on her knee; But I Il remember thee, Glencairn, And a’ that thou hast done for me!” LINES TO SIR JOHN WHITE- FOORD, Bart. SENT WITH THE FOREGOING POEM Sir John Whitefoord was, like Glencairn, the warm friend of Burns, who wrote The Braes o’ Ballochmyle (see post, p. 225) in 1783, on the occasion of the family’s being compelled to sell the estate of that name. Tuov, who thy honour as thy God rever’st, Who, save thy mind’s reproach, nought earthly fear’st, To thee this votive off’ring I impart, The tearful tribute of a broken heart. The Friend thou valued’st, I the Patron lov’d; His worth, his honour, all the world ap- rov’d: We’ll mourn till we too go as he has gone, And tread the shadowy path to that dark world unknown. TAM O’? SHANTER A TALE Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke. Gawin Dovetas. Alloway Kirk was originally the church of the quoad civilia parish of Alloway; but this parish having been annexed to that of Ayr in 1690, the church fell more or less to ruin, and when Burns wrote had been roofless for half acentury. It stands some two hundred yards to the north of the picturesque Auld Brig of Doon, which dates from about the beginning of the Fifteenth Century, and in Burns’s time was the sole means of communication over the steep-banked Doon between Carrick and Kyle. The old road to Ayr ran west of the Kirk: the more direct road dating from the erection of the New Brig — a little west of the old one —in 1815. Burns's birthplace is about three fourths of a mile to the north; so that the ground and its legends were familiar to him from the first. Writing to Francis Grose (first published in Sir Egerton Brydges’ Censura Literaria, 17‘), —‘‘ Among the many witch-stories I have heard,” he says, “relating to Alloway Kirk, I distinctly remember only two or three. Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind and bitter blasts of hail — in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take the air in—a farmer, or farmer’s servant, was plod- ding and plashing homeward with his plough- irons on his shoulder, having been getting some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the Kirk of Alloway ; and being rather on the anxious look-out in approaching: a place so well known to he a favourite haunt of the devil, and the devil’s TAM O’ SHANTER 89 friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering, through the horrors of the storm and stormy night, a light, which on his nearer approach plainly shewed itself to pro- ceed from the haunted edifice. Whether he had been fortified from above on his devout supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the immediate presence of Satan, or whether, according to another custom, he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to determine; but so it was, that he ventured to go up to, nay into, the very Kirk. As luck would have it, his temer- ity came off unpunished. The members of the infernal junto were all out on some mid- night business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or cauldron, depending from the roof, over the fire, simmering some heads of unchristened children, limbs of exe- cuted malefactors, etc., for the business of the night. It was, in for a penny, in for a pound with the honest ploughman: so without cere- mony he unhooked the cauldron from the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, in- verted it on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the family, a living evidence of the truth of the story. An- other story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as follows: On a market-day in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick, and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway Kirkyard, in order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about two or three hundred yards further on than the said gate, had been detained by his business till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard hour between night and morn- ing. Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the Kirk, yet, as it is a well- known fact, that to turn back on these occa- sions is running by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced on his road. When he had reached the gate of the Kirk- yard, he was surprised and entertained, through the ribs and arches of an old Gothic window, which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer, stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was dressed, tradition does not say, but that the ladies were all in their smocks: and one of them happening unluckily to have a smock which was considerably too short to answer all the purpose of that piece of dress, our farmer was so tickled that he involuntarily burst out with a loud laugh, ‘Weel luppen, Maggy wi’ the short sark!’ and recollecting himself, in- stantly spurred his horse to the top of his speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no diabolical power can pur- sue you beyond the middle of a running stream. Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for notwithstanding the speed of the horse, which was a good one, when he reached the middle of the arch of the bridge, and consequently the middle of the stream, the pursuing vengeful hags were so close at his heels that one of them actually sprang to seize him: but it was too late; no- thing was on her side of the stream but the horse’s tail, which immediately gave way at her infernal grip, as if blasted by a stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond her reach. However, the unsightly tailless con- dition of the vigorous steed was, to the last hour of the noble creature’s life, an awful warning to the Carrick farmers not to stay too late in Ayr markets. “The last relation I shall give, though equally true, is not so well identified as the two former with regard to the scene; but as the best authorities give it for Alloway, I shall relate it, On a summer’s evening, about the time nature puts on her sables to mourn the expiry of the cheerful day, a shepherd boy, belonging to a farmer in the immediate neigh- bourhood of Alloway Kirk, had just folded his charge and was returning home. As he passed the Kirk, in the adjoining field, he fell in with a crew of men and women who were busy pulling stems of the plant ragwort. He ob- served that as each person pulled a ragwort, he or she got astride of it and called out, ‘Up horsie!’ on which the ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the air with its rider. The foolish boy likewise pulled his ragwort, and cried with the rest, ‘ Up horsie!’ and, strange to tell, away he flew with the company. The first stage at which the cavalcade stopt was a merchant’s wine-cellar in Bordeaux, where, without saying by your leave, they quaffed away at the best the cellar could afford until the morning, foe to the imps and works of darkness, threatened to throw light on the matter, and frightened them from their ca- rousals. The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the liquor, heed- lessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse he fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging to the merchant. Somebody that understood Seotch, asking him what he was, he said such a one’s herd in Alloway; and by some means or other getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous tale.” [As a vehicle for narrative, the octosyllabic couplet, employed by Burns in this piece, as also in The Twa Dogs, became classical in 90 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 Scotland through Barbour’s Bruce (c. 1875).] The motto is the eighteenth verse of Gavin Douglas’s sixth “Proloug” (Eneados), and should read thus: “ Of browneis and of bogillis full this buke.’’ Probably Burns drew the suggestion of his hero, Tam o’ Shanter, from the character and adventures of Douglas Graham — born 6th Jan- uary, 1739, died 23d June, 1811 —son of Robert Graham, farmer at Douglastown, tenant of the farm of Shanter on the Carrick Shore, and owner of a boat which he had named Tam o’ Shanter. Graham was noted for his convivial habits, which his wife’s ratings tended rather to confirm than to eradicate. Tradition relates that once, when his long-tailed grey mare had waited even longer than usual for her master at the tavern door, certain humourists plucked her tail to such an extent as to leave it little better than a stump, and that Graham, on his attention being called to its state next morn- ing, swore that it had been depi'ated by the witches at Alloway Kirk (MS. Notes by D. Auld of Ayr in Edinburgh University Li- brary). The prototype —if prototype there were — of Souter Johnie is more doubtful; but a shoemaker named John Davidson — born 1728, died 30th June, 1806 — did live for some time at Glenfoot of Ardlochan, near the farm of Shanter, whence he removed to Kirkoswald. In Alloway Kirk and its surroundings, apart from its uncanny associations, Burns cherished a special interest. ‘‘ When my father,” says Gilbert, “ feued his little property near Allo- way Kirk the wall of the churchyard had gone to ruin, and cattle had free liberty of pastur- ing in it. My father and two or three other neighbours joined in an application to the Town Council of Ayr, who were superiors of the adjoining land, for liberty to rebuild it, and raised by subscription a sum for enclosing this ancient cemetery with a wall; hence he came to consider it as his burial-place, and we learned the reverence for it people generally have for the burial-place of their ancestors.” When, therefore, Burns met Captain Grose — then on his peregrinations through Scotland — at the house of Captain Riddell, he suggested a drawing of the ruin; and “the captain,” Gil- bert says, ‘‘agreed to the request, provided the poet would furnish a witch story to be printed along with it.” It is probable that Burns originally sent the stories told above for insertion in the work, and that the narrative in rhyme was an afterthought. Lockhart, on Cromek’s authority, accepts a statement, said to have been made by Mrs. Burns, that the piece was the work of a single day, and on this very slender evidence divers critics have indulged in a vast amount of admiration. Burns’s general dictum must, however, be borne in mind: “ All my poetry is the effect of easy composition, but of laborious correc- tion ;” together with his special verdict on Tam o’ Shanter (letter to Mrs. Dunlop, April, 1791) that it “showed w finishing polish,” which he despaired of ‘‘ever excelling.” It appeared in Grose’s Antiquities — published in April, 1791 — the captain’s indebtedness being thus acknowledged: ‘‘ To my ingenious friend, Mr. Robert Burns, I have been seriously obli- gated: he was not only at the pains of making out what was most worthy of notice in Ayr- shire, the county honoured by his birth, but he also wrote, expressly for this work, the pretty tale annexed to Alloway Church.” Ere Grose’s work was before the public, the piece made its appearance in The Edinburgh Magazine for March, 1791; and it was also published in The Edinburgh Herald of 18th March, 1791. WHEN chapman billies leave the street, And drouthy neebors neebors meet; As market-days are wearing late, An’ folk begin to tak the gate; While we sit bousing at the nappy, An’ getting fou and unco happy, We think na on the lang Scots miles, The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, That lie between us and our hame, Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter, As he frae Ayr ae night did canter: (Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses, For honest men and bonie lasses). O Tam, had’st thou but been sae wise, As taen thy ain wife Kate’s advice ! She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum; That frae November till October, Ae market-day thou was nae sober; That ilka melder wi’ the miller, Thou sat as lang as thou had siller; That ev’ry naig was ca’d a shoe on, The smith and thee gat roaring fou on; That at the Lord’s house, even on Sun- day, Thou drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday. She prophesied, that, late or soon, Thou would be found deep drown’d in Doon, Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk By rere haunted kirk. TAM O’ SHANTER gt Ah! gentle dames, it gars me greet, To think how monie counsels sweet, How monie lengthen’d, sage advices The husband frae the wife despises ! But to our tale: Ae market-night, Tam had got planted unco right, Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, Wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely; And at his elbow, Souter Johnie, His ancient, trusty, drouthy cronie: Tam lo’ed him like a very brither; They had been fou for weeks thegither. The night drave on wi’ sangs and clatter; And ay the ale was growing better: The landlady and Tam grew gracious Wi’ secret favours, sweet and precious: The Souter tauld his queerest stories; The landlord’s laugh was ready chorus: The storm without might rair and rustle, Tam did na mind the storm a whistle. Care, mad to see a man sae happy, F’en drown’d himsel amang the nappy. As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure, The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure: Kings may be blest but Tam was glorious, O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious ! But pleasures are like poppies spread: You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shade Or like the snow falls in the river, : A moment white — then melts for ever; Or like the borealis race, ‘ That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow’s lovely form Evanishing amid the storm. Nae man can tether time or tide; t The hour approaches Tam maun ride: ' That hour, o’ night’s black arch the key- stane, ‘ That dreary hour Tam mounts his beast in; And sic a night he taks the road in, As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in. The wind blew as ’t wad blawn its last; The rattling showers rose on the blast; The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d; Loud, deep, and lang the thunder bellow’d: That night, a child might understand, The Deil had. business on his hand. Weel mounted on his gray mare Meg, A better never lifted leg, Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire, Despising wind, and rain, and fire; Whiles holding fast his guid blue bonnet, Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet, Whiles glow’ring round wi’ prudent cares, Lest bogles catch him unawares: Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, Whare ghaists and houlets nightly ery. By this time he was cross the ford, Whare in the snaw the chapman smoor’d; And past the birks and meikle stane, Whare drunken Charlie brak ’s neck-bane; And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn, Whare hunters fand the murder’d bairn; And near the thorn, aboon the well, Whare Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel. Before him Doon pours all his floods; The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods; The lightnings flash from pole to pole; Near and more near the thunders roll: When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees, Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze, Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing, And loud resounded mirth and dancing. Inspiring bold John Barleycorn, What dangers thou canst make us scorn ! Wi’ tippenny, we fear nae evil; Wi’ usquabae, we ’ll face the Devil ! The swats sae ream’d in Tammie’s noddle, Fair play, he car’d na deils a boddle. But Maggie stood, right sair astonish’d, Till, by the heel and hand admonish’d, She ventur’d forward on the light; And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight ! Warlocks and witches in a dance: Nae cotillion, brent new frae France, But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, Put life and mettle in their heels. A winnock-bunker in the east, There sat Auld Nick, in shape o’ beast; A tousie tyke, black, grim, and large, To gie them music was his charge: He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl, Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl. Coffins stood round, like open presses, That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses; And, by some devilish cantraip sleight, Each in its cauld hand held a light: By which heroic Tam was able 92 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 To note upon the haly table, A murderer’s banes, in gibbet-airns; Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen’d bairns; A thief new-cutted frae a rape — Wi his last gasp his gab did gape; Five tomahawks wi’ bluid red-rusted; Five seymitars wi? murder crusted; A garter which a babe had strangled; A knife a father’s throat had mangled — Whom his ain son o’ life bereft — The grey-hairs yet stack to the heft; Wi’ mair of horrible and awefu’, Which even to name wad be unlawfu’. As Tammie glowr’d, amaz’d, and curious, The mirth and fun grew fast and furi- ous; The piper loud and louder blew, The dancers quick and quicker flew, They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit, Till ilka carlin swat and reekit, And coost her duddies to the wark, And linket at it in her sark ! Now Tam, O Tam! had thae been queans, A’ plump and strapping in their teens ! Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flannen, Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linen ! — Thir breeks o’ mine, my only pair, That ance were plush, o’ guid blue hair, I wad hae gi’en them off my hurdies For ae blink o’ the bonie burdies ! But wither’d beldams, auld and droll, Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, Louping and flinging on a crummock, - I wonder did na turn thy stomach ! But Tam kend what was what fu’ braw- lie: There was ae winsome wench and wawlie, That night enlisted in the core, Lang after kend on Carrick shore (For monie a beast to dead she shot, An’ perish’d monie a bonie boat, And shook baith meikle corn and bear, And kept the country-side in fear). Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn, That while a lassie she had worn, In longitude tho’ sorely scanty, It was her best, and she was vauntie. .. . Ah! little kend thy reverend grannie, That sark she coft for her wee Nannie, Wi’ twa pund Scots (’t was a’ her riches), Wad ever grac’d a dance of witches ! But here my Muse her wing maun cour, Sic flights are far beyond her power: To sing how Nannie lap and flang (A souple jad she was and strang), And how Tam stood like ane bewitch’d, And thought his very een enrich’d; Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain, And hotch’d and blew wi’ might and main; Till first ae caper, syne anither, Tam tint his reason a’ thegither, And roars out: “ Weel done, Cutty-sark ! ” And in an instant all was dark; And scarcely had he Maggie rallied, When out the hellish legion sallied. As bees bizz out wi’ angry fyke, When plundering herds assail their byke; As open pussie’s mortal foes, When, pop! she starts before their nose; As eager runs the market-crowd, When “ Catch the thief !” resounds aloud: So Maggie runs, the witches follow, Wi?’ monie an eldritch skriech and hollo. Ah, Tam! ah, Tam! thou’ll get thy fairin ! In hell they ’1] roast thee like a herrin ! In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin ! Kate soon will be a woefu’ woman! Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, And win the key-stane of the brig; There, at them thou thy tail may toss, A running stream they dare na cross ! But ere the key-stane she could make, The fient a tail she had to shake; For Nannie, far before the rest, Hard upon noble Maggie prest, And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle; But little wist she Maggie’s mettle ! Ae spring: brought off her master hale, But left behind her ain grey tail: The carlin claught her by the rump, And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. Now, wha this tale o’ truth shall read, Ilk man, and mother’s son, take heed: Whene’er to drink you are inclin’d, Or cutty sarks run in your mind, Think ! ye may buy the joys o’er dear: Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare. ADDRESS TO THE SHADE OF THOMSON 93 ON SEEING A WOUNDED HARE LIMP BY ME WHICH A FEL- LOW HAD JUST SHOT AT On 21st April, 1789, Burns enclosed a copy of this production in an unpublished letter to Mrs. Dunlop: ‘‘ Two mornings ago, as I was at a very early hour sowing in the fields, I heard a shot, and presently a poor little hare limped by me apparently very much hurt. You will easily guess this set my humanity in tears and my indignation in arms. The follow- ing was the result, which please read to the young ladies. I believe you may include the Major too, as whatever I have said of shooting hares I have not spoken one irreverent word against coursing them. This is according to your just right the very first copy I wrote.” Enclosing a draft to Alexander Cunningham, 4th May, 1789 (in a letter only partly published in any collection of the Correspondence), Burns, after a somewhat similar account of the inci- dent, added: “ You will guess my indignation at the inhuman fellow who could shoot a hare at this season, when all of them have young ones ; and it gave me no little gloomy satisfac- tion to see the poor injured creature escape him.” On 2d June, 1789, Dr. Gregory sent to Burns a somewhat supercilious criticism, which induced him (however) to change one or two expressions for the better. Regarding the measure Dr. Gregory remarked that it was “not a good one;” that it did not “flow well;” and that the rhyme of the fourth line was ‘‘almost lost by its distance from the first, and the two interposed close rhymes: ” hence, ' “Dp. Gregory is a good man, but he crucifies me” (R. B.). Burns’s use of his stanza is groping and tentative; and the effect of his piece is one of mere frigidity. I INHUMAN man! curse on thy barb’rous art And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye; May never pity soothe thee with a sigh, Nor never pleasure glad thy cruel heart ! II Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, The bitter little that of life remains ! No more the thickening brakes and ver- dant plains To thee shall home, or food, or pastime yield. III Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest, No more of rest, but now thy dying bed ! The sheltering rushes whistling o’er thy head, The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest. Iv Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn, I’ll miss thee sporting o’er the dewy lawn, And curse the roffian’s aim, and mourn thy hapless fate. ADDRESS TO THE SHADE OF THOMSON ON CROWNING HIS BUST AT EDNAM, ROXBURGHSHIRE, WITH A WREATH OF BAYS When, in 1791, the eccentric Earl of Bu- chan instituted an annual festival in commem- oration of James Thomson, by crowning, with a wreath of bays, a bust of the poet surmount- ing the Ionic temple erected in his honour on the grounds in Dryburgh, he sent an invitation to Burns and suggested that he might com- pose an ode. Burns was harvesting, and must needs decline ; but, in regard to the second half of the invitation, he (29th August, 1791) wrote as follows: ‘‘ Your lordship hints at an ode for the occasion; but who would write after Collins ? I read over his verses to the memory of Thomson and despaired. I attempted three or four stanzas, in the way of address to the shade of the Bard, on crowning his bust. I trouble your lordship with the enclosed copy of them, which, I am afraid, will be but too convincing a proof how unequal I am to the task you would obligingly assign me.” The piece is closely modelled upon Collins’s ode. I Waite virgin Spring by Eden’s flood Unfolds her tender mantle green, Or pranks the sod in frolic mood, Or tunes Eolian strains between: 94 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793~ II While Summer, with a matron grace, Retreats to Dryburgh’s cooling shade, Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace The progress of the spikey blade: III While Autumn, benefactor kind, By Tweed erects his aged head, And sees, with self-approving mind, Each creature on his bounty fed: Iv While maniac Winter rages o’er The hills whence classic Yarrow flows, Rousing the turbid torrent’s roar, Or sweeping, wild, a waste of snows : Vv So long, sweet Poet of the year! Shall bloom that wreath thou well has won; While Scotia, with exulting tear, Proclaims that Thomson was her son. ON THE LATE CAPTAIN GROSE’S PEREGRINATIONS THRO’ SCOTLAND COLLECTING THE ANTIQUITIES OF THAT KINGDOM The son of Francis Grose, a Swiss, who had settled as a jeweller at Richmond, Surrey, Francis Grose was born at Greenford, Middle- sex, about 1731; was educated as an artist, and exhibited at the Royal Academy ; in 1755 became Richmond Herald; was made Adju- tant in the Hampshire, and latterly Captain and Adjutant in the Surrey militias ; published Antiquities of England and Wales, 1773-1787 ; made the acquaintance of Burns during his an- tiquarian tour in Scotland in 1789 (see ante, 'p. 90, headnote to Tam o’ Shanter) ; published Antiquities of Scotland, 1789-1791; was au- thor of many treatises in different branches of antiquarian lore, as well as various miscel- laneous works — among them an excellent Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785); and died (of apoplexy) 12th May, 1791. His re- markable corpulence is suggested in the Epi- gram on Captain Francis Grose (see post, p. 186); and his wandering’s are further denoted in the lively verses beginning ‘‘ Ken ye ought o’ Cap- tain Grose ? ” (p. 122). He had his own share of humour, and was an “ inimitable boon com- panion.” I Hear, Land o’ Cakes, and brither Scots Frae Maidenkirk to Johnie Groat’s, If there ’s a hole in a’ your coats, I rede you tent it: A chield ’s amang you takin notes, And faith he ’Il prent it: II If in your bounds ye chance to light Upon a fine, fat, fodgel wight, O’ stature short but genius bright, That ’s he, mark weel: And wow ! he has an unco sleight O’ cauk and keel. ITI By some auld, houlet-haunted biggin, Or kirk deserted by its riggin, It ’s ten to ane ye ‘Il find him snug in Some eldritch part, Wi deils, they say, Lord safe ’s ! colleaguin At some black art. Iv Ilk ghaist that haunts auld ha’ or chamer, Ye gipsy-gang that deal in glamour, And you, deep-read in hell’s black gram- mar, Warlocks and witches: Ye “Il quake at his conjuring hammer, Ye midnight bitches ! v It’s tauld he was a sodger bred, And ane wad rather fa’n than fled; But now he ’s quat the spurtle-blade And dog-skin wallet, And taen the— Antiquarian trade, I think they call it. VI He has a fouth o’ auld nick-nackets: Rusty airn caps and jinglin jackets Wad haud the Lothians three in tackets A towmont guid; And parritch-pats and auld saut-backets Before the Flood. SONG: ANNA, THY CHARMS 95 VII Of Eve’s first fire he has a cinder; Auld Tubalcain’s fire-shool and fender; That which distinguishéd the gender O’ Balaam’s ass: A broomstick o’ the witch of Endor, Weel shod wi’ brass. VIII Forbye, he’ll shape you aff fu’ gleg The cut of Adam’s philibeg; The knife that nicket Abel’s craig He ll prove you fully, It was a faulding jocteleg, Or lang-kail gullie. ix * But wad ye see him in his glee — For meikle glee and fun has he — Then set him down, and twa or three Guid fellows wi’ him; And port, O port ! shine thou a wee, And then ye’ll see him! x Now, by the Pow’rs o’ verse and prose ! Thou art a dainty chield, O Grose ! — Whae’er 0’ thee shall ill suppose, They sair misea’ thee; I’d take the rascal by the nose, Wad say, “Shame fa’ thee.” TO MISS CRUICKSHANK A VERY YOUNG LADY WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF OF A BOOK PRESENTED TO HER BY THE AUTHOR Miss Jane Cruickshank, to whom these lines were addressed, was the daughter of the poet’s friend, Mr. William Cruickshank, of the High School, Edinburgh, and was then about twelve or thirteen years old. In June, 1804, she mar- ried James Henderson, writer, of Jedburgh. She also inspired A Rosebud by my Early Walk. The present piece appears to have been written under the inspiration of “Namby- Pamby ” Phillips (d. 1749). Beauteous Rosebud, young and gay, Blooming on thy early May, Never may’st thou, lovely flower, Chilly shrink in sleety shower ! Never Boreas’ hoary path, Never Eurus’ pois’nous breath, Never baleful stellar lights, Taint thee with untimely blights ! Never, never reptile thief Riot on thy virgin leaf ! Nor even Sol too fiercely view Thy bosom blushing still with dew! May’st thou long, sweet crimson gem, Richly deck thy native stem; Till some ev’ning, sober, calm, Dropping dews and breathing balm, While all around the woodland rings, And ev’ry bird thy requiem sings, Thou, amid the dirgeful sound, Shed thy dying honours round, And resign to parent Earth The loveliest form she e’er gave birth. SONG: ANNA, THY CHARMS Scott Douglas, on plausible evidence, con- jectured that this song referred to a sweetheart of Alexander Cunningham, and that it was a “vicarious effusion.” His conjecture can now be fully substantiated. In an unpublished part of a letter to Cunningham, 4th May, 1789, Burns wrote: “The publisher of The Star has been polite. He may find his account for it, though I would scorn to put my name to a newspaper poem — one instance, indeed, excepted. I mean your twostanzas. Had the lady kept her char- acter she should have kept my verses; but as she has prostituted the one [by marrying in January, 1789], and no longer made anything of the other; so sent them to Stuart as a bribe in my earnestness to be cleared from the foul as- persions respecting the D—— of G——” [Duch- ess of Gordon]. The piece appeared in Stnart’s Star, 18th April, 1789. Burns also enclosed a sony to Mrs. Dunlop: ‘The following is a jeu desprit of t’ other day on a des airing lover leading me to see his Dulcinea.” . I Anna, thy charms my hosom fire, And waste my soul with care; But ah! how bootless to admire When fated to despair! II Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair, To hope may be forgiven: 96 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 For sure ’t were impious to despair So much in sight of Heaven. ON READING IN A NEWSPAPER THE DEATH OF JOHN M‘LEOD, ESQ, BROTHER TO A YOUNG LADY, A PARTIC- ULAR FRIEND OF THE AUTHOR’S Burns made the acquaintance of Miss Isa- bella M‘Leod during his first visit to Edinburgh. Her brother, John M'‘Leod of’ Rasay — the representative of the main Lewis branch of the clan — died 20th July, 1787. In reference to other misfortunes of the family Burns wrote his Raving Winds around her Blowing. In a ms. note, “ This poetic compliment,” he says, “what few poetic compliments are, was from the heart.” I Sap thy tale, thou idle page, And rueful thy alarms: Death tears the brother of her love From Isabella’s arms. Ir Sweetly deckt with pearly dew The morning rose may blow; But cold successive noontide blasts May lay its beauties low. TIr Fair on Isabella’s morn The sun propitious smil’d; But, long ere noon, succeeding clouds Succeeding hopes beguil’d. Iv Fate oft tears the bosom-chords That Nature finest strung: So Isabella’s heart was form’d, And so that heart was wrung. Vv Dread Omnipotence alone Can heal the wound he gave — Can point the brimful, grief-worn eyes To scenes beyond the grave. VI Virtue’s blossoms there shall blow, And fear no withering blast; There Isabella’s spotless worth Shall happy be at last. THE HUMBLE PETITION OF BRUAR WATER TO THE NOBLE DUKE OF ATHOLE Burns spent two days with the family of the Duke of Atholl during his northern tour in August, 1787; and in the Glenriddell Book, in which the Humble Petition is inscribed, he wrote: “God, who knows all things, knows how my heart aches with the throes of grati- tude, whenever I recollect my reception at the noble house of Atholl.” In a letter to Pro- fessor Josiah Walker, enclosing the poem, he stated that “it was, at least the most part of it, the effusion of a half hour” at Bruar. But, he adds, “I do not mean it was extempore, for I have endeavoured to brush it up as well as Mr. Nicoll’s chat and the jogging of the chaise would allow.” I My lord, I know, your noble ear Woe ne’er assails in vain; Embolden’d thus, I beg you Il hear Your humble slave complain, How saucy Phebus’ scorching beams, In flaming summer-pride, Dry-withering, waste my foamy streams, And drink my crystal tide. II The lightly-jumping, glowrin trouts, That thro’ my waters play, If, in their random, wanton spouts, They near the margin stray; If, hapless chance! they linger lang, I’m scorching up so shallow, They ’re left the whitening stanes amang In gasping death to wallow. III Last day I grat wi’ spite and teen, As Poet Burns came by, That, to a Bard, I should be seen Wi’ half my channel dry; A panegyric rhyme, I ween, Ev’n as I was, he shor’d me; But had I in my glory been, He, kneeling, wad ador’d me. ON SCARING SOME WATERFOWL IN LOCH TURIT 97 Iv Here, foaming down the skelvy rocks, In twisting strength I rin; There high my boiling torrent smokes, Wild-roaring o’er a linn: Enjoying large each spring and well, As Nature gave them me, I am, altho’ I say ’t mysel, Worth gaun a mile to see. Vv Would, then, my noble master please To grant my highest wishes, He ’ll shade my banks wi’ tow’ring trees And bonie spreading bushes. Delighted doubly then, my lord, You ‘ll wander on my banks, And listen monie a grateful bird Return you tuneful thanks. VI The sober laverock, warbling wild, Shall to the skies aspire; The gowdspink, Music’s gayest child, Shall sweetly join the choir; The blackbird strong, the lintwhite clear, The mavis mild and mellow, The robin, pensive Autumn cheer In all her locks of yellow. VII This, too, a covert shall ensure To shield them from the storm; And coward maukin sleep secure, Low in her grassy form: Here shall the shepherd make his seat To weave his crown of flow’rs; Or find a shelt’ring, safe retreat From prone-descending show’rs. VII And here, by sweet, endearing stealth, Shall meet the loving pair, Despising worlds with all their wealth, As empty idle care: The flow’rs shall vie, in all their charms, The hour of heav’n to grace; And birks extend their fragrant arms To screen the dear embrace. IX Here haply too, at vernal dawn, Some musing Bard may stray, And eye the smoking, dewy lawn And misty mountain grey; Or, by the reaper’s nightly beam, Mild-chequering thro’ the trees, Rave to my darkly dashing stream, Hoarse-swelling on the breeze. x Let lofty firs and ashes cool My lowly banks o’erspread, And view, deep-bending in the pool, Their shadows’ wat’ry bed: Let fragrant birks, in woodbines drest, My craggy cliffs adorn, And, for the little songster’s nest, The close embow’ring thorn ! XI So may, old Scotia’s darling hope, Your little angel band Spring, like their fathers, up to prop Their honour’d native land ! So may, thro’ Albion’s farthest ken, To social-flowing glasses, The grace be: “ Athole’s honest men And Athole’s bonie lasses !” ON SCARING SOME WATER- FOWL IN LOCH TURIT A WILD SCENE AMONG THE HILLS OF OUGHTERTYRE Thus presented in the Glenriddell Book MS. ‘‘This was the production of a solitary fore- noon’s walk from Oughtertyre House. I lived there, the guest of Sir William Murray, for two or three weeks [October, 1787], and was much flattered by my hospitable reception. What a pity that the mere emotions of gratitude are so impotent in this world! ’T is lucky that, as we are told, they will be of some avail in the world to come.” Way, ye tenants of the lake, For me your wat’ry haunt forsake ? Tell me, fellow creatures, why At my presence thus you fly ? Why disturb your social joys, Parent, filial, kindred ties ? — Common friend to you and me, Nature’s gifts to all are free: Peaceful keep your dimpling wave, Busy feed, or wanton lave; 98 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 Or, beneath the sheltering rock, Bide the surging billow’s shock. Conscious, blushing for our race, Soon, too soon, your fears I trace. Man, your proud, usurping foe, Would be lord of all below: Plumes himself in freedom’s pride, Tyrant stern to all beside. The eagle, from the eliffy brow Marking -you his prey below, In his breast no pity dwells, Strong necessity compels: But Man, to whom alone is giv’n A ray direct from pitying Heav’n, Glories in his heart, humane — And creatures for his pleasure slain ! In these savage, liquid plains, Only known to wand’ring swains, Where the mossy riv’let strays Far from human haunts and ways, All on Nature you depend, And life’s poor season peaceful spend. Or, if Man’s superior might Dare invade your native right, On the lofty ether borne, Man with all his powers you scorn; ‘Swiftly seek, on clanging wings, Other lakes, and other springs; And the foe you cannot brave, Scorn at least to be his slave. VERSES WRITTEN WITH A PENCIL OVER THE CHIMNEY-PIECE, IN THE PAR- LOUR OF THE INN AT KENMORE, TAY- MOUTH Burns visited Taymouth on 29th August, 1787. The piece is inscribed in the Glenriddell Book m the hand of an amanuensis, with the following note by Burns: ‘‘I wrote this with a pencil over the chimney-piece in the parlour e the inn at Kenmore, at the outlet of Loch ay.” ApMIRING Nature in her wildest grace, These northern scenes with weary feet I trace; O’er many a winding dale and painful steep, Th’ abodes of covey’d grouse and timid sheep, My savage journey, curious, I pursue, Till fam’d Breadalbane opens to my view. The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides: The woods, wild-scatter’d, ample sides; Th’ outstretching lake, imbosomed ’mong the hills, The eye with wonder and amazement fills: The Tay meand’ring sweet in infant pride, The palace rising on his verdant side, The lawns wood-fring’d in Nature’s native taste, The hillocks dropt in Nature’s careless haste, The arches striding o’er the new-born stream, The village glittering in the noontide beam — clothe their Poetic ardors in my bosom swell, Lone wand’ring by the hermit’s mossy cell; The sweeping theatre of hanging woods, Th’ incessant roar of headlong tumbling floods — Here Poesy might wake her heav’n-taught lyre, And look through Nature with creative fire; Here, to the wrongs of Fate half reconcil’d, Misfortune’s lighten’d steps might wander wild; And Disappointment, in these lonely bounds, Find balm to soothe her bitter rankling wounds; Here heart-struck Grief might heav’nward stretch her scan, And injur’d Worth forget and pardon man. LINES ON THE FALL OF FYERS NEAR LOCH NESS WRITTEN WITH A PENCIL ON THE SPOT Burns visited the Fall of Foyers on 5th September, 1787. In « note in the Glenrid- dell Book, where the poem is inscribed by an amanuensis, “I composed these lines,” he wrote, “‘ standing on the brink of the hideous cauldron below the waterfall.” THE WHISTLE 99 Among the heathy hills and ragged woods The roaring Fyers pours his mossy floods; Till full he dashes on the rocky mounds, Where, thro’ a shapeless breach, his stream resounds,. As high in air the bursting torrents flow, As deep recoiling surges foam below, Prone down the rock the whitening sheet descends, And viewless Echo’s ear, astonish’d, rends. Dim-seen through rising mists and cease- less show’rs, The hoary cavern, wide-surrounding, lours: Still thro’ the gap the struggling river toils, And still, below, the horrid caldron boils — ON THE BIRTH OF A POSTHU- MOUS CHILD BORN IN PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES OF FAMILY DISTRESS In the Glenriddell Book —where the poem is inscribed — Burns explains that it is ‘‘on the birth of Mons. Henri, posthumous child to a Mons. Henri, a gentleman of family and fortune from Switzerland ; who died in three days’ illness, leaving his lady, a sister of Sir Thomas Wallace, in her sixth month of this her first child. The lady and her family were particular friends of the author (she was a daughter of Mrs. Dunlop). The child was born in November, ’90.” On receiving the news of the birth Burns wrote to Mrs. Dunlop: “How could such a mercurial creature as a poet lumpishly keep his seat on receipt of the best news from his best friend? I seized my gilt-headed Wangee rod — an instrument indis- pensably necessary —in my left hand, in the moment of inspiration and rapture ; and stride, stride — quick and quicker—out skipt I among the broomy banks of Nith to muse over my joy by retail. To keep within the bounds of prose was impossible. . . . I, almost extem- pore, poured out to him in the following verses.” I Sweer flow’ret, pledge o’ meikle love, And ward o’ monie a prayer, What heart o’ stane wad thou na move, Sae helpless, sweet, and fair ! II November hirples o’er the lea, Chill, on thy lovely form; And gane, alas! the shelt’ring tree, Should shield thee frae the storm. Til May He who gives the rain to pour, And wings the blast to blaw, Protect thee frae the driving show’r, The bitter frost and snaw ! IV May He, the friend of Woe and Want, Who heals life’s various stounds, Protect and guard the mother plant, And heal her cruel wounds ! Vv But late she flourish’d, rooted fast, Fair on the sammer morn, Now feebly bends she in the blast, Unshelter’d and forlorn. VI Blest be thy bloom, thou lovely gem, Unseath’d by ruffian hand ! And from thee many a parent stem Arise to deck our land ! THE WHISTLE A BALLAD Thus prefaced by Burns: “ As the authen- tie Prose history of the Whistle is curious, I shall here give it. In the train of Anne of Denmark, when she came to Scotland with our James the Sixth, there came over also a Danish gentleman of gigantic stature and great prow- ess, and a matchless champion of Bacchus. He had a little ebony Whistle, which, at the com- mencement of the orgies, he laid on the table; and whoever was last able to blow it, every- body else being disabled by the potency of the bottle, was to earry off the Whistle, as a trophy of victory. The Dane produced credentials of his victories, without a single defeat, at the courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm, Moscow, Warsaw, and several of the petty courts in Germany ; and challenged the Scots Baccha- nalians to the alternative of trying his prow- ess, or else of acknowledging their inferiority. After many overthrows on the part of the 100 ADDITIONS IN THE EDINBURGH EDITION OF 1793 Scots, the Dane was encountered by Sir Robert Laurie of Maxwelton, ancestor to the present worthy baronet of that name ; who, after three days and three nights’ hard contest, left the Scandinavian under the table, ‘and blew on the Whistle his requiem shrill.’ : ‘Sir Walter, son to Sir Robert before men- tioned, afterwards lost the Whistle to Walter Riddell of Glenriddell, who had married a sister of Sir Walter’s. On Friday, the 16th October, 1790, at Friars-Carse, the Whistle was once more contended for, as related in the Ballad, by the present Sir Robert Laurie of Maxwelton ; Robert Riddell, Esq., of Glenrid- dell, lineal descendant and representative of Walter Riddell, who won the Whistle, and in whose family it had continued; and Alexan- der Ferguson, Esq., of Craigdarroch, likewise descended of the great Sir Robert, which last gentleman carried off the hard-won honors of the field.” In this Prefatory Note Burns misdates the contest by a year, as is proved by (1) the date of a letter — 16th October, 1789 — to Captain Riddell, in which he refers to the contest of the evening ; and (2) by the memorandum of the “ Bett,” now in the possession of Sir Robert Jardine of Castlemilk, first published in Notes be Queries, Second Series, vol. x. (1860), p. 423 :— DOQUET The original Bett between Sir Robert Laurie and Craigdarroch, for the noted Whistle, which is so much celebrated by Robert Burns’ Poems —in which Bett I was named Judge — 1789. The Bett decided at Carse — 16th October, 1789. Won by Craigdarroch — he drank upds. of 5 Bottles of Claret. MEMORANDUM FOR THE WHISTLE The Whistle gained by Sir Robert Laurie (now) in possession of Mr. Riddell of Glenriddell, is to be ascer- tained to the heirs of the said Sir Robert now existing, being Sir R. L., Mr. R. of G., and Mr. F. of C. — to be settled under the arbitration of Mr. Jn. M‘Murdo: the business to be decided at Carse, the 16th of October, (Signed) ALEX. FERcuson. R. Lavriz. Roget. RIDDELL. Cow8ILL, 10th October, 1789. John M‘Murdo accepts as Judge. Geo. Johnston witness, to be present. Patrick Miller witness, to be pre. if possible. Minute of Bett between Sir Robert Laurie and Craigdarroch, 1789. The question whether or not Burns was present has been hotly debated. The refer- ences in his letter on the day of the fight, as well as the terms of the “ Bett,” seem to show that, tradition notwithstanding, he was not. But there are no data for an absolute conclusion. For the stanza, see ante, p.'79, Prefatory Note to No Churchman Am I. I I sinc of a Whistle, a Whistle of worth, I sing of a Whistle, the pride of the North, Was brought to the court of our good Scottish King, And. long with this Whistle all Scotland shall ring. II Old Loda, still rueing the arm of Fingal, The God of the Bottle sends down from his hall: “This Whistle ’s your challenge, to Scot- land get o’er, And drink them to Hell, Sir! or ne’er see me more !” IIL Old poets have sung, and old chronicles tell, What champions ventur’d, what champions fell: The son of great Loda was conqueror still, And blew on the Whistle their requiem shrill. Iv Till Robert, the lord of the Cairn and the Seaur, Unmatch’d at the bottle, unconquer’d in war, He drank his poor god-ship as deep as the sea; No tide of the Baltic e’er drunker than he. Vv Thus Robert, victorious, the trophy has gain’d; Which now in his house has for ages re- main’d; Till three noble chieftains, and all of his blood, The jovial contest again have renew’d. vI Three joyous good fellows, with hearts clear of flaw; Craigdarroch, so famous for wit, worth, and. law; THE WHISTLE Iol And trusty Glenriddel, so skilled in old coins; And gallant Sir Robert, deep-read in old wines. vit Craigdarroch began, with a tongue smooth as oil, Desiring Glenriddel to yield up the spoil; Or else he would muster the heads of the elan, And once more, in claret, try which was the man. VIII ‘‘ By the gods of the ancients !”” Glenriddel replies, “Before I surrender so glorious a prize, I'll conjure the ghost of the great Rorie More, And bumper his horn with him twenty times o’er.” Ix Sir Robert, a soldier, no speech would pre- tend, But he ne’er turn’d his back on his foe, or his friend; Said: —‘* Toss down the Whistle, the prize of the field,” And, knee-deep in claret, he’d die ere he’d yield x To the board of Glenriddel our heroes re- pair, So noted for drowning of sorrow and care; But for wine and for weleome not more known to fame Than the sense, wit, and taste, of a sweet lovely dame. . XI A Bard was selected to witness the fray, And tell future ages the feats of the day; A Bard who detested all sadness and spleen, And wish’d that Parnassus a vineyard had been. XII The dinner being over, the claret they ply, And ev’ry new cork is a new spring of joy; In the bands of old friendship and kindred so set, And the bands grew the tighter the more they were wet. XIII Gay Pleasure ran riot as bumpers ran o’er; Bright Phebus ne’er witness’d so joyous a core, And vow’d that to leave them he was quite forlorn, Till Cynthia hinted he’d see them next morn. XIV Six bottles a-piece had well wore out the night, When gallant Sir Robert, to finish the fight, Turn’d o’er in one bumper a bottle of red, And swore ’t was the way that their ances- tor did. xv Then worthy Glenriddel, so cautious and sage, No longer the warfare ungodly would wage: A high Ruling Elder to wallow in wine ! He left the foul business to folks less di- vine. XVI The gallant Sir Robert fought hard to the end; But who can with Fate and quart bumpers contend ? Though Fate said, a hero should perish in light; So uprose bright Phoebus — and down fell the knight. XVII Next uprose our Bard, like a prophet in drink : — “ Craigdarroch, thou ’It soar when creation shall sink ! But if thou would flourish immortal in rhyme, Come — one bottle more — and have at the sublime ! XVIII “ Thy line, that have struggled for freedom with Bruce, Shall heroes and patriots ever produce: So thine be the laurel, and mine be the bay; The field thou hast won, by yon bright God of Day !” 102 POSTHUMOUS PIECES POSTHUMOUS PIECES [THe poems included in this general division were gathered for the Centenary Edition from various periodicals, from the several series of tracts by Stewart and Meikle, Glasgow, ori- THE JOLLY BEGGARS A CANTATA The Burns of this “ puissant and splendid production,” as Matthew Arnold calls it — this irresistible presentation of humanity caught in the act and summarised for ever in the terms of art—comes into line with divers poets of repute, from our own Dekker and John Fletcher to the singer of les Gueux (1818) and le Vieux Vagabond (1830), and approves himself their master in the matter of such qualities as humour, vision, lyrical potency, descriptive style, and the faculty of swift, dramatic pre- sentation to a purpose that may not be gain- said. It was suggested by a chance visit (in company with Richmond and Smith) to the “ doss-house ” of Poosie Nansie, as Agnes Gib- son was nicknamed (see post, p. 334, Note to Recitativo I, line 9), in the Cowgate, Mauchline. This “‘ken” stood directly opposite Johnie Dow’s tavern (The Whitefoord Arms). Thence issuing, the three friends heard a sound of rev- elry at Poosie Nansie’s, whose company they Joined. And a few days afterwards Burns re- cited several bits of the cantata to Richmond. RECITATIVO I WHEN lyart leaves bestrow the yird, Or, wavering like the bauckie-bird, Bedim cauld Boreas’ blast; When hailstanes drive wi’ bitter skyte, And infant frosts begin to bite, In hoary eranreuch drest; Ae night at e’en a merry core O’ randie, gangrel bodies In Poosie-Nansie’s held the splore, To drink their orra duddies: Wi’ quaffing and laughing They ranted an’ they sang, Wi’ jumping an’ thumping The vera girdle rang. ginally published at a penny or twopence each, from similar cheap publications, from the more or less complete editions of Burns’s works, and from manuscripts not before printed. ] II First, niest the fire, in auld red rags Ane sat, weel brac’d wi’ mealy bags And knapsack a’ in order; His doxy lay within his arm; Wi’ usquebae an’ blankets warm, She blinket on her sodger. An’ ay he gies the tozie drab The tither skelpin kiss, While she held up her greedy gab Just like an aumous dish: Ilk smack still did crack still Like onie cadger’s whup; Then, swaggering an’ staggering, He roar’d this ditty up: — AIR Tune: Soldiers Joy I I am a son of Mars, who have been in many wars, And show my cuts and scars wherever I come: This here was for a wench, and that other in a trench When welcoming the French at the sound ofvthe drum. Lal de daudle, ete. Ir My prenticeship I past, where my leader breath’d his last, ‘When the bloody die was cast on the heights of Abram; And I servéd out my trade when the gal- lant game was play’d, And the Moro low was laid at the sound of the drum. THE JOLLY BEGGARS Il s I lastly was with Curtis among the floating batt’ries, And there I left for witness an arm and a limb; Yet let my country need me, with Eliott to head me I’d clatter on my stumps at the sound of the drum. Iv And now, tho’ I must beg with a wooden arm and leg And many a tatter’d rag hanging over my bum, ; I’m as happy with my wallet, my bottle, and my callet As when I us’d in scarlet to follow a drum. v What tho’ with hoary locks I must stand the winter shocks, Beneath the woods and rocks oftentimes for a home ? When the tother bag I sell, and the tother bottle tell, I could meet a troop of Hell at the sound of a drum. Lal de daudle, ete. RECITATIVO He ended; and the kebars sheuk -Aboon the chorus roar; While frighted rattons backward leuk, An’ seek the benmost bore: A fairy fiddler frae the neuk, He skirl’d out Encore / But up arose the martial chuck, An’ laid the loud uproar: — AIR Tune: Sodger Laddie I I once was a maid, tho’ I cannot tell when, And still my delight is in proper young men. Some one of a troop of dragoons was my daddie: No wonder I’m fond of a sodger laddie! Sing, lal de dal, ete. 103 II The first of my loves was a swaggering blade: To rattle the thundering drum was his trade; His leg was so tight, and his cheek was so ruddy, Transported I was with my sodger laddie. III But the godly old chaplain left him in the lurch; The sword I forsook for the sake of the church; He riskéd the soul, and I ventur’d the body: *T was then I prov’d false to my sodger laddie. Iv Full soon I grew sick of my sanctified sot; The regiment at large for a husband I got; From the gilded spontoon to the fife I was ready: I askéd no more but a sodger laddie. Vv But the Peace it reduc’d me to beg in de- spair, Till I met my old boy in a Cunningham Fair; His rags regimental they flutter’d so gaudy: My heart it rejoic’d at a sodger laddie. VI And now I have liv’d—I know not how long! But still I can join in a cup and a song; And whilst with both hands I can hold the glass steady, Here ae thee, my hero, my sodger lad- ie! Sing, lal de dal, ete. RECITATIVO Poor Merry-Andrew in the neuk Sat guzzling wi’ a tinkler-hizzie; They mind ’t na wha the chorus teuk, Between themselves they were sae busy. At length, wi’ drink an’ courting dizzy, 104 POSTHUMOUS PIECES He stoiter’d up an’ made a face; Then turn’d an’ laid a smack on Grizzie, Syne tun’d his pipes wi’ grave grimace: — AIR Tune: Auld Sir Symon I Sir Wisdom ’s a fool ‘when he ’s fou; Sir Knave is a fool in a session: He’s there but a prentice I trow, But I am a fool by profession. II My grannie she bought me a beuk, An’ | held awa to the school: I fear I my talent misteuk, But what will ye hae of a fool ? IIr For drink I wad venture my neck; A hizzie ’s the half of my craft: But what could ye other expect Of ane that’s avowedly daft ? Iv I ance was tyed up like a stirk For civilly swearing and quaffing; I ance was abus’d i’ the kirk For towsing a lass i’ my daffin. . Vv Poor Andrew that tumbles for sport Let naebody name wi’ a jeer: There ’s even, I’m tauld, i’ the Court A tumbler ca’d the Premier. VI Observ’d ye yon reverend lad Mak faces to tickle the mob ? He rails at our mountebank squad — It’s rivalship just i? the job! VII And now my conclusion I’1l tell, For faith! I’m confoundedly dry: The chiel that ’s a fool for himsel, Guid Lord! he’s far dafter than I. RECITATIVO Then niest outspak a raucle carlin, Wha kent fu’ weel to cleek the sterlin, For monie a pursie she had hooked, An’ had in monie a well been douked. Her love had been a Highland laddie, But weary fa’ the waefu’ woodie ! Wi’ sighs an’ sobs she thus began To wail her braw John Highlandman: — AIR Tune: O An’ Ve Were Dead, Guidman I A Highland lad my love was born, The Tatiana laws he held in scorn, But he still was faithfu’ to his clan, My gallant, braw John Highlandman. CHORUS Sing hey my braw John Highlandman ! Sing ho my braw John Highlandman ! There’s not a lad in a’ the lan’ Was match for my John Highlandman ! IL With his philibeg, an’ tartan plaid, An’ guid claymore down by his side, The ladies’ hearts he did trepan, My gallant, braw John Highlandman. In We rangéd a’ from Tweed to Spey, An’ liv’d like lords an’ ladies gay, For a Lalland face he fearéd none, My gallant, braw John Highlandman. Iv They banish’d him beyond the sea, But ere the bud was on the tree, Adown my cheeks the pearls ran, Embracing my John Highlandman. Vv But, Och! they catch’d him at the last, And bound him in a dungeon fast. My curse upon them every one — They ’ve hang’d my braw Jobn Highland- man! vI And now a widow I must mourn The pleasures that will ne’er return; No comfort but a hearty can When I think on John Highlandman. THE JOLLY BEGGARS 105 CHORUS Sing hey my braw John Highlandman ! Sing ho my braw John Highlandman ! There ’s not a lad in a’ the lan’ Was match for my John Highlandman ! RECITATIVO I A pigmy seraper on a fiddle, Wha us’d to trystes an’ fairs to driddle, Her strappin limb an’ gawsie middle (He reach’d nae higher) Had hol’d his heartie like a riddle, An’ blawn ’t on fire. Ir Wi’ hand on hainch and upward e’e, He ecroon’d his gamut, one, two, three, Then in an arioso key The wee Apollo Set off wi’ allegreito glee His giga solo: — AIR Tune: Whistle Owre the Lave O't I Let me ryke up to dight that tear; An’ go wi’ me an’ be my dear, An’ then your every care an’ fear May whistle owre the lave o’t. CHORUS Iam a fiddler to my trade, An’ a’ the tunes that e’er I play’d, The sweetest still to wife or maid Was Whistle Owre the Lave O't. II At kirns an’ weddins we ’se be there, An’ O, sae nicely ’s we will fare! We ’ll bowse about till Daddie Care Sing Whistle Owre the Lave O’t. TI Sae merrily the banes well pyke, An’ sun oursels about the dyke; An’ at our leisure, when ye like, We ’ll — whistle owre the lave o’t! Iv But bless me wi’ your heav’n o’ charms, An’ while I kittle hair on thairms, Hunger, cauld, an’ a’ sic harms May whistle owre the lave o’t. - CHORUS I am a fiddler to my trade, An’ a’ the tunes that e’er I play’d, The sweetest still to wife or maid Was Whistle Owre the Lave O't. RECITATIVO I Her charms had struck a sturdy caird As weel as poor gut-scraper; He taks the fiddler by the beard, An’ draws a roosty rapier; He swoor by a’ was swearing worth To speet him like a pliver, Unless he would from that time forth Relinquish her for ever. II Wi’ ghastly e’e poor Tweedle-Dee Upon his hunkers bended, An’ pray’d for grace wi’ ruefu’ face, An’ sae the quarrel ended. But tho’ his little heart did grieve When round the tinkler prest her, He feign’d to snirtle in his sleeve When thus the caird address’d her: — AIR TuNE: Clout the Cauldron T My bonie lass, I work in brass, A tinkler is my station; I’ve travell’d round all Christian ground In this my occupation; I’ve taen the gold, an’ been enrolled In many a noble squadron; But vain they search’d when off I march’d To go an’ clout the cauldron. II Despise that shrimp, that wither’d imp, With a’ his noise an’ cap’rin, 106 POSTHUMOUS PIECES An’ take a share wi’ those that bear The budget and the apron ! And by that stowp, my faith an’ houpe ! And by that dear Kilbaigie ! If e’er ye want, or meet wi’ scant, May I ne’er weet my craigie ! RECITATIVO I The caird prevail’d: th’ unblushing fair In his embraces sunk, : Partly wi’ love o’ercome sae sair, An’ partly she was drunk. Sir Violino, with an air That show’d a man o’ spunk, Wish’d unison between the pair, An’ made the bottle clunk To their health that night. II But hurchin Cupid shot a shaft, That play’d a dame a shavie: The fiddler rak’d her fore and aft Behint the chicken cavie; Her lord, a wight of Homer’s craft, Tho’ limpin’ wi’ the spavie, He hirpl’d up, an’ lap like daft, An’ shor’d them “ Dainty Davie ” O’ boot that night. TIr He was a care-defying blade As ever Bacchus listed ! Tho’ Fortune sair upon him laid, His heart, she ever miss’d it. He had no wish but — to be glad, Nor want but — when he thristed, He hated nought but — to be sad; An’ thus the Muse suggested His sang that night. AIR Tune: For A’? That, An’ A’ That I Iam a Bard, of no regard Wi’ gentle folks an’ a’ that, But Homer-like the glowrin byke, Frae town to town I draw that. CHORUS For a’ that, an’ a’ that, An’ twice as muckle ’s a’ that, I’ve lost but ane, I ’ve twa behin’, I’ve wife eneugh for a’ that. II I never drank the Muses’ stank, Castalia’s burn, an’ a’ that; But there it streams, an’ richly reams — My Helicon I ca’ that. UI Great love I bear to a’ the fair, Their humble slave an’ a’ that; But lordly will, I hold it still A mortal sin to thraw that. Iv In raptures sweet this hour we meet Wi’ mutual love an’ a’ that; But for how lang the flie may stang, Let inclination law that ! Vv Their tricks an’ craft hae put me daft, . They ’ve taen me in, an’ a’ that; But clear your decks, an’ here’s the Sex! I like the jads for a’ that. CHORUS For a’ that, an’ a that, An’ twice as muckle ’s a’ that, My dearest bluid, to do them guid, They ’re welcome till ’t for a’ that! RECITATIVO So sung the Bard, and Nansie’s wa’s Shook with a thunder of applause, Re-echo’d from each mouth ! They toom’d their pocks, they pawn’d their duds, They scarcely left to coor their fuds, To quench their lowin drouth. Then owre again the jovial thrang The Poet did request To lowse his pack, an’ wale a sang, A ballad o’ the best: He rising, rejoicing Between his twa Deborahs, Looks round him, an’ found them Impatient for the chorus : — THE TWA HERDS: OR, THE HOLY TULYIE 107 AIR Tune: Jolly Mortals, Fill Your Glasses I See the smoking bowl before us ! Mark our jovial, ragged ring ! Round and round take up the chorus, And in raptures let us sing: CHORUS A fig for those by law protected ! Liberty’s a glorious feast, Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest ! II What is title, what is treasure, What is reputation’s care ? If we lead a life of pleasure, *T is no matter how or where ! Ill With the ready trick and fable Round we wander all the day; And at night in barn or stable Hug our doxies on the hay. IV Does the train-attended carriage Thro’ the country lighter rove ? Does the sober bed of marriage Witness brighter scenes of love ? Vv Life is all a variorum, We regard not how it goes; Let them prate about decorum, Who have character to lose. vI Here ’s to budgets, bags, and wallets ! Here’s to all the wandering train ! Here’s our ragged brats and callets ! One and all, ery out, Amen! CHORUS A fig for those by law protected ! Liberty ’s a glorious feast, ‘Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest ! SATIRES AND VERSES THE TWA HERDS: OR, THE HOLY TULYIE AN UNCO MOURNFU’ TALE Blockheads with reason wicked wits abhor, But fool with fool is barbarous civil war. Porz. This piece and the two next, Holy Willie’s Prayer, and The Kirk’s Alarm—with three printed before, The Holy Fair, p. 9, The Ad- dress to the Deil, p. 12, and The Ordination, p. 63, — constitute what is certainly the most bril- liant series of assaults ever delivered against the practical bigotry of the Kirk. Burns suffered by them in reputation during his life and long afterwards. Even his most amicable critics have generally failed to appreciate, or at least to indicate, their true significance, and have deemed it seemly to qualify admiration of their cleverness with apologies for their irreve- rence. But, irreverent or not, they did for the populace much the same service as was done by the Essay on Miracles for the class of light and leading, and have proved an endur- ing antidote against the peculiar superstitions with which the many Scots afflicted them- selves so desperately and so long. ‘* The following,” wrote Burns in a note to a MS. copy, now in the British Museum, “ was the first of my poetical productions that saw the light. I gave a copy of it to a particular friend of mine, who was very fond of these things, and told him ‘I did not know who was the author, but that I had got a copy of it by accident.’ The occasion was a bitter and shameless quarrel between two Rev. gentle- men, Moodie of Ricearton and Russell of Kil- marnock. It was at the time when the hue and ery against patronage was at its worst.” After a similar account in the Autobiographi- eal Letter to Dr. Moore he adds: “With a certain set of both clergy and laity it met with aroar of applause.” The quarrel was about parochial boundaries, and in the discussion of the question, says Lockhart, “the reverend divines, hitherto sworn friends and associates, lost all command of temper, and abused each other coram populd, with a fiery virulence of personal invective such as has long been banished from all popular assemblies, wherein the laws of courtesy are enforced by those of a certain unwritten code.” I O a’ ye pious godly flocks Weel fed on pastures orthodox, 108 POSTHUMOUS PIECES Wha now will keep you frae the fox Or worrying tykes ? Or wha will tent the waifs an’ crocks About the dykes ? It The twa best herds in a’ the wast, That e’er gae gospel horn a blast These five an’ twenty simmers past — O, dool to tell ! — Hae had a bitter, black out-cast Atween themsel. III O Moodie, man, an’ wordy Russell, How could you raise so vile a bustle ? Ye ‘Il see how New-Light herds will whistle, An’ think it fine ! The Lord’s cause gat na sic a twistle Sin’ I hae min’. Iv O Sirs ! whae’er wad hae expeckit Your duty ye wad sae negleckit ? Ye wha were no by lairds respeckit To wear the plaid, But by the brutes themselves eleckit To be their guide ! Vv What flock wi’ Moodie’s flock could rank, Sae hale an’ hearty every shank ? Nae poison’d, soor Arminian stank He let them taste; But Calvin’s fountainhead they drank — O, sic a feast ! VI The thummart, wilcat, brock, an’ tod Weel kend his voice thro’ a’ the wood; He smell’d their ilka hole an’ road, Baith out and in; An’ weel he lik’d to shed their bluid An’ sell their skin. VII What herd like Russell tell’d his tale ? His voice was heard thro’ muir and dale; He kend the Lord’s sheep, ilka tail, O’er a’ the height; An’ tell’d gin they were sick or hale At the first sight. VII He fine a mangy sheep could serub; Or nobly swing the gospel club; Or New-Light herds could nicely drub And pay their skin; Or hing them o’er the burning dub Or heave them in. IX Sie twa — O, do I live to see ’t ? — Sic famous twa, sud disagree ’t, An’ names like villain, hypocrite, IIk ither gi’en, While New-Light herds wi’ laughin spite Say neither ’s liein ! x A’ ye wha tent the gospel fauld, Thee, Duncan deep, an’ Peebles shaul’, But chiefly great apostle Auld, We trust in thee, That thou wilt work them hot an’ cauld Till they agree! XI Consider, sirs, how we ’re beset: There ’s scarce a new herd that we get But comes frae ’mang that cursed set I winna name: I hope frae heav’n to see them yet In fiery flame ! XII Dalrymple has been lang our fae, M’Gill has wrought us meikle wae, An’ that curs’d rascal ca’d M‘Quhae, An’ baith the Shaws, That aft hae made us black an’ blae Wi’ vengefu’ paws. XII Auld Wodrow lang has hatch’d mischief: We thought ay death wad bring relief, But he has gotten to our grief Ane to succeed him, A chield wha’ll soundly buff our beef — I meikle dread him. XIV An’ monie mae that I could tell, Wha fain would openly rebel, Forby turn-coats amang oursel: There ’s Smith for ane — I doubt he ’s but a greyneck still, An’ that ye Il fin’! XV O a ye flocks o’er a’ the hills, By mosses, meadows, moors, an’ fells, HOLY WILLIE’S PRAYER 109 Come, join your counsel and your skills To cowe the lairds, An’ get the brutes the power theinsels To chuse their herds ! xVI Then Orthodoxy yet may prance, An’ Learning in a woody dance, An’ that fell cur ca’d Common-sense, That bites sae sair, Be banish’d o’er the sea to France — Let him bark there ! XVII Then Shaw’s an’ D’rymple’s eloquence, M‘Gill’s close, nervous excellence, M‘Quhae’s pathetic, manly sense, An’ guid M‘Math Wha thro’ the heart can brawly glance, May 2a’ pack aff! HOLY WILLIE’S PRAYER And send the godly in a pet to pray. Porz. The interlocutor in this amazing achieve- ment in satire, this matchless parody of Cal- vinistic intercession — so nice, so exquisite in detail, so overwhelming in effect — was a cer- tain William Fisher, son of Andrew Fisher, farmer at Montgarswood, Ayrshire, born in February, 1737; succeeded his father at Mont- garswood, and afterwards tenanted the farm of Tongue-in-Auchterless; on 26th July, 1772, was ordained elder in the parish church of Mauchline ; became one of the most strenuous of Auld’s assistants (see post, p. 336, note to The Twa Herds, Stanza x. 1. 3) in his rigid surveillance of the parishioners, and was prob- ably the ‘informer against Gavin Hamilton for neglect of ordinances and violation of the Sabbath isee headnote to Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, Esq., ante, p. 41); was himself in 1790 rebuked by the minister, in presence of the Kirk-Session, for drunkenness; and was reputed (see Stanza xvii. of The Kirk’s Alarm, p. 112) tu have utilised his opportunities, as “elder at the plate,” to help himself to the kirk offerings, but there is no official record of any such charge. On his way home from Mauchline, in a snow-storm, he died in a ditch by the roadside, 13th February, 1809. The occasion of the piece is thus explained by Burns in a preface in the Glenriddell Book at Liverpool : “ AncomEnt. — Holy Willie was a rather oldish bachelor elder, in the parish 1 1 of Mauchline, and much and justly famed for that polemical chattering which ends in tippling orthodoxy, and for that spiritualized bawdry which refines to liquorish devotion. In a ses- sional process with a gentleman in Mauchline —a Mr. Gavin Hamilton— Holy Willie and his priest, Father Auld, after full hearing in the Presbytery of Ayr, came off but second best, owing partly to the oratorical powers of Mr. Robert Aiken, Mr. Hamilton’s counsel ; but chiefly to Mr. Hamilton’s being one of the most irreproachable and truly respectable characters in the country. On losing his pro- cess, the muse overheard him at his devotions, as follows.” A Presbyterial decision in favour of Hamilton was given in January, 1/35. The Session appealed to the Synod, but was at last constrained to grant Hamilton a certificate, 17th July, 1785: to the effect that he was “ free from public scandal or ground of church censure known to us.” I O Tuov that in the Heavens does dwell, Wha, as it pleases best Thysel, Sends ane te Heaven an’ ten to Hell A’ for Thy glory, And no for onie guid or ill They ’ve done before Thee ! II I bless and praise Thy matchless might, When thousands Thou hast left in night, That I am here before Thy sight, For gifts an’ grace A burning and.a shining light To a’ this place. III What was I, or my generation, That I should get sic exaltation ? I, wha deserv’d most just damnation For broken laws Sax thousand years ere my creation, Thro’ Adam’s cause ! Iv When from my mither’s womb I fell, Thou might hae plung’d me deep in hell To gnash my gooms, and weep, and wail In burning lakes, Whare damnéd devils roar and yell, Chain’d to their stakes. Vv Yet I am here, a chosen sample, To show Thy grace is great and ample: Irmo POSTHUMOUS PIECES I’m here a pillar o’ Thy temple, Strong as a rock, A guide, a buckler, and example To a’ thy flock! vi But yet, O Lord! confess I must: At times I’m fash’d wi’ fleshly lust; An’ sometimes, too, in warldly trust, Vile self gets in; But Thou remembers we are dust, Defiled wi’ sin. VII O Lord! yestreen, Thou kens, wi’ Meg — Thy pardon I sincerely beg — O, may ’t ne’er be a living plague To my dishonour ! An’ [ll ne’er lift a lawless leg Again upon her. VIII Besides, I farther maun avow — Wi’ Leezie’s lass, three times, I trow — But, Lord, that Friday I was fou, When I cam near her, Or else, Thou kens, Thy servant true Wad never steer her. IX Maybe Thou lets this fleshly thorn Buffet. Thy servant e’en and morn, Lest he owre proud and high should turn That he’s sae gifted: If sae, Thy han’ maun e’en be borne Until Thou lift it. x Lord, bless Thy chosen in this place, For here Thou has a chosen race ! But God confound their stubborn tace An’ blast their name, Wha bring Thy elders to disgrace An’ open shame ! XI Lord, mind Gau’n Hamilton’s deserts: He drinks, an’ swears, an’ plays at cartes, Yet has sae monie takin arts Wi?’ great and sma’, Frae God’s ain Priest the people’s hearts He steals awa. XII And when we chasten’d him therefore, Thou kens how he bred sic a splore, , “gt And set the warld in a roar O’ laughin at us: Curse Thou his basket and his store, Kail an’ potatoes ! XIII Lord, hear my earnest ery and pray’r Against that Presbyt’ry of Ayr! Thy strong right hand, Lord, mak it bare Upo’ their heads! Lord, visit them, an’ dinna spare, For their misdeeds! xIV O Lord, my God ! that glib-tongu’d Aiken, My vera heart and flesh are quakin To think how we stood sweatin, shakin, An’ pish’d wi’ dread, While he, wi’ hingin lip an’ snakin, yy cuny Held up his head. XV Lord, in Thy day o’ vengeance try him ! Lord, visit him wha did employ him ! And pass not in Thy mercy by them, Nor hear their pray’r, But for Thy people’s sake destroy them, An’ dinna spare ! XVI But, Lord, remember me and mine Wi’ mercies temporal and divine, That I for grace an’ gear may shine Excell’d by nane; And a’ the glory shall be Thine — Amen, Amen! THE KIRK’S ALARM William M‘Gill, minister of Ayr— whose “heretic blast” aroused the “alarm’’ here burlesqued — was youngest son of | William M‘Gill, farmer of Carsenestock, Wigtonshire ; born 1782 ; educated at the University of Glas- gow; became assistant at Kilwinning) in June, 1760; and was ordained to the second charge of Ayr, 22d October, 1761, as colleague to William Dalrymple. M‘Gill, who received the degree of D. D. in 1781, published (Edinburgh, 1786) a Practical Essay on the Death, of Christ, which set forth doctrines held to be: Socinian. It was commended in his colleagu Dalrym- ple’s History of Christ, 1787; and; attacked, guardedly and by implication, by Dr. William Peebles—see post, p. 827, note to The Holy Fair, stanza xvi. line 8 —in a Centenary |Sermon on t | THE KIRK’S ALARM Iil the Revolution, preached 5th November, 1788, and published soon afterwards. M(‘Gill re- plied in The Benefits of the Revolution, Kil- marnock, 1789: whereupon a complaint against his Essay, as being heterodox, was presented on 15th April to the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr. The Synod ordered the Presbytery of Ayr to take up the case, and the General Assembly, though it quashed the order, added a general recommendation to the Presby- tery to see to it that doctrinal purity was maintained. With this general warrant the Presbytery appointed (15th July) a cominittee to consider and report specifically on M‘Gill’s doctrines; and on 14th April, 1790, he com- promised the matter by offering an explanation and an apology, which the Synod accepted. M‘Gill died 30th March, 1807. He was more philosopher than ecclesiastic. A simple and unworldly man and a resolute student, he was at the same time a quaint and cheerful humour- ist, and was held by his parishioners in singular affection and respect. Burns’s regard for him, like his reverence for Dalrymple, dated from childhood; and the doctrines which had so perturbed the ‘‘ Orthodox” were those which William Burness [we have adopted throughout the Poet’s own spelling of his father’s name] had embodied in his Manual of Religious Belief. The satire was evoked by the action of the Presbytery on 15th July, 1789. Two days later Burns sent a draft of it to Mrs. Dunlop in an unpublished letter: “ You will be well acquainted with the persecution that my worthy friend Dr. M'Gill is undergoing among your divines. Several of these reverend lads his opponents have come through my hands be- fore; but I have some thoughts of serving them up in a different dish. I have just sketched the following ballad and as usual send the first rough draft to you.” I OrtHopox ! orthodox ! — Wha believe in John Knox — Let me sound an alarm to your conscience: A heretic blast Has been blawn i’ the Wast, That what is not sense must be nonsense — Orthodox ! That what is not sense must be nonsense. I Dr. Mac! Dr. Mac! You should stretch on a rack, To strike wicked Writers wi’ terror: To join faith and sense, Upon onie pretence, Was heretic, damnable error — Dr. Mac! *T was heretic, damnable error. iy Town of Ayr! Town of Ayr! It was rash, I declare, To meddle wi’ mischief a-brewing: Provost John is still deaf To the church’s relief, And Orator Bob is its ruin — Town of Ayr! And Orator Bob is its ruin. Iv D’rymple mild! D’rymple mild! Tho’ your heart ’s like a child, An’ your life like the new-driven snaw, Yet that winna save ye: Auld Satan must have ye, For preaching that three ’s ane and twa — D’rymple mild ! For preaching that three ’s ane and twa. Vv Calvin’s sons ! Calvin’s sons ! Seize your sp’ritual guns, Ammunition you never can need: Your hearts are the stuff Will be powther enough, And your skulls are store-houses o’ lead — Calvin’s sons ! Your skulls are store-houses o” lead. VI Rumble John! Rumble John! Mount the steps with a groan, Cry: ‘‘ The book is wi’ heresy cramm’d;” Then lug out your ladle, Deal brimstone like adle, And roar every note o’ the damn’d — Rumble John ! And roar every note o’ the damn’d. VII Simper James! Simper James! Leave the fair Killie dames — There ’s a holier chase in your view: Ill lay on your head That the pack ye ’ll soon lead, For puppies like you there’s but few — Simper James! For puppies like you there ’s but few. 112 POSTHUMOUS PIECES VIII Singet Sawnie ! Singet Sawnie ! Are ye herding the penny, Unconscious what evils await ? Wi’ a jump, yell, and howl Alarm every soul, For the Foul Thief is just at your gate — . Singet Sawnie ! The Foul Thief is just at your gate. Ix Daddie Auld! Daddie Auld! There ’s a tod in the fauld, A tod meikle waur than the clerk: Tho’ ye can do little skaith, Ye ’Il be in at the death, And gif ye canna bite, ye may bark — Daddie Auld ! For gif ye canna bite ye may bark. x Davie Rant ! Davie Rant ! In a face like a saunt And a heart that would poison a hog, Raise an impudent roar, Like a breaker lee-shore, Or the Kirk will be tint in a bog — Davie Rant! Or the Kirk will be tint in a bog. XI Jamie Goose ! Jamie Goose ! Ye hae made but toom roose In hunting the wicked lieutenant; But the Doctor ’s your mark, For the Lord’s haly ark, He has cooper’d, and ca’d a wrang pin in ’t — Jamie Goose ! He has cooper’d and ca’d a wrang pin in’t. XII Poet Willie ! Poet Willie ! Gie the Doctor a volley, Wi? your “ Liberty’s chain” and your wit: O’er Pegasus’ side Ye ne’er laid a stride, Ye but smelt, man, the place where he shit — Poet Willie ! Ye smelt but the place where he shit. XIII Andro’ Gowk! Andro’ Gowk ! Ye may slander the Book, And the Book not the waur, let me tell ye: Ye are rich, and look big, But lay by hat and wig, And ye’ll hae a calf’s head 0’ sma’ value — Andro’ Gowk ! Ye ’Il hae a calf’s head 0’ sma’ value. XIV Barr Steenie ! Barr Steenie ! What mean ye? what mean ye? Tf ye ’ll meddle nae mair wi’ the matter, Ye may hae some pretence To havins and sense Wi’ people wha ken ye nae better — Barr Steenie ! Wi’ people wha ken ye nae better. XV Irvine-side ! Irvine-side ! Wi’ your turkey-cock pride, Of manhood but sma’ is your share: Ye ’ve the figure, ’t is true, Even your faes will allow, And your friends daurna say ye hae mair — Irvine-side ! Your friends daurna say ye hae mair. XVI Muirland Jock! Muirland Jock ! Whom the Lord gave a stock Wad set up a tinkler in brass, If ill manners were wit, There ’s no mortal so fit To prove the poor Doctor an ass — Muirland Jock ! To prove the poor Doctor an ass. XVII Holy Will! Holy Will! There was wit i’ your skull, When ye pilfer’d the alms o’ the poor: The timmer is scant, When ye’re taen for a saunt Wha should swing in a rape for an hour — Holy Will! Ye should swing in a rape for an hour. XVIII Poet Burns! Poet Burns ! Wi’ your priest-skelping turns, Why desert ye your auld native shire ? Your Muse is a gipsy, Yet were she ev’n tipsy, She could ca’ us nae waur than we are — Poet Burns! Ye could ca’ us nae waur than we are. A POET’S WELCOME TO HIS LOVE-BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER 113 POSTSCRIPTS I Arton’s Laird! Afton’s Laird ! When your pen can be spared, A copy of this I bequeath, On the same sicker score As I mention’d before, To that trusty auld worthy, Clackleith — Afton’s Laird ! To that trusty auld worthy, Clackleith. 2 Factor Joun! Factor John! Whom the Lord made alone, And ne’er made another thy peer, Thy poor servant, the Bard, In respectful regard He presents thee this token sincere — Factor John ! He presents thee this token sincere. A POET’S WELCOME TO HIS LOVE-BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER THE FIRST INSTANCE THAT ENTITLED HIM TO THE VENERABLE APPELLATION OF FATHER The “wean” of this generous and delight- ful Address was the poet’s daughter Elizabeth, by Elizabeth Paton, for some time a servant at Lochlie. The child was born in November, 1784. She was brought by her father to Moss- giel. On his marriage the child remained under the charge of his mother and his brother Gilbert. She married John Bishop, overseer at Polkemmet, and died 8th January, 1817, leaving several children. Cf. Notes to The Inventory, post, p. 338, and Prefatory Note to Epistle to John Rankine, ante, p. 50. I Tuou’s welcome, wean! Mishanter fa’ me, If thoughts 0’ thee or yet thy mammie Shall ever daunton me or awe me, © My sweet, wee lady, Or if I blush when thou shalt ca’ me Tyta or daddie ! II What tho’ they ca’ me fornicator, An’ tease my name in kintra clatter ? The mair they talk, I’m kend the bet- ter; ; E’en let them clash ! An auld wife’s tongue’s a feckless mat. ter To gie ane fash. If Welcome, my bonie, sweet, wee dochter ! Tho’ ye come here a wee unsought for, And tho’ your comin I hae fought for Baith kirk and queir; Yet, by my faith, ye’re no. unwrought for — That I shall swear ! Iv Sweet fruit o’ monie a merry dint, My funny toil is no a’ tint: Tho’ thou cam to the warl’ asklent, Which fools may scoff at, In my last plack thy part’s be in’t The better half o’t. Vv Tho’ I should be the waur bestead, Thou’s be as braw and bienly clad, And thy young years as nicely bred Wi’ education, As onie brat 0’ wedlock’s bed In a’ thy station. VI Wee image o” my bonie Betty, As fatherly I kiss and daut thee, As dear and near my heart I set thee, Wi’ as guid will, As a’ the priests had seen me get thee That’s out o’ Hell. Vil Gude grant that thou may ay inherit Thy mither’s looks an’ gracefu’ merit, An’ thy poor, worthless daddie’s spirit Without his failins ! °T will please me mair to see thee heir it Than stocket mailins. VIII And if thou be what I wad hae thee, An’ tak the counsel I shall gie thee, [’ll never rue my trouble wi’ thee — The cost nor shame o’t — But be a loving father to thee, And brag the name o’t. 114, POSTHUMOUS PIECES THE INVENTORY IN ANSWER TO A MANDATE BY THE SURVEYOR OF TAXES A MS. of this catalogue of plenishing, dated May, 1786, sent to Lady Harriet Don and now in the Laing Collection in the University of Edinburgh, has this heading: “To Mr. Robt. Aiken in Ayr, in answer to his mandate requiring an account of servants, carriages, car- riage horses, riding horses, wives, children,” ete. Currie explains that the mandate enjoined on every man “to send a signed list of his horses, servants, wheel-carriages, etc., and whether he was a married manor a bachelor, and what children he had.” The new tax was levied by Pitt (May, 1785) with a view to reducing the National Debt. Sir, as your mandate did request, I send you here a faithfu’ list O’ guids an’ gear an’ a’ my graith, To which I’m clear to gie my aith. Imprimis, then, for carriage cattle: — I hae four brutes o’ gallant mettle As ever drew before a pettle: My lan’-afore ’s a guid auld “has been,” An’ wight an’ wilfu’ a’ his days been. My lan’-ahin ’s a weel-gaun fillie, That aft has borne me hame frae Killie, An’ your auld borough monie a time In days when riding was nae crime. But ance, when in my wooing pride , like a blockhead, boost to ride, The wilf’u creature sae I pat to— Lord, pardon a’ my sins, an’ that too ! — I play’d my fillie sic a shavie, She’s a’ bedevil’d wi’ the spavie.) My fur-ahin’s a wordy beast As e’er in tug or tow was traced. The fourth’s a Highland Donald hastie, A damn’d red-wud Kilburnie blastie ! Foreby, a cowte, 0’ cowtes the wale, As ever ran afore a tail: If he be spar’d to be a beast, He ’Il draw me fifteen pund at least. Wheel-carriages I hae but few: Three carts, an’ twa are feckly new; An auld wheelbarrow — mair for token, Ae leg an’ baith the trams are broken: I made a poker o’ the spin’le, An’ my auld mither brunt the trin’le. For men, I’ve three mischievous boys, Run-deils for fechtin an’ for noise: A gaudsman ane, a thrasher t’ other, Wee Davoc hauds the nowte in fother. I rule them, as I ought, discreetly, An’ aften labour them completely; An’ ay on Sundays duly, nightly, I on the Questions tairge them tightly: Till, faith ! wee Davoe ’s grown sae gleg, Tho’ scarcely langer than your leg, He ’ll screed you aff “ Effectual Calling” As fast as onie in the dwalling. I ’ve nane in female servan’ station (Lord keep me ay frae a’ temptation !): I hae nae wife — and that my bliss is — An’ ye hae laid nae tax on misses; An’ then, if kirk folks dinna clutch me, I ken the deevils darena touch me. Wi weans I ’m mair than weel contented: Heav’n sent me ane mair than I wanted ! My sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess, She stares the daddie in her face, Enough of ought ye like but grace: But her, my bonie, sweet wee lady, I’ve paid enough for her already; An’ gin ye tax her or her mither, By the Lord, ye ’se get them a’ thegither ! But pray, remember, Mr. Aiken, Nae kind of licence out I’m takin: Frae this time forth, I do declare I ’se ne’er ride horse nor hizzie mair; Thro’ dirt and dub for life I’ll paidle, Ere I sae dear pay for a saddle; I ’ve sturdy stumps, the Lord be thankit, And a’ my gates on foot I ’ll shank it. The Kirk and you may tak’ you that, It puts but little in your pat: Sae dinna put me in your beuk, Nor for my ten white shillings leuk. This list, wi? my ain hand I ’ve wrote it, The day and date as under notit; Then know all ye whom it concerns, Subscripsi huic RoszertT Burns. A MAUCHLINE WEDDING This, one of Burns’s best-natured squibs, was enclosed ina letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 21st August, 1788, and is here published for the ADAM ARMOUR’S PRAYER 115 first time 1 (Lochryan mss). He explains that a sister of Miller, then ‘‘a tenant” of his heart, had huffed his ‘ Bardship in the pride of her new connection.” She was the Miss Betty of The Belles of Mauchiline (see post, p. 1'71); and the Eliza of the Song (see ante, p. 52). Burns did not go on to describe the ceremony: “ Against my Muse had come thus far,” he writes, ‘‘Miss Bess and I were once more in unison.” I Wuen Eighty-five was seven months auld And wearing thro’ the aught, When rolling rains and Boreas bauld Gied farmer-folks a faught; Ae morning quondam Mason W ..., Now Merchant Master Miller, Gaed down to meet wi’ NansieB..., And her Jamaica siller To wed, that day. Il The rising sun o’er Blacksideen Was just appearing fairly, When Nell and Bess got up to dress Seven lang half-hours o’er early ! Now presses clink, and drawers jink, For linens and for laces: But modest Muses only think What ladies’ underdress is On sic a day ! II But we Il suppose the stays are lae’d, And bonie bosoms steekit, Tho’ thro’ the lawn — but guess the rest ! An angel scarce durst keek it. Then stockins fine o’ silken twine ‘Wi’ cannie care are drawn up; An’ garten’d tight whare mortal wight — As I never wrote it down my recollection does not en- tirely serve me. Iv But now the gown wi’ rustling ‘sound Its silken pomp displays; Sure there’s nae sin in being vain O’ siccan bonie claes ! Sae jimp the waist, the tail sae vast — Trouth, they were bonie birdies ! O Mither Eve, ye wad been grieve To see their ample hurdies Sae large that day! 1 That is, in the Centenary Edition. Vv Then Sandy, wi’s red jacket braw, Comes whip-jee-woa ! about, And in he gets the bonie twa — Lord, send them safely out ! And auld John Trot wi’ sober phiz, As braid and braw’s a Bailie, His shouthers and his Sunday’s jiz Wi’ powther and wi’ ulzie Weel smear’d that day. ADAM ARMOUR’S PRAYER | Published in The Scots Magazine, January,: 1808. The interlocutor in this intercession was Burns’s brother-in-law. At this time he had headed a band of younkers in Mauchline in the work of stanging — which is riding astride an unbarked sapling — a loose woman, one Agnes Wilson, who figures in the Kirk-Session records of March, 1786, as ‘“‘ the occasion of a late dis- turbance in this place.”” The Geordie, whose ‘‘jurr” or maid she was, is described in The Scots Magazine as the village constable ; but this is clearly a mistake. He was, in fact, one George Gibson, the husband of Poosie Nansie (see post, p. 834, Note to The Jolly Beg- gars, Recitativo i. line 9). As Gibson resented the outrage on his maid, Armour, dreading the law’s reprisals, absconded. According to the person who sent the thing to The Scots Maga- zine, Armour chose Burns’s house as his hid- ing-place. The person adds that he got the manuscript from Armour himself, who told him ‘‘ that Burns composed it one Sunday even- ing just before he took the Book,’’ i. e. the Bibl’ _ i JUDE : Wor tha ty me, because I’m little ! And can Pp 1 am an elf o’ mettle, ‘ke onie wabster’s shuttle Yet, Jink there or here, TOA lang ’s a guid kail-whittle, I’m unco queer. II An’ now Thou k wh OES a * ’ . LE or Geordie’s aoe our woefu’ case: Recau r were in disgrace. be seahg i her through the ‘place, whi y hurt her spleuchan; For ull We daur /na show our face \ ithin the clachan. 116 POSTHUMOUS PIECES II An’ now we ’re dern’d in dens and hollows, And hunted, as was William Wallace, Wi’ constables—thae blackguard fal- lows — An’ sodgers baith; But Gude preserve us frae the gallows, That shamefu’ death ! Iv Auld, grim, black-bearded Geordie’s sel’ — O, shake him owre the mouth o’ Hell ! There let him hing, an’ roar, an’ yell ; Wi’ hideous din, And if he offers to rebel, Then heave him in ! Vv When Death comes in wi’ glimmerin blink, An’ tips auld drucken Nanse the wink, May Sautan gie her doup a clink Within his yett, An’ fill her up wi’ brimstone drink Red-reekin het. VI Though Jock an’ hav’rel Jean are merry, Some devil seize them in a hurry, An’ waft them in th’ infernal wherry Straught through the lake, An’ gie their hides a noble curry Wi’ oil of aik ! Vil As for the jurr — puir worthless body ! — She ’s got mischfef enough already; Wi’ stanget hips and buttocks bluidy She ’s suffer’d sair; But may she wintle in a woody If she whore mair ! / ft NATURE’S LAW ’ N HUMBLY INSCRIBED TO GAV" iN HAMILTO™ ESQUIRE Great Nature spoke, wenn man opeyed,, é fee ie Written shortly after ies event, * Wish me luck, Dear Richmond. le Armas just brought me a fine boy and 4 si a% throw. God bless the little dears! We \ ‘Green grow the Rashes, O, Green grow the Rashes, O, A feather bed is no sae saft As the bosoms o’ the lasses O.’ ‘¢MossereL, Sunday, 3d September, 1786.”” The more serious aspect of the situation is touched in a letter of the Sth September, to Robert Muir: ‘‘ You will have heard that poor Armour has repayed my amorous mort- gages double. A very fine boy and girl have awakened a thought and feelings that thrill, some with tender pressure and some with fore- boding anguish thro’ my soul.” The girl (Jean} died “at fourteen months old” (R. B. in Bible) ; the boy (Robert) died 14th May, 1857. I Let other heroes boast their sears, The marks o’ sturt and strife, But other poets sing of wars, The plagues o’ human life ! Shame fa’ the fun: wi’ sword and gun To slap mankind like lumber ! I sing his name and nobler fame Wha multiplies our number. II Great Nature spoke, with air benign: — “Go on, ye human race; This lower world I you resign; Be fruitful and increase. The liquid fire of strong desire, I’ve poured it in each bosom; Here on this hand does Mankind stand, And there, is Beauty’s blossom !” Til The Hero of these artless strains, A lowly Bard was he, Who sung his rhymes in Coila’s plains With meikle mirth and glee: Kind Nature’s care had given his share Large of the flaming current; And, all devout, he never sought To stem the sacred torrent. Iv ‘e felt the powerful, high behest y. Thrill vital thro’ and thro’; And sought a correspondent breast To give obedience due. Propitious Powers screen’d the young flow’rs From mildews of abortion; And lo! the Bard —a great reward — Has got a double portion ! LINES ON MEETING WITH LORD DAER v Auld cantie Coil may count the day, As annual it returns, The third of Libra’s equal sway, That gave another Burns, With future rhymes an’ other times To emulate his sire, To sing auld Coil in nobler style With more poetic fire ! VI Ye Powers of peace and peaceful song, Look down with gracious eyes, And bless auld Coila large and long With multiplying joys ! Lang may she stand to prop the land, The flow’r of ancient nations, And Burnses spring her fame to sing To endless generations ! LINES ON MEETING WITH LORD DAER The Lord Daer was Basil William Douglas- Hamilton, second son of the fourth Earl of Selkirk. He was born 16th March, 1763, and educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he boarded with Professor Dugald Stewart, whose guest he was at Catrine when Burns met him at dinner. A warm admirer of the French Revolution, he wentgn 1789 to Paris, where he lived in terms of friendship with some of its chief promoters. On his return he joined the Society of the Friends of the People; became a zealous advocate of Reform; and raised the question of the eligibility of Scots Peers’ sons to vote in elections and sit in the Commons (the Court of Session decided against him in 1792). He died of consumption at Ivy Bridge, Devon, 5th November, 1794. . Burns, in sending the lines to Mackenzie, eulogised the Professor, dividing his character into “ten parts, thus: four parts Socrates, four parts Nathaniel, and two parts Shake- speare’s Brutus.” Of the verses he wrote that they “‘ were really extempore but a little cor- rected since.” I Tuts wot ye all whom it concerns: I, Rhymer Rab, alias Burns, October twenty-third, A ne’er-to-be-forgotten day, Sae far I sprachl’d up the brae I dinner’d wi’ a Lord. II I’ve been at drucken Writers’ feasts, Nay, been bitch-fou ’mang godly Priests — Wi’ rev’rence be it spoken ! — I’ve even join’d the honor’d jorum, When mighty Squireships o’ the Quorum Their hydra drouth did sloken. Itt But wi’ a Lord !— stand out my shin ! A Lord, a Peer, an Earl’s son ! — Up higher yet, my bonnet ! An’ sic a Lord !— lang Scotch ell twa Our Peerage he looks o’er them a’, As I look o’er my sonnet. Iv But O, for Hogarth’s magic pow’r To show Sir Bardie’s willyart glow’r, An’ how he star’d an’ stammer’d, When, goavin ’s he’d been led wi’ branks, An’ stumpin on his ploughman shanks, He in the parlour hammer’d ! Vv To meet good Stewart little pain is, Or Scotia’s sacred Demosthénes : Thinks I: “They are but men” ! But “ Burns ”!— “My Lord” !— Good God! I doited, My knees on ane anither knoited As faultering I gaed ben. VI I sidling shelter’d in a neuk, An’ at his Lordship staw a leuk, Like some portentous omen: Except good sense and social glee An’ (what surpris’d me) modesty, I markéd nought uncommon. VII I watch’d the symptoms o’ the Great — The gentle pride, the lordly state, The arrogant assuming: The fient a pride, nae pride had he, Nor sauce, nor state, that I could see, Mair than an honest ploughman ! VII Then from his Lordship I shall learn Henceforth to meet with unconcern | 118 POSTHUMOUS PIECES One rank as well ’s another; Nae honest, worthy man need care To meet with noble youthfu’ Daer, For he but meets a brother. ADDRESS TO THE TOOTHACHE I My curse upon your venom’d stang, That shoots my tortur’d gooms alang, An’ thro’ my lug gies monie a twang Wi’ gnawing vengeance, Tearing my nerves wi’ bitter pang, Like racking engines ! It A’ down my beard the slavers trickle, I throw the wee stools o’er the mickle, Whilr round the fire the giglets keckle To see me loup, An’, raving mad, I wish a heckle Were i’ their doup! IIl When fevers burn, or ague freezes, Rheumatics gnaw, or colic squeezes, Our neebors sympathise to ease us Wi’ pitying moan; But thee !— thou hell o’ a’ diseases, They mock our groan! IV Of a’ the num’rous human dools — Iil-hairsts, daft bargains, cutty-stools, Or worthy frien’s laid i’ the mools, Sad sight to see ! The tricks o’ knaves, or fash o’ fools — Thou bear’st the gree ! Vv Whare’er that place be priests ca’ Hell, Whare a’ the tones o’ misery yell, An’ ranked plagues their numbers tell In dreadfw’ raw, Thou, Toothache, surely bear’st the bell Amang them a’! vI O thou grim, mischief-making chiel, That gars the notes o’ discord squeel, Till humankind aft dance a reel In gore a shoe-thick, Gie a’ the faes o’ Scotland’s weal A towmond’s toothache. LAMENT FOR THE ABSENCE OF WILLIAM CREECH, PUBLISHER Enclosed in a letter to “ William Creech, Esq., London,’ dated 13th May, 1787: ‘‘My Honored Friend — the enclosed I have just wrote, nearly extempore, in a solitary Inn in Selkirk, after a miserable, wet day’s riding.” The son of the Rev. William Creech, minis- ter of Newbattle, in Midlothian, Creech was born 21st April, 1745. He completed the Arts course at the University of Edinburgh; at- tended some medical lectures ; was apprenticed to the publishers Kincaid and Bell; in 1770 accompanied Lord Kilmaurs, afterwards the Earl of Glencairn (and the patron of Burns) on a Continental tour; became partner with Kincaid in 1771 and the firm itself in 1773: when his shop, standing to the north of St. Giles’, was soon, in Cockburn’s phrase, “ the natural resort of lawyers, authors, and all sorts of literary allies.” In his house, too, he held literary gatherings, which came to be called ‘*Creech’s levees.’’ To his social qualities and his ascendancy in literary and municipal Edin- burgh the Lament bears witness. Another trait in his character—a combination of bad business habits with a certain keenness over money — revealed itself in so unpleasant a fashion to Burns, in connexion with the settle- ment over the Poems, that the men’s relations were strained and distant ever after: Burns from this time forth addressing Creech as “Sir,” and in a fragment (see p. 181), meant for part of a Poet’s Progress, describing him as “A little, upright, pert, tart, tripping wight, And still his precious self his dear delight.” Before this, and before writing the Lament, Burns had mastered all Creech’s peculiarities; and in his Second Common Place Book (in the possession of Mr. Macmillan) he gives a por- trait which must be regarded as corrective of eulogy and satire alike: “(My worthy book- seller, Mr. Creech, is « strange, multiform character. His ruling passions of the left- hand kind are—extreme vanity, and some- thing of the more harmless modifications of selfishness. The one, mixed as it often is with great goodness of heart, makes him rush into all public matters, and take every instance of unprotected merit by the hand, provided it is in his power to hand it into public notice; the other quality makes him, amid all the em- barass in which his vanity entangles him, now and then to cast half a squint at his own inter- est. His parts as a man, his deportment as a gentleman, and his abilities as a scholar, are much above mediocrity. Of all the Edinburgh literati and wits he writes the most like a gen- LAMENT FOR THE ABSENCE OF WILLIAM CREECH 119 tleman. He does not awe you with the pro- foundness of the philosopher, or strike your eye with the soarings of genius ; but he pleases you with the handsome turn of his expression, and the polite ease of his paragraph. His social demeanour and powers, particularly at his own table, are the most engaging I have ever met with.” Creech was publisher of The Mirror, The Lounger, and the works of the chief Scots authors of his day. He contributed a number of Essays to The Edinburgh Courant, which he reprinted in a volume under the title Fugitive Pieces, 1791 (a second edition, published post- humously, with an account of his life, appeared in 1875). His Account of the Manners and Customs in Scotland between 1763 and 1783, originally contributed to the Courant, was brought down to 1793 and published in the Statistical Account of Scotland. He was also the author of An Account of the Trial of Wm. Brodie and George Smith (1789), having sat on the jury by which the famous Deacon was tried. He was a founder of the Speculative Society and the Edinburgh Chamber of Com- merce. In 1811-13 he was Lord Provost. He died 14th January, 1815. I AvuLp chuckie Reekie’s sair distrest, Down droops her ance weel burnish’d erest, Nae joy her bonie buskit nest Can yield ava: Her darling bird that she lo’es best, Willie, ’s awa. II O, Willie was a witty wight, And had o’ things an unco sleight ! Auld Reekie ay he keepit tight ‘ And trig an’ braw; But now they ll busk her like a fright — Willie ’s awa! III The stiffest o’ them a’ he bow’d ; The bauldest o’ them a’ he cow’d; They durst nae mair than he allow’d — That was a law: We’ve lost a birkie weel worth gowd — Willie’s awa! Iv Now gawkies, tawpies, gowks, and fools Frae colleges and boarding schools May sprout like simmer puddock-stools In glen or shaw: He wha could brush them down to mools, Willie, ’s awa ! Vv The brethren o’ the Commerce-Chaumer May mourn their loss wi’ doolfw’ clamour: He was a dictionar and grammar Amang them a’. I fear they’ll now mak monie a stam- mer: Willie ’s awa ! VI Nae mair we see his levee door Philosophers and Poets pour, And toothy Critics by the score In bloody raw: The adjutant of a’ the core, Willie, ’s awa ! vil Now worthy Greg’ry’s Latin face, Tytler’s and Greenfield’s modest grace, M‘Kenzie, Stewart, such a brace As Rome ne’er saw, They a’ maun meet some ither place — Willie’s awa ! vir Poor Burns ev’n “Scotch Drink” canna quicken: He cheeps like some bewilder’d chicken Scar’d frae its minnie and the cleckin By hoodie-craw. Grief ’s gien his heart an unco kickin —. Willie ’s awa! Ix Now ev’ry sour-mou’d, girnin blellum,, And Calvin’s folk, are fit to fell him; Ilk self-conceited critic-skellum His quill may draw: He wha could brawlie ward their bellum,, Willie, ’s awa ! x | Up wimpling, stately Tweed I ’ve sped,, And Eden scenes on crystal Jed, And Ettrick banks, now toaring red While tempests blaw;, But every joy and pleasure ’s fled: Willie’s awa !. xI May I be Slander’s common speech,, A text for Infamy to preach, 120 POSTHUMOUS PIECES And, lastly, streekit out to bleach In winter snaw, When I forget thee, Willie Creech, Tho’ far awa! XII May never wicked Fortune touzle him, May never wicked men bamboozle him, Until a pow as auld ’s Methusalem He canty claw! Then to the blessed new Jerusalem Fleet-wing awa! VERSES IN FRIARS CARSE HERMITAGE This is the first version of the Hermitage verses (see ante, p. 80); that which was ac- tually inscribed on the Friars Carse window- pane — now in the Observatory Museum, Dum- fries. i Tuovu whom chance may hither lead, Be thou clad in russet weed, Be thou deckt in silken stole, Grave these maxims on thy soul: — Life is but a day at most, Sprung from night in darkness lost; Hope not sunshine every hour, Fear not clouds will always lour. Happiness is but a name, Make content and ease thy aim. Ambition is a meteor-gleam; Fame a restless airy dream; Pleasures, insects on the wing Round Peace, th’ tend’rest flow’r of spring; Those that sip the dew alone — ; Make the butterflies thy own; Those that would the bloom devour — Crush the locusts, save the flower. For the future be prepar’d: Guard whatever thou canst guard; But, thy utmost duly done, Welcome what thou canst not shun. Follies past give thou to air — Make their consequence thy care. Keep the name of Man in mind, And dishonour not thy kind. Reverence with lowly heart Him, whose wondrous work thou art; Keep His Goodness still in view — Thy trust, and thy example too. Stranger, go! Heaven be thy guide! Quod the Beadsman on Nidside. ELEGY ON THE DEPARTED YEAR 1788 For lords or kings I dinna mourn; E’en let them die — for that they ’re born; But O, prodigious to reflect, A Towmonut, sirs, is gane to wreck ! O Eighty-Eight, in thy sma’ space What dire events hae taken place ! Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us ! In what a pickle thou hast left us ! The Spanish empire ’s tint a head, An’ my auld teethless Bawtie ’s dead; The tulyie’s teugh ’tween Pitt and Fox, An’ our guidwife’s wee birdie cocks: The tane is game, a bluidie devil, But to the hen-birds unco civil; The tither ’s dour — has nae sic breedin, But better stuff ne’er claw’d a midden. Ye ministers, come mount the poupit, An’ ery till ye be haerse an’ roupet, For Eighty-Eight, he wished you weel, An’ gied ye a’ baith gear an’ meal: E’en monie a plack and monie a peck, Ye ken yoursels, for little feck ! Ye bonie lasses, dight your een, For some o’ you hae tint a frien’: In Eighty-Eight, ye ken, was taen What ye ’ll ne’er hae to gie again. Observe the vera nowte an’ sheep, How dowff an’ dowilie they creep ! Nay, even the yirth itsel does cry, For Embro’ wells are grutten dry ! O Eighty-Nine, thou ’s but a bairn, An’ no owre auld, I hope, to learn! Thou beardless boy, I pray tak care, Thou now has got thy Daddie’s chair: Nae hand-cuff’d, mizzl’d, half-shackl’d Regent, : But, like himsel, a full free agent, Be sure ye follow out the plan Nae waur than he did, honest man ! As muckle better as ye can. January 1, 1789. ON THE DUCHESS OF GORDON’S REEL DANCING 121 CASTLE GORDON Burns was introduced to the Duchess of Gordon in Edinburgh (1786-7). And during his northern tour in 1787 he called at Gordon Castle on 7th September, as recorded in his Journal : “ Cross the Spey to Fochabers — fine palace, worthy of the noble, the polite, the generous proprietor. Dine. Company: Duke and Duchess, Ladies Charlotte and Madeline ; Colonel Abercrombie and Lady, Mr. Gordon, and Mr. , a clergyman, a venerable, aged figure, and Mr. Hoy, a clergyman too, I sup- pose — pleasant open manner. The Duke makes me happier than ever great man did — noble, princely, yet mild, condescending and affable, gay and kind ; the Duchess, charming, witty, and sensible. God bless them.” The piece was suggested by this visit. Burns sent it to Mr. Hoy, the Duke’s librarian, who wrote to him that the Duchess wished he had written in Seotch. It is worth recalling how the Duchess told Sir Walter that Burns was the only man she had ever met whose conversation fairly ‘“‘ carried her off her feet.” I StrEAms that glide in Orient plains, Never bound by Winter’s chains; Glowing here on golden sands, There immixed with foulest stains From tyranny’s empurpled hands; These, their richly gleaming waves, I leave to tyrants and their slaves: Give me the stream that sweetly laves The banks by Castle Gordon. II Spicy forests ever gay, Shading from the burning ray Hapless wretches sold to toil; Or, the ruthless native’s way, Bent on slaughter, blood and spoil; Woods that ever verdant wave, I leave the tyrant and the slave: Give me the groves that lofty brave The storms of Castle Gordon. Il Wildly here without control Nature reigns, and rules the whole; In that sober pensive mood, Dearest to the feeling soul, She plants the forest, pours the flood. ‘Life’s poor day Ill, musing, rave, And find at night a sheltering cave, Where waters flow and wild woods wave By bonie Castle Gordon. ON THE DUCHESS OF GOR- DON’S REEL DANCING Published in Stuart’s Star for the 31st March (1789), and here first reprinted. Jane, Duchess of Gordon, second daughter of Sir William Maxwell, third Baronet of Monreith, was born in Hyndford’s Close, Edinburgh, in 1746. She was beautiful, clever, witty, abounding in gaiety of temperament, of a most frolic habit, and more or less reckless of the proprieties. During her childhood a country cousin caught her one day, hard by her father’s house, riding an Edinburgh pig — (Edinburgh was largely scavengered by pigs in those years) — her sis- ter (afterwards Lady Wallace) belabouring her mount with a stick. On her marriage to Alex- ander, Duke of Gordon (1767), she became the queen of Edinburgh Society ; which, under her rule, appears to have been as merry as cards, wine, suppers, dances, late hours, and her own enchanting example and incomparable energy could make it; while in London her house was a chief resort for the Pittites. In 1802 she went to Paris, with the purpose (so tis said) of making a match between her youngest daughter and Eugéne Beauharnais, and re- turned to boast (so ’t was reported) that Napo- leon would “ breakfast in Ireland, dine in Lon- don, and sup in Gordon Castle.’’ In her later years she lived apart from her husband. She died 11th April, 1812. I Sue kiltit up her kirtle weel To show her bonie cutes sae sma’, And wallopéd about the reel, The lightest louper o’ them a’ ! Ir While some, like slav’ring, doited stots Stoit’ring out thro’ the midden dub, Fankit their heels amang their coats And gart the floor their backsides rub; Ill Gordon, the great, the gay, the gallant, Skip*t like a maukin owre a dyke: Deil tak me, since I was a callant, Gif e’er my een beheld the like! 122 POSTHUMOUS PIECES ON CAPTAIN GROSE WRITTEN ON AN ENVELOPE ENCLOSING A LETTER TO HIM This amusing parody of the funny old song against tale-telling travellers (Herd, 1769) : — ‘¢ Keep ye weel frae Sir John Malcolme, Igo and ago 2: If he’s a wise man, | mistak him. Tram, coram, dago “ Keep ye weel frae Sandie Don, Igo and ago He’s ten times dafter than Sir John. Tram, coram, dago:” — was ‘‘ written in a wrapper inclosing a letter to Captain Grose,” to be left with Mr. Cardonnel, the Edinburgh antiquary. Only two letters from Burns to Grose have been published : one recommending him to call on Professor Stew- art ; the other on witch stories connected with Alloway Kirk (see ante, p. 88). For a notice of Captain Grose, see ante, p. 94, I KEn ye ought o’ Captain Grose ? Igo and ago If he’s among his friends or foes ? Tram, coram, dago II Is he south, or is he north ? Igo and ago Or drownéd in the River Forth ? dram, coram, dago III Ts he slain by Hielan’ bodies ? Igo and ago And eaten like a wether haggis? Lram, coram, dago IV Is he to Abra’m’s bosom gane ? Igo and ago Or haudin Sarah by the wame ? lram, coram, dago v Where’er he be, the Lord be near him ! Igo and ago As for the Deil, he daur na steer him. Tram, coram, dago VI But please transmit th’ encloséd letter Igo and ago Which will oblige your humble debtor fram, coram, dago VII So may ye hae auld stanes in store, Igo and ago The very stanes that Adam bore! Tram, coram, dago VIII So may ye get in glad possession, Igo and ago The coins o’ Satan’s coronation ! Iram, coram, dago NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1791 [To MRS. DUNLOP] Editors have taken for granted that this was written for New Year’s Day, 1790; but the ‘grandchild ” whose cap is referred to was probably the child of Mrs. Henri, born in No- vember, 1790. Since also Mrs. Dunlop, on 1st January, 1791, snatched “a few moments” to acknowledge receipt of a letter, a poem, and a gilded card from Burns (Lochryan MSS.), it seems most likely that the latter is the true date. Mrs. Dunlop, whose maiden name was Fran- ces Anne Wallace, was the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Wallace of Craigie (descended from the uncle of the renowned leader) and Eleanor Agnew, daughter of Colonel Agnew, of Lochryan. She was born 16th April, 1730; married in 1748 John Dunlop of Dunlop, Ayr- shire, who died in 1785 ; succeeded her father before July, 1777; and died 24th May, 1815. Being in a state of profound mental depression — from which, she affirmed, her “ only refuge would have been the madhouse or the grave ” —she fell to reading the Kilmarnock volume — the gift of a friend. It had an almost ma- gical effect upon her spirits; and. feeling her- self under an “ inexpressible debt” to Burns for the relief thus experienced, she wrote to him what proved to be the initial letter of a most engaging correspondence, — a correspond- ence which shows the poet at his easiest and best as a letter-writer at the same time that it reveals the lady for one of the staunchest and kindest friends he ever had. The persons re- FROM ESOPUS TO MARIA 123 ferred to in the piece were members of her family. Tuts day Time winds th’ exhausted chain, To run the twelvemonth’s length again: I see the old, bald-pated fellow, With ardent eyes, complexion sallow, Adjust the unimpair’d machine To wheel the equal, dull routine. The absent lover, minor heir, In vain assail him with their prayer: Deaf as my friend, he sees them press, Nor makes the hour one moment less. Will you (the Major ’s with the hounds; The happy tenants share his rounds; Coila’s fair Rachel’s care to-day, And blooming Keith ’s engaged with Gray) From housewife cares a minute borrow (That grandchild’s cap will do to-morrow), And join with me a-moralizing ? This day ’s propitious to be wise in ! First, what did yesternight deliver ? «Another year has gone for ever.” And what is this day’s strong suggestion ? “‘The passing moment ’s all we rest on!” Rest on — for what? what do we here? Or why regard the passing year ? Will Time, amus’d with proverb’d lore, Add to our date one minute more ? A few days may — a few years must — Repose us in the silent dust : Then, is it wise to damp our bliss ? Yes: all such reasonings are amiss! The voice of Nature loudly cries, And many a message from the skies, That something in us never dies; That on this frail, uncertain state Hang matters of eternal weight; That future life in worlds unknown Must take its hue from this alone, Whether as heavenly glory bright Or dark as Misery’s woeful night. Since, then, my honour’d first of friends, On this poor being all depends, Let us th’ important Now employ, And live as those who never die. Tho’ you, with days and honours crown’d, Witness that filial circle round (A sight life’s sorrows to repulse, A sight pale Envy to convulse), Others now claim your chief regard: Yourself, you wait your bright reward. FROM ESOPUS TO MARIA The ‘‘ Maria” lampooned in this inept and unmanly parody of Pope’s Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard, in which the writer gives himself the lie all round with distressing particularity, was Mrs. Walter Riddell of Woodley Park, whose favour he had lost (see post, p. 178, Pre- fatory Note to Impromptu on Mrs. Riddell’s Birthday). The Esopus was James William- son, manager of the Dumfries Theatre, who, like Burns, had been an occasional guest at Woodley Park. The occasion of the piece was the committal to prison by the Earl of Lons- dale of Williamson’s company of players as vagrants. From those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, Where Infamy with sad Repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare re- past; Where truant ’prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay half — to whore — no more; ; Where tiny thieves, not destin’d yet to swing, Beat hemp for others riper for the string: From these dire scenes my wretched lines I date, To tell Maria her Esopus’ fate. “ Alas! I feel I am no actor here !” *T is real hangmen real scourges bear ! Prepare, Maria, for a horrid tale Will turn thy very rouge to deadly pale; Will make thy hair, tho’ erst from gipsy poll’d, By barber woven and by barber sold, Though twisted smooth with Harry’s nicest care, Like hoary bristles to erect and stare ! The hero of the mimic scene, no more I start in Hamlet, in Othello roar; Or, haughty Chieftain, ’mid the din of arms, In Highland bonnet woo Malvina’s charms: While sans-culottes stoop up the mountain high, : And steal me from Maria’s prying eye. 124 POSTHUMOUS PIECES Blest Highland bonnet ! once my proudest dress, Now, prouder still, Maria’s temples press ! I see her wave thy towering plumes afar, And call each coxcomb to the wordy war ! I see her face the first of Ireland’s sons, And even out-Irish his Hibernian bronze ! The crafty Colonel leaves the tartan’d lines For other wars, where he a hero shines; The hopeful youth, in Scottish senate bred, Who owns a Bushby’s heart without the head, Comes ’mid a string of coxcombs to dis- lay That Veni, vidi, vici, is his way; The shrinking Bard adown the alley skulks, And dreads a meeting worse than Wool- wich hulks, Though there his heresies in Church and State Might well award him Muir and Palmer’s fate : Still she, undaunted, reels and rattles on, And dares the public like a noontide sun. What scandal called Maria’s jaunty stagger The ricket reeling of a crooked ewaeee 2 Whose spleen (e’en worse than Burns’s venom, when He dips in gall unmix’d his eager pen, And pours his vengeance in the burning line), Who aa thus Maria’s lyre-divine, The idiot strum of Vanity bemus’d, And even th’ abuse of Poesy abus’d ? Who called her verse a Parish Workhouse, made For motley foundling Fancies, stolen or strayed ? A Workhouse! Ah, that sound awakes my woes, And pillows on the thorn my rack’d re- pose ! In durance vile here must I wake and weep, And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep : That straw where many a rogue has lain of yore, And vermin’d gipsies litter’d heretofore. Why, Lonsdale, thus thy wrath on vagrants pour ? Must earth no rascal save thyself endure ? Must thou alone in guilt immortal swell, And make a vast monopoly of Hell ? Thou know’st the Virtues cannot hate thee worse: The Vices also, must they club their curse ? Or must no tiny sin to others fall, Because thy guilt’s supreme enough for all ? Maria, send me too thy griefs and cares, In all of thee sure thy Esopus shares : As thou at all mankind the flag unfurls, Who on my fair one Satire’s vengeance hurls ! Who calls thee, pert, affected, vain co- quette, A wit in folly, and a fool in wit! Who says that fool alone is not thy due, And quotes thy treacheries to prove it true! Our force united on thy foes we ’ll turn, And dare the war with all of woman born: For who can write and speak as thou and 1? My periods that decyphering defy, And thy still matchless tongue that con- quers all reply ! NOTES AND EPISTLES TO JOHN RANKINE IN REPLY TO AN ANNOUNCEMENT The “announcement” was ‘‘that a girl [Elizabeth Paton] in that neighbourhood was with child” by Robert Burns. The Epistle to John Rankine, ante, p. 50, sets forth the se- quel. I I am a keeper of the law In some sma’ points, altho’ not a’; Some people tell me, gin I fa’ Ae way or ither, The breaking of ae point, tho’ sma’, Breaks a’ thegither. I I hae been in for ’t ance or twice, And winna say o’er far for thrice, Yet never met wi’ that surprise That broke my rest. But now a rumour’s like to rise — A whaup ’s i’ the nest ! TO J. LAPRAIK 125 TO JOHN GOLDIE AUGUST, 1785 John Goldie or Goudie was the son of a mill- er in Galston parish, Ayrshire, where he was born in 1717. He prospered first as a cabinet- maker and then as a wine merchant in Kilmar- nock, but lost money in mining speculations. He died in 1809. Much of his leisure was given to mechanical and scientific studies; but in later life he was almost equally addicted to advanced theology. He published an Essay on Various Important Subjects Moral and Di- vine — being an attempt to distinguish True JSrom False Religion, 1779 — popularly known as Goudie’s Bible (the issue of a second edition, 1785, was the occasion of this Epistle); The Gospel Recovered from its Captive State and Re- stored to its Original Purity, six vols., London, 1784; and A Treatise upon the Evidences of a Deity, 1809. Before his death he had prepared a work on astronomy. Burns, as laureate of the New-Light party, was warmly welcomed by Goldie, who became one of his sureties for the Kilmarnock Edition, and entertained him while he was seeing the book through the press. I O Goupr, terror o’ the Whigs, Dread o’ black coats and rev’rend wigs ! Sour Bigotry on her last legs Girns and looks back, Wishing the ten Egyptian plagues May seize you quick. IL Poor gapin, glowrin Superstition ! Wae’s me, she’s in a sad condition ! Fye ! bring Black Jock, her state physician, To see her water ! Alas ! there’s ground for great suspicion She ’ll ne’er get better. Til Enthusiasm ’s past redemption Gane in a gallopin consumption: Not a’ her quacks wi’ a’ their gumption Can ever mend her; Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption She Il soon surrender. Iv Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple For every hole to get a stapple; But now she fetches at the thrapple, Av’ fights for breath: Haste, gie her name up in the chapel, Near unto death ! Vv *T is you an’ Taylor are the chief To blame for a’ this black mischfef; But, gin the Lord’s ain folk gat leave, A toom tar barrel An’ twa red peats wad bring relief, And end the quarrel. vi For me, my skill ’s but very sma’, An’ skill in prose I’ve nane ava’; But, quietlenswise between us twa, Weel may ye speed ! And, tho’ they sud you sair misca’, Ne’er fash your head ! VII E’en swinge the dogs, and thresh them sicker ! The mair they squeel ay chap the thicker, And still ’mang hands a hearty bicker O’ something stout ! It gars an owthor’s pulse beat quicker, An’ helps his wit. VII There's naething like the honest nappy: Whare "Il ye e’er see men sae happy, Or women sonsie, saft, and sappy *Tween morn and morn, As them wha like to taste the drappie In glass or horn? Ix I’ve seen me daez’t upon a time, I scarce could wink or see a styme; Just ae hauf-mutchkin does me prime (Ought less is little); Then back I rattle on the rhyme ‘ As gleg’s a whittle. TO J. LAPRAIK THIRD EPISTLE I Gurp speed and furder to you, Johnie, Guid health, hale han’s, an’ weather bonie ! Now, when ye ’re nickin down fu’ cannie The staff o’ bread, 126 POSTHUMOUS PIECES May ye ne’er want a stoup o’ bran’y To clear your head ! II May Boreas never thresh your rigs, Nor kick your rickles aff their legs, Sendin the stuff o’er muirs an’ haggs Like drivin wrack ! But may the tapmost grain that wags Come to the sack ! Tr I’m bizzie, too, an’ skelpin at it; But bitter, daudin showers hae wat it; Sae my auld stumpie-pen, I gat it, W? muckle wark, An’ took my jocteleg, an’ whatt it Like onie clark. Iv It’s now twa month that I’m your debtor For your braw, nameless, dateless letter, Abusin me for harsh ill-nature On holy men, While deil a hair yoursel ye ’re better, But mair profane ! Vv But let the kirk-folk ring their bells! Let ’s sing about our noble sel’s: We 'll cry nae jads frae heathen hills To help or roose us, But browster wives an’ whisky stills — They are the Muses ! VI Your friendship, sir, I winna quat it; An’ if ye mak’ objections at it, Then hand in nieve some day we’ll knot it, An’ witness take; An’, when wi’ usquabae we ’ve wat it, It winna break. VII But if the beast and branks be spar’d Till kye be gaun without the herd, And a’ the vittel in the yard An’ theckit right, I mean your ingle-side to guard Ae winter night. VIII Then Muse-inspirin aqua-vite Shall mak us baith sae blythe an’ witty, Till ye forget ye ’re auld an’ gatty, And be as canty As ye were nine year less than thretty — Sweet ane an’ twenty ! IX But stooks are cowpet wi’ the blast, And now the sinn keeks in the wast; Then I maun rin amang the rest, An’ quat my chanter; Sae I subseribe mysel in haste, Yours, Rab the Ranter. September 13, 1785. TO THE REV. JOHN M‘MATH INCLOSING A COPY OF “HOLY WILLIE’S PRAYER” WHICH HE HAD REQUESTED, SEPTEMBER 17, 1785 I Wale at the stook the shearers cow’r To shun the bitter blaudin show’r, Or, in gulravage rinnin, scowr: To pass the time, To you I dedicate the hour In idle rhyme. IL My Musie, tir’d wi’ monie a sonnet On gown an’ ban’ an’ douse black-bonnet, Is grown right eerie now she ’s done it, Lest they should blame her, An’ rouse their holy thunder on it, And anathém her. II I own ’t was rash, an’ rather hardy, That I, a simple, countra Bardie, Should meddle wi’ a pack sae sturdy, Wha, if they ken me, Can easy wi’ a single wordie Louse Hell upon me. Iv But I gae mad at their grimaces, Their sighin, cantin, grace-proud faces, Their three-mile prayers an’ hauf-mile praces, Their raxin conscience, Whase greed, revenge, an’ pride disgraces Waur nor their nonsense. TO DAVIE 127 Vv There ’s Gau’n, niisca’d waur than a beast, Wha has mair honor in his breast Than monie scores as guid’s the priest Wha sae abus’t him: And may a Bard no crack his jest What way they ’ve use’t him ? VI See him, the poor man’s friend in need, The gentleman in word an’ deed — An’ shall his fame an’ honor bleed. By worthless skellums, An’ not a Muse erect her head To cowe the blellums ? VII O Pope, had I thy satire’s darts To gie the rascals their deserts, I ’d rip their rotten, hollow hearts, An’ tell aloud Their jugglin, hocus-pocus arts To cheat the crowd ! VIII God knows, I’m no the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean Than under gospel colors hid be Just for a screen. IX An honest man may like a glass, An honest man may like a lass; But mean revenge an’ malice fause He'll still disdain An’ then cry zeal for gospel laws Like some we ken. x They take Religion in their mouth, They talk o’ Mercy, Grace, an’ Truth: For what? To gie their malice skouth On some puir wight; An’ hunt him down, o’er right an’ ruth, To ruin streight. xI All hail, Religion! Maid divine, Pardon a Muse sae mean as mine, * Who in her rough imperfect line Thus daurs to name thee To stigmatise false friends of thine Can ne’er defame thee. xII Tho’ blotch’t and foul wi’ monie a stain An’ far unworthy of thy train, With trembling voice I tune my strain To join with those Who boldly dare thy cause maintain In spite of foes: xUI In spite o’ crowds, in spite o’ mobs, In spite of undermining jobs, In spite o’ dark banditti stabs At worth an’ merit, By scoundrels, even wi’ holy robes But hellish spirit ! XIV O Ayr! my dear, my native ground, Within thy presbyterial bound A candid lib’ral band is found Of public teachers, As men, as Christians too, renown’d, An’ manly preachers. XV Sir, in that circle you are nam’d; Sir, in that circle you are fam’d; An’ some, by whom your doctrine ’s blam’d (Which gies ye honor), Even, Sir, by them your heart ’s esteem’d, An’ winning manner. XVI Pardon this freedom I have taen, An’ if impertinent I’ve been, Impute it not, good sir, in ane Whase heart ne’er wrang’d ye, But to his utmost would befriend Ought that belang’d ye. TO DAVIE SECOND EPISTLE I AuLp NEEzoR, I’m three times doubly o’er your debtor For your auld-farrant, frien’ly letter; Tho’ I maun say ’*t, I doubt ye flatter, Ye speak sae fair: 128 POSTHUMOUS PIECES For my puir, silly, rhymin clatter Some less maun sair. II Hale be your heart, hale be your fiddle ! Lang may your elbuck jink an’ diddle To cheer you thro’ the weary widdle O’ war’ly cares, Till bairns’ bairns kindly cuddle Your auld grey hairs ! III But Davie, lad, I ’m red ye’re glaikit: I’m tauld the Muse ye hae negleckit; An’ gif it’s sae, ye sud be lickit Until ye fyke; Sic han’s as you sud ne’er be faiket, ‘Be hain’t wha like. ‘Iv For me, I’m on Parnassus’ brink, Rivin the words to gar them clink; Whyles daez’t wi’ love, whyles daez’t wi’ | drink Wi’ jads or Masons, An’ whyles,.but ay owre late I think, - Braw sober:lessons. Of a’ the thoughtless sons o’ man Commen’ me to the Bardie clan: Except it be some idle plan O’ rhymin clink — The devil-haet that I sud ban ! — They never think. vi Nae thought, nae view, nae scheme o’ livin, Nae cares to gie us joy or grievin, But just the pouchie put the nieve in, An’ while ought ’s there, Then, hiltie-skiltie, we gae scrievin, An’ fash nae mair. VII ‘ Leeze me on rhyme! It’s ay a trea- sure, My chief, amaist my only pleasure; At hame, a-fiel’, at wark or leisure, _ The Muse, poor hizzie ! ‘Tho’ rough an’ raploch be her measure, ‘ She ’s seldom lazy. VIII Haud to the Muse, my dainty Davie: The warl’ may play you monie a shavie, But for the Muse, she’ll never leave ye, Tho’ e’er sae puir; Na, even tho’ limpin wi’ the spavie Frae door to door ! TO JOHN KENNEDY, DUMFRIES HOUSE Kennedy was factor to the Earl of Dumfries, and resided at Dumfries House, two miles west of Cumnock. He died at Edinburgh, 19th June, 1812. The first part of the letter is in prose, and refers to a copy of The Cotter’s Sat- urday Night enclosed to Kennedy. Burns sent other pieces to him ; and either he or M‘Murdo is the “Factor John” of The Kirk’s Alarm, see ante, p. 113. I 4 Now, Kennedy, if foot or horse F’er bring you in by Mauchlin Corss (Lord, man, there ’s lasses there wad force A hermit’s fancy; _ And down the gate in faith ! they ’re worse . - An’ smair unchaney): . II But as I’m sayin, please step to Dow’s, An’ taste sic gear as Johnie brews, Till some bit callan bring me news That ye are there; An’ if we dinna hae a bowse, I’se ne’er drink mair. I It’s no I like to sit an’ swallow, -. .. Then like a swine to puke an’ wallow; But gie me just a true guid fallow Wi’ right ingine, And spunkie ance to mak us mellow, An’ then well shine ! Iv Now if ye ’re ane o’ warl’s folk, Wha rate the wearer by the cloak, An’ sklent on poverty their joke Wi? bitter sneer, Wi’ you nae friendship I will troke, Nor cheap nor dear. Vv But if, as I’m informéd weel, Ye hate as ill’s the vera Deil TO MR. M‘ADAM OF CRAIGEN-GILLAN The flinty heart that canna feel — Come, sir, here’s tae you ! Hae, there ’s my han’, J wiss you weel, An’ Gude be wi’ you! Rost. BurNeEss. Mossarex, 3d March, 1786. TO GAVIN HAMILTON, ESQ,, MAUCHLINE RECOMMENDING A BOY Cromek states that Master Tootie was a knavish eattle-dealer in Mauchline. Moss@aviLLe, May 3, 1786. I worn it, Sir, my bounden duty To warn you how that Master Tootie, Alias Laird M‘Gaun, Was here to hire yon lad away *Bout whom ye spak the tither day, An’ wad hae don’t aff han’; But lest he learn the callan tricks — As faith ! I muckle doubt him — Like scrapin out auld Crummie’s nicks, An’ tellin lies about them, As lieve then, I’d have then Your clerkship he should sair, If sae be ye may be Not fitted otherwhere. Altho’ I say ’t, he’s gleg enough, An’ bout a house that’s rude an’ rough The boy might learn to swear; But then wi’ you he ’ll be sae taught, An’ get sic fair example straught, I hae na onie fear: Ye’ll catechise him every quirk, An’ shore him weel wi’ “ Hell; ” An’ gar him follow to the kirk — Ay when ye gang yoursel ! If ye, then, mann be then Frae hame this comin Friday, Then please, Sir, to lea’e, Sir, The orders wi’ your lady. My word of honour I hae gien, In Paisley John’s that night at e’en To meet the “ warld’s worm,” To try to get the twa to gree, An’ name the airles an’ the fee In legal mode an’ form: I ken he weel a snick can draw, When simple bodies let him; An’ if a Devil be at a’, In faith he’s sure to get him. To phrase you an’ praise you, e ken, your Laureat scorns: The pray’r still you share still Of grateful MinsTREL Burns. TO MR. M‘ADAM OF CRAIGEN- GILLAN IN ANSWER TO AN OBLIGING LETTER HE SENT IN THE COMMENCEMENT OF MY POETIC CAREER There is no evidence that Burns had any further correspondence with this M‘Adam, whose letter no doubt referred to the Kilmar- nock Edition. The son (‘‘ Dunaskin’s laird ” of stanza, vii.) is alluded to in the Second Heron Ballad, p. 166, stanza vii. line 8, as “o’ Jads no the warst.” I Sir, o’er a gill I gat your card, I trow it made me proud. «See wha taks notice o’ the Bard!” I lap, and ery’d fw’ loud. Il Now deil-ma-care about their jaw, The senseless, gawky million ! I’ll cock my nose aboon them a’: I’m roos’d by Craigen-Gillan ! III °T was noble, sir; ’t was like yoursel, To grant your high protection: A great man’s smile, ye ken fu’ well, Is ay a blest infection. Iv Tho’, by his banes wha in a tub Match’d Macedonian Sandy ! On my ain legs thro’ dirt and dub I independent stand ay; Vv And when those legs to guid warm kail Wi’ welcome canna bear me, A lee dyke-side, a sybow-tail, An’ barley-scone shall cheer me. vI Heaven spare you lang to kiss the breath O’ monie flow’ry simmers, 130 POSTHUMOUS PIECES An’ bless your bonie lasses baith (1’m tauld they ’re loosome kimmers) ! VII An’ God bless young Dunaskin’s laird, The blossom of our gentry, An’ may he wear an auld man’s beard, A credit to his country ! REPLY TO AN INVITATION Written doubtless in a tavern. Str, Yours this moment I unseal, And faith! I’m gay and hearty. To tell the truth and shame the Deil, I am as fou as Bartie. But Foorsday, Sir, my promise leal, Expect me o’ your partie, If on a beastie I can speel Or burl in a cartie. Yours, — Ropert Burns. Macauin, Monday Night, 10 o’clock. TO DR. MACKENZIE AN INVITATION TO A MASONIC GATHERING Dr. John Mackenzie — one of the poet’s warmest friends — practised at Mauchline, on completing his medical course at the University of Edinburgh. He has recorded, in a letter to Professor Walker (often reprinted), his first impressions of Burns, whom he met during the last illness of William Burness. After removing to Mossgiel, Burns had frequent opportunities of meeting him at Gavin Hamil- ton’s, the Masonic Lodge, and elsewhere ; and he introduced the poet to Sir John White- foord, Professor Dugald Stewart, and other persons of influence. At a later period Mac- kenzie settled at Irvine, and in 1827 he'retired to Edinburgh, where he died 11th January, 1837. For Burns’s connexion with the lodge, see ante, p. 53, Prefatory Note to The Fare- well, He was then depute-master, and so signs himself; the procession referred to in the note took place on 24th June. The Masonic date signifies 1786. Fripay first’s the day.appointed By our Right Worshipful Anointed To hold our grand procession, To get a blaud o’ Johnie’s morals, An’ taste a swatch o’ Manson’s barrels T’ th’ way of our profession. Our Master and the Brotherhood Wad a’ be glad to see you. For me, I wad be mair than proud To share the mercies wi’ you. If Death, then, wi’ skaith then Some mortal heart is hechtin, Inform him, an’ storm him, That Saturday ye’ll fecht him. Rosert Burys, D. M. Mossqien, 14th June, a.m. 5790. TO JOHN KENNEDY A FAREWELL Forms the end of a letter sent from Kilmar- nock, undated, but written some time between the 8d and 16th August. Burns tells Ken- nedy that he is about to set out for Jamaica, and is in daily expectation of orders to repair to Greenock. Hence these last lines. For Kennedy see ante, p. 128, Prefatory Note to To John Kennedy. FAREWELL, dear friend! may guid luck hit you, And ’mong her favourites admit you ! If e’er Detraction shore to smit you, May nane believe him ! And onie deil that thinks to get you, Good Lord, deceive him ! TO WILLIE CHALMERS’ SWEET- HEART Sent to Lady Harriet Don with this expla- nation: “Mr. Chalmers, a gentleman in Ayr- shire, a particular friend of mine, asked me to write a poetic epistle to a young lady, his Dul- cinea. I had seen her, but was scarcely ac- quainted with her, and wrote as follows.” On 20th November, 1786, Burns, as “ Bard-in- Chief” of Kyle, Cunningham, and Carrick, sent to Chalmers and another practitioner “ in the ancient and mysterious science of con- founding right and wrong,”’ a warrant for the destruction of a certain ‘‘ wicked song or bal- lad.” He also wrote Chalmers a humorous letter on his arrival in Edinburgh, enclosing a copy of his Address to that city. Chalmers was a lawyer in Ayr. EXTEMPORE TO GAVIN HAMILTON 131 I WY braw new branks in mickle pride, And eke a braw new brechan, My Pegasus I’m got astride, And up Parnassus pechin: Whyles owre a bush wi’ downward crush The doited beastie stammers; Then up he gets, and off he sets For sake o’ Willie Chalmers. II I doubt na, lass, that weel kend name May. cost a pair o’ blushes: I am nae stranger to your fame, Nor his warm-urgéd wishes: Your bonie face, sae mild and sweet, His honest heart enamours; And faith! ye ’ll no be lost a whit, Tho’ wair’d on Willie Chalmers. II Auld Truth hersel might swear ye’re fair, And Honor safely back her; And Modesty assume your air, And ne’er a ane mistak her; And sic twa love-inspiring een Might fire even holy palmers: Nae wonder then they ’ve fatal been To honest Willie Chalmers ! Iv I doubt na Fortune may you shore Some mim-mou’d, pouther’d priestie, Fw’ lifted up wi’ Hebrew lore And band upon his breastie; But O, what signifies to you His lexicons and grammars ? The feeling heart ’s the royal blue, And that’s wi’ Willie Chalmers. Vv Some gapin, glowrin countra laird May warsle for your favour: May claw his lug, and straik his beard, And hoast up some palaver. My bonie maid, before ye wed Sic clumsy-witted hammers, Seek Heaven for help, and barefit skelp Awa wi’ Willie Chalmers. vI Forgive the Bard! My fond regard For ane that shares my bosom Inspires my Muse to gie’m his dues, For deil a hair I roose him. May Powers aboon unite you soon, And fruetify your 4mours, And every year come in mair dear To you and Willie Chalmers ! TO AN OLD SWEETHEART WRITTEN ON A COPY OF HIS POEMS The sweetheart was Peggy Thomson of Kirkoswald (see ante, p. 52, Prefatory Note to Song Composed in August). Thus prefaced in the Glenriddell Book: “Written on the blank leaf of a copy of the first edition of my Poems which I presented to an old sweetheart, then married. °T was the girl I mentioned in my letter to Dr. Moore, where I speak of tak- ing the sun’s altitude. Poor Peggy! Her husband is my old acquaintance, and a most worthy fellow. When I was taking leave of my Carrick relations, intending to go to the West Indies, when I took farewell of her, neither she nor I could speak a syllable. Her husband escorted me three miles on my road, and we both parted with tears.” I Once fondly lov’d and still remember’d dear, Sweet early object of my youthful vows, Accept this mark of friendship, warm, sin- cere — (Friendship! ’tis all cold duty now al- lows); II And when you read the simple artless rhymes, One friendly sigh for him—he asks no more — Who, distant, burns in flaming torrid climes, Or haply lies beneath th’ Atlantic roar. EXTEMPORE TO GAVIN HAMIL- TON STANZAS ON NAETHING I To you, Sir, this summons I ’ve sent (Pray, whip till the pownie is fraeth- ing !); 132 POSTHUMOUS PIECES But if you demand what I want, — I honestly answer you — naething. II Ne’er scorn a poor Poet like me For idly just living and breathing, While people of every degree : Are busy employed about — naething. Ill Poor Centum-per-Centum may fast, And grumble his hurdies their claithing; He ’Il find, when the balance is cast, He’s gane to the Devil for — naething. Iv The courtier cringes and bows; Ambition has likewise its plaything — A coronet beams on his brows; And what is a coronet ? — Naething. Vv Some quarrel the Presbyter gown, Some quarrel Episcopal graithing ; But every good fellow will own The quarrel is a’ about — naething. VI The lover may sparkle and glow, Approaching his bonie bit gay thing ; But marriage will soon let him know He’s gotten — a buskit-up naething. VII The Poet may jingle and rhyme In hopes of a laureate wreathing, And when he has wasted his time, He’s kindly rewarded with — naething. VIII The thundering bully may rage, And swagger and swear like a heathen; But collar him fast, I ’Il engage, You'll find that his courage is —nae- thing. IX Last night with a feminine Whig — A poet she couldna put faith in! But soon we grew lovingly big, I taught her, her terrors were — nae- thing. x Her Whigship was wonderful pleased, But charmingly tickled wi’ ae thing; Her fingers I lovingly squeezed, And kissed her, and promised her — naething. xI The priest anathémas may threat — Predicament, sir, that we ’re baith in; But when Honor’s reveillé is beat, The holy artillery ’s — naething. XII And now I must mount on the wave: My voyage perhaps there is death in; But what is a watery grave? The drowning a Poet is — naething. XIII And now, as grim Death’s in my thought, To you, Sir, I make this bequeathing: My service as long as ye ’ve ought, And my friendship, by God, when ye ’ve — naething. REPLY TO A TRIMMING EPIS- TLE RECEIVED FROM A TAILOR The tailor was one Thomas Walker, who re- sided at Pool, near Ochiltree. His remon- strance, with Burns’s Reply, appeared in one of the tracts “ printed for and sold by Stewart and Meikle.” Scott Douglas, who had seen the tailor’s manuscripts, concludes that Simp- son of Ochiltree (see ante, p. 47, Prefatory Note to Epistle to William Simpson) had as much to do with the composition of his Epistle as himself. I Wuauat ails ye now, ye lousie bitch, To thresh my back at sic a pitch ? Losh, man, hae mercy wi’ your natch ! Your bodkin’s bauld: I didna suffer half sae much Frae Daddie Auld. II What tho’ at times, when I grow crouse, I gie their wames a random pouse, Is that enough for you to souse our servant sae ? Gae mind your seam, ye prick-the-louse An’ jag-the-flae ! TO MAJOR LOGAN 133 Ill King David 0’ poetic brief Wrocht ’mang the lassies sic mischfef As fill’d his after-life with grief An’ bloody rants; An’ yet he ’s rank’d amang the chief O’ lang-syne saunts. IV And maybe, Tam, for a’ my cants, My wicked rhymes an’ drucken rants, I'll gie auld Cloven-Clootie’s haunts An unco slip yet, An’ snugly sit amang the saunts At Davie’s hip yet! Vv But, fegs! the Session says I maun Gae fa’ upo’ anither plan Than garrin lasses coup the cran, Clean heels owre body, An’ sairly thole their mither’s ban Afore the howdy. VI This leads me on to tell for sport How I did wi’ the Session sort: Auld Clinkum at the inner port Cried three times : — “ Robin ! Come hither lad, and answer for ’t, Ye’re blam’d for jobbin !” VII Wi’ pinch I put a Sunday’s face on, An’ snoov’d awa’ before the Session: I made an open, fair confession — I scorn’d to lie — An’ syne Mess John, beyond expression, Fell foul o’ me. VIII A fornicator-loun he call’d me, An’ said my faut frae bliss expell’d me. I own’d the tale was true he tell’d me, “ But, what the matter? ” (Quo’ I) “I fear unless ye geld me, I'll ne’er be better !” IX “ Geld you!” (quo’ he) “an’ what for no? If that your right hand, leg, or toe Should ever prove your sp’ritual foe ou should remember To cut it aff; an’ what for no Your dearest member ?” x “Na, na” (quo’ I), “I’m no for that, Gelding ’s nae better than ’t is ca’t; I’d rather suffer for my faut A hearty flewit, As sair owre hip as ye can draw ’t, Tho’ I should rue it. XI “ Or, gin ye like to end the bother, To please us a’ — I’ve just ae ither: When next wi’ yon lass I forgather, Whate’er betide it, I'll frankly gie her ’t a’ thegither, An’ let her guide it.” XII But, Sir, this pleas’d them warst of a’, An’ therefore, Tam, when that I saw, I said “ Guid-night,” an’ cam awa, An’ left the Session: I saw they were resolved a’ On my oppression. TO MAJOR LOGAN Major William Logan, a retired soldier, of some repute as fiddler and wit, who lived at Park, near Ayr, must not be confounded with John Logan of Afton and Knoekshinnoch (the “ Afton’s Laird” of The Kirk’s Alarm, p. 118), with whom Burns also corresponded. I Hau, thairm-inspirin, rattlin Willie ! Tho’ Fortune’s road be rough an’ hilly To every fiddling, rhyming billie, We never heed, But take it like the unbrack’d filly Proud o’ her speed. II When, idly goavin, whyles-we saunter, Yirr! Fancy barks, awa we canter, Up hill, down brae, till some mishanter, : Some black bog-hole, Arrests us; then the scathe an’ banter We’re forced to thole. Ilr Hale be your heart ! hale be your fiddle ! Lang may your elbuck jink an’ diddle, 134 POSTHUMOUS Finvuns To cheer you through the weary widdle O’ this vile warl’, Until you on a cummock driddle, ] A grey-hair’d carl. Iv Come wealth, come poortith, late or soon, Heaven send your heart-strings ay in tune, And screw your temper-pins aboon (A fifth or mair) The melancholious, sairie croon O’ cankrie Care. Vv May still your life from day to day, Nae lente largo in the play But allegretto forte gay, Harmonious flow, A sweeping, kindling, bauld strathspey — Encore! Bravo! VI A’ blessings on the cheery gang, Wha dearly like a jig or sang, Av’ never think o’ right an’ wrang By square an’ rule, But as the clegs o’ feeling stang Are wise or fool. VII My hand-wal’d curse keep hard in chase The harpy, hoodock, purse-proud race, Wha count on poortith as disgrace ! Their tuneless hearts, May fireside discords jar a bass To a’ their parts ! Vill But come, your hand, my careless bri- ther ! T’ th’ ither warl’, if there’s anither — An’ that there is, I’ve little swither About the matter — We, cheek for chow, shall jog thegither — I ’se ne’er bid better ! IX We've faults and failins — granted clear- We ’re frail, backsliding mortals merely ; Eve’s bonie squad, priests wyte them sheerly For our grand fa’ ; But still, but still— I like them dearly... God bless them a’! x Ochon for poor Castalian drinkers, When they fa’ foul o’ earthly jinkers ! The witching, curs’d, delicious blinkers Hae put me hyte, An’ gart me weet my waukrife winkers ‘Wi’ girnin spite. xI But by yon moon—and that’s high swearin | — An’ every star within my hearin, An’ by her een wha was a dear ane I'll ne’er forget, I hope to gie the jads a clearin In fair play yet! XII My loss I mourn, but not repent it; I’ll seek my pursie whare I tint it; Ance to the Indies I were wonted, Some cantraip hour By some sweet elf I'll yet be dinted: Then vive amour ! XIII Faites mes baissemains respectueusé To sentimental sister Susie And honest Lucky: no to roose you, Ye may be proud, That sic a couple Fate allows ye To grace your blood. XIV Nae mair at present can I measure, An’ trowth! my rhymin ware’s nae trea- sure 3 But when in Ayr, some half-hour’s leisure, Be’t light, be’t dark, Sir Bard will do himself the pleasure To call at Park. Roserr Burns. MosseieL, 30th October, 1786. TO THE GUIDWIFE OF WAU- CHOPE HOUSE (MRS. SCOTT) Written in answer to a rhyming epistle from “The Guidwife of Wauchope-House to Robert Burns the Ayrshire Bard, February, 1787.” The lady was Mrs. Elizabeth Scott (born 1729, daughter of David Rutherford, Edinburgh, TO WM. TYTLER, ESQ., OF WOODHOUSELEE 135 and niece to Mrs. Cockburn, the song-writer), wife of Walter Scott of Wauchope. Burns’s visit to her on 10th May following is thus re- corded in his Journal of the Border tour: “Wauchope — Mr. Scott exactly the figure and face commonly given to Saneho Panza — very shrewd in his farming matters, and not unfrequently stumbles on what may be called a strong thing rather than a good thing. Mrs. Scott all the sense, taste, intrepidity of face, and. bold critical decision which usually dis- tinguish female authors.” She died 19th Feb- ruary, 1789. After her death a selection from her verses was published (1801), under the title Alonzo and Cora, in which Burns’s Epistle was included. I Gui Wire, I mind it weel, in early date, When I was beardless, young, and blate, An’ first could thresh the barn, Or haud a yokin at the pleugh, An’, tho’ forfoughten sair eneugh, Yet unco proud to learn; When first amang the yellow corn A man I reckon’d was, An’ wi’ the lave ilk merry morn Could rank my rig and lass: Still shearing, and clearing The tither stookéd raw, WY clavers an’ havers Wearing the day awa. II E’en then, a wish (I mind its pow’r), A wish that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breast, That I for poor auld Scotland’s sake Some usefu’ plan or book could make, Or sing a sang at least. The rough burr-thistle spreading wide Amang the bearded bear, I turn’d the weeder-clips aside, An’ spar’d the symbol dear. No nation, no station My envy e’er could raise; A Scot still, but blot still, I knew nae higher praise. It But still the elements o” sang In formless jumble, right an’ wrang, Wild floated in my brain; Till on that hairst I said before, My partner in the merry core, She rous’d the forming strain, I see her yet, the sonsie quean That lighted up my jingle, Her witching smile, her pauky een That gart my heart-strings tingle ! I fired, inspired, At ev’ry kindling keek, But, bashing and dashing, I fearéd ay to speak. Iv Hale to the sex! (ilk guid chiel says): Wi’ merry dance on winter days, An’ we to share in common ! The gust 0’ joy, the balm of woe, The saul o’ life, the heav’n below Is rapture-giving Woman. Ye surly sumphs, who hate the name, Be mindfu’ o’ your mither: She, honest woman, may think shame That ye ’re connected with her ! Ye ’re wae men, ye’re nae men That slight the lovely dears; To shame ye, disclaim ye, Ik honest birkie swears. Vv For you, no bred to barn and byre, Wha sweetly tune the Scottish lyre, Thanks to you for your line ! The marl’d plaid ye kindly spare, By me should gratefully be ware; °T wad please me to the nine. I’d be mair vauntie o’ my hap, Douce hingin owre my curple, Than onie ermine ever lap, Or proud imperial purple. Farewell, then ! lang hale, then, An’ plenty be your fa’ ! May losses and crosses Ne’er at your hallan ca’ ! R. Burns. March, 1787. TO WM. TYTLER, ESQ., OF WOODHOUSELEE WITH AN IMPRESSION OF THE AUTHOR’S PORTRAIT Son of Alexander Tytler, an Edinburgh so- licitor, William Tytler was born 12th October, 1711; was educated at the High School and University ; was admitted Writer to the Signet 136 POSTHUMOUS PIECES in 1744; and died 12th September, 1792. He bestowed his leisure upon historical and anti- quarian studies, and is known (to those who eare to know) as author of an Inquiry, Histori- cal and Critical, into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots, 1759 (hence the terms of the poet’s address) ; a Poetical Remains of James L. of Scotland, 1783 ; a Dissertation on Scottish Music, 1774; and certain papers in the Trans- actions of the Society of Antiquaries. He as- sisted Johnson with vol. i. of the Musical Mu- seum, whereon his place was presently taken by Burns. The Epistle (as awkward a piece of writing as Burns ever did in English) was accompanied by a copy of the Beugo engraving. A few lines of prose were added (those in brackets have not hitherto! been printed): “My Muse jilted me here, and turned a corner on me, and I have not got again into her good graces. [I have two requests to make. Burn the above verses when you have read them, as any little sense that is in them is rather heretical, and] do me the justice to believe me sincere in my grateful remembrance of the many civilities you have honoured me with since I came to Edinburgh, and in assuring you that I have the honour to be, revered sir, your obliged and very humble servant, Rogert Burns. “Lawn Market, Friday noon.” Seott Douglas surmises that the expunged lines contained “some ultra-Jacobite sally ;” but it is now manifest that Tytler would not have it known that he had disregarded Burns’s request. I REVERED defender of beauteous Stuart, Of Stuart !—a name once respected, A name which to love was once mark of a true heart, But now ’tis despis’d and neglected ! II Tho’ something like moisture conglobes in my eye — Let no one misdeem me disloyal ! A poor friendless wand’rer may well claim igh — gs Still more, if that wand’rer were royal. TI My Fathers that name have rever’d on a throne; My Fathers have fallen to right it: 1 That is, before the Centenary Edition. Those Fathers would spurn their degener- ate son, Roa That name, should he scoffingly slight it. ‘ Iv Still in prayers for King George I most heartily join, 2 The Queen, and the rest of the gentry; Be they wise, be they foolish, is nothing of - mine: : Their title ’s avow’d by my country. Vv But why of that epocha make such a fuss That gave us the Hanover stem ? If bringing them over was lucky for us, I’m sure ’t was as lucky for them. VI But loyalty — truce ! we’re on dangerous ground: Who knows how the fashions may alter ? The doctrine, to-day that is loyalty sound, To-morrow may bring us a halter ! VII I send you a trifle, a head of a Bard, A trifle scarce worthy your care; But accept it, good Sir, as a mark of regard, Sincere as a saint’s dying prayer. vor Now Life’s chilly evening dim-shades on your eye, And ushers the long dreary night; But you, like the star that athwart gilds the sky, Your course to the latest is bright. TO MR. RENTON OF LAMERTON Sent to Mr. Renton, Mordington House, Berwickshire, probably during the poet’s Bor- der tour — though Renton is not mentioned in his Journal. : Your billet, Sir, I grant receipt; Wi’ you I ’ll canter onie gate, Tho’ ’t were a trip to yon blue warl’ Where birkies march on burning marl: Then, Sir, God willing, I ’ll attend ye, And to His goodness 1 commend ye. R. Burns. TO MISS FERRIER 137 TO MISS ISABELLA MACLEOD For Isabella Macleod, see ante, p. 96, Prefa- tory Note to On Reading in a Newspaper the Death of John M‘Leod, Esq. Enrysuree, March 16, 1787. I THE crimson blossom charms the bee, The summer sun the swallow: So dear this tuneful gift to me From lovely Isabella. It Her portrait fair upon my mind Revolving time shall mellow, And mem’ry’s latest effort find The lovely Isabella. Itt No Bard nor lover’s rapture this In fancies vain and shallow! She is, so come my soul to bliss, The lovely Isabella ! TO SYMON GRAY Symon Gray lived near Duns, and while Burns was on his Border tour sent him some verses for his opinion. I Symon Gray, you’re dull to-day ! Dullness with redoubled sway Has seized the wits of Symon Gray. il Dear Symon Gray, the other day When you sent me some rhyme, I could not then just ascertain Its worth for want of time; Til But now to-day, good Mr. Gray, I’ve read it o’er and o’er: Tried all my skill, but find I’m still Just where I was before. Iv We auld wives’ minions gie our opinions, Solicited or no; Then of its fauts my honest thoughts I'll give — and here they go: Vv Such damn’d bombdst no age that ’s past Can show, nor time to come; So, Symon dear, your song I’ll tear, And with it wipe my bum. TO MISS FERRIER Jane Ferrier, eldest daughter of James Fer- rier, Writer to the Signet — who resided in George Street, Edinburgh — and sister to Miss Ferrier the novelist. She was born in 1767; married General Samuel Graham, for some time deputy-governor of Stirling Castle ; with Edward Blore, the architect, published draw- ings of the carved work in the state-rooms of that fortress under the title, Lacunar Streve- linense, 1817; and died in 1846. I Nae heathen name shall I prefix Frae Pindus or Parnassus; Auld Reekie dings them a’ to sticks For rhyme-inspiring lasses. II Jove’s tunefu’ dochters three times three Made Homer deep their debtor; But gien the body half an e’e, Nine Ferriers wad done better ! III Last day my mind was in a bog; Down George’s Street I stoited; A ereeping, cauld, prosaic fog My very senses doited; Iv Do what I dought to set her free, My saul lay in the mire: Ye turned a neuk, I saw your e’e, She took the wing like fire! Vv The mournfw’ sang I here enclose, In gratitude I send you, And pray, in rhyme as weel as prose, A’ guid things may attend you ! 138 POSTHUMOUS PIECES SYLVANDER TO CLARINDA Clarinda was Mrs. Agnes Maclehose, née Craig, daughter of Andrew Craig, surgeon, Glasgow. She was born in April, 1759 — the same year as her poet; and when he met her in Edinburgh (7th December, 1787) she had for some time been separated from her hus- band. The Bard, who was (as ever) by way of being a buck, accepted an invitation to take tea with her on the 9th; but an accident obli- ging him to keep his room, he wrote to express his regret, and at the same time intimated his resolve to cherish her “friendship with the enthusiasm of religion.” Mrs. Maclehose re- sponding in the same key, the ‘‘ friendship” proceeded apace. On Christmas Eve she sent him certain verses, signed “ Clarinda,” On Burns saying He had nothing else to Do, three of which he quoted in the Glenriddell Book : — “ When first you saw Clarinda’s charms, What rapture in your bosom grew! Her heart was shut to Love’s alarms, But then — you ’d nothing else to do. * Apollo oft had lent his harp, But now ’t was strung from Cupid’s bow ; You sung —it reached Clarinda’s heart — She wish’d you ’d nothing else to do. ‘Fair Venus smil’d, Minerva frown’d, Cupid observed, the arrow flew: Indifference (ere a week went round) Show’d you had nothing else to do.” Thus challenged, Sylvander — he became Syl- vander there and then — replied as in the text ; and the romantic terms in which the two went on to conduct their correspondence soon served the ardent youth as a pretext for the expres- sion of fiercer sentiments than Clarinda’s “ prin- ciples of reason and religion’’ should have allowed. She sent her Arcadian poems, which he amended for Johnson’s Museum ; and he fell so deeply enamoured that, on leaving Edinburgh (24th March) he must write thus to a friend: “ During these last eight days I have been pos- itively erazy.’? Clarinda (like Maman Vau- quer) avait des idées—as what lady in the cireumstances would not ? And when Clarinda learned, in August, that Burns had married Armour, Clarinda resented her Sylvander’s de- fection as an unpardonable wrong. They were partly reconciled in the autumn of 1791; and ere she rejoined her husband in Jamaica, they had an interview on 6th December, which the gallant and romantic little song, O May, Thy Morn was ne'er sae Sweet,is held to commemo- rate. On the 27th he sent her Ae Fond Kiss and then We Sever, with the finest lines he ever wrote : — “Had we never lov’d sae kindly, Had we never lov’d sae blindly, Never met — or never parted — We had ne’er been broken-hearted :”” Behold the Hour, the Boat Arrive, and part of Gloomy December, with the remark: “ ‘The re- mainder of this song is on the wheels — Adieu ! Adieu!” Mrs. Maclehose, still unreconciled to her husband, returned to Scotland in August, 1792. Burns and she corresponded oceasion- ally, but never met again. She died 22d Octo- ber, 1841. I WHEn dear Clarinda, matchless fair, First struck Sylvander’s raptur’d view, He gaz’d, he listened to despair — Alas ! ’t was all he dared to do. II Love from Clarinda’s heavenly eyes Transfixed his bosom thro’ and thro’, But still in Friendship’s guarded guise — For more the demon fear’d to do. TIt That heart, already more than lost, The imp beleaguer’d all perdu; For frowning Honor kept his post — To meet that frown he shrunk to do. Iv His pangs the Bard refus’d to own, Tho’ half he wish’d Clarinda knew; But Anguish wrung the unweeting groan — Who oe what frantic Pain must o? Vv That heart, where motley follies blend, Was sternly still to Honor true: To prove Clarinda’s fondest friend Was what a lover, sure, might do! VI The Muse his ready quill employ’d; No nearer bliss he could pursue; That bliss Clarinda cold deny’d — “Send word by Charles how you do!” VII The chill behest disarm’d his Muse, Till Passion all impatient grew: He wrote, and hinted for excuse, “°T was ’cause he’d nothing else to do.” TO HUGH PARKER 139 VIII But by those hopes I have above ! And by those faults I dearly rue ! The deed, the boldest mark of love, For thee that deed I dare to do! Ix O, could the Fates but name the price Would bless me with your charms and you, With frantic joy I’d pay it thrice, If human art or power could do! x Then take, Clarinda, friendship’s hand (Friendship, at least, I may avow), And lay no more your chill command — I’ll write, whatever I ’ve to do. SYLVANDER. Wednesday night. TO CLARINDA WITH A PAIR OF WINE-GLASSES The glasses were sent as a parting gift when Burns left Edinburgh, 24th March, 1788. I Farr Empress of the Poet’s soul And Queen of Poetesses, Clarinda, take this little boon, This humble pair of glasses; II And fill them up with generous juice, As generous as your mind; And pledge them to the generous toast: “The whole of human kind!” III * To those who love us !” second fill; But not to those whom we love, Lest we love those who love not us ! A third: — “To thee and me, love!” TO HUGH PARKER A brother of Major William Parker of Kil- marnock, referred to in the song Ye Sons of Old Killie (see post, p. 306). Writing to Robert Muir, 26th August, 1787, Burns sends compli- ments to Messrs. W. and H. Parker, and hopes that ‘“‘ Hughoe is going on and prospering with God and Miss M‘Causlin.” The Epistle was written soon after his arrival in Ellisland on 12th June, 1788, whence, on writing to Mrs. Dunlop, he describes himself (14th June) as “a solitary inmate of an old smoky spence ; far from every object I love, or by whom I am beloved; nor any acquaintance older than yes- terday except Jenny Geddes, the old mare I ride on.” In this strange land, this uncouth clime, A land unknown to prose or rhyme; Where words ne’er cros’t the Muse’s heckles, Nor limpit in poetic shackles: A land that Prose did never view it, Except when drunk he stacher’t thro’ it: Here, ambush’d by the chimla cheek, Hid in an atmosphere of reek, I hear a wheel thrum i’ the neuk, I hear it — for in vain I leuk: The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel Enhuskéd by a fog infernal. Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures, I sit and count my sins by chapters; For life and spunk like ither Christians, I’m dwindled down to mere existence; W? nae converse but Gallowa’ bodies, Wi nae kend face but Jenny Geddes. Jenny, my Pegasean pride, Dowie she saunters down Nithside, And ay a westlin leuk she throws, While tears hap o’er her auld brown nose ! Was it for this wi’ cannie care Thou bure the Bard through many a shire ? At howes or hillocks never stumbled, And late or early never grumbled ? O, had I power like inclination, I’d heeze thee up a constellation ! To canter with the Sagitarre, Or loup the Ecliptic like a bar, Or turn the Pole like any arrow; Or, when auld Phebus bids good-morrow, Down the Zodfac urge the race, And cast dirt on his godship’s face: For I could lay my bread and kail He’d ne’er cast saut upo’ thy tail! .. . Wi’ a’ this care and a’ this grief, And sma’, sma’ prospect of relief, And nought but peat reek i’ my head, How can I write what ye can read ? — Tarbolton, twenty-fourth o’ June, 140 POSTHUMOUS PIECES Ye ’ll find me in a better tune;, But till we meet and weet our whistle, Tak this excuse for nae epistle. Rosert Burns. TO ALEX. CUNNINGHAM ELLISLAND IN NITHSDALE, July 27th, 1788. Alexander Cunningham, when Burns met him in Edinburgh in the winter of 1786-7, was practising as a lawyer. Probably Burns was introduced to him at the Crochallan Club; and they remained on the friendliest terms until the poet’s death. The Anna of this Epistle and of the song Anna (ante, p. 95) was a Miss Anne Stewart, who (to Cunningham’s lasting chagrin) married Mr. Forest Dewar, surgeon and town-councillor, Edinburgh (13th January, 1789). Her perfidy suggested She’s Fair and Fause; and, according to Burns himself, it was Cunningham’s misfortune to which he essayed to do further justice in Had I a Cave. Cun- ningham married in 1792, and went into part- nership with a goldsmith. He died January 27, 1812. In accordance with an announce- ment made by Burns in an affecting letter a fortnight before his death, the Poet’s post- humous child was named Alexander Cunning- ham Burns. Holograph letters of Cunningham — with copies of which we have been favoured by his descendants — show that he it was who originated both the subscription on behalf of Mrs. Burns and the scheme for a collected Edition; and that to him the success of both enterprises was chiefly due. I My godlike friend — nay, do not stare: You think the praise is odd-like ? But “God is Love,” the saints declare: Then surely thou art god-like ! Il And is thy ardour still the same, And kindled still in Anna ? Others may boast a partial flame, But thou art a voleano ! Til Even Wedlock asks not love beyond Death’s tie-dissolving portal; But thou, omnipotently fond, May’st promise love immortal ! IV Thy wounds such healing powers defy, Such symptoms dire attend them, That last great antiheetie try — Marriage perhaps may mend them. Vv Sweet Anna has an air —a grace, Divine, magnetic, touching ! She takes, she charms — but who ean trace The process of bewitching ? TO ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ. OF FINTRY REQUESTING A FAVOUR This was doubtless the piece referred to in a note to Miss Chalmers, 16th September, 1788 : “T very lately —to wit, since harvest began — wrote a poem, not in imitation, but in the manner of Pope’s Moral Epistles. It is only a short essay, just to try the strength of my Muse’s pinion in that way.’’ For an account of Graham of Fintry, see ante, p. 85. WHEN Nature her great master-piece de- sign’d, And fram’d her last, best work, the human maind, Her eye intent on all the wondrous plan, She form’d of various stuff the various Man. The useful many first, she calls them forth — Plain plodding Industry and sober Worth: Thence peasants, farmers, native sons of earth, And merchandise’ whole genus take their birth; Each prudent cit a warm existence finds, And all mechanics’ many-apron’d kinds. Some other rarer sorts are wanted yet — The lead and buoy are needful to the net: The caput mortuum of gross desires Makes a material for mere knights and squires; The martial phosphorus is taught to flow; She kneads the lumpish philosophic dough, Then marks th’ unyielding mass with grave designs — TO ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ., OF FINTRY I4t Law, physic, politics, and deep divines; Last, she sublimes th’ Aurora of the poles, The flashing elements of female souls. The order’d system fair before her stood; Nature, well pleas’d, pronoune’d it very good; Yet ere she gave creating labour, o’er, Half-jest, she tried one curious labour more. Some spumy, fiery, ignis fatuus matter, Such as the slightest breath of air might scatter; With arch-alacrity and conscious glee (Renee may have her whim as well as we: er Hogarth-art, perhaps she meant to show it), She forms the thing, and christens it —a Poet: Creature, tho’ oft the prey of care and sorrow, When blest to-day, unmindful of to-mor- row; A being form’d t’ amuse his graver friends; Admir’d and prais’d — and there the wages ends; _A mortal quite unfit for Fortune’s strife, ‘Yet oft the sport of all the ills of life; Prone to enjoy each pleasure riches give, Yet haply wanting wherewithal to live; Longing to wipe each tear, to heal each _ groan, Yet frequent all unheeded in his own. But honest Nature is not quite a Turk: She Jaugh’d at first, then felt for her poor work. Viewing the propless climber of mankind, She cast about a standard tree to find; In pity for his helpless woodbine state, She clasp’d his tendrils round the truly great: A title, and the only one I claim, To lay strong hold for help on bounteous Graham. . Pity the hapless Muses’ tuneful train ! Weak, timid Jandsmen on life’s stormy main, Their hearts no selfish, stern, absorbent stuff, That never gives— tho’ humbly takes — enough: The little Fate allows, they share as soon, Unlike sage, proverb’d Wisdom’s hard- wrung boon. The world were blest did bliss on them de- pend — Ah, that “the friendly e’er should want a friend !” Let Prudence number o’er each sturdy son Who life and wisdom at one race begun, Who feel by reason, and who give by rule (Instinct ’s a brute, and Sentiment a foul !), Who make poor “ will do” wait upon “I should ” — We own they ’re prudent, but who owns they ’re good ? Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye, God’s image rudely etch’d on base alloy !. But ‘come yé who the godlike pleasure — ‘know, Heaven’s attribute « distinguish’d — to be- stew ! ae oo Whose arms of love would grasp all human race: a Come thou who‘ giv’st with all a courtier’s grace— . ’ Pe oa Friend of my’ life, true .patron ‘of my rhymes, dees . Prop of my dearest hopes for future times ! Why shrinks my soul, half blushing, half afraid, Backward, abash’d to ask thy friendly aid ? I know my need, I know thy giving hand, I tax thy friendship at thy kind command. But there are such who court the tuneful Nine (Heavens! shonld the branded character be mine !), Whose verse in manhood’s pride sublimely A flows, Yet vilest reptiles in their begging prose. Mark, how their lofty independent spirit Soars on the spurning wing of injur’d merit ! Seek you the proofs in private life to find ? Pity the best of words should be bnt wind! So to Heaven’s gates the lark’s shrill song ascends, But grovelling on the earth the carol ends. In all the clam’rons ery of starving want, They dun Benevolence with shameless front; Oblige them, patronise their tinsel lays — They persecute you all your future days ! 142 POSTHUMOUS PIECES Ere my poor soul such deep damnation stain, My horny fist assume the plough again ! The pie-bald jacket let me patch once more ! : On eighteenpence a week I’ve liv’d before. Tho’, thanks to Heaven, I dare even that last shift, I trust, meantime, my boon is in thy gift: That, plac’d by thee upon the wish’d-for height, With man and nature fairer in her sight, My Muse may imp her wing for some sub- limer flight. IMPROMPTU TO CAPTAIN RID- DELL ON RETURNING A NEWSPAPER Burns’s near neighbour at Friars Carse, who showed him great courtesy, and gave him a key to his private grounds and the Hermitage on Nithside (see ante, pp. 80, 120). Friars Carse was also the scene of the drinking bout celebrated in The Whistle (ante, p.99). Burns wrote his song, The Day Returns (post, p. 219) for the anniversary (‘7th November) of Captain Riddell’s marriage. At the Riddells’ fireside he “ enjoyed more pleasant evenings than at all the houses of the fashionable people put to- gether; ”’ and his great regard was in no wise lessened by the quarrel with the Captain’s brother and sister-in-law (see post, p. 178, Pre- fatory Note to Impromptu on Mrs. Riddell’s Birthday), by which the hospitable doors of GlenridJell — a centre of music and books, of talk and fellowship and wine — were closed on him, as the sequel was soon to show, for ever. On Captain Riddell’s death, 21st April, 1794, he hastened to dedicate his No More, Ye Warblers of the Wood (see post, p. 179) to his memory. Riddell was an accomplished musi- cian, and composed several of the airs to Burns’s songs in Johnson’s Museum. He is the “ wor- thy Glenriddell so skilled in old coins” of The Whistle. A fellow of the London Society of Antiquaries, he contributed some important papers to Archeologia. At his special request, Burns made a selection from his unprinted poems, which he presented, with a preface breathing warm affection for himself and his “amiable lady,” and concluding thus: ‘‘ Let these be regarded as the genuine sentiments of a man who seldom flattered any, and never those he loved.” ELLisLanp, Monday Evening. I Your News and Review, Sir, I’ve read through and through, Sir, With little admiring or blaming: The Papers are barren Of home-news or foreign — No murders or rapes worth the naming. II Our friends, the Reviewers, Those chippers and hewers, Are judges of mortar and stone, Sir; ut of meet or unmeet In a fabric complete I'll boldly pronounce they are none, Sir. III My goose-quill too rude is To tell all your goodness Bestow’d on your servant, the Poet; Would to God I had one Like a beam of the sun, And then all the world, Sir, should know it! REPLY TO A NOTE FROM CAP- TAIN RIDDELL 2 i : ELLISLAND. Deak Sir, at onie time or tide I’d rather sit wi’ you than ride, Tho’ ’t were wi’ royal Geordie: And trowth ! your kindness soon and late Aft gars me to mysel look blate — The Lord in Heaven reward ye! R. Borys. TO JAMES TENNANT OF GLEN- CONNER Second son of John Tennant, farmer, of Glenconner, in the parish of Ochiltree — ances- tor of the present Sir Charles Tennant of The Glen— by his first wife. He was born 1755; kept a mill at Ochiltree ; and died April, 1835. AULD comrade dear and brither sinner, How’s a’ the folks about Glenconner ? How do you this blae eastlin wind, That ’s like to blaw a body blind ? For me, my faculties are frozen, My dearest member nearly dozen’d. TO JOHN MMURDO 143 I’ve sent you here, by Johnie Simson, Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on: Smith wi’ his sympathetic feeling, An’ Reid to common sense appealing. Philosophers have fought and wrangled, An’ meikle Greek an’ Latin mangled, Till, wi’ their logic-jargon tir’d And in the depth of science mir’d, To common sense they now appeal — What wives and wabsters see and feel ! But, hark ye, friend ! I charge you strictly, Peruse them, an’ return them quickly: For now I’m grown sae cursed douse I pray and ponder butt the house; My shins my lane I there sit roastin, Perusing Bunyan, Brown, an’ Boston; Till by an’ by, if I hand on, I'll grunt a redl gospel groan. Already I begin to try it, To cast my een up like a pyet, When by the gun she tumbles o’er, Flutt’ring an’ gasping in her gore: Sae shortly you shall see me bright, A burning an’ a shining light. My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen, The ace an’ wale of honest men: When bending down wi’ auld grey hairs, Beneath the load of years and cares, May He who made him still support him, An’ views beyond the grave comfort him ! His worthy fam’ly far and near, God bless them a’ wi’ grace and gear ! My auld schoolfellow, preacher Willie, The manly tar, my Mason-billie, And Auchenbay, I wish him joy; If he’s a parent, lass or boy, May he be dad and Meg the mither Just five-and-forty years thegither ! And no forgetting wabster Charlie, I’m tauld he offers very fairly. An’, Lord, remember singing Sannock Wi’ hale breeks, saxpence, an’ a bannock ! And next, my auld acquaintance, Nancy, Since she is fitted to her fancy, An’ her kind stars hae airted till her A guid chiel wi’ a pickle siller ! My kindest, best respects, I sen’ it, To cousin Kate, an’ sister Janet: Tell them, frae me, wi’ chiels be cautious, For faith! they ‘Il aiblins fin’ them fash- ious; To grant a heart is fairly civil, But to grant a maidenhead ’s the devil ! Aw’ lastly, Jamie, for yoursel, May guardian angels tak a spell, An’ steer you seven miles south o’ Hell! But first, before you see Heaven’s glory, May ye get monie a merry story, Monie a laugh and monie a drink, And ay eneugh o’ needfu’ clink ! Now fare ye weel, an’ joy be wi’ you! For my sake, this I beg it 0’ you: Assist poor Simson a’ ye can; Yell fin’ him just an honest man. Sae I conclude, and quat my chanter, Yours, saint or sinner, Ras THE RANTER. TO JOHN M‘MURDO WITH SOME OF THE AUTHOR’S POEMS Son of Robert M‘Murdo of Drumlanrig. He became chamberlain to the Duke of Queensberry, and resided at Drumlanrig. He is, perhaps, the “ Factor John” of The Kirk’s Alarm (see post, p. 338). Burns was latterly on terms of peculiar intimacy with him and his family, especially after 1793, when M‘Murdo kept house near Dumfries. He died at Bath, 4th December, 1803. M‘Murdo and Colonel de Peyster of the Dumfries Volun- teers were brothers-in-law, their wives being daughters of Provost Blair, Dumfries. The canvassing of M‘Murdo and his ‘lovely spouse” in the Dumfries election of 1790 is thus described in the Election Ballad to Gra- ham of Fintry (post, p. 168) : “She won each gaping burgess’ heart, While he, sub rosé, played his part Among their wives and lasses.” But Burns’s esteem for both is sufficiently shown in the present note and in the lines On John M‘Murdo (post, p. 178). Two of their daughters are the respective themes of Bonie Jean and Phyllis the Fair. I O, coup I give thee India’s wealth, As I this trifle send ! Because thy Joy in both would be To share them with a friend ! II But golden sands did never grace The Heliconian stream; 144 POSTHUMOUS PIECES Then take what gold could never buy — An honest Bard’s esteem. SONNET TO ROBERT GRAHAM, ESQ., OF FINTRY ON RECEIVING A FAVOUR, IQTH AUGUST, 1789 The favour was the appointment to an ex- cise district on which the writer’s farm was situate. For Graham, see ante, p. 85. For the stave, it is fair to note that, judging by this and the other two or three essays in the form which Burns has left, he knew nothing about the sonnet except that it must consist of fourteen lines, and that (as his variations in the present case appear to show) he was not always sure of that. The reason is not, of course, that the sonnet (which is described in the Schorte Treatise [1585], and of which Mont- gomerie left some seventy finished and spirit- ed examples) had no past in the vernacular, put that very few sonnets were made in the eighteenth century, and none of these few was the work of either Ramsay or Fergusson. I cat no Goddess to inspire my strains: A fabled Muse may suit a Bard that feigns. Friend of my life ! my ardent spirit burns, And all the tribute of my heart returns, For boons accorded, goodness ever new, The gift still dearer, as the giver you. Thou orb of day ! thou other paler light ! And all ye many sparkling stars of night ! If aught that giver from my mind efface, If I that giver’s bounty e’er disgrace, Then roll to me along your wand’ring spheres Only to number out a villain’s years ! I lay my hand upon my swelling breast, And grateful would, but cannot, speak the rest. EPISTLE TO DR. BLACKLOCK Thomas Blacklock was born at Annan, of English (Cumberland) parents in 1721. At six months smallpox made him blind. He pub- lished Poems (poor stuff) in 1746; made the acquaintance of David Hume, who (with other friends) partly supported him at the University of Edinburgh; by Hume’s advice completed a theological course ; in 1762 was presented to the living of Kirkcudbright; but, the parish- ioners objecting to his blindness, retired in 1764 to Edinburgh, where he lived by taking pupils. He died 7th July, 1791. An edition of his verses appeared in 1798, with a life by Henry Mackenzie. It was owing to Blacklock that Burns resolved upon an Edinburgh Edi- tion. ELLISLAND, 21st October, 1789. I Wow, but your letter made me vauntie ! And are ye hale, and weel, and cantie ? I kend it still, your wee bit jauntie Wad bring ye to: Lord send you ay as weel’s I want ye, And then ye’ll do! II The Ill-Thief blaw the Heron south, And never drink be near his drouth ! He tauld mysel by word o’ mouth, He ’d tak my letter: I lippen’d to the chiel in trowth, And bade nae better. Ill But aiblins honest Master Heron Had at the time some dainty fair one To ware his theologie care on And holy study, ‘ And, tired o’ sauls to waste his lear on, E’en tried the body. Iv But what d’ ye think, my trusty fier ? I’m turned a gauger — Peace be here ! Parnassian queires, I fear, I fear, Ye ’Il now disdain me, And then my fifty pounds a year Will little gain me! Vv Ye glaikit, gleesome, dainty damies, Wha by Castalia’s wimplin streamies Lowp, sing, and lave your pretty limbies, Ye ken, ye ken, That strang necessity supreme is *Mang sons o’ men. VI T hae a wife and twa wee laddies; They maun hae brose and brats o’ duddies: TO A GENTLEMAN Ye ken yoursels my heart right proud is — I need na vaunt — But I'll sned besoms, thraw saugh woodies, Before they want. VIT Lord help me thro’ this warld o’ care ! I’m weary — sick o’t late and air ! Not but I hae a richer share Than monie ithers; But why should ae man better fare, And a’ men brithers ? VIII Come, firm Resolve, take thou the van, Thou stalk o’ carl-hemp in man ! And let us mind, faint heart ne’er wan A lady fair: Wha does the utmost that he can Will whyles do mair. IX But to conclude my silly rhyme (I’m scant o’ verse and scant o’ time): To make a happy fireside clime To weans and wife, That ’s the true pathos and sublime Of human life. x My compliments to sister Beckie, And eke the same to honest Lucky: I wat she is a daintie chuckie As e’er tread clay: And gratefully, my guid auld cockie, I’m yours for ay. Rozsert Burns. TO A GENTLEMAN WHO HAD SENT A NEWSPAPER, AND OFFERED TO CONTINUE IT FREE OF EXPENSE Probably Peter Stuart of The London Star. He left. The Morning Post to join with certain others, including John Mayne, author of The Siller Gun, in founding The Star and Evening Advertiser in the beginning of 1788; but in the February of 1789 he quarrelled, not, as has been vaguely supposed, with the proprietors of some other paper, but with the proprietors of The Star aforesaid, and on the 13th he brought 145 out a Star of his own. The main ground of the quarrel was his support of the Prince of Wales, and he defended his secession in a lengthy address to the public. Thus for some six months two several Stars appeared in Lon- don: the old one —- the Dog Star, Stuart called it— “published by John Mayne;” and the new one, ‘‘ published by Peter Stuart,” ex-pub- lisher of the old. At first Stuart retained the old title, with the addition below, Printed by P. Stuart ; but on February 24th he changed it to Stuart’s Star and Evening Advertiser, and on April 27th to The Morning Star. Some two months after the journal died. Krnp Srr, I’ve read your paper through, And faith, to me ’t was really new ! How guessed ye, Sir, what maist I wanted ? This monie a day I’ve grain’d and gaunted, To ken what French mischief was brewin;. Or what the drumlie Dutch were doin; That vile doup-skelper, Emperor Joseph, If Venus yet had got his nose off; Or how the collieshangie works Atween the Russians and the Turks; Or if the Swede, before he halt, Would play anither Charles the Twalt; If Denmark, any body spak o’t; Or Poland, wha had now the tack 0’t; How cut-throat Prussian blades were hingin; How libbet Italy was singing; If Spaniard, Portuguese, or Swiss Were sayin or takin aught amiss; Or how our merry lads at hame In Britain’s court kept up the game: How royal George—the Lord leuk o’er him !— Was managing St. Stephen’s quorum; If sleekit Chatham Will was livin, Or glaikit Charlie got his nieve in; How Daddie Burke the plea was cookin; If Warren Hastings’ neck was yeukin; How cesses, stents, and fees were rax’d, Or if bare arses yet were tax’d; The news o’ princes, dukes, and earls, Pimps, sharpers, bawds, and opera-girls; If that daft buckie, Geordie Wales, Was threshin still at hizzies’ tails; Or if he was grown oughtlins douser, And no a perfect kintra cooser: A’ this and mair I never heard of, And, but for you, I might despair’d of. So, gratefu’, back your news I send you, And pray a’ guid things may attend you! ELLISLAND, Monday Morning. 146 POSTHUMOUS PIECES TO PETER STUART Dear Peter, dear Peter, We poor sons of metre Are often negleckit, ye ken: For instance your sheet, man (Tho’ glad I’m to see ’t, man), I get it no ae day in ten. TO JOHN MAXWELL, ESQ., OF TERRAUGHTIE ON HIS BIRTH-DAY John Maxwell, though descended from a branch of the Maxwells, was born of humble parents at Buittle, 7th February, 1720, and apprenticed to a joiner in Dumfries. His in- dustry and ability enabled him to repurchase the family estate of Terraughtie. Burns’s pre- diction as to his length of days was so far veri- fied, one learns, that he died (25th January, 1814) in his ninety-fourth year. In the Second Heron Election Ballad (p. 166) he is designated “Teuch Johnie.’’ I Heatta to the Maxwells’ vet’ran Chief ! Health ay unsour’d by care or grief ! Inspir’d, I turn’d Fate’s sibyl leaf This natal morn: I see thy life is stuff o’ prief, Scarce quite half-worn. II This day thou metes threescore eleven, And I can tell that bounteous Heaven (The second-sight, ye ken, is given To ilka Poet) On thee a tack o’ seven times seven, Will yet bestow it. III If envious buckies view wi’ sorrow Thy lengthen’d days on thy blest morrow, May Desolation’s lang-teeth’d harrow, : Nine miles an’ hour, Rake them, like Sodom and Gomorrah, In brunstane stoure ! Iv But for thy friends, and they are monie, Baith honest men and lasses bonie, May couthie Fortune, kind and cannie In social glee, Wi’ mornings blythe and e’enings funny Bless them and thee ! Vv Fareweel, auld birkie! Lord be near ye, And then the Deil, he daurna steer ye ! Your friends ay love, your foes ay fear ye ! For me, shame fa’ me, If neist my heart I dinna wear ye, While Burns they ca’ me! TO WILLIAM STEWART In honest Bacon’s ingle-neuk Here maun I sit and think, Sick o’ the warld and warld’s folk, An’ sick, damn’d sick, o’ drink ! I see, I see there is nae help, But still doun I maun sink, Till some day laigh enough I yelp: — “ Wae worth that cursed drink!” Yestreen, alas! I was sae fu’ I could but yisk and wink; And now, this day, sair, sair I rue The weary, weary drink. Satan, I fear thy sooty claws, I hate thy brunstane stink, And ay I curse the luckless cause — The wicked soup o’ drink. In vain I would forget my woes In idle rhyming clink, For, past redemption damn’d in prose, I can do nought but drink. To you my trusty, well-tried friend, May heaven still on you blink! And may your life flow to the end, Sweet as a dry man’s drink ! INSCRIPTION TO MISS GRAHAM OF FINTRY I Here, where the Scottish Muse immortal lives In sacred strains and tuneful numbers join’d, Accept the gift! Though humble he who gives, Rich is the tribute of the grateful mind. TO COLONEL DE PEYSTER 147 iH So may no ruffian feeling in thy breast, Discordant, jar thy bosom-chords among ! But Peace attune thy gentle soul to rest, Or Love ecstatic wake his seraph song ! Ill Or Pity’s notes in luxury of tears, As modest Want the tale of woe reveals; While conscious Virtue all the strain en- dears, And heaven-born Piety her sanction seals ! Rosert Burns. Doumrnrizs, 31st January, 1794. REMORSEFUL APOLOGY Probably sent to Mrs. Walter Riddell. I Tue friend whom, wild from Wisdom’s way, The fumes of wine infuriate send (Not moony madness more astray), Who but deplores that hapless friend ? II Mine was th’ insensate, frenzied part — Ah! why should I such scenes outlive ? Scenes so abhorrent to my heart ! *T is thine to pity and forgive. TO COLLECTOR MITCHELL Written towards the close of 95. Burns was on very friendly terms with Mitchell, and often sent him first drafts for criticism. I Frienp of the Poet tried and leal, Wha wanting thee might beg or steal; Alake, alake, the meikle Deil Wi’ 2’ his witches Are at it, skelpin jig an’ reel In my poor pouches ! Il I modestly fu’ fain wad hint it, That One-pound-one, I sairly want it; If wi’ the hizzie down ye sent it, It would be kind; And while my heart wi’ life-blood dunted, I’d bear ’t in mind! III So may the Auld Year gang out moanin To see the New come laden, groanin Wi’ double plenty o’er the loanin To thee and thine: Domestic peace and comforts crownin The hale design ! POSTSCRIPT Iv Ye’ve heard this while how I’ve been licket, And by fell Death was nearly nicket: Grim loon! He got me by the fecket, And sair me sheuk; But by guid luck I lap a wicket, And turn’d a neuk. Vv But by that health, I ’ve got a share o’t, And by that life, I’m promis’d mair o’t, My hale and weel, I ’ll tak a care o't, A tentier way; Then farewell Folly, hide and hair o’t, For ance and ay! TO COLONEL DE PEYSTER Colonel Arent Schuyler de Peyster was de- scended from a Huguenot family settled in America, and served with distinction in the American War. He took up honse at Mavis Grove, near Dumfries ; and on th May, 1795, was appointed colonel of the Dumfries Volun- teers, in which Burns was a private. He was a brother-in-law of John M‘Murdo ‘see ante, p. 143), He died 26th November, 18z2, in his 96th year. I My honor’d Colonel, deep I feel Your interest in the Poet’s weal: Ah! now sma’ heart hae I to speel The steep Parnassus, Surrounded thus by bolus pill And potion glasses. I 48 POSTHUMOUS PIECES II O, what a canty warld were it, Would pain and care and sickness spare it, And Fortune favor worth and merit As they deserve, And ay a rowth — roast-beef and claret ! — Syne, wha wad starve ? I Dame Life, tho’ fiction out may trick her, And in paste gems and frippery deck her, Oh! flickering, feeble, and unsicker I’ve found her still: Ay wavering, like the willow-wicker, *Tween good and ill! Iv ‘Then that curst carmagnole, Auld Satan, Watches, like baudrons by a ratton, Our sinfu’ saul to get a claut on Wi’ felon ire; Syne, whip ! his tail ye ne’er cast saut on — He’s aff like fire. Vv Ah Nick! Ah Nick! it is na fair, First showing us the tempting ware, Bright wines and bonie lasses rare, To put us daft; Syne weave, unseen, thy spider snare O’ Hell’s damned waft! VI Poor Man, the flie, aft bizzes by, And aft, as chance he comes thee nigh, Thy damn’d auld elbow yeuks wi’ joy And hellish pleasure, Already in thy fancy’s eye Thy sicker treasure ! VII Soon, heels o’er gowdie, in he gangs, And, like a sheep-head on a tangs, Thy girnin laugh enjoys his pangs And murdering wrestle, As, dangling in the wind, he hangs A gibbet’s tassle. VIII But lest you think I am uncivil To plague you with this draunting drivel, Abjuring a’ intentions evil, I quat my pen: The Lord preserve us frae the Devil ! Amen! Amen! TO MISS JESSIE LEWARS Tune be the volumes, Jessie fair, And with them take the Poet’s prayer: That Fate may in her fairest page, With ev’ry kindliest, best presage Of future bliss enrol thy name; With native worth, and spotless fame, And wakeful caution, still aware Of ill — but chief Man’s felon snare ! All blameless joys on earth we find, And all the treasures of the mind — These be thy guardian and reward ! So prays thy faithful friend, the Bard. Rozsert Burns. June 26, 1796. INSCRIPTION WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF OF A COPY OF THE LAST EDITION OF MY POEMS, PRESENTED TO THE LADY WHOM, IN SO MANY FICTITIOUS REVER- IES OF PASSION, BUT WITH THE MOST ARDENT SENTIMENTS OF REAL FRIEND- SHIP, I HAVE SO OFTEN SUNG UNDER THE NAME OF CHLORIS For Chloris, see Prefatory Note to Lassie wi’ the Lint-white Locks, post, p. 289. The copy sent to George Thomson, now at Brechin Cas- tle, corresponds with the text. An early draft is in the Clarke-Adam Collection. The stanza is that of much English eigh- teenth century verse: among the rest, of Gold- smith’s Edwin and Angelina. I *T 1s Friendship’s pledge, my young, fair Friend, Nor thou the gift refuse; Nor with unwilling ear attend The moralising Muse. II Since thou in all thy youth and charms Must bid the world adieu (A world ’gainst peace in constant arms), To join the friendly few; Ill Since, thy gay morn of life o’ercast, Chill came the tempest’s lour PROLOGUE 149 (And ne’er Misfortune’s eastern blast Did nip a fairer flower); Iv Since life’s gay scenes must charm no more: Still much is left behind, Still nobler wealth hast thou in store — The comforts of the mind ! Vv Thine is the self-approving glow Of conscious honor’s part; And (dearest gift of Heaven below) Thine Friendship’s truest heart; vI The joys refin’d of sense and taste, With every Muse to rove: And doubly were the Poet blest, These joys could he improve. Une Bagatelle de ’ Amitié. Coma. THEATRICAL PIECES PROLOGUE SPOKEN BY MR. WOODS ON HIS BENEFIT NIGHT, MONDAY, I6TH APRIL, 1787 William Woods, born 1751, was originally a printer, but joined (c. 1768) a strolling com- pany at Southampton. ter appearing in London, he removed, about 1771, to Edinburgh, where he played leading parts in tragedy and sentimental comedy. He died 14th De- cember, 1802, and was buried in the Old Cal- ton Cemetery. He was author of two plays: The Volunteers (1778) and The Twins (1780) ; the last one published in ’83. Burns’s interest in Woods was probably quickened by the play- er’s friendship with Fergusson, who, in his Last Will, bequeaths him his Shakespeare : — ** To Woods, whose genius can provoke My passions to the bowl or sock ; For love to thee and to the Nine, Be my immortal Shakespeare thine.” The piece, like the others in this category, is on the traditional lines originally laid down by Dryden. WueEn bya generous Publie’s kind acclaim That dearest need is granted — honest fame; When here your favour is the actor’s lot, Nor even the man in private life forgot; What breast so dead to heavenly Virtue’s glow But heaves impassion’d with the grateful throe ? Poor is the task to please a barb’rous throng: It needs no Siddons’ powers in Southern’s song. But here an ancient nation, fam’d afar For genius, learning high, as great in war. Hail, Caledonia, name for ever dear ! Before whose sons I’m honor’d to ap- pear ! Where every science, every noble art, That can inform the mind or mend the heart, Is known (as grateful nations oft have found), Far as the rude barbarian marks the bound ! Philosophy, no idle pedant dream, Here holds her search by heaven-taught Reason’s beam; Here History paints with elegance and force The tide of Empire’s fluctuating course; Here Douglas forms wild Shakespeare into plan, And Harley rouses all the God in man. When well-form’d taste and sparkling wit unite With manly lore, or female beauty bright (Beauty, where faultless symmetry and grace Can only charm us in the second place), Witness my heart, how oft with panting fear, As on this night, I’ve met these judges here ! , But still the hope Experience taught to live: Equal to judge, you ’re candid to forgive. No hundred-headed Riot here we meet, With Decency and Law beneath his feet; Nor Insolence assumes fair Freedom’s name: Like Caledonians you applaud or blame! O Thou, dread Power, Whose empire- giving hand Has oft been stretch’d to shield the honor’d land ! ; Strong oo she glow with all her ancient re; May every son be worthy of his sire; 150 POSTHUMOUS PIECES Firm may she rise, with generous disdain At Tyranny’s, or direr Pleasure’s chain; Still self-dependent in her native shore, Bold may she brave grim Danger’s loudest roar. Till Fate the curtain drop on worlds to be no more ! PROLOGUE SPOKEN AT THE THEATRE OF DUMFRIES ON NEW YEAR’S DAY EVENING, 1790 Of Sutherland Burns wrote (9th February, 1790) to William Nicol: ‘A worthier or cleverer fellow I have rarely met with.” To his brother Gilbert, 11th January, 1790, he described him as “aman of apparent worth,” adding that he spouted the prologue ‘‘to his audience with applause.” “TI shall not be in the least mortified,” wrote Burns, ‘‘ though they are never heard of, but if they can be of. any service to Mr. Sutherland and his friends, I shall kiss my hands to my Lady Muse, and own myself much her debtor.” No song nor dance I bring from yon great eit That Giceag it o’er our taste — the more ’s the pity ! Tho’, by the bye, abroad why will you roam ? . Good sense and taste are natives here at home. But not for panegyric I appear: I come to wish you all a good New Year! Old Father Time deputes me here before e, Not fie to preach, but tell his simple story. The sage, grave Ancient cough’d, and bade me say: “ You’re one year older this important day.” If wiser too — he hinted some suggestion, But ’t would be rude, you know, to ask the question; And with a would-be-roguish leer and wink He bade me on you press this one word — Think ! Ye sprightly youths, quite flush with hope and spirit, Who think to storm the world by dint of merit, To you the dotard has a deal to say, Ih his sly, dry, sententious, proverb way ! He bids you mind, amid your thoughtless rattle, é That the first blow is ever half the battle; That, tho’ some by the skirt may try to snatch him, Yet by the forelock is the hold to catch him; That, whether doing, suffering, or forbear- ing, You may do miracles by persevering. Last, tho’ not least in love, ye youthful fair. Angelic forms, high Heaven’s peculiar care ! To you old Bald-Pate smoothes his wrinkled brow, And humbly begs you ’ll mind the impor- tant — Now ! To crown your happiness he asks your leave, And offers bliss to give and to receive. For our sincere, tho’ haply weak endeav- ours, With grateful pride we own your many favours; And howsoe’er our tongues may ill reveal it Believe our glowing bosoms truly feel it. SCOTS PROLOGUE FOR MRS. SUTHERLAND ON HER BENEFIT-NIGHT AT THE THEA- TRE, DUMFRIES, MARCH 3, 1790 Waar needs this din about the town o* Lon’on, How this new play an’ that new song is comin ? Why is outlandish stuff sae meikle courted ? Does Nonsense mend like brandy — when. imported ? Is there nae poet, burning keen for fame, Will bauldly try to gie us plays at hame ? For Comedy abroad he need na toil: A knave and fool are plants of every soil. Nor need he stray as far as Rome or Greece To gather matter for a serious piece: There ’s themes enow in Caledonian story Would show the tragic Muse in a’ her glory. THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN I51 Is there no daring Bard will rise and tell How glorious Wallace stood, how hapless fell ? Where are the Muses fled that could pro- duce A drama worthy o’ the name o’ Bruce ? How here, even here, he first unsheath’d the sword *Gainst mighty England and her guilty lord, And after monie a bloody, deathless doing, Wrench’d his dear country from the jaws of Ruin ! O, for a Shakespeare, or an Otway scene To paint the lovely, hapless Scottish Queen ! Vain all th’ omnipotence of female charms *Gainst headlong, ruthless, mad Rebellion’s arms ! She fell, but fell with spirit truly Roman, To glut the vengeance of a rival woman: A woman (tho’ the phrase may seem uncivil) As able — and as cruel —as the Devil! One Douglas lives in Home’s immortal page, But Douglasses were heroes every age; And tho’ your fathers, prodigal of life, A Douglas followed to the martial strife, Perhaps, if bowls row right, and Right succeeds, Ye yet may follow where a Douglas leads ! As ye hae generous done, if a’ the land Would take the Muses’ servants by the hand; Not only hear, but patronize, befriend them, And where ye justly can commend, com- mend them; And aiblins, when they winna stand the test, Wink hard, and say: “The folks hae done their best !” Would a’ the land do this, then I’ll be caition Ye ‘ll soon hae Poets o’ the Scottish nation Will gar Fame blaw until her trumpet crack, And warsle Time, an’ lay him on his back ! For us and for our stage, should onie spier: — «“Whase aught thae chiels maks a’ this bustle here?” My best leg foremost, I’ll set up my brow: — “ We have the honor to belong to you!” We ’re your ain bairns, e’en guide us as ye like, But like good mithers, shore before ye strike; And gratefu’ still, I trust ye ’ll ever find us For gen’rous patronage and meikle kindness We’ve got frae a’ professions, setts an’ ranks: God help us! we’re but poor —ye’se get but thanks ! THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN AN OCCASIONAL ADDRESS SPOKEN BY MISS FONTENELLE ON HER BENEFIT NIGHT, NOVEMBER 26, 1792 Sent to Miss Fontenelle in a complimentary letter: ‘“‘Your charms as a woman would se- cure applause to the most indifferent actress, and your theatrical talents would secure admi- ration to the plainest figure.” She is also the subject of a flattering Hpigram (p. 189). Miss Fontenelle won some applause on the London boards. Her name appears in the obituary of The Gentleman’s Magazine for September, 1800: “Tn Charles-town, South Carolina, a victim to. the yellow fever, Miss Fontenelle, who made. her début many years ago at Covent Garden, and afterwards performed at the Haymarket. In America she played under the name of Mrs. Wilkinson.”’ Waite Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things, The fate of empires and the fall of kings; While quacks of State must each produce- his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man; Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention. First, in the sexes’ intermix’d connexion One sacred Right of Woman is Protection: The tender flower, that lifts its head elate, Helpless must fall before the blasts of fate, . Sunk on the earth, defae’d its lovely form, Unless your shelter ward th’ impending: storm. Our second Right — but needless here is. caution — To keep that right inviolate ’s the fashion: Each man of sense has it so full before him, He’d die before he’d wrong it —’tis De-- corum ! 152 POSTHUMOUS PIECES There was, indeed, in far less polish’d days, A time, when rough rude Man had naughty ways: : Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot, Nay, even thus invade a lady’s quiet! Now, thank our stars! these Gothic times are fled; *Now, well-bred men — and you are all well-bred — Most justly think (and we are much the gainers) Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor man- ners. For Right the third, our last, our best, our dearest: That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest, Which even the Rights of Kings, in low prostration, Most humbly own —’tis dear, dear Admi- ration ! In that blest sphere alone we live and move; There taste that life of life — Immortal Love. Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs — ’Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares ? When awful Beauty joins with all her charms, Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms ? But truce with kings, and truce with con- stitutions, With bloody armaments and revolutions; Let Majesty your first attention summon: Ah! ¢aira! the Majesty of Woman ! ADDRESS SPOKEN BY MISS FONTENELLE ON HER BENEFIT NIGHT, DECEMBER 4, 1793, AT THE THEATRE, DUMFRIES STILL anxious to secure your partial favor, And not less anxious, sure, this night than ever, A Prologue, Epilogue, or some such mat- ter °T would vamp my bill, said 1, if nothing better: So sought a Poet roosted near the skies; Told him I came to feast my curious eyes; Said, nothing like his works was ever printed; And last, my prologue-business slily hinted. “ Ma’am, let me tell you,” quoth my man of rhymes, “T know your bent — these are no laugh- ing times: Can you— but, Miss, I own I have my fears — Dissolve in pause, and sentimental tears ? With laden sighs, and solemn-rounded sen- tence, Rouse from his sluggish slumbers fell Re- pentance ? Paint Vengeance, as he takes his horrid stand, Waving on high the desolating brand, Calling the storms to bear him o’era guilty land?” I could no more! Askance the creature eyeing: — “D’ ye think,” said I, “this face was made for crying ? I'll laugh, that’s poz—nay more, the world shall know it; And so, your servant! gloomy Master Poet !” Firm as my creed, Sirs, ’t is my fix’d be- lief That Misery ’s another word for Grief. T also think (so may I be a bride !) That so much laughter, so much life en- joy’d. Thou man of crazy care and ceaseless sigh, Still under bleak Misfortune’s blasting eye; Doom’d to that sorest task of man alive — To make three guineas do the work of five; Laugh in Misfortune’s face —the beldam witch — Say, you’ll be merry, tho’ you can’t be rich ! Thou other man of care, the wretch in love! Who long with jiltish arts and airs hast strove; Who, as the boughs all temptingly project, Measur’st in desperate thought —a rope — thy neck — Or, where the beetling cliff o’erhangs the deep, BIRTHDAY ODE FOR 31st DECEMBER, 1787 153 Peerest to meditate the healing leap: Would’st thou be eur’d, thou silly, moping ‘Laugh ne follies, laugh e’en at thy- Learn a ea those frowns now so ter- And lovee kinder: that ’s your grand spe- cific. To sum up all: be merry, I advise; And as we’re merry, may we still be wise ! POLITICAL PIECES ADDRESS OF BEELZEBUB To the Right Honorable the Earl of Breadalbane, President of the Right Honorable the Highland Society, which met on the 23rd of May last, at the Shakespeare, Covent Garden, to concert ways and means to frustrate the designs of five hundred Highlanders who, as the Society were informed by Mr. M‘Kenzie of Applecross, were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their Jawful lords and masters whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of Mr. Macdonald of Glen- gary to the wilds of Canada, in search of that fantastic thing — Liberty. Longe life, my lord, an’ health be yours, Unskaith’d by hunger’d Highland boors ! Lord grant nae duddie, desperate beggar, Wi’ dirk, claymore, or rusty trigger, May twin auld Scotland o’ a life She likes — as lambkins like a knife ! Faith ! you and Applecross were right To keep the Highland hounds in sight ! I doubt na! they wad bid nae better Than let them ance out owre the water ! Then up amang thae lakes and seas, They 11 mak what rules and laws they please: : Some daring Hancock, or a Franklin, May set their Highland bluid a-ranklin; Some Washington again may head them, Or some Montgomerie, fearless, lead them; Till (God knows what may be effected When by such heads and hearts directed) Poor dunghill sons of dirt an’ mire May to Patrician rights aspire ! Nae sage North now, nor sager Sackville, To watch and premier owre the pack vile ! An’ whare will ye get Howes and Clin- ' tons To bring them to a right repentance ? To cowe the rebel generation, An’ save the honor o’ the nation ? They, an’ be damn’d! what right hae they To meat or sleep or light o’ day, Far less to riches, pow’r, or freedom, But what your lordship likes to gie them ? But hear, my lord! Glengary, hear! Your hand ’s owre light on them, I fear: Your factors, grieves, trustees, and bailies, I canna say but they do gaylies : They lay aside a’ tender mercies, An’ tirl the hullions to the birses. Yet while they ’re only poind and herriet, They'll keep their stubborn Highland spirit. But smash them! crush them a’ to spails, An’ rot the dyvors i’ the jails ! The young dogs, swinge them to the labour: Let wark an’ hunger mak them sober! The hizzies, if they ’re aughtlins fawsom, Let them in Drury Lane be lesson’d ! An’ if the wives an’ dirty brats Come thiggin at your doors an’ yetts, Flaffin wi’ duds an’ grey wi’ beas’, Frightin awa your deuks an’ geese, Get out a horsewhip or a jowler, The langest thong, the fiercest growler, An’ gar the tatter’d gypsies pack Wi’ a’ their bastards on their back ! Go on, my Lord ! I lang to meet you, An’ in my “house at hame” to greet you Wi’ common lords ye shanna mingle: The benmost neuk beside the ingle, At my right han’ assigned your seat ’Tween Herod’s hip an’ Polycrate, Or (if you on your station tarrow) Between Almagro and Pizarro, A seat, I’m sure ye ’re weel deservin ’t; An’ till ye come — your humble servant, BEELZEBUB Het, 1st June, Anno Mundi 5790. BIRTHDAY ODE FOR 31st DECEMBER, 1787 Without giving his authority, Currie ac- counts for the piece thus: “It appears that on the 31st December he (Burns) attended a meeting to celebrate the birthday of the lineal descendant of the Scottish race of kings, the late unfortunate Prince Charles Edward.” 154 POSTHUMOUS PIECES More he knew uot; but he assumed the “ per- fect loyalty to the reigning sovereign of all who attended the meeting,” and he withheld a large portion of the Ode because it was ‘‘a kind of rant, for which indeed precedent may be cited in various other odes, but with which it is impossible to go along.” AFAR the illustrious Exile roams, Whom kingdoms on this day should hail, An inmate in the casual shed, On transient pity’s bounty fed, Haunted by busy Memory’s bitter tale ! Beasts of the forest have their savage homes, But He, who should imperial purple wear, Owns not the lap of earth where rests his royal head: His wretched refuge dark despair, While ravening wrongs and woes pursue, And distant far the faithful few Who would his sorrows share ! False flatterer, Hope, away, Nor think to lure us as in days of yore ! We solemnize this sorrowing natal day, To prove our loyal truth — we can no more — And, owning Heaven’s mysterious sway, Submissive, low, adore. Ye honor’d, mighty Dead, Who nobly perish’d in the glorious cause, Your King, your Country, and her laws: From great Dundee, who smiling Victory led And fell a Martyr in her arms (What breast of northern ice but warms !), To bold Balmerino’s undying name, Whose soul of fire, lighted at Heaven’s high flame, Deserves the proudest wreath departed heroes claim ! Not unrevenged your fate shall lie, It only lags, the fatal hour: Your blood shall with incessant cry Awake at last th’ unsparing Power. As from the cliff, with thundering course, The snowy ruin smokes along With doubling speed and gathering force, Till deep it, crushing, whelms the cottage in the vale, So Vengeance’ strong, Shall with resistless might assail, Usurping Brunswick’s pride shall lay, And Stewart’s wrongs and yours with ten- fold weight repay. arm, ensanguin’d, Perdition, baleful child of night, Rise and revenge the injured right Of Stewart’s royal race ! Lead on the unmuzzled hounds of Hell, Till all the frighted echoes tell The blood-notes of the chase ! Full on the quarry point their view, Full on the base usurping crew, The tools of faction and the nation’s curse } Hark how the cry grows on the wind; They leave the lagging gale behind; Their savage fury, pityless, they pour; With murdering eyes already they de- vour ! See Brunswick spent, a wretched prey, His life one poor despairing day, Where each avenging hour still ushers in a worse ! Such Havoe, howling all abroad, Their utter ruin bring, The base apostates to their God Or rebels to their King ! ’ ODE TO THE DEPARTED REGENCY BILL George III. began to show signs of mental de- rangement on 22d October, 1788; and on 5th December his physicians reported that, al- though he was not incurable, it was impossible to predict how long’ his illness might last. Fox and the “ Portland Band” (i. e. the Whigs) who hoped to return to power through the Prince of Wales, maintained that the Heir-Apparent must take up the Regency with plenary soy- ereign powers; but on 16th December Pitt brought in resolutions for appointing him Re- gent with restricted authority. The Bill passed the Commons on 11th February, 1789, but its progress was suspended by the announcement of the Chancellor on the 19th that the King was convalescent; and on 10th March he re- sumed his state. Daventer of Chaos’ doting years, Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears ! A NEW PSALM FOR THE CHAPEL OF KILMARNOCK 155 Whether thy airy, unsubstantial shade (The rights of sepulture now duly paid) Spread abroad its hideous form On the roaring civil storm, Deafening din and warring rage Factions wild with factions wage; Or Underground Deep-sunk, profound Among the demons of the earth, With groans that make The mountains shake Thou mourn thy ill-starr’d blighted birth; Or in the uncreated Void, Where seeds of future being fight, With lighten’d step thou wander wide To greet thy mother — Ancient Night — And as each jarring monster-mass is past, Fond recollect what once thou wast: In manner due, beneath this sacred oak, Hear, Spirit, hear! thy presence I in- voke ! By a Monarch’s heaven-struck fate; By a disunited State; By a generous Prince’s wrongs; By a Senate’s war of tongues; By a Premier’s sullen pride Louring on the changing tide; By dread Thurlow’s powers to awe — Rhetoric, blasphemy, and law; By the turbulent ocean, A Nation’s commotion; By the harlot-caresses Of Borough addresses; By days few and evil; Thy portion, poor devil !), y Power, Wealth, and Show — the Gods by men adored; By nameless Poverty their Hell abhorred; By all they hope, by all they fear, Hear! and Appear ! Stare not on me, thou ghostly Power, Nor, grim with chain’d defiance, lour ! No Babel-structure would I build Where, Order exil’d from his native sway, Confusion might the Regent-sceptre wield, While all would rule and none obey. Go, to the world of Man relate The story of thy sad, eventful fate; And call presumptuous Hope to hear And bid him check his blind career; And tell the sore-prest sons of Care Never, never to despair ! Paint Charles’s speed on wings of fire, The object of his fond desire, Beyond his boldest hopes, at hand. Paint all the triumph of the Portland Band (Hark ! how they lift the joy-exulting voice, And how their num’rous creditors rejoice !); But just as hopes to warm enjoyment rise, Cry “Convalescence !” and the vision flies. Then next pourtray a dark’ning twilight gloom Eclipsing sad a gay, rejoicing morn, While proud Ambition to th’ untimely tomb By gnashing, grim, despairing fiends is borne ! Paint Ruin, in the shape of high Dundas Gaping with giddy terror o’er the brow: In vain he struggles, the Fates behind him press, And clamorous Hell yawns for her prey below ! How fallen That, whose pride late scaled the skies ! And This, like Lucifer, no more to rise ! Again pronounce the powerful word: See Day, triumphant from the night, re- stored ! Then know this truth, ye Sons of Men (Thus ends thy moral tale): Your darkest terrors may be vain, Your brightest hopes may fail ! » A NEW PSALM FOR THE CHAPEL OF KILMARNOCK ON THE THANKSGIVING-DAY FOR HIS MAJESTY’S RECOVERY In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop of 4th April, 1789, [probably for 4th May], Burns wrote: “The following are a few stanzas of new Psalmody for that ‘joyful solemnity’ [the Thanks- giving for the King’s recovery] which I sent to a London newspaper with the date and preface following: ‘ Kilmarnock, 25th April. Mr. Printer, —In a certain chapel, not fifty leagues from the market cross of this good town, the following stanzas of Psalmody, it is said, were composed for, and devoutly sung on, the late joyful solemnity of the 23d.” The paper was Stuart’s Morning Star, where parody and letter, dated “Kilmarnock, April 30th,” and signed “ Duncan M‘Leerie ’ — the hero 156 POSTHUMOUS PIECES he of an old Kilmarnock song preserved in The Merry Muses — appeared on May 14th. I O, SING a new song to the Lord! Make, all and every one, A joyful noise, ev’n for the King His restoration ! Il The sons of Belial in the land Did set their heads together. «“ Come, let us sweep them off,” said they, “ Like an o’erflowing river !” Til They set their heads together, I say, They set their heads together: On right, and left, and every hand, We saw none to deliver. IV Thou madest strong two chosen ones, To quell the Wicked’s pride: That Young Man, great in Issachar, The burden-bearing tribe; Vv And him, among the Princes, chief In our Jerusalem, The Judge that’s mighty in Thy law, The man that fears Thy name. VI Yet they, even they with all their strength, Began to faint and fail; Even as two howling, rav’ning wolves To dogs do turn their tail. VII Th’ ungodly o’er the just prevail’d; For so Thou hadst appointed, That Thou might’st greater glory give Unto Thine own anointed ! VIII And now Thou hast restored our State, Pity our Kirk also; For she by tribulations Is now brought very low! IX . Consume that high-place, Patronage, From off Thy holy hill; And in Thy fury burn the book Even of that man M‘Gill ! x Now hear our prayer, accept our song, And fight Thy chosen’s battle ! We seek but little, Lord, from Thee: Thou kens we get as little ! INSCRIBED TO THE RIGHT HON. C. J. FOX Enclosed to Mrs. Dunlop in the same letter as the preceding piece: “ I have another poetic whim in my head, which I at present dedicate, or rather inscribe, to the Hon. Charles J. Fox ; but how long the fancy may hold I can’t say. A few of the first lines I have just rough sketched as follows.” How Wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite, How Virtue and Vice blend their black and their white, © How Genius, th’ illustrious father of fiction, Confounds rule and law, reconciles contra- diction, Ising. If these mortals, the critics, should bustle, I care not, not I: let the critics go whistle! But now for a Patron, whose name and whose glory At once may illustrate and honour my story :— Thon first of our orators, first of our wits, Yet whose parts and acquirements seem mere lucky hits; With knowledge so vast and with judg- ment so strong, No man with the half of ’em e’er could go wrong; With passions so potent and fancies so bright, No man with the half of ’em e’er could go right; A sorry, poor, misbegot son of the Muses, For using thy name, offers fifty excuses. Good Lord, what is Man! For as simple he looks, Do but try to develop his hooks and his erooks ! ON GLENRIDDELL’S FOX BREAKING HIS CHAIN 157 With his depths and his shallows, his good and his evil, All in all he’s a problem must puzzle the Devil. On his one ruling passion Sir Pope hugely labors, That, like th’ old Hebrew walking-switch, eats up its neighbours. Human Nature’s his show-box — your friend, would you know him ? Pull the string, Ruling Passion — the pic- ture will show him. What pity, in rearing so beanteous a sys- tem, One trifling particular — Truth — should have miss’d him ! For, spite of his fine theoretic positions, Mankind is a science defies definitions. Some sort all our qualities each to its tribe, And think Human Nature they truly de- seribe: Have you found this, or t’other ? There’s more in the wind, As by one drunken fellow his comrades youll find. But such is the flaw, or the depth of the plan In the make of that wonderful creature called Man, No two virtues, whatever relation they claim, Nor even two different shades of the same, Though like as was ever twin brother to brother, Possessing the one shall imply you ’ve the other. But truce with abstraction, and truce with a Muse Whose rhymes you ’ll perhaps, Sir, ne’er deign to peruse ! Will you leave your justings, your jars, and your quarrels, Contending with Billy for proud-nodding laurels ? My much-honour’d Patron, believe your poor Poet, Your courage much more than your pru- dence you show it. In vain with Squire Billy for laurels you struggle: He ‘ll have them by fair trade — if not, he will smuggle; Nor cabinets even of kings would conceal "em, He’d up the back-stairs, and by God he would steal ’em ! Then feats like Squire Billy’s, you ne’er can. achieve ’em; It is not, out-do him — the task is, out- thieve him ! ON GLENRIDDELL’S FOX BREAKING HIS CHAIN A FRAGMENT, 1791 Tuov, Liberty, thou art my theme: Not such as idle poets dream, Who trick thee up a heathen goddess That a fantastic cap and rod has ! Such stale conceits are poor and silly: I paint thee out a Highland filly, A sturdy, stubborn, handsome dapple, As sleek ’s a mouse, as round’s an apple, That, when thou pleasest, can do wonders, But when thy luckless rider blunders, Or if thy fancy should demur there, Wilt break thy neck ere thou go further. These things premis’d, I sing a Fox — Was caught among his native rocks, And to a dirty kennel chained — How he his liberty regained. Glenriddell ! a Whig without a stain, A Whig in principle and grain, Could’st thou enslave a free-born crear ture, A native denizen of Nature ? How could’st thou, with a heart so good (A better ne’er was sluiced with blood), Nail a poor devil to a tree, That ne’er did harm to thine or thee ? The staunchest Whig Glenriddel was, Quite frantic in his country’s cause; And oft was Reynard’s prison passing, And with his brother-Whigs canvassing The rights of men, the powers of women, With all the dignity of Freemen. Sir Reynard daily heard debates Of princes’, kings’, and nations’ fates, With many rueful, bloody stories Of tyrants, Jacobites, and Tories: 158 POSTHUMOUS PIECES From liberty how angels fell, ‘That now are galley-slaves in Hell; How Nimrod first the trade began ‘Of binding Slavery’s chains on man; How fell Semiramis — God damn her ! — Did first, with sacrilegious hammer all ills till then were trivial matters) ‘or Man dethron’d forge hen-peck fetters; How Xerxes, that abandoned Tory, Thought cutting throats was reaping glory, Until the stubborn Whigs of Sparta Taught him great Nature’s Magna Charta; How mighty Rome her fiat hurl’d Resistless o’er a bowing world, And, kinder than they did desire, Polish’d mankind with sword and fire: With much too tedious to relate Of ancient and of modern date, But ending still how Billy Pitt Unlucky boy !) with wicked wit as gage’d old Britain, drained her coffer, As butchers bind and bleed a heifer. Thus wily Reynard, by degrees In kennel listening at his ease, Suck’d in a mighty stock of knowledge, As much as some folks at a college; Knew Britain’s rights and constitution, Her aggrandisement, diminution; How Fortune wrought us good from evil: Let no man, then, despise the Devil, As who should say: “I ne’er can need him,” Since we to scoundrels owe our Freedom. ON THE COMMEMORATION RODNEY’S VICTORY OF KING’S ARMS, DUMFRIES, I2TH APRIL, 1793 Rodney’s action off Dominica, 12th April, 1792, was for some time celebrated year by year. InstEAD of a song, boys, Ill give you a toast: : Here ’s the Mem’ry of those on the Twelfth that we lost ! — We lost, did I say?—No, by Heav’n, that we found ! For their fame it shall live while the world goes round. The next in succession I’ll give you: the King! And who would betray him, on high may he swing ! And here’s the grand fabric, our Free Constitution As built on the base of the great Revolu-. tion ! And, longer with Politics not to be cramm’d, Be Anarchy curs’d, and be Tyranny damn’d ! And who would to Liberty e’er prove disloyal, May his son be a hangman—and he his first trial ! ODE FOR GENERAL WASHING- TON’S BIRTHDAY “T am just going to trouble your critical patience with the first sketch of a stanza I have been framing asI paced along the road. The subjectis Liberty : you know, my honoured friend, how dear the theme is to me. I de- sign it as an irregular ode for General Wash- ington’s birthday.” (R. B. to Mrs. Dunlop, 25th June, 1794.) No Spartan tube, no Attic shell, No lyre Aolian I awake. ’T is Liberty’s bold note I swell: Thy harp, Columbia, let me take ! See gathering thousands, while I sing, A broken chain, exulting, bring And dash it in a tyrant’s face, And dare him to his very beard, . And tell him he no more is fear’d, No more the despot of Columbia’s race ! A tyrant’s proudest insults brav’d, They shout a People freed! They hail an Empire sav’d ! Where is man’s godlike form ? Where is that brow erect and bold, That eye that can unmov’d behold The wildest rage, the loudest storm That e’er created Fury dared to raise ? Avaunt ! thou eaitiff, servile, base, That tremblest at a despot’s nod, Yet, crouching under the iron rod, Canst laud the arm that struck th’ insult- ing blow ! THE FETE CHAMPETRE 159 Art thou of man’s Imperial line ? Dost boast that countenance divine ? Each skulking feature answers: No! But come, ye sons of Liberty, Columbia’s offspring, brave as free, In danger’s hour still flaming in the van, Ye know, and dare maintain the Royalty of Man! Alfred, on thy starry throne Surrounded by the tuneful choir, The Bards that erst have struck the patriot lyre, And rous’d the freeborn Briton’s soul of fire, No more thy England own! Dare injured nations form the great design To make detested tyrants bleed ? Thy England execrates the glorious deed ! Beneath her hostile banners waving, Every pang of honour braving, England in thunder calls: “The tyrant’s cause is mine !” That hour accurst how did the fiends rejoice, And Hell thro’ all her confines raise th’ exulting voice ! That hour which saw the generous English name Link’t with such damnéd deeds of ever- lasting shame ! Thee, Caledonia, thy wild heaths among, Fam’d for the martial deed, the heaven- taught song, To thee I turn with swimming eyes ! Where is that soul of Freedom fled ? Immingled with the mighty dead Beneath that hallow’d turf where Wallace lies ! Hear it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death ! Ye babbling winds, in silence sweep ! Disturb not ye the hero’s sleep, Nor give the coward secret breath ! Is this the ancient Caledonian form, Firm as her rock, resistless as her storm ? Show me that eye which shot immortal hate, Blasting the Despot’s proudest bearing ! Show me that arm which, nerv’d with thundering fate, Crush’d Usurpation’s boldest daring ! Dark-quench’d as yonder sinking star, No more that glance lightens afar, That palsied arm no more whirls on the waste of war. THE FETE CHAMPETRE TuNE: Killiecrankie This is the earliest of a series of election ballads, all in some sort parodies of popular pieces. Regarding the genesis of this one, see ante, p. 15, Prefatory Note to When Guilford Good, and post, p. 221, Prefatory Note to The Battle of Sherramuir. It celebrates an enter- tainment given by William Cunningham of Annbank in 1788, on attaining his majority, but intended (so men held) to serve a political end as well. I O, wHa will to Saint Stephen’s House, To do our errands there, man ? O, wha will to Saint Stephen’s House O’ th’ merry lads of Ayr, man ? Or will ye send a man o’ law ? Or will ye send a sodger ? Or him wha led o’er Scotland a’ The meikle Ursa-Major ? II Come, will ye court a noble lord, Or buy a score o’ lairds, man ? For Worth and Honour pawn their word, Their vote shall be Glencaird’s, man. Ane gies them coin, ane gies them wine, Anither gies them clatter; Annbank, wha guess’d the ladies’ taste, He gies a Féte Champétre. Ill When Love and Beauty heard the news The gay green-woods amang, man, Where, gathering flowers and busking bowers, They heard the blackbird’s sang, man; A vow, they seal’d it with a kiss, Sir Politics to fetter: As theirs alone the patent bliss To hold a Féte Champétre. IV Then mounted Mirth on gleesome wing, O’er hill and dale she flew, man; Ik wimpling burn, ilk crystal spring, lk glen and shaw she knew, man. She summon’d every social sprite, That sports by wood or water, On th’ bonie banks of Ayr to meet And keep this Féte Champétre. 160 POSTHUMOUS PIECES Vv Cauld Boreas wi’ his boisterous crew Were bound to stakes like kye, man; And Cynthia’s car, o’ silver fu’, Clamb up the starry sky, man: Reflected beams dwell in the streams, Or down the current shatter; The western breeze steals through the trees To view this Féte Champétre. VI How many a robe sae gaily floats, What sparkling jewels glance, man, To Harmony’s enchanting notes, As moves the mazy dance, man ! The echoing wood, the winding flood Like Paradise did glitter, When angels met at Adam’s yett To hold their Féte Champétre. VII When Politics came there to mix And make his ether-stane, man, He circled round the magic ground, But entrance found he nane, man: He blush’d for shame, he quat his name, Forswore it every letter, Wi’ humble prayer to join and share This festive Féte Champétre. THE FIVE CARLINS Tune: Chevy Chase The Five Carlins were of course the Dumfries Parliamentary Burghs. On 29th October, 1789, soon after the beginning of the contest, Burns sent a copy of this brilliant pastiche of the folk- ballad to Mrs. Dunlop, prefacing it with a mi- nute account of the state of parties, and indicat- ing pretty plainly that his sympathies were with Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, who had represented the Burghs in the previous parlia- ment. The other candidate, Captain Patrick Miller — a young officer of twenty —the son of his landlord, he describes as the ‘‘ creature ” of the Duke of Queensberry. To Graham of Fintry he wrote on 9th December that he was “too little a man to have any political attach- ments ;” that he had “ the warmest veneration for individuals of both parties ;” but ‘‘ that a man who has it in his power to be the father of a country, and who is only known to that country by the mischiefs he does in it, is a char- acter that one cannot speak of with patience.” Captain Miller won the election, and repre- sented the Burghs till 1796. It was through him that Mr. Perry of The Morning Chronicle Proposed that Burns should join his staff in 1794. I THERE was five carlins in the South: They fell upon a scheme To send a lad to Lon’on town To bring them tidings hame: II Nor only bring them tidings hame, But do their errands there: And aiblins gowd and honor baith Might be that laddie’s share. TIt There was Maggie by the banks o’ Nith, A dame wi’ pride eneugh; And Marjorie o’ the Monie Lochs, A carlin auld and teugh; IV And Blinkin Bess of Annandale, That dwelt near Solway-side; And Brandy Jean, that took her gill In Galloway sae wide; v And Black Joan, frae Crichton Peel, O’ gipsy kith an’ kin: Five wighter carlins were na found The South countrie within. VI To send a lad to London town They met upon a day; And monie a knight and monie a laird This errand fain wad gae. VII O, monie a knight and monie a laird This errand fain wad gae; But nae ane could their fancy please, O, ne’er a ane but tway! VIII The first ane was a belted Knight, Bred of a Border band; ; And he wad gae to London Town, Might nae man him withstand; ELECTION BALLAD FOR WESTERHA’ 161 IX And he wad do their errands weel, And meikle he wad say; And ilka ane at London court Wad bid to him guid-day. x The neist cam in, a Soger boy, And spak wi’ modest grace; And he wad gae to London Town, If sae their pleasure was. xI He wad na hecht them courtly gifts, Nor meikle speech pretend; But he wad hecht an honest heart Wad ne’er desert his friend. XII Now wham to chuse and wham refuse At strife thae carlins fell; For some had gentle folk to please, And some wad please themsel. XII Then out spak mim-mou’d Meg o’ Nith, And she spak up wi’ pride, And she wad send the Soger lad, Whatever might betide. XIV For the auld Guidman o’ London court She didna care a pin; But she wad send the Soger lad To greet his eldest son. xv Then up sprang Bess o’ Annandale, And swore a deadly aith, Says: — “I will send the belted Knight, Spite of you carlins baith ! XVI “For far-aff fowls hae feathers fair, And fools 0’ change are fain; But I hae tried this Border Knight: I'll try him yet again.” XVII Then Brandy Jean spak owre her drink: — “ Ye weel ken, kimmers a’, The auld Guidman o’ London court, His back ’s been at the wa’; XVUI “ And monie a friend that kiss’d his caup Is now a fremit wight; But it’s ne’er be sae wi’ Brandy Jean — I'll send the Border Knight.” XIX Says Black Jod4n frae Crichton Peel, A carlin stoor and grim: — “The auld Guidman or the young Guidman For me may sink or swim ! xx “For fools will prate o’ right or wrang, While knaves laugh in their slieve; But wha blaws best the horn shall win — I'll spier nae courtier’s leave !” XXI Then slow raise Marjorie o’ the Lochs, And wrinkled was her brow, Her ancient weed was russet gray, Her auld Scots heart was true: — XXII “There ’s some great folk set light by me, I set as light by them; But I will send to London town Wham I lo’e best at hame.” XXIII Sae how this sturt and strife may end, There ’s naebody can tell. God grant the King and ilka man May look weel to themsel ! ELECTION BALLAD FOR WES- TERHA’ Written on behalf of Sir James Johnstone, and modelled on the Jacobite ballad Up and Waur them A’, Willie. In the letter to Mrs. Dunlop enclosing the preceding ballad Burns wrote of the Duke of Queensberry: “ His Grace is keenly attached to the Buff and Blue party ; renegades and Apostates are, you know, always keen.’’ Up and waur them a’, Jamie, Up and waur them a’! The Johnstones hae the guidin o’t: Ye turncoat Whigs, awa ! 162 POSTHUMOUS PIECES I Tur Laddies by the banks o’ Nith Wad trust his Grace wi’ a’, Jamie; But he ’1l sair them as he sair’d the King — Turn tail and rin awa, Jamie. II The day he stude his country’s friend, Or gied her faes a claw, Jamie, Or frae puir man a blessin wan — That day the Duke ne’er saw, Jamie. III But wha is he, his country’s boast ? Like him there is na twa, Jamie ! There ’s no a callant tents the kye But kens o’ Westerha’, Jamie. Iv To end the wark, here’s Whistlebirk — Lang may his whistle blaw, Jamie ! — And Maxwell true, o’ sterling blue, And well be Johnstones a’, Jamie. Up and waur them a’, Jamie, Up and waur them a’! The Johustones hae the guidin o’t: Ye turncoat Whigs, awa ! AS I CAM DOON THE BANKS O’ NITH William Douglas, fourth Duke of Queens- berry (1724-1810), the notorious “Old Q.,” is “his Grace” of the last ballad and is satirised again in the following not hitherto! printed. Queensberry supported the proposal that the Prince of Wales should assume the govern- ment, with full royal prerogatives, during the King’s illness. As I cam doon the banks o’ Nith And by Glenriddell’s ha’, man, There I heard a piper play Turn-coat Whigs awa, man. Drumlanrig’s towers hae tint the powers That kept the lands in awe, man: The eagle ’s dead, and in his stead We've gotten a hoodie-craw, man. The turn-coat Duke his King forsook, When his back was at the wa’, man: 1 That is, before the Centenary Edition. The rattan ran wi’ a’ his clan For fear the house should fa’, man. The lads about the banks o’ Nith, They trust his Grace for a’, man: But he ’ll sair them as he sair’t his King, Turn tail and rin awa, man. ELECTION BALLAD AT CLOSE OF THE CONTEST FOR REPRE= SENTING THE DUMFRIES BURGHS, 1790 ADDRESSED TO ROBERT GRAHAM OF FINTRY For Graham of Fintry, see ante, p. 85. I Fintry, my stay in worldly strife, Friend o’ my Muse, friend o’ my life, Are ye as idle’s Iam? Come, then! Wi’ uncouth kintra fleg O’er Pegasus I'll fling my leg, And ye shall see me try him ! II But where shall I gae rin or ride, That I may splatter nane beside ? I wad na be uncivil: In mankind’s various paths and ways There ’s ay some doytin body strays, And I ride like a devil. III Thus I break aff wi’ a’ my birr, An’ down yon dark, deep alley spur, Where Theologics dander: Alas ! curst wi’ eternal fogs, And damn’d in everlasting bogs, As sure ’s the Creed I'll blunder ! Iv Ill stain a band, or jaup a gown, Or rin my reckless, guilty crown Against the haly door! Sair do I rue my luckless fate, When, as the Muse an’ Deil wad hae ’t, I rade that road before ! Vv Suppose I take a spurt, and mix Amang the wilds 0’ Politics — Electors and elected — ELECTION BALLAD Where dogs at Court (sad sons o’ bitches !) Septennially a madness touches, Till all the land ’s infected ? VI All hail, Drumlanrig’s haughty Grace, Discarded remnant of a race Once godlike — great in story ! Thy fathers’ virtues all contrasted, The very name of Douglas blasted, Thine that inverted glory ! VII Hate, envy, oft the Douglas bore; But thou hast superadded more, And sunk them in contempt ! Follies and crimes have stain’d the name; But, Queensberry, thine the virgin claim, From aught that’s good exempt! VIII I'll sing the zeal Drumlanrig bears, Who left the all-important cares Of fiddlers, whores, and hunters, And, bent on buying Borough Towns, Came shaking hands wi’ wabster-loons, And kissing barefit bunters. IX Combustion thro’ our boroughs rode, Whistling his roaring pack abroad Of mad unmuzzled lions, As Queensberry buff-and-blue unfurl’d, And Westerha’ and Hopeton hurl’d To every Whig defiance. x But cautious Queensberry left the war (Th’ unmanner’d dust might soil his star; Besides, he hated bleeding), But left behind him heroes bright, Heroes in Cesarean fight Or Ciceronian pleading. XI O, for a throat like huge Mons-Meg, To muster o’er each ardent Whig Beneath Drumlanrig’s banner ! Heroes and heroines commix, All in the field of politics, To win immortal honor ! XII M‘Murdo and his lovely spouse (Th’ enamour’d laurels kiss her brows !) Led on the Loves and Graces: She won each gaping burgess’ heart, While he, sub rosd, played his part Among their wives and lasses. XIII Craigdarroch led a light-arm’d core: Tropes, metaphors, and figures pour, Like Hecla streaming thunder. Glenriddell, skill’d in rusty coins, Blew up each Tory’s dark designs And bared the treason under. XIV In either wing two champions fought: Redoubted Staig, who set at nought The wildest savage Tory ; / And Welsh, who ne’er yet flinch’d his ground, High-wav’d his magnum-bonum round With Cyclopeian fury. xv Miller brought up th’ artillery ranks, The many-pounders of the Banks, Resistless desolation ! While Maxwelton, that baron bold, *Mid Lawson’s port entrench’d his hold And threaten’d worse damnation. XVI To these what Tory hosts oppos’d, With these what Tory warriors clos’d, Surpasses my descriving : Squadrons, extended long and large, With furious speed rush to the charge, Like furious devils driving. XVII What verse can sing, what prose narrate The butcher deeds of bloody Fate Amid this mighty tulyie ? Grim Horror girn’d, pale Terror roar’d, As Murther at his thrapple shor’d, And Hell mix’d in the brulyie. XVIII As Highland craigs by thunder cleft, When lightnings fire the stormy lift, Hurl down with crashing rattle, As flames among a hundred woods, As headlong foam a hundred floods — Such is the rage of Battle ! 164 POSTHUMOUS PIECES XIX The stubborn Tories dare to die : As soon the rooted oaks would fly Before th’ approaching fellers ! The Whigs come on like Ocean’s roar, When all his wintry billows pour Against the Buchan Bullers. xx Lo, from the shades of Death’s deep night Departed Whigs enjoy the fight, And think on former daring ! The muffled murtherer of Charles The Magna Charter flag unfurls, All deadly gules its bearing. XXI Nor wanting ghosts of Tory fame : Bold Scrimgeour follows gallant Graham, Auld Covenanters shiver . Forgive! forgive! much-wrong’d Mon- trose ! Now Death and Hell engulph thy foes, Thou liv’st on high for ever ! XXII ‘Still o’er the field the combat burns; The Tories, Whigs, give way by turns; But Fate the word has spoken; For woman’s wit and strength o’ man, Alas! can do but what they can: The Tory ranks are broken. XXIII O, that my een were flowing burns ! My voice a lioness that mourns Her darling cubs’ undoing That I might greet, that I might cry, While Tories fall, while Tories fly From furious Whigs pursuing ! XXIV What Whig but melts for good Sir James, Dear to his country by the names, Friend, Patron, Benefactor ? Not Pulteney’s wealth can Pulteney save; And MHopeton falls — the generous, brave ! — And Stewart bold as Hector. XXV Thou, Pitt, shalt rue this overthrow, And Thurlow growl this curse of woe, And Melville melt in wailing ! Now Fox and Sheridan rejoice, ; And Burke shall sing: — “O Prince, arise Thy power is all prevailing !” XXVI For your poor friend, the Bard, afar He sees and hears the distant war, A cool spectator purely: So, when the storm the forest rends, The robin in the hedge descends, And, patient, chirps securely. XXVII Now, for my friends’ and brethren’s sakes, And for my dear-lov’d Land o’ Cakes, I pray with holy fire: — Lord, send a rough-shod troop o’ Hell O’er a’ wad Scotland buy or sell, To grind them in the mire ! BALLADS ON MR. HERON’S ELECTION, 1795 BALLAD FIRST { In this Election for the Stewartry of Kirk- eudbright, Heron of Kerroughtrie, the Whig candidate, was opposed by Thomas Gordon of Balmaghie. Burns, who had visited Heron in June, 1794, warmly supported him, not merely for friendship’s sake but out of a special dis- like to the more conspicuous among Balmagh. ie’s supporters. This ballad and the next he enclosed in a letter to Mr. Heron, stating that he had distributed them ‘‘among friends all over the country.” I Wuam will we send to London town, To Parliament and a’ that ? Or wha in a’ the country round The best deserves to fa’ that ? For a’ that, and a’ that, Thro’ Galloway and a’ that, Where is the Laird or belted Knight That best deserves to fa’ that ? II Wha sees Kerroughtree’s open yett — And wha is ’t never saw that ? — Wha ever wi’ Kerroughtree met, And has a doubt of a’ that ? For a’ that, and a’ that, Here ’s Heron yet for a’ that ! BALLADS ON MR. HERON’S ELECTION 165 The independent patriot, The honest man, and a’ that ! TI Tho’ wit and worth, in either sex, Saint Mary’s Isle can shaw that, Wi’ Lords and Dukes let Selkirk mix, And weel does Selkirk fa’ that. For a’ that, and a’ that, Here ’s Heron yet for a’ that ! An independent commoner Shall be the man for a’ that. Iv But why should we to Nobles jeuk, And it against the law, that, And even a Lord may be a gowk, Wi’ ribban, star, and a’ that ? For a’ that, and a’ that, Here’s Heron yet for a’ that! A Lord may be a lousy loon, Wi? ribban, star, and a’ that. s Vv A beardless boy comes o’er the hills ‘Wi’s uncle’s purse and a’ that; But we ’ll hae ane frae ’mang oursels, A man we ken, and a’ that. For a’ that, and a’ that, Here ’s Heron yet for a’ that ! We are na to be bought and sold, Like nowte, and naigs, and a’ that. VI Then let us drink: — “‘ The Stewartry, Kerroughtree’s laird, and a’ that, Our representative to be:” For weel he’s worthy a’ that! For a’ that, and a’ that, Here ’s Heron yet for a’ that! A House of Commons such as he, They wad be blest that saw that. BALLAD SECOND: THE ELEC- TION Tune: Fy, Let Us A’ to The Bridal A parody of The Blythsome Wedding, the classic, in Watson’s First Part (1706), attrib- uted to Francis Semple : — “ Fy, let us All to the Briddel, For there will be Lilting there, For Jockie ’s to be marry’d to Maggie, The Lass with the Gauden Hair: And there will be Lang-kail and Pottage, And Bannocks of Barley-Meal; And there will be good Salt-herring To relish a kog of good Ale.” I Fy, let us a’ to Kirkendbright, For there will be bickerin there; For Murray’s light horse are to muster, An’ O, how the heroes will swear ! And there will be Murray commander, An’ Gordon the battle to win: Like brothers, they ’1l stan’ by each other, Sae knit in alliance and kin. II An’ there ’Il be black-nebbit Johnie, The tongue o’ the trump to them a’: Gin. he get na Hell for his haddin, The Deil gets nae justice ava ! And there "ll be Kempleton’s birkie, A boy no sae black at the bane; But as to his fine nabob fortune — We ’ll e’en let the subject alane! Ir An’ there ’ll be Wigton’s new sheriff — Dame Justice fu’ brawly has sped: She’s gotten the heart of a Bushby, But Lord! what ’s become o’ the head ? An’ there ’Il be Cardoness, Esquire, Sae mighty in Cardoness’ eyes: A wight that will weather damnation, For the Devil the prey would despise. Iv An’ there ’Il be Douglasses doughty, New christening towns far and near: Abjuring their democrat doings An’ kissing the arse of a peer ! An’ there ‘ll be Kenmure sae generous,’ Wha’s honor is proof to the storm: To save them from stark reprobation He lent them his name to the firm ! Vv But we winna mention Redeastle, The body — e’en let him escape ! He ’d venture the gallows for siller, An’ ’t were na the cost o’ the rape! An’ whare is our King’s Lord Lieutenant, Sae famed for his gratefu’ return ? The billie is getting his Questions To say at St. Stephen’s the morn ! 166 POSTHUMOUS PIECES VI An’ there ’II be lads 0” the gospel: Muirhead, wha’s as guid as he’s true; An’ there “Il be Buittle’s Apostle, Wha.’s mair o’ the black than the blue; An’ there ’ll be folk frae St. Mary’s, A house o’ great merit and note: The Deil ane but honors them highly, The Deil ane will gie them his vote! Vil An’ there ’ll be wealthy young Richard, Dame Fortune should hang by the neck: But for prodigal thriftless bestowing, His merit had won him respect. An’ there ’11 be rich brither nabobs; Tho’ nabobs, yet men o’ the first ! An’ there ’11 be Collieston’s whiskers, An’ Quinton — 0’ lads no the warst ! Vill An’ there ’ll be Stamp-Office Johnie: Tak tent how ye purchase a dram ! An’ there ’ll be gay Cassencarry, An’ there ’ll be Colonel Tam; An’ there’ll be trusty Kerroughtree, Wha’s honour was ever his law: If the virtues were pack’t in a parcel, His worth might be sample for a’! IX An’ can we forget the auld Major, Wha ll ne’er be forgot in the Greys ? Our flatt’ry we "ll keep for some other: Him only it’s justice to praise ! An’ there ’ll be maiden Kilkerran, Av’ also Barskimming’s guid Knight. An’ there "Il be roaring Birtwhistle _ Yet luckily roars in the right ! x An’ there frae the Niddlesdale border Will mingle the Maxwells in droves: Teuch Johnie, Staunch Geordie, and Wattie That girns for the fishes an’ loaves ! An’ there ’1l be Logan’s M‘Doual — Sculdudd’ry an’ he will be there ! An’ also the wild Scot o’ Galloway, Sogering, gunpowther Blair ! XI Then hey the chaste interest of Broughton, An’ hey for the blessings ’t will bring ! It may send Balmaghie to the Commons — In Sodom ’t would mak him a King! An’ hey for the sanctified Murray Our land wha wi’ chapels has stor’d; He founder’d his horse among harlots, But gie’d the auld naig to the Lord! BALLAD THIRD: JOHN BUSHBY’S LAMENTATION Tune: Babes In the Wood For John Bushby, see post, p. 198, Prefatory Note to Epitaph on John Bushby ; and for the personages referred to in the ballad, see Notes, p. 343, and also Notes to Ballad Second, pp. 342, 343. I *T was in the Seventeen Hunder year O” grace, and Ninety-Five, That year I was the wae’est man Of onie man alive. II In March the three-an’-twentieth morn, The sun raise clear an’ bright; But O, I was a waefu’ man, Ere to-fa’ o’ the night ! III Yerl Galloway lang did rule this land Wi’ equal right and fame, Fast knit in chaste and holy bands With Broughton’s noble name. Iv Yerl Galloway’s man o’ men was I, And chief o’ Broughton’s host: So twa blind beggars, on a string, The faithfu’ tyke will trust ! v But now Yerl Galloway’s sceptre ’s broke, And Broughton ’s wi’ the slain, And I my ancient craft may try, Sin’ honesty is gane. VI *T was by the banks o’ bonie Dee, Beside Kirkeudbright’s towers, The Stewart and the Murray there Did muster a’ their powers. Vil Then Murray on the auld grey yaud Wi?’ winged spurs did ride: THE TROGGER 167 That auld grey yaud a’ Nidsdale rade, He staw upon Nidside. VIII An’ there had na been the Yerl himsel, O, there had been nae play ! But Garlies was to London gane, And sae the kye might stray. IX And there was Balmaghie, I ween — In front rank he wad shine; But Balmaghie had better been Drinkin’ Madeira wine. x And frae Glenkens cam to our aid A chief o’ doughty deed: In case that worth should wanted be, O’ Kenmure we had need. XI And by our banners march’d Muirhead, And Buittle was na slack, Whase haly priesthood nane could stain, For wha could dye the black ? XII And there was grave Squire Cardoness, Look’d on till a’ was done: Sae in the tower 0’ Cardoness .A howlet sits at noon. XIII And there led I the Bushby clan: My gamesome billie, Will, And my son Maitland, wise as brave, My footsteps follow’d still. XIV The Douglas and the Heron’s name, We set nought to their score; The Douglas and the Heron’s name Had felt our weight before. XV But Douglasses 0” weight had we: The pair o’ lusty lairds, For building cot-houses sae fam’d, And echristenin kail-yards. XVI And then Redeastle drew his sword That ne’er was stain’d wi’ gore Save on a wand’rer lame and blind, To drive him frae his door. XVII And last cam creepin Collieston, Was mair in fear than wrath; Ae knave was constant in his mind — To keep that knave frae seaith. THE TROGGER Tune: Buy Broom Besoms Written for Heron’s election for Kirkeud- bright in ’96. [See ante, p. 164, Prefatory Note to First Heron Election Ballad.] Burns died before the result was known. On this oceasion Heron was opposed by the Hon. Mont- gomery Stewart, son of the Earl of Galloway. A trogger is a travelling hawker or packman. For the persons, see post, pp. 342, 343, Notes to Second Heron Election Ballad. CHORUS Buy braw troggin Frae the banks o’ Dee ! Wha wants troggin Let him come to me ! I Waa will buy my troggin, Fine election ware, Broken trade o’ Broughton, A’ in high repair ? II There’s a noble Earl’s Fame and high renown, For an auld sang — it’s thought The guids were stown. III Here ’s the worth o’ Broughton In a needle’s e’e. Here’s a reputation Tint by Balmaghie. Iv Here’s its stuff and lining, Cardoness’s head — Fine for a soger, A’ the wale o’ lead. 168 POSTHUMOUS PIECES ed Vv Here ’s a little wadset — Buittle’s scrap o’ truth, Pawn’d in a gin-shop, Quenching holy drouth. VI Here ’s an honest conscience Might a prince adorn, Frae the downs o’ Tinwald — So was never worn ! Vil Here’s armorial bearings Frae the manse o’ Urr: The crest, a sour crab-apple Rotten at the core. VIII Here is Satan’s picture, Like a bizzard gled Pouncing poor Redcastle, Sprawlin like a taed. Ix Here ’s the font where Douglas Stane and mortar names, Lately used at Caily Christening Murray’s crimes. x Here’s the worth and wisdom Collieston can boast: By a thievish midge They had been nearly lost. xI Here is Murray’s fragments O’ the Ten Commands, Gifted by Black Jock To get them aff his hands. XII Saw ye e’er sic troggin ? — If to buy ye’re slack, Hornie ’s turnin chapman: He ’ll buy a’ the pack ! CHORUS Buy braw troggin Frae the banks 0’ Dee | Wha wants troggin Let him come to me ! THE DEAN OF THE FACULTY A NEW BALLAD Tune: The Dragon of Wantley Burns charged the squib on learning that Robert Dundas of Arniston — against whom he had a grudge — (see post, p. 174, Prefatory Note to On the Death of Lord President Dun- das) — had, on 12th January, 1796, been elected Dean of the Faculty of Advocates by a large majority over Henry Erskine. Dundas, the son of the Lord President, was born 6th June, 1758 ; appointed Lord Advocate in 1789 ; from 1790 to 1796 sat for Edinburgh; in 1801 was made Baron of the Exchequer; and died 17th June, 1819. For Erskine, see post, p. 326, Note to The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer, stanza xiv. line 1; and also post, p. 183, Prefatory Note to In the Court of Session. I Drre was the hate at Old Harlaw That Scot to Scot did carry; And dire the discord Langside saw For beauteous, hapless Mary. But Scot to Seot ne’er met so hot, Or were more in fury seen, Sir, Than ’twixt Hal and Bob for the famous job, Who should be the Faculty’s Dean, Sir. II This Hal for genius, wit, and lore Among the first was number’d; But pious Bob, ’mid learning’s store Commandment the Tenth remember’d. Yet simple Bob the victory got, And won his heart’s desire: Which shows that Heaven can boil the pot, Tho’ the Deil piss in the fire. Til Squire Hal, besides, had in this case Pretensions rather brassy; For talents, to deserve a place, Are qualifications saucy. So their worships of the Faculty, Quite sick of Merit’s rudeness, Chose one who should owe it all, d’ ye see, To their gratis grace and goodness. Iv As once on Pisgah purg’d was the sight Of a son of Circumcision, THE RONALDS OF THE BENNALS 169 So, may be, on this Pisgah height Bob’s purblind mental vision. Nay, Bobby’s mouth may be open’d yet, Till for eloquence you hail him, And swear that he has the Angel met That met the Ass of Balaam. Vv In your heretic sins may ye live and die, Ye heretic Eight-and-Thirty ! But accept, ye sublime majority, My congratulations hearty ! With your honors, as with a certain King, In your servants this is striking, The more incapacity they bring The more they ’re to your liking. MISCELLANIES THE TARBOLTON LASSES I Ir ye gae up to yon hill-tap, Ye ‘ll there see bonie Peggy: She kens her father is a laird, And she forsooth’s a leddy. II There ’s Sophy tight, a lassie bright, Besides a handsome fortune: Wha canna win her in a night Has little art in courtin. TI Gae down by Faile, and taste the ale, And tak a look o’ Mysie: She ’s dour and din, a deil within, But aiblins she may please ye. Iv If she be shy, her sister try, Yell may be fancy Jenny: If ye ‘Il dispense wi’ want o’ sense, She kens hersel she’s bonie. v As ye'gae up by yor hillside, Spier in for bonie Bessy: She'll gie ye a beck, and bid ye light, And handsomely address ye. VI There ’s few sae bonie, nane sae guid In a’ King George’ dominion: If ye should doubt the truth of this, It’s Bessy’s ain opinion. THE RONALDS OF THE BEN- NALS The Bennals was afarm in Tarbolton parish. Miss Jean refused Gilbert Burns. The father, supposed to have “ Braid money to tocher them a’, man,” went bankrupt in 1789, when Robert wrote to his brother William: “You will easily guess that from his insolent vanity in his sunshine of life, he will now feel a little retalia- tion from those who thought themselves eclipsed by him.” I In Tarbolton, ye ken, there are proper young men, And proper young lasses and a’, man: But ken ye the Ronalds that live in the Bennals ? They carry the gree frae them a’, man. Il Their father’s a laird, and weel he can spare ’t: : Braid money to tocher them a’, man; To proper young men, he’ll clink in the hand Gowd guineas a hunder or twa, man. Til There’s ane they ca’ Jean, I'll warrant ye ’ve seen As bonie a lass or as braw, man; But for sense and guid taste she ‘ll vie wi’ the best, And a conduct that beautifies a’, man. Iv The charms o’ the min’, the langer they shine The mair admiration they draw, man; While peaches and cherries, and roses and lilies, They fade and they wither awa, man. v If ye be for Miss Jean, tak this frae a frien’, A hint o’ a rival or twa, man: The Laird o’ Blackbyre wad gang through the fire, If that wad entice her awa, man. 170 POSTHUMOUS PIECES A ten-shillings hat, a Holland cravat — vi There are no monie Poets sae braw, The Laird o’ Braehead has been on his man! speed For mair than a towmond or twa, man: The Laird o’ the Ford will straught on a board, If he canna get her at a’, man. VII Then Anna comes in, the pride o” her kin, The boast of our bachelors a’, man: Sae sonsy and sweet, sae fully complete, She steals our affections awa, man. VIII If I should detail the pick and the wale O’ lasses that live here awa, man, The faut wad be mine, if they didna shine The sweetest and best o’ them a’, man. Ix I lo’e her mysel, but darena weel tell, My poverty keeps me in awe, man; For making o’ rhymes, and working at times, Does little or naething at a’, man. x Yet I wadna choose to let her refuse Nor hae’t in her power to say na, man: For though I be poor, unnoticed, obscure, My stomach’s as proud as them a’, man. XI Though I canna ride in well-booted pride, And flee o’er the hills like a craw, man, I can haud up my head wi’ the best o’ the breed, Though fluttering ever so braw, man. XII My coat and my vest, they are Scotch o’ the best; 0” pairs o’ guid breeks I hae twa, man, And stockings and pumps to put on my stumps, And ne’er a wrang steek in them a’, man. XIII My sarks they are few, but five o’ them new — Twal’ hundred, as white as the snaw, man ! XIV I never had frien’s weel stockit in means, To leave me a hundred or twa, man; Nae weel-tocher’d aunts, to wait on their drants And wish them in hell for it a’, man. Xv I never was cannie for hoarding o’ money, Or claughtin ’t together at a’, man; I ’ve little to spend and naething to lend, But devil a shilling I awe, man. I’LL GO AND BE A SODGER Inspired, it may be, by the destruction of the shop at Irvine, when the writer was “ left, like a true poet, not worth sixpence.” I O, wxy the deuce should I repine, And be an ill foreboder ? I’m twenty-three and five feet nine, I'll go and be a sodger. II I gat some gear wi’ meikle care, I held it weel thegither; But now it’s gane — and something mair: I'll go and be a sodger. APOSTROPHE TO FERGUSSON INSCRIBED ABOVE AND BELOW HIS PORTRAIT The copy of Fergusson bearing this passion- ate but Anglified and imitative protest was given by Burns, while in Edinburgh in 1787, to a young woman, herself a writer of verse: ‘This copy of Fergusson’s Poems is presented as a mark of esteem, friendship and regard to Miss R. Carmichael, poetess, by Rosert Burns. ‘* Eprnpurak, 19th March, 1787.” A volume of verse by Rebekah Carmichael, printed and sold by Peter Hill, appeared in 1790 ; and in 1806, under the name of Rebekah INSCRIBED ON A WORK OF HANNAH MORE’S Hay, the same person enclosed a printed poem, On Seeing the Funeral of Sir William Forbes, in a letter (now in the British Museum) pre- sumably to some of Forbes’s relations, in which she stated that she “was weak and ill,” and begged for assistance. CurRsE on ungrateful man, that can be pleas’d And yet can starve the author of the pleasure ! O thou, my elder brother in misfortune, By far my elder brother in the Muse, With tears I pity thy unhappy fate ! Why is the Bard unfitted for the world, Yet has so keen a relish of its pleasures ? THE BELLES OF MAUCHLINE Miss Miller is the ‘‘ Nell” of A Mauchline Wedding (see ante, p. 114); Miss Markland married Mr. James Findlay, [an exciseman, formerly but wrongly supposed to be the hero of] Wha is That at My Bower Door (post, p. 236) ; Miss Smith, the witty sister of the witty James Smith (see ante, p. 15), became the wife of another of Burns’s especial friends, James Candlish, and the mother of a famous Free Church leader, the Rev. Dr. Candlish of Edin- burgh ; Miss Betty was the “ Eliza” of Burns’s song (see ante, p. 52) and the “Bess” of A Mauchline Wedding aforesaid ; Mr. Paterson, a Mauchline merchant, got Miss Morton; and of ‘the other Burns noted in the Glenriddell Book : “Miss Armour is now known by the designation of Mrs. Burns.” I In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles, The pride of the place and its neighbour- hood 2’, Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess, In Lon’on or Paris they ’d gotten it a’. II Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland’s di- vine, Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is . braw, There ’s beauty and fortune to get wi’ Miss Morton; But Armour ’s the jewel for me o’ them a’. 171 AH, WOE IS ME, MY MOTHER DEAR JEREMIAH, chap. xv, verse 10 I AH, woe is me, my Mother dear A man of strife ye’ve born me. For sair contention I maun bear; They hate, revile, and scorn me. II I ne’er could lend on bill or band, That five per cent. might blest me; And borrowing, on the tither hand, The deil a ane wad trust me. Til Yet I, a coin-denyéd wight, By Fortune quite discarded, Ye see how I am day and night By lad and lass blackguarded ! INSCRIBED ON A WORK OF HANNAH MORE’S PRESENTED TO THE AUTHOR BY A LADY “T received your kind letter with double pleasure on account of the second flattering instance of Mrs. C.’s notice and approbation. I assure you I ‘Turn out the brunt side o’ my shin,’ as the famous Ramsay, of jingling memory, says, of such a patroness. Present her my most grateful acknowledgments in your very best manner of telling the truth. I have inscribed the following stanza on the blank leaf of Miss More’s works.” (R. B. to Robert Aiken, 3d April, 1786.) Mrs. C. is not identi- fied. Scott Douglas suggested Mrs. Cunning- hame of Enterkine, but discovered that she was not married until 1794. He then bethought him of the wife of Sir William Cunningham of Robertland, forgetting that she had a handle to her name. Mrs. Cunninghame of Lainshaw subscribed for two copies of the First Edin: burgh. Tuov flatt’ring mark of friendship kind, Still may thy pages call to mind The dear, the beauteous donor ! 172 POSTHUMOUS PIECES Tho’ sweetly female ev’ry part, Yet such a head and — more — the heart Does both the sexes honor: She show’d her taste refin’d and just, When she selected thee, Yet deviating, own I must, For so approving me: But, kind still, I mind still The giver in the gift; Ill bless her, and wiss her A Friend aboon the lift. LINES WRITTEN ON A BANK NOTE WaeE worth thy power, thou cursed leaf ! Fell source of a’ my woe and grief, For lack o’ thee I’ve lost my lass, For lack o’ thee I scrimp my glass ! I see the children of affliction Unaided, through thy curs’d restriction. I’ve seen the oppressor’s cruel smile Amid his hapless victims’ spoil; And for thy potence vainly wish’d To crush the villain in the dust. For lack o’ thee I leave this much-lov’d shore, : Never, perhaps, to greet old Scotland more. Kye. THE FAREWELL The valiant, in himself, what can he suffer ? Or what does he regard his single woes ? But when, alas! he multiplies himself, To dearer selves, to the lov’d tender fair, To those whose bliss, whose beings hang upon him, To helpless children, — then, oh then he feels The point of misery festering in his heart, And weakly weeps his fortunes like a coward: Such, such am I! — undone! Tuomson’s Edward and Eleanora. Published in Hamilton Paul (1819). The piece may contain the germ of The Gloomy Night is Gathering Fast; but it is so conven- tional and commonplace withal that one is tempted to doubt its genuineness, despite the fact that Paul’s authority is of some account. I FAREWELL, old Scotia’s bleak domains, Far dearer than the torrid plains, Where rich ananas blow ! Farewell, a mother’s blessing dear, A brother’s sigh, a sister’s tear, My Jean’s heart-rending throe ! Farewell, my Bess! Tho’ thou ’rt bereft Of my paternal care, A faithful brother I have left, My part in him thou ’lt share ! Adieu too, to you too, My Smith, my bosom frien’; When kindly you mind me, O, then befriend my Jean! II What bursting anguish tears my heart ? From thee, my Jeany, must I part ? Thou, weeping, answ’rest: “No!” Alas! misfortune stares my face, And points to ruin and disgrace — I for thy sake must go! Thee, Hamilton, and Aiken dear, A grateful, warm adieu: I with a much-indebted tear Shall still remember you ! All-hail, then, the gale then Wafts me from thee, dear shore ! It rustles, and whistles — 1’ll never see thee more ! ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF ROBERT RUISSEAUX ‘*Ruisseaux ” — French for “ brooks” (i. e “ burns ”) — is an innocent play on the writer’s name. I ' Now Robin lies in his last lair, He ‘Il gabble rhyme, nor sing nae mair; Cauld Poverty wi’ hungry stare ; Nae mair shall fear him; Nor anxious Fear, nor cankert Care, E’er mair come near him. It To tell the truth, they seldom fash’d him, Except the moment that they crush’d him; For sune as Chance or Fate had hush’d ’em, Tho’ e’er sae short, Then wi’ a rhyme or sang he lash’d ’em, And thought it sport. Ill Tho’ he was bred to kintra-wark, And counted was baith wight and stark, ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF SIR JAMES HUNTER BLAIR 173 Yet that was never Robin’s mark To mak a man; But tell him, he was learned and clark, Ye roos’d him then ! VERSES INTENDED TO BE WRIT- TEN BELOW A NOBLE EARL’S PICTURE A special compliment (and a gross) to the writer’s patron, the Earl of Glencairn (see ante, p. 87, Prefatory Note to Lament for James Earl of Glencairn), who declined, being a per- a of taste, to have it included in Edition 87. I Wuosz is that noble, dauntless brow ? And whose that eye of fire ? And whose that generous princely mien, Ev’n rooted foes admire ? Il Stranger ! to justly show that brow And mark that eye of fire, Would take His hand, whose vernal tints His other works admire ! Ill Bright as a cloudless summer sun, With stately port he moves; His guardian Seraph eyes with awe The noble Ward he loves. IV Among the illustrious Scottish sons That Chief thou may’st discern: Mark Scotia’s fond-returning eye — It dwells upon Glencairn. ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF SIR JAMES HUNTER BLAIR Sir James Hunter Blair, son of John Hunter, pailie in Ayr, was born 2d February,’ 1741; was apprenticed in the banking house of the prothers Coutts, Edinburgh ; became, with Sir William Forbes, joint partner in the bank ; as- sumed the name of Blair when his wife—a daughter of John Blair of Dunskey, Wigton- shire —sueceeded to her estates in 1777; greatly improved the estates in agriculture and trade; partly rebuilt, Portpatrick, and started a packet service to Ireland ; was also an active citizen of Edinburgh, for which he was chosen M. P. in 1781 and 1784, and in 1784 Lord Pro- vost ; was created a baronet, 1786; and died of putrid fever Ist July, 1787. To Robert Aiken, Burns wrote: “The mel- ancholy oceasion of the foregoing poem affects not only individuals but a country. That I have lost a friend is but repeating after Cale- donia.” Further, in the Glenriddell Book he thus prefaces his Elegy : ‘‘ This performance is but mediocre, but my grief was sincere. The last time I saw the worthy, public-spirited man —a man he was! how few of the two-legged breed that pass for such deserve the designa- tion! —he pressed my hand, and asked me with the most friendly warmth if it was in his power to serve me; and if so, that I would oblige him by telling him how. I had nothing to ask of him; but if ever a child of his should be so unfortunate as to be under the necessity of asking anything of so poor a man as IJ am it may not be in my power to grant it, but by God I shall try.” I Tue lamp of day with ill-presaging glare, Dim, cloudy, sank beneath the westerr wave; Th’ inconstant blast howl’d thro’ the dark-. ening air, And hollow whistled in the rocky cave. It Lone as I wander’d by each cliff and dell, Once the lov’d haunts of Scotia’s royal train; Or mus’d where limpid streams, once hal- low’d, well, Or mould’ring ruins mark the sacred Fane. III Th’ increasing blast roared round the bee-. tling rocks, The clouds, swift-wing’d, flew o’er the starry sky, The groaning trees untimely shed their locks, And shooting meteors caught the startled eye. Iv The paly moon rose in the livid east, And ute the cliffs disclos’d a stately orm 174 POSTHUMOUS PIECES In weeds of woe, that frantic beat her breast, ‘ And mix’d her wailings with the raving storm. Vv Wild to my heart the filial pulses glow: °T was Caledonia’s trophied shield I view’d, Her form majestic droop’d in pensive woe, The lightning of her eye in tears im- bued; VI Revers’d that spear redoubtable in war, Reclined that banner, erst in fields un- furl’d, That like a deathful meteor gleam’d afar, And brav’d the mighty monarchs of the world. VII “ My patriot son fills an untimely grave !” With accents wild and lifted arms, she cried; *‘ Low lies the hand that oft was stretch’d to save, Low lies the heart that swell’d with hon- or’s pride. VIII «¢ A weeping country joins a widow’s tear; The helpless poor mix with the orphan’s ery "The drooping Arts surround their patron’s bier; And grateful Science heaves the heart- felt sigh. IX “<7 saw my sons resume their ancient fire; I saw fair Freedom’s blossoms richly blow. But ah ! how hope is born but to expire ! Relentless fate has laid their guardian low. x “‘ My patriot falls, but shall he lie unsung, While empty greatness saves a worthless name ? No: every Muse shall join her tuneful tongue, And future ages hear his growing fame. XI “ And I will join a mother’s tender cares Thro’ future times to make his virtues last, That distant years may boast of other Blairs !”” — She said, and vanish’d with the sweeping blast. ON THE DEATH OF LORD PRE- SIDENT DUNDAS Robert Dundas of Arniston, descended from an old Scottish family, and eldest son of Rob- ert Dundas, who also was Lord President of the Court of Session, was born 18th July, 1713. He was appointed Lord Advocate in 1754, and in 1760 became Lord President, in which capa- city he acquired a high repute for courtesy, fairness, and ability. He died 18th December, 1787. Ina letter to Alexander Cunningham, 11th March, 1791, Burns states that he wrote the verses at the suggestion of Alexander Wood, Surgeon, and that Wood left them, to- gether with a letter from the author, in the house of the Lord President’s son (see ante, p. 168, Prefatory Note to The Dean of the Faculty); that Mr. Dundas “ never took the smallest no- tice of the letter, the poem, or the poet; ” and that since then he (Burns) never saw the name of Dundas in a newspaper but his “ heart felt straitened ” in his ‘“‘ bosom.” He makes a sim- ilar statement in an interleaved copy of his Poems presented to Bishop Geddes, but adds: “Did the fellow—the gentleman — think I looked for any dirty gratuity?’’ No doubt Dundas did think so : none, either, that Burns, by this time a person of importance, was hope- ful of — not a present in money but a place. In a letter to Charles Hay, Advocate, published in The Scots Magazine (June, 1818), where the piece appeared, Burns gives a different ac- count of its origin: ‘‘ The enclosed poem was written in consequence of your suggestion, last time I had the pleasure of seeing you. It cost me an hour or two of next morning’s'sleep, but did not please me; so it lay by, an ill- digested effort, till the other day that I gave it a critic brush. These kind of subjects are much hackneyed; and besides, the wailings of the rhyming tribe over the ashes of the great are... out of all character for sincerity: ” which well enough describes both the quality and the effect of a performance meriting no better reception than it got. ELEGY ON WILLIE NICOL’S MARE 175 Lone on the bleaky hills, the straying flocks Shun the fierce storms among the shelter- ing rocks; Down foam the rivulets, red with dashing rains; The gathering floods burst o’er the distant plains; Beneath the blast the leafless forests groan; The hollow caves return a hollow moan. Ye hills, ye plains, ye forests, and ye caves, Ye howling winds, and wintry swelling waves, Unheard, unseen, by human ear or eye, Sad to your sympathetic glooms I fly, Where to the whistling blast and water’s roar Pale Scotia’s recent wound I may de- plore ! O heavy loss, thy country ill could bear ! A loss these evil days can ne’er repair ! Justice, the high vicegerent of her God, Her doubtful balance eyed, and sway’d her rod; Hearing the tidings of the fatal blow, She sank, abandon’d to the wildest woe. Wrongs, injuries, from many a darksome den, Now gay in hope explore the paths of men. See from his cavern grim Oppression rise, And throw on Poverty his cruel eyes ! Keen on the helpless victim let him fly, And stifle, dark, the feebly-bursting cry ! Mark Ruffian Violence, distained with crimes, Rousing elate in these degenerate times ! View unsuspecting Innocence a prey, As guileful Fraud points out the erring way; While palate Litigation’s pliant tongue The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong! Hark, injur’d Want recounts th’ unlisten’d tale, And much-wrong’d Mis’ry pours th’ unpit- ied wail! Ye dark, waste hills, ye brown, unsightly plains, Congenial seenes, ye soothe my mournful strains. Ye tempests, rage! ye turbid torrents, roll! Ye suit the joyless tenor of my soul. Life’s social haunts and pleasures I re- sign; Be nameless wilds and lonely wanderings mine, To mourn the woes my country must en- dure: That wound degenerate ages cannot cure. ELEGY ON WILLIE NICOL’S MARE Probably William Nicol (see post, p. 195, Epitaph for William Nicol) bought the nag for use in his holidays at Moffat. She got into poor condition, and Burns offered to take her to Ellisland to recruit. When, however, he had got her into good enough condition for Dumfries Fair, she suddenly died of an unsus- pected affection of the spine. In the letter, 9th February, 1790, enclosing the Elegy he wrote: ‘‘I have likewise strung four or five barbarous stanzas to the tune of Chevy Chase, by way of Elegy on your poor unfortunate mare, beginning (the name she got here was Peg Nicholson): ‘Peg Nicholson,’” ete. No doubt, the mare was named after Margaret Nicholson, who, being insane, tried to stab George ITI. on 2d August, 1786. I Pre NicHoLson was a good bay mare As ever trod on airn; But now she’s floating down the Nith, And past the mouth o’ Cairn. II Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare, ' An’ rode thro’ thick an’ thin; But now she’s floating down the Nith, And wanting even the skin. Til Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare, And ance she bore a priest; But now she’s floating down the Nith, For Solway fish a feast. Iv Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare, An’ the priest he rode her sair; And much oppress’d, and bruis’d she was, As priest-rid cattle are. 176 POSTHUMOUS PIECES LINES ON FERGUSSON I ILt-FATED genius ! Heaven-taught Fergus- son ! What heart that feels, and will not yield a tear To think Life’s sun did set, e’er well be- gun To shed its influence on thy bright career ! II O, why should truest Worth and Genius ine Beucath the iron grasp of Want and Woe, While titled knaves and idiot- greatness shine . In all the splendour Fortune can be- stow ? ELEGY ON THE LATE MISS BURNET OF MONBODDO Elizabeth Burnet, the ‘‘fair Burnet” of the Address to Edinburgh (ante, p. 73), was the younger daughter of James Burnet, Lord Mon- pboddo. Burns was a frequent visitor to Mon- boddo’s house in 1786-7; and almost wor- shipped the fair hostess. ‘His favourite for looks and manners,” wrote Mrs. Alison Cockburn, ‘‘is Bess Burnet—no bad judge indeed.’ In a letter to William Chalmers (27th December, 1786), he describes her as “ > 5 ' And be the Calais Lady ! CRE oamtiaes Pans eeraest III Coggie, an the King come, Coggie, an the King come, OF A’ THE AIRTS I’ll be fou, and thou ’se be toom, 2 Coggie, an the King come ! The air is by Marshall; the song I com- osed. on of Sone imen to Mrs. eB) ae CHORUS + was during the honeymoon. . b. e@ . song was a8 doubt Tatton shortly after his coe ae a ae comes arrival in Ellisland, while his wife was yet in Th aur sal ene ai vi : ‘Agrshire. ou shalt dance, and I will sing, Carl, an the King come ! I Or a’ the airts the wind can blaw I dearly like the west, ’ ’ For there the bonie lassie lives, WEEE OES i Tae The lassie T lo’e best. f The repeat is borrowed from the old song, There wild woods grow, and rivers row, Whistle O'er the Lave O’t. [The fiddler of The And monie a hill between, E Jolly Beggars models his solo upon the same But day and night my fancy’s flight ditty (see ante, p. 105).] Is ever wi’? my Jean. I II First when Maggie was my care, Heav’n, I thought, was in her air; Now we’re married, spier nae mair, But — whistle o’er the lave o’t ! Meg was meek, and Meg was mild, Sweet and harmless as a child: Wiser men than me’s beguiled — Whistle o’er the lave o’t ! rr I see her in the dewy flowers — I see her sweet and fair. . I hear her in the tunefu’ birds — I hear her charm the air. There ’s not a bonie flower that springs By fountain, shaw, or green, There ’s not a bonie bird that sings, But minds me o’ my Jean. How we live, my Meg and me, How we love, and how we gree, CARL, AN THE KING COME I care na by how few may see — Whistle o’er the lave o’t ! CHORUS Wha I wish were maggots’ meat, : Dish’d up in her winding-sheet, % Carl, an the King come, I could write (but Meg wad see ’t) — Carl, an the King come, Whistle o’er the lave o’t ! 222 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” O, WERE ION PARNASSUS HILL I O, WERE I on Parnassus hill, Or had o’ Helicon my fill, That I might catch poetic skill To sing how dear I love thee ! But Nith maun be my Muses’ well, My Muse maun be thy bonie sel’, On Corsincon I'll glowr and spell, And write how dear I love thee. II Then come, sweet Muse, inspire my lay ! For a’ the lee-lang simmer’s day T couldna sing, I couldna say How much, how dear I love thee. I see thee dancing o’er the green, Thy waist sae jimp, thy limbs sae clean, Thy tempting lips, thy roguish een — By Heaven and Earth I love thee ! III By night, by day, a-field, at hame, The thoughts o’ thee my breast inflame, And ay I muse and sing thy name — I only live to love thee. Tho’ I weré doom’d to wander on, Beyond the sea, beyond the sun, Till my last weary sand was run, Till then — and then —I’d love thee! THE CAPTIVE RIBBAND I Myra, the captive ribband ’s mine ! °T was all my faithful love could gain, And would you ask me to resign The sole reward that crowns my pain ? II Go, bid the hero, who has run Thro’ fields of death to gather fame — Go, bid him lay his laurels down, And all his well-earn’d praise disclaim ! III The ribband shall its freedom lose — Lose all the bliss it had with you ! — And share the fate I would impose On thee, wert thou my captive too. Iv It shall upon my bosom live, Or clasp me in a close embrace; And at its fortune if you grieve, Retrieve its doom, and take its place. THERE’S A YOUTH IN THIS CITY “ The air is claimed by Neil Gow, who calls it his Lament for his brother. The first half stanza of the song is old; the rest is mine.’’ (R. B.) Burns was never above vamping from him- self; and the present piece is strongly reminis- cent of The Belles of Mauchline (ante, p. 171). I THERE’s a youth in this city, it were a great pity That he from our Jasses should wander awa’; For he’s bonie and braw, weel-favor’d witha’, Aw’ his hair has a natural buckle an’ a’. Ir His coat is the hue o’ his bonnet sae blue, His fecket is white as the new-driven snaw, His hose they are blae, and his shoon like the slae, And his clear siller buckles, they dazzle us a’, III For beauty and fortune the laddie’s been courtin: Weel - featur’d, weel-tocher’d, weel- mounted, an’ braw, But chiefly the siller that gars him gang till her — The penny ’s the jewel that beautifies a’! IV There ’s Meg wi’ the mailen, that fain wad a haen him, And Susie, wha’s daddie was laird of the Ha’, There’s lang-tocher’d Nancy maist fetters his fancy; But the laddie’s dear sel he loes dearest of a’, AWA’, WHIGS, AWA’ 223 MY HEART’SIN THE HIGHLANDS “The first half stanza of this song is old; the rest is mine.” (R. B.) Burns apparently refers to the first half stanza of the chorus. Sharpe quotes ‘‘from a stall copy” The Strong Walls of Derry, one stanza in which is almost identical with the Burns chorus. CHORUS My heart ’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer, A-chasing the wild deer and following the roe — My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever Igo! I FAREWELL to the Highlands, farewell to the North, The birthplace of valour, the country of worth ! Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, The hills of the Highlands for ever I love. Ir Farewell to the mountains high cover’d with snow, Farewell to the straths and green valleys below, Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods, Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods ! CHORUS My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart ’s in the Highlands a-chasing the deer, A-chasing the wild deer and following the roe— My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever Igo! JOHN ANDERSON MY JO I Joun Anderson my jo, John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonie brow was brent; But now your brow is beld, John, Your locks are like the snaw, But blessings on your frosty pow, John Anderson my jo! II John Anderson my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither, And monie a cantie day, John, We’ve had wi’ ane anither; Now we maun totter down, John, And hand in hand we’ll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson my jo! AWA’, WHIGS, AWA? CHORUS Awa’, Whigs, awa’! Awa’, Whigs, awa’! Ye’re but a pack o’ traitor louns, Yell do nae guid at a’. I Oor thrissles flourish’d fresh and fair, And bonie bloom’d our roses; But Whigs cam like a frost in June, Av’ wither’d a’ our posies. II Our ancient crown’s fa’n in the dust — Deil blin’ them wi’ the stoure 0’t, An’ write their names in his black beuk, Wha gae the Whigs the power 0’t ! UI Our sad decay in church and state Surpasses my descriving. The Whigs cam o’er us for a curse, And we hae done wi’ thriving. Iv Grim Vengeance lang has taen a nap, But we may see him waukin — Gude help the day when Royal heads Are hunted like a maukin ! CHORUS Awa’, Whigs, awa’! Awa’, Whigs, awa’ ! Ye ’re but a pack o’ traitor louns, Yell do nae guid at a’. 224 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” CA’ THE YOWES TO THE KNOWES “This beautiful song is in the true old Scotch taste, yet I do not know that either the air or words were in print before.” (R. B.) In sending a new version (post, p. 292) to Thomson in September, 1794, he wrote: “I am flattered at your adopting Ca’ the Yowes to the Knowes, as it was owing to me that ever it saw the light. About seven years ago, I was well acquainted with a worthy little fellow, a Mr. Clunie [Rev. John Clunie, minister of Ewes, Dumfriesshire, author of I Loe Na a Laddie but Ane], who sang it charmingly; and, at my request, Mr. Clarke took it down from his sing- ing. When I gave it to Johnson I added some stanzas to the song and mended others; but still it will not do for you.” Stenhouse gives the old words, presumably those taken down from Clunie’s singing. It can searce be af- firmed, that Burns has improved them. The two last stanzas are his; his two first are ex- panded from Clunie’s first ; while his two middles, where they differ from Clunie, differ for the worse. CHORUS Ca’ the yowes to the knowes, Ca’ them where the heather grows, Ca’ them where the burnie rowes, My bonie dearie ! I As I gaed down the water-side, There I met my shepherd lad: He row’d me sweetly in his plaid, And he ca’d me his dearie. II “Will ye gang down the water-side, And see the waves sae sweetly glide Beneath the hazels spreading wide ? The moon it shines fu’ clearly.” Il «TJ was bred up in nae sic school, My shepherd lad, to play the fool, An’ 2’ the day to sit in dool, An’ naebody to see me.” Iv * Ye sall get gowns and ribbons meet, Cauf-leather shoon upon your feet, And in my arms thou ‘lt lie and sleep, An’ ye sall be my dearie.” Vv “Tf ye ’ll but stand to what ye’ve said, I’se gang wi’ you, my shepherd lad, d ye may row me in your plaid, And I sall be your dearie.” VI “ While waters wimple to the sea, While day blinks in the lift sae hie, Till clay-cauld death sall blin’ my e’e, Ye sall be my dearie.” CHORUS Ca’ the yowes to the knowes, Ca’ them where the heather grows, Ca’ them where the burnie rowes, My benie dearie ! O, MERRY HAE I BEEN “Ramsay, as usual, has modernized this song. The original, which I learned on the spot, from the old hostess in the principal Inn there, is: — ‘Lassie, lend me your braw hemp-heckle, And I'll lend you my thripplin kame.”’ ‘‘My heckle is broken, it canna be gotten, And we’ll gae dance the Bob o’ Dumblane.” Twa gaed to the wood, to the wood, to the wood, Twa gaed to the wood —three came hame; An it be na weel bobbit, weel bobbit, weel bobbit, And it be na weel bobbit we "Il bob it again.’ I insert this song to introduce the following anecdote, which I have heard well authenti- cated. In the evening of the day of the battle of Dunblane (Sheriffmuir) when the action was over, a Scots officer in Argyle’s army ob- served to his Grace that he was afraid the rebels would give out to the world that they had gotten the victory. ‘Weel, weel,’ an- swered his Grace, alluding to the foregoing ballad, ‘if they think it nae weel bobbit, we "Il bob it again.’”” (R. B.) I O, MERRY hae I been teethin a heckle, An’ merry hae I been shapin a spoon! O, merry hae I been cloutin a kettle, An’ kissin my Katie when a’ was done! O, a’ the lang day I ca’ at my hammer, An’ a’ the lang day I whistle an’ sing! O, a’ the lang night I cuddle my kimmer, An’ a’ the lang night as happy’s a king! THE BRAES 0’ BALLOCHMYLE 225 II Bitter in dool, I lickit my winnins O’ marrying Bess, to gie her a slave. Blest be the hour she cool’d in her linens, And blythe be the bird that sings on her grave ! Come to my arms, my Katie, my Katie, An’ come to my arms, and kiss me again ! Drucken or sober, here’s to thee, Katie, And blest be the day I did it again! A MOTHER’S LAMENT “The words were composed to commemorate the much lamented and premature death of James Ferguson, Esq., Junior, of Craigdar- toch.” (R. B.) Tn a letter to Mrs. Dunlop (27th September, 1788) Burns states that he made them on a twenty-six mile ride from Nithsdale to Mauch- line. The copy sent her is entitled Mrs. Fer- gusson of Crazgdarroch’s Lamentation for the Death of her Son. Young Fergusson died 5th November, 1787, just after completing his university course. The only son of Mrs. Stew- art of Afton died 5th December, 1787, and Burns inseribed the song in the Afton Lodge Book, which he presented to the bereaved mother, his title this time being A Mother’s Lament for the Loss of Her Only Son. I Fate gave the word — the arrow sped, And piere’d my darling’s heart, And with him all the joys are fled Life can to me impart. By cruel hands the sapling drops, In dust dishonor’d laid: So fell the pride of all my hopes, My age’s future shade. II The mother linnet in the brake Bewails her ravish’d young: So I for my lost darling’s sake Lament the live-day long. Death, oft I’ve fear’d thy fatal blow ! Now fond I bare my breast ! O, do thou kindly lay me low, With him I love at rest! THE WHITE COCKADE CHORUS O, he’s a ranting, roving lad ! He is a brisk an’ a bonie lad ! Betide what may, I will be wed, And follow the boy wi’ the White Cock- ade ! I My love was born in Aberdeen, The boniest lad that e’er was seen; But now he makes our hearts fu’ sad — He takes the field wi’ his White Cockade. II Ill sell my rock, my reel, my tow, My guid gray mare and hawkit cow, To buy mysel a tartan plaid, To follow the boy wi’ the White Cockade. CHORUS O, he’s a ranting, roving lad ! He is a brisk an’ a bonie lad! Betide what may, I will be wed, And follow the boy wi’ the White Cock- ade ! THE BRAES 0’ BALLOCHMYLE “T composed the verses on the amiable and excellent family of Whitefoord’s leaving Bal- lochmyle, when Sir John’s misfortunes had obliged him to sell the estate.” (R. B.) See Prefatory Note to Lines Sent to Sir John Whitefoord, Bart. (ante, p. 88). I THE Catrine woods were yellow seen, The flowers decay’d on Catrine lea; Nae lav’rock sang on hillock green, But nature sicken’d on the e’e; Thro’ faded groves Maria sang, Hersel in beauty’s bloom the while, And aye the wild-wood echoes rang: — “ Fareweel the braes o’ Ballochmyle ! II “Low in your wintry beds, ye flowers, Again ye ’ll flourish fresh and fair; Ye birdies, dumb in with’ring bowers, Again ye “ll charm the vocal air; 226 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” But here, alas ! for me nae mair Shall birdie charm, or floweret smile: Fareweel the bonie banks of Ayr ! Fareweel ! fareweel sweet Ballochmyle !” THE RANTIN DOG, THE DADDIE O’T “*T composed this song pretty early in life, and sent it to a young girl, a very particular acquaintance of mine, who was at the time under a cloud.” (R. B.) The ‘‘young girl’? may have been either Elizabeth Paton (see A Poet’s Welcome, ante, p- 118) or Jean Armour. It matters not which. I O, wHa my babie-clouts will buy ? O, wha will tent me when I cry ? Wha will kiss me where I lie ? — The rantin dog, the daddie o’t ! II O, wha will own he did the faut ? O, wha-will buy the groanin maut ? O, wha will tell me how to ca’t ? — The rantin dog, the daddie o’t ! ' Ill When I mount the creepie-chair, Wha will sit beside me there ? Gie me Rob, I'll seek nae mair — The rantin dog, the daddie o’t! IV Wha will crack to me my lane ? Wha will mak me fidgin fain ? Wha will kiss me o’er again ? —- The rantin dog, the daddie o’t ! THOU LINGERING STAR Enclosing this very famous lament — hypo- chondriacal and remorseful, yet riddled with adjectives, specifically amatorious, yet wofully lacking in genuine inspiration — in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 8th November, 1789, Burns de- scribed it as ‘‘ made the other day.” He also asked her opinion of it, as he was too much interested in the subject to be “ a critic in the - composition.” For Mary Campbell see ante, p. 204, Prefatory Note to My Highland Lassie, O, and Notes, p. 348. To Mrs. Dunlop on 18th December, Burns, groaning “under the miseries of a diseased nervous system,” refers with longing to a future life: ‘‘ There should 1, with speechless agony of rapture, again welcome my lost, my ever dear Mary, whose bosom was fraught with truth, honour, con- stancy, and love : — ‘* My Mary, dear departed shade,” etc. Currie states that a copy found among Burns’s papers was headed To Mary in Heaven ; but only seeing is believing. I Txov ling’ring star with less’ning ray, That lov’st to greet the early morn, Again thou usher’st in the day My Mary from my soul was torn. O Mary, dear departed shade ! Where is thy place of blissful rest ? See’st thou thy lover lowly laid ? Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast ? II That sacred hour can I forget, Can I forget the hallow’d grove, Where, by the winding Ayr, we met To live one day of parting love ? Eternity cannot efface Those records dear of transports past, Thy image at our last embrace — Ah ! little thought we ’t was our last! III Ayr, gurgling, kiss’d his pebbled shore, O’erhung with wild woods thickening green; The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar *Twin’d amorous round the raptur’d scene; The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, The birds sang love on every spray, Till too, too soon, the glowing west Proclaim’d the speed. of wingéd day. Iv Still o’er these scenes my mem’ry wakes, And fondly broods with miser-care. Time but th’ impression stronger makes, As streams their channels deeper wear. O Mary, dear departed shade ! Where is thy place of blissful rest ? See’st thou thy lover lowly laid ? Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast ? THE BATTLE OF SHERRAMUIR 2249 EPPIE ADAIR CHORUS An’ O my Eppie, My jewel, my Eppie ! Wha wadna be happy Wi’ Eppie Adair ? I By love and by beauty, By law and by duty, I swear to be true to My Eppie Adair ! II A’ pleasure exile me, Dishonour defile me, Tf e’er I beguile thee, My Eppie Adair ! CHORUS An’ O my Eppie, My jewel, my Eppie ! Wha wadna be happy Wi’ Eppie Adair ? THE BATTLE OF SHERRAMUIR This song, in which the idiosyncrasies of the fight are summarised with excellent discrimi- nation, is condensed from a ballad by the Rev. John Barclay (1734-1798), Berean minister at Edinburgh): “ The Dialogue Betwixt William Luckladle and Thomas Cleancogue, Who were Feeding their Sheep upon the Ochil Hills, 13th November, 1715. Being the day the Battle of Sheriffmuir was Fought. To the tune of The Cameron Men.” I “QO, cam ye here the fight to shun, Or herd the sheep wi’ me, man ? Or were ye at the Sherra-moor, Or did the battle see, man ?” “T saw the battle, sair and teugh, And reekin-red ran monie a sheugh; My heart for fear gae sough for sough, To hear the thuds, and see the cluds O’ clans frae woods in tartan duds, Wha glaum’d at kingdoms three, man. IL “ The red-coat lads wi’ black cockauds To meet them were na slaw, man: They rush’d and push’d and bluid out- gush’d, And monie a bouk did fa’, man ! The great Argyle led on his files, I wat they glane’d for twenty miles; They hough’d the clans like nine-pin kyles, They hack’d and hash’d, while braid-swords clash’d, And thro’ they dash’d, and hew’d and smash’d, Till fey men died awa, man. III “ But had ye seen the philibegs And skyrin tartan trews, man, When in the teeth they daur’d our Whigs And Covenant trueblues, man ! In lines extended lang and large, When baig’nets o’erpower’d the targe, And thousands hasten’d to the charge, Wi’ Highland wrath they frae the sheath Drew blades o’ death, till out o’ breath They fled like frighted dows, man!” Iv “O, how Deil! Tam, can that be true? The chase gaed frae the north, man ! I saw mysel, they did pursue The horseman back to Forth, man; And at Dunblane, in my ain sight, They took the brig wi’ a’ their might, And straught to Stirling wing’d their flight; But, cursed lot! the gates were shut, And monie a huntit poor red-coat, For fear amaist did swarf, man!” Vv “My sister Kate cam up the gate Wi’ crowdie unto me, man: She swoor she saw some rebels run To Perth and to Dundee, man ! Their left-hand general had nae skill; The Angus lads had nae good will That day their neebors’ bluid to spill; For fear by foes that they should lose Their cogs o’ brose, they scar’d at blows, And hameward fast did flee, man. vI “They ’ve lost some gallant gentlemen, Amang the Highland clans, man ! I fear my Lord Panmure is slain, Or in his en’mies’ hands, man. Now wad ye sing this double flight, Some fell for wrang, and some for right, 228 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” But monie bade the world guid-night: . Say, pell and mell, wi’ muskets’ knell How Tories fell, and Whigs to Hell Flew off in frighted bands, man !” YOUNG JOCKIE WAS THE BLYTHEST LAD I Youne Jockie was the blythest lad, ' In a’ our town or here awa: Fw’ blythe he whistled at the gaud, Fw lightly dane’d he in the ha’. II He roos’d my een sae bonie blue, He roos’d my waist sae genty sma’; An’ ay my heart cam to my mou’, When ne’er a body heard or saw. III My Jockie toils upon the plain Thro’ wind and weet, thro’ frost and snaw; And o’er the lea I leuk fu’ fain, When Jockie’s owsen hameward ca’. Iv An’ ay the night comes round again, When in his arms he taks me a’, An’ ay he vows he ’ll be my ain As lang’s he has a breath to draw. A WAUKRIFE MINNIE “T picked up the old song and tune from a country girl in Nithsdale. I never met with it elsewhere in Scotland.” (R. B.) The vamp —if vamp it be, and we have no- where found an original —is in Burns’s happi- est and most “ folkish ”’ vein. I “‘ WHARE are you gaun, my bonie lass ? Whare are you gaun, my hinnie?” She answer’d me right saucilie: — “An errand for my minnie!” II «“O, whare live ye, my bonie lass ? O, whare live ye, my hinnie?” “ By yon burnside, gin ye maun ken, In a wee house wi’ my minnie !” III But I foor up the glen at e’en To see my bonie lassie, And lang before the grey morn cam She was na hauf sae saucy. Iv O, weary fa’ the waukrife cock, And the foumart lay his crawin ! He wauken’d the auld wife frae her sleep A wee blink or the dawin. Vi An angry wife I wat she. raise, And o’er the bed she brought her, And wi’ a meikle hazel-rung She made her a weel-pay’d dochter. VI “ O, fare-thee-weel, my bonie lass ! O, fare-thee-weel, my hinnie ! Thou art a gay and a bonie lass, _ But thou has a waukrife minnie!” THO’ WOMEN’S MINDS (R. By song is mine, all except the chorus.” ‘A new set of the Bard’s song in The Jolly Beggars (ante, p. 106). [The verses were clearly suggested by an old Scots song begin- nin: = “Put butter in my Donald’s brose,” and having a similar refrain. See also the song Is There for Honest Poverty, post, p. 294.] CHORUS For a’ that, an’ a’ that, And twice as meikle ’s a’ that, The bonie lass that I loe best, She ’ll be my ain for a’ that! I THO’ women’s minds like winter winds May shift, and turn, an’ a’ that, — The noblest breast adores them maist — A consequence, I draw that. II Great love I bear to a’ the fair, Their humble slave, an’ a’ that; KILLIECRANKIE 229 But lordly will, I hold it still A mortal sin to thraw that. Ir In rapture sweet this hour we meet, Wi’ mutual love an’ a’ that, But for how lang the flie may stang, Let inclination law that ! IV Their tricks an’ craft hae put me daft, They ’ve taen me in an’ a’ that, But clear your decks, and here ’s: — “ The Sex!” I like the jads for a’ that ! CHORUS For a’ that, an’ a’ that, And twice as meikle ’s a’ that, The bonie lass that I loe best, She ’Il be my ain for a’ that ! WILLIE BREW’D A PECK 0’ MAUT ‘“‘The air is Masterton’s; the song mine. The occasion of it was this: Mr. Wm. Nicol, of the High School, Edinburgh, during the autumn vacation being at Moffat, honest Allan (who was at that time on a visit to Dalswinton) and I went to pay Nicol a visit. We had such a joyous meeting that Mr. Masterton and I agreed, each in our own way, that we should celebrate the business.” (R. B.) The meeting took place in the autumn of 1789. The song —a little masterpiece of drunken fancy —is included in Thomson. For William Nicol see ante, p. 195, Prefatory Note to Epitaph For William Nicol. Allan Masterton was appointed writing-master to Edinburgh High School 10th October, 1789. He died in 1799. CHORUS We are na fou, we’re nae that fou, But just a drappie in our e’e ! The cock may craw, the day may daw, And ay we ’ll taste the barley-bree ! I O, Wix.ie brew’d a peck o’ maut, And Rob and Allan cam to see. Three blyther hearts that lee-lang night Ye wad na found in Christendie. II Here are we me‘ three merry boys, Three merry boys I trow are we; And monie a night we’ve merry been, And monie mae we hope to be ! III It is the moon, I ken her horn, That ’s blinkin in the lift sae hie: She shines sae bright to wyle us hame, But, by my sooth, she ’ll wait a wee ! Iv Wha first shall rise to gang awa, A euckold, coward loun is he ! Wha first beside his chair shall fa’, He is the King amang us three { CHORUS We are na fou, we ’re nae that fou, But just a drappie in our e’e ! The cock may craw, the day may daw, And ay we’ll taste the barley-bree ! KILLIECRANKIE “The battle of Killiecrankie was the last stand made by the clans for James after his abdication. Here the gallant Lord Dundee fell in the moment of victory, and with him fell the hopes of the party. General M‘Kay, when he found the Highlanders did not pursue his flying army, said : ‘ Dundee must be killed, or he never would have overlooked this advan- tage.’ A great stone marks the place where Dundee fell.” (R. B.) But the fact is that Dundee got his hurt further up the hill than the “great stone.” The battle was fought on 1%th July, 1689. CHORUS An ye had been whare I hae been, Ye wad na been sae cantie, O! An ye had seen what I hae seen On the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O ! I “ Wuark hae ye been sae braw, lad ? Whare hae ye been sae brankie, O ? ‘Whare hae ye been sae braw, lad ? Cam ye by Killiecrankie, O ?” 230 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” II “T faught at land, I faught at sea, At hame.I faught my auntie, O; But I met the Devil and Dundee On the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O ! III *¢ The bauld Pitcur fell in a furr, An’ Clavers gat a clankie, O, Or I had fed an Athole gled On the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O!” CHORUS An ye had been whare I hae been, Ye wad na been sae cantie, O ! An ye had seen what I hae seen On the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O ! THE BLUE-EYED LASSIE Enclosed in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, 2d Oc- tober, 1788: ‘“ How do you like the following song, designed for and composed by a friend of mine, and which he has christened The Blue- Eyed Lassie.” The friend was Captain Robert Riddell. The “ blue-eyed lassie ” was Jean, daughter of the Rev. Andrew Jeffrey, of Lochmaben. She married a Mr. Renwick, of New York, and died in October, 1850. I [ Garp a waefu’ gate yestreen, A gate I fear I'll dearly rue: [ gat my death frae twa sweet een, Twa lovely een o’ bonie blue ! 'T was not her golden ringlets bright, Her lips like roses wat wi’ dew, Her heaving bosom lily-white: It was her een sae bonie blue. II She talk’d, she smil’d, my heart she wyl’d, She charm’d my soul I wist na how; And ay the stound, the deadly wound, Cam frae her een sae bonie blue. But “spare to speak, and spare to speed ” — She ’1l aiblins listen to my vow: Should she refuse, Ill lay my dead To her twa een sae bonie blue. THE BANKS OF NITH I Tue Thames flows proudly to the sea, Where royal cities stately stand; But sweeter flows the Nith to me, Where Cummins ance had high command. When shall I see that honor’d land, That winding stream I love so dear ? Must wayward Fortune’s adverse hand For ever — ever keep me here ? Il How lovely, Nith, thy fruitful vales, Where bounding hawthorns gaily bloom, And sweetly spread thy sloping dales, Where lambkins wanton thro’ the broom! Tho’ wandring now must be my doom Far from thy bonie banks and braes, May there my latest hours consume Amang my friends of early days! TAM GLEN I My heart is a-breaking, dear tittie, Some counsel unto me come len’. To anger them a’ is a pity, But what will I do wi? Tam Glen? II I’m thinking, wi’ sic a braw fellow In poortith I might mak a fen’. What care I in riches to wallow, If I mauna marry Tam Glen? Tir There ’s Lowrie the laird o’ Dumeller: “ Guid day to you,” brute ! he comes ben. He brags and he blaws o’ his siller, But when will he dance like Tam Glen ? Iv My minnie does constantly deave me, And bids me beware o’ young men. They flatter, she says, to deceive me — But wha can think sae o’ Tam Glen ? Vv My daddie says, gin Ill forsake him, He’d gie me guid hunder marks ten. FRAE THE FRIENDS AND LAND I LOVE 231 But if it’s ordain’d I maun take him, O, wha will I get but Tam Glen ? VI Yestreen at the valentines’ dealing, My heart to my mou gied a sten, For thrice I drew ane without failing, And thrice it was written “Tam Glen!” VII The last Halloween I was waukin My droukit sark-sleeve, as ye ken — His likeness came up the house staukin, And the very grey breeks o’ Tam Glen ! VIII Come, counsel, dear tittie, don’t tarry ! I’ll gie ye my bonie black hen, Gif ye will advise me to marry The lad I lo’e dearly, Tam Glen. CRAIGIEBURN WOOD “Tt is remarkable of this air, that it is the confine of that country where the greatest part of our lowland music (so far as from the title, words, ete., we can localize it) has been com- posed. From Craigieburn, near Moffat, until one reaches the West Highlands, we have searcely one slow air of antiquity. The song was composed on a passion which a Mr. Gilles- pie, a particular friend of mine, had for a Miss Lorimer, afterwards a Mrs. Whepdale. The young lady was born in Craigieburn Wood. The chorus is part of an old foolish ballad.” (R. B.) For Jean Lorimer see post, p. 289, CHORUS Beyond thee, dearie, beyond thee, dearie, And O, to be lying beyond thee ! O, sweetly, soundly, weel may he sleep That ’s laid in the bed beyond thee ! I Sweet closes the ev’ning on Craigieburn Wood And blythely awaukens the morrow; But the pride o’ the spring on the Craigie- burn Wood Can yield me naught but sorrow. II I see the spreading leaves and flowers, I hear the wild birds singing; But pleasure they hae nane for me, While care my heart is wringing. III I can na tell, I maun na tell, I daur na for your anger; But secret love will break my heart, If I conceal it langer. IV I see thee gracefu’, straight, and tall; I see thee sweet and bonie; But O, what will my torment be, If thou refuse thy Johnie ! Vv To see thee in another’s arms In love to lie and languish, °T wad be my dead, that will be seen — My heart wad burst wi’ anguish ! vI But, Jeanie, say thou wilt be mine, Say thou lo’es nane before me, And a’ my days o’ life to come I'll gratefully adore thee. CHORUS Beyond thee, dearie, beyond thee, dearie, And O, to be lying beyond thee ! O, sweetly, soundly, weel may he sleep That ’s laid in the bed beyond thee ! FRAE THE FRIENDS AND LAND I LOVE “T added the four last lines by way of giv- ing a turn to the theme of the poem, such as itis.’ (R. B.) I Fras the friends and land I love Driv’n by Fortune’s felly spite, Frae my best belov’d I rove, Never mair to taste delight ! Never mair maun hope to find Ease frae toil, relief frae care. When remembrance wracks the mind, Pleasures but unveil despair. II Brightest climes shall mirk appear, Desert ilka blooming shore, 232 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” Till the Fates, nae mair severe, Friendship, love, and peace restore: Till Revenge wi’ laurell’d head Bring our banish’d hame again, And ilk loyal,,bonie lad Cross the seas, and win his ain ! O JOHN, COME KISS ME NOW Altered and expanded from a fragment in Herd (1769) : — “ John, come kiss me now, now, now ! O John, come kiss me now! John, come kiss me by and by, And make nae mair ado! ‘Some will court and compliment And make a great ado, Some will make of their guidman, And sae will I of you.” CHORUS O John, come kiss me now, now, now ! O John, my love, come kiss me now ! O John, come kiss me by and by, For weel ye ken the way to woo! I O, SoME will court and compliment, And ither some will kiss and daut; But I will mak o’ my guidman, My ain guidman — it is nae faut! Il O, some will court and compliment, And ither some will prie their mou’, And some will hause in ither’s arms, And that’s the way I like to do! CHORUS O John, come kiss me now, now, now! O John, my love, come kiss me now ! O John, come kiss me by and by, For weel ye ken the way to woo! COCK UP YOUR BEAVER I WHEN first my brave Johnie lad came to this town, He had a blue bonnet that wanted the crown, But now he has gotten a hat and a fea- ther — Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your bea- ver ! II Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu’ sprush ! We ’ll over the border and gie them a brush: There ’s somebody there we ’Il teach better haviour — Hey, brave Johnie lad, cock up your bea- ver ! MY TOCHER’S THE JEWEL I O, MEIKLE thinks my luve o’ my beauty, And meikle thinks my luve o’ my kin; But little thinks my luve I ken brawlie My tocher’s the jewel has charms for him. It’s a’ for the apple he ll nourish the tree, It’s a’ for the hiney he’ll cherish the bee ! My laddie’s sae meikle in luve wi’ the siller, He canna hae luve to spare for me ! II Your proffer o’ luve ’s an airle-penny, My tocher’s the bargain ye wad buy; But an ye be crafty, I am cunnin, Sae ye with anither your fortune may try. Ye’re like to the timmer o’ yon rotten wood, Ye ’re like to the bark o’ yon rotten tree: Ye ’ll slip frae me like a knotless thread, An’ ye ’ll crack ye ’re credit wi’ mair nor me! GUIDWIFE, COUNT THE LAWIN “The chorus of this is part of an old song, one stanza of which I recollect : — ‘ Every day my wife tells me That ale and brandy will ruin me ; But if gude liquor be my dead, This shall be written on my head — Landlady, count the lawin,’ ” etc. (R. B.) WHAT CAN A YOUNG LASSIE 233 CHORUS II Then, guidwife, count the lawin, “The Church is in ruins, the State is in The lawin, the lawin ! jars, Then, guidwife, count the lawin, Delusions, oppressions, and murderous And bring a coggie mair ! wars, We dare na weel say ’t, but we ken wha ’s to blame — ‘GANE is the day, and mirk’s the night, There ll never be peace till Jamie comes But we ’ll ne’er stray for faut o’ light, hame ! For ale and brandy’s stars and moon, And blude-red wine ’s the risin sun. It There’s wealth and ease for gentlemen, And semple folk maun fecht and fen’; But here we ’re a’ in ae accord, For ilka man that’s drunk’s a lord. iI My coggie is a haly pool, That heals the wounds o’ care and dool, And Pleasure is a wanton trout: An ye drink it a’, ye "ll find him out! CHORUS Then, guidwife, count the lawin, The lawin, the lawin ! Then, guidwife, count the lawin, And bring a coggie mair ! THERE ’LL NEVER BE PEACE TILL JAMIE COMES HAME Burns enclosed a copy (“a song of my late composition”) to Alexander Cunningham, 11th March, 1791: “You must know a beautiful Jacobite air— There'll Never be Peace till Jamie Comes Hame. When political combus- tion ceases to be the object of Princes and Pa- triots it then, you know, becomes the lawful prey of Historians and Poets.” No doubt there was an old Jacobite song with this title; but the air and the title were all that Burns knew, and no authentic copy of the thing itself is known to survive. I By yon castle wa’ at the close of the day, I heard a man sing, tho’ his head it was grey, : And as he was singing, the tears doon came: — “ There ’Il never be peace till Jamie comes hame ! Til “My seven braw sons for Jamie drew sword, But now I greet round their green beds in the yerd; It brak the sweet heart o’ my faithfu’ auld dame — There ’ll never be peace till Jamie comes hame ! IV “ Now life is a burden that bows me down, Sin I tint my bairns, and he tint his crown; But till my last moments my words are the same — There ’ll never be peace till Jamie comes hame!” WHAT CAN A YOUNG LASSIE T Wuat can a young lassie, What shall a young lassie, What can a young lassie Do wi’ an auld man ? Bad luck on the penny That tempted my minnie To sell her puir Jenny For siller an’ lan’ ! Il He’s always compleenin Frae mornin to eenin; He hoasts and he hirples The weary day lang; He’s doylt and he’s dozin; His blude it is frozen — O, dreary ’s the night Wi’ a crazy auld man! TI He hums and he hankers, He frets and he cankers, . 234 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” I never can please him Do a’ that I can. He’s peevish an’ jealous Of a’ the young fellows — O, dool on the day I met wi’ an auld man! Iv My auld auntie Katie Upon me taks pity, I’ll do my endeavour To follow her plan: I?ll cross him an’ wrack him Until I heartbreak him, And then his auld brass Will buy me a new pan. THE BONIE LAD THAT’S FAR AWA It is supposed to refer to old Armour’s ex- trusion of his daughter in the winter of 1788. I O, How can I be blythe and glad, Or how can I gang brisk and braw, When the bonie lad that I lo’e best Is o’er the hills and far awa ? II It’s no the frosty winter wind, It’s no the driving drift and snaw; But ay the tear comes in my e’e To think on him that’s far awa. III My father pat me frae his door, My friends they hae disown’d me a’; But I hae ane will tak my part — The bonie lad that’s far awa. Iv A pair o’ glooves he bought to me, And silken snoods he gae me twa, And I will wear them for his sake, The bonie lad that’s far awa. Vv O, weary Winter soon will pass, And Spring will cleed the birken shaw, And my sweet babie will be born, And he ’Il be hame that’s far awa ! I DO CONFESS THOU ART SAE FAIR “This song is altered from « poem by Sir Robert Ayton, private secretary to Mary and Anne, Queens of Scotland. The poem is to be found in Watson’ s Collection of Scots Poems, the earliest collection published in Scotland. I think that I have improved the simplicity of ie Soe by giving them a Scots dress.” R. B. I I po confess thou art sae fair, I wad been o’er the lugs in luve, Had I na found the slightest prayer That lips could speak thy heart could muve. I do confess thee sweet, but find Thou art so thriftless o’ thy sweets, Thy favours are the silly wind That kisses ilka thing it meets. II See yonder rosebud rich in dew, Amang its native briers sae coy, How sune it tines its scent and hue, When pu’d and worn a common toy! Sic fate ere lang shall thee betide, Tho’ thou may gaily bloom awhile, And sune thou shalt be thrown aside, Like onie common weed, an’ vile. SENSIBILITY HOW CHARMING I SENSIBILITY how charming, Thou, my friend, can’st truly tell ! But Distress with horrors arming Thon alas! hast known too well! II Fairest flower, behold the lily Blooming in the sunny ray: Let the blast sweep o’er the valley, See it prostrate in the clay. III Hear the woodlark charm the forest, Telling o’er his little joys; But alas! a prey the surest To each pirate of the skies ! IT IS NA, JEAN, THY BONIE FACE 235 Iv Vv Dearly bought the hidden treasure To Beauty what man but maun yield him Finer feelings can bestow: a prize, Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure In her armour of glances, and blushes, and Thrill the deepest notes of woe. sighs ? And when Wit and Refinement hae polish’d her darts, é They dazzle our een, as they flie to our YON WILD MOSSY MOUNTAINS hearts. VI “The song alludes to a part of my private history which is of no consequence to the world to know.” (R. B.) In July, 1793, he recommended it to Thom- son as suitable to the air of There'll Never be Peace till Jamie Comes Hame, if he objected to the Jacobite sentiments of that song. It is held by some to refer to Mary Campbell; but Burns occasionally visited a peasant-girl near Covington, Lanarkshire. I Yon wild mossy mountains sae lofty and wide, That nurse in their bosom the youth o’ the Clyde, ‘ Where the grouse lead their coveys thro’ the heather to feed, And the shepherd tents his flock as he pipes on his reed. see Not Gowrie’s rich valley nor Forth’s sunny shores To me hae the charms o’ yon wild, mossy : moors; For there, by a lanely, sequesteréd stream, Resides a sweet lassie, my thought and my dream. III Amang thae wild mountains shall still be my path, Ilk stream foaming down its ain green, narrow strath; For there wi’ my lassie the lang day I rove, While o’er us unheeded flie the swift hours o’ love. Iv She is not the fairest, altho’ she is fair; O’ nice education but sma’ is her share; Her parentage humble as humble can be; But I lo’e the dear lassie because she lo’es me. But kindness, sweet kindness, in the fond- sparkling e’e Has lustre outshining the diamond to me, And the heart beating love as I’m clasp’d in her arms, O, these are my lassie’s all- conquering charms ! I HAE BEEN AT CROOKIEDEN I I wax been at Crookieden — My bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! Viewing Willie and his men — My bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! There our foes that burnt and slew — My bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! There at last they gat their due— My bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! II Satan sits in his black neuk — My bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! Breaking sticks to roast the Duke — My bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! The bloody monster gae a yell—__ My bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! And loud the laugh gaed round a’ Hell — My bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! IT IS NA, JEAN, THY BONIE FACE I Ir is na, Jean, thy bonie face at or shape that I admire, tho’ thy beauty and thy grace Might weel awauk dete 236 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” e Something in ilka part o’ thee To praise, to love, I find; But, dear as is thy form to me, Still dearer is thy mind. I Nae mair ungen’rous wish I hae, Nor stronger in my breast, Than, if I canna mak thee sae, At least to see thee blest: Content am I, if Heaven shall give But happiness to thee, And, as wi’ thee I wish to live, For thee I’d bear to dee. MY EPPIE MACNAB I O, saw ye my dearie, my Eppie Macnab ? O, saw ye my dearie, my Eppie Macnab ? *She’s down in the yard, she’s kissin the laird, She winna come hame to her ain Jock Rab !” II O, come thy ways to me, my Eppie Mac- nab ! O, come thy ways to me, my Eppie Mac- nab ! Whate’er thou has done, be it late, be it soon, : Thou ’s welcome again to thy ain Jock Rab. IIt What says she, my dearie, my Eppie Mac- nab ? What says she, my dearie, my Eppie Mac- nab ? ‘She lets thee to wit that she has thee forgot, And for ever disowns thee, her ain Jock Rab.” Iv O, had I ne’er seen thee, my Eppie Mac- nab ! O, had I ne’er seen thee, my Eppie Mac- nab! As light as the air and as fause as thou ’s fair, Thou ’s broken the heart o’ thy ain Jock Rab ! WHA IS THAT AT MY BOWER DOOR Without any manner of doubt, Burns’s ori- ginal was Who But I, quoth Finlay, “a new song, much in request, sung with its own proper tune.”’ I “ Wua is that at my bower door?” “QO, wha is it but Findlay !” “Then gae your gate, ye ’se nae be here.” “Indeed maun I!” quo’ Findlay. “What mak ye, sae like a thief?” “QO, come and see !” quo’ Findlay. “ Before the morn ye “ll work mischief ?”” “ Indeed will I!” quo’ Findlay. II “ Gif I rise and let you in” — “Let me in!” quo’ Findlay — “Yell keep me wauken wi’ your din?” “Indeed will I!” quo’ Findlay. “In my bower if ye should stay ” — “Let me stay !” quo’ Findlay — “T fear ye Il bide till break 0’ day ? ” “Indeed will I!” quo’ Findlay. Tir “ Here this night if ye remain”? — “J 7ll remain!” quo’ Findlay — “T dread ye’ll learn the gate again? ” “Indeed will I!” quo’ Findlay. “What may pass within this bower” (“Let it pass !” quo’ Findlay !) “Ye maun conceal till your last hour ” — “Indeed will I!” quo’ Findlay. BONIE WEE THING “ Composed on my little idol—‘the charm- ing lovely Davies.’” (R. B.) Miss Debora Davies, daughter of Dr. Davies of Tenby, Pembrokeshire, and a relative of Captain Riddell, was jilted by one Captain Delany, and died of a decline. See further, ante, p. 187, Epigram On Miss Davies, and the song Lovely Davies, post, p. 237. CHORUS Bonie wee thing, cannie wee thing, Lovely wee thing, wert thou mine, I wad wear thee in my bosom Lest my jewel it should tine. LOVELY DAVIES 237 I Wisarutty I look and languish In that bonie face o’ thine, And my heart it stounds wi’ anguish, Lest my wee thing be na mine. II Wit and Grace and Love and Beauty In ae constellation shine ! To adore thee is my duty, Goddess 0’ this soul o’ mine ! CHORUS Bonie wee thing, cannie wee thing, Lovely wee thing, wert thou mine, I wad wear thee in my bosom Lest my jewel it should tine. THE TITHER MORN I TuHE tither morn, when I forlorn Aneath an aik sat moaning, I did na trow I’d see my jo — Beside me gin the gloaming. But he sae trig lap o’er the rig, And dawtingly did cheer me, When I, what reck, did least expeck To see my lad sae near me ! II His bonnet he a thought ajee Cock’d sprush when first he clasp’d me; And I, I wat, wi’ fainness grat, While in his grips he press’d me. “ Deil tak the war!” I late and air Hae wish’d since Jock departed; But now as glad I’m wi’ my lad As short syne broken-hearted. III Fw’ aft at e’en, wi’ dancing keen, When a’ were blythe and merry, I car’d na by, sae sad was I In absence o’ my deary. But praise be blest ! my mind’s at rest, I’m happy wi’ my Johnie ! At kirk and fair, I’se ay be there, And be as canty ’s onie. AE FOND KISS The germ of Ae Fond Kiss is found in The Parting Kiss, by Robert Dodsley (1703-1764), which was set by Oswald : — “One fond kiss before we part, Drop a Tear and bid adieu; Tho’ we sever, my fond Heart Till we meet shall pant for you,’’ etc. It finishes with a repeat of the two first lines. I Az fond kiss, and then we sever ! Ae farewell, and then forever ! Deep in heart-wrung tears I ’ll pledge thee, Warring sighs and groans I ’ll wage thee. Who shall say that Fortune grieves him, While the star of hope she leaves him ? Me, nae cheerfw’ twinkle lights me, Dark despair around benights me. II I'll ne’er blame my partial fancy: Naething could resist my Nancy ! But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love for ever. Had we never lov’d sae kindly, Had we never lov’d sae blindly, Never met — or never parted — We had ne’er been broken-hearted. Til Fare-the-weel, thou first and fairest ! Fare-the-weel, thou best and dearest ! Thine be ilka joy and treasure, Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure ! Ae fond kiss, and then we sever ! Ae farewell, alas, for ever ! Deep in heart-wrung tears I ’ll pledge thee, Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee. LOVELY DAVIES For Miss Davies, see ante, p. 236, Prefatory: Note to Bonie Wee Thing. I O, How shall I, unskilfu’, try The Poet’s occupation ? The tunefu’ Powers, in happy hours. That whisper inspiration, 238 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” Even they maun dare an effort mair Than aught they ever gave us, Ere they rehearse in equal verse The charms 0’ lovely Davies. II Each eye, it cheers, when she appears, Like Phebus in the morning, When past the shower, and every flower The garden is adorning ! As the wretch looks o’er Siberia’s shore, When winter-bound the wave is, Sae droops our heart, when we maun part Frae charming, lovely Davies. TI Her smile ’s a gift frae "boon the lift That maks us mair than princes. A sceptred hand, a king’s command, Is in her darting glances. The man in arms ’gainst female charms, Even he her willing slave is: He hugs his chain, and owns the reign Of conquering lovely Davies. IV My Muse to dream of such a theme Her feeble powers surrenders; ‘The eagle’s gaze alone surveys The sun’s meridian splendours. I wad in vain essay the strain — The deed too daring brave is! I'll drap the lyre, and, mute, admire The charms o’ lovely Davies. THE WEARY PUND O’ TOW CHORUS The weary pund, the weary pund, The weary pund o’ tow ! I think my wife will end her life Before she spin her tow. I I Bovest my wife a stane o’ lint As guid as e’er did grow, And a’ that she has made o’ that Is ae puir pund o’ tow. II There sat a bottle in a bole Beyont the ingle low; And ay she took the tither souk To drouk the stourie tow. III Quoth I: — “ For shame, ye dirty dame, Gae spin your tap o’ tow !” She took the rock, and wi’ a knock She brake it o’er my pow. Iv At last her feet —I sang to see *t !— Gaed foremost o’er the knowe, And or I wad anither jad, I'll wallop in a tow. CHORUS The weary pund, the weary pund, The weary pund o’ tow! I think my wife will end her life Before she spin her tow. I HAE A WIFE O’ MY AIN Made a few days after his marriage. I I HAE a wife o’ my ain, I’ll partake wi’ naebody: I’ll take cuckold frae nane, I'll gie cuckold to naebody. II I hae a penny to spend, There — thanks to naebody ! I hae naething to lend, I’ll borrow frae naebody. III I am naebody’s lord, I'll be slave to naebody. T hae a guid braid sword, I’ll tak dunts frae naebody. Iv I'll be merry and free, I'll be sad for naebody. Naebody cares for me, I care for naebody. O, KENMURE ’S ON AND AWA, WILLIE 239 WHEN SHE CAM BEN, SHE BOBBED I O, wHEN she cam ben, she bobbéd fu’ law! O, when she cam ben, she bobbéd fw’ law ! And when she cam’ ben, she kiss’d Cock- pen, And syne she deny’d she did it at a’! II And was na Cockpen right saucy witha’ ? And was na Cockpen right saucy witha’, In leaving the dochter o’ a lord, And kissin a collier lassie an’ a’? III O, never look down, my lassie, at a’! O, never look down, my lassie, at a’ ! Thy lips are as sweet, and thy figure com- plete, As the finest dame in castle or ha’. Iv “ Tho’ thou hast nae silk, and holland sae sma’, Tho’ thou hast nae silk, and holland sae sma’ Thy coat and thy sark are thy ain handy- wark, And Lady Jean was never sae braw.” O, FOR ANE-AND-TWENTY, TAM CHORUS An’ O, for ane-and-twenty, Tam! And hey, sweet ane-and-twenty, Tam ! I'll learn my kin a rattlin sang An I saw ane-and-twenty, Tam. I THEY snool me sair, and haud me down, And gar me look like bluntie, Tam; But three short years will soon wheel roun’ — And then comes ane-and-twenty, Tam ! II A gleib o’ lan’, a claut o’ gear Was left me by my auntie, Tam. At kith or kin I needna spier, An I saw ane-and-twenty, Tam. III They ’ll hae me wed a wealthy coof, Tho’ I mysel hae plenty, Tam; But hear’st thou, laddie — there’s my loof: I’m thine at ane-and-twenty, Tam ! CHORUS An’ O, for ane-and-twenty, Tam! And hey, sweet ane-and-twenty, Tam ! I'll learn my kin a rattlin san An I saw ane-and-twenty, Tam. - O, KENMURE’S ON AND AWA, WILLIE William Gordon, sixth Viscount Kenmure, took up the Jacobite cause in 1715, — mainly through the persuasion of his wife, Mary, daughter of Robert Dalyell, sixth Earl of Carn- wath, — and got Mar’s commission to command the forces in the south. After divers ineffec- tive moves he passed into England, and, being taken prisoner at Preston on 14th November, he beheaded on Towerhill on 24th February, 1716. I O, Kenmure ’s on and awa, Willie, O, Kenmure’s on and awa ! An’ Kenmure’s lord ’s the bravest lord That ever Galloway saw ! Il Success to Kenmure’s band, Willie, Success to Kenmure’s band ! There ’s no a heart that fears a Whig That rides by Kenmure’s hand. Ill Here’s Kenmure’s health in wine, Willie, Here ’s Kenmure’s health in wine ! There ne’er was a coward o’ Kenmure’s blude, Nor yet o’ Gordon’s line. Iv O, Kenmure’s lads are men, Willie, O, Kenmure’s lads are men ! Their hearts and swords are metal true, And that their faes shall ken. 240 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” Vv They ’ll live or die wi’ fame, Willie, They ’ll live or die wi’ fame ! But soon wi’ sounding victorie May Kenmure’s lord come hame ! vI Here ’s him that’s far awa, Willie, Here ’s him that’s far awa ! And here ’s the flower that I lo’e best — The rose that’s like the snaw ! O, LEEZE ME ON MY SPINNIN- WHEEL One of the best and the most Burnsian of Burns’s vamps, this charming song was no doubt suggested by The Loving Lass and Spin- ning-wheel in Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany, which Ramsay must have imitated from an old blackletter broadside (Pepys Collection), “ The Bonny Scott and the Yielding Lass, to an excel- lent new Tune :” — ‘* As I sate at my spinning-wheel A bonny lad there passéed by, I keen’d him round, and I lik’d him weel, Geud faith he had a bony eye: My heart new panting ’gan to feel, But still I turned my spinning-wheel,”’ etc. I O, LEEZE me on my spinnin-wheel ! And leeze me on my rock and reel, Frae tap to tae that cleeds me bien, And haps me fiel and warm at e’en ! I Il set me down, and sing and spin, While laigh descends the summer sun, Blest wi’ content, and milk and meal — O, leeze me on my spinnin-wheel ! II On ilka hand the burnies trot, And meet below my theekit cot. The scented birk and hawthorn white Across the pool their arms unite, Alike to screen the birdie’s nest And little fishes’ caller rest. The sun blinks kindly in the biel, Where blythe I turn my spinnin-wheel. II On lofty aiks the cushats wail, And Echo cons the doolfu’ tale. The lintwhites in the hazel braes, Delighted, rival ither’s lays. The craik amang the claver hay, The paitrick whirrin o’er the ley, The swallow jinkin round my shiel, Amuse me at my spinnin-wheel. Iv Wi’ sma to sell and less to buy, Aboon distress, below envy, O, wha wad leave this humble state For a’ the pride of a’ the great ? Amid their flaring, idle toys, Amid their cumbrous, dinsome joys, Can they the peace and pleasure feel Of Bessy at her spinnin-wheel ? MY COLLIER LADDIE ‘*T do not know a blyther old song than this.’ (R. B.) I “QO, WHARE live ye, my bonie lass, And tell me how they ca’ ye?” “My name,” she says, “is Mistress Jean, And I follow the collier laddie.” Ir “QO, see you not yon hills and dales The sun shines on sae brawlie ? They a’ are mine, and they shall be thine, Gin ye ll leave your collier laddie! II * An’ ye shall gang in gay attire, Weel buskit up sae gaudy, And ane to wait on every hand, Gin ye Il leave your collier laddie !” Iv “'Tho’ ye had a’ the sun shines on, And the earth conceals sae lowly, I wad turn my back on you and it a’, And embrace my collier laddie. Vv “JT can win my five pennies in a day, Av’ spend it at night fu’ brawlie, And make my bed in the collier’s neuk And lie down wi’ my collier laddie. IN SIMMER, WHEN THE HAY WAS MAWN 241 vI “ Loove for loove is the bargain for me, Tho’ the wee cot-house should haud me, And the warld before me to win my bread — And fair fa’ my collier laddie !” NITHSDALE’S WELCOME HAME | Lady Winifred Maxwell Constable (1735- 1801) was sole surviving child of William Lord Maxwell, son of William, fifth Earl of Niths- dale, who was sentenced to decapitation on Towerhill, 24th February, 1716, for his share in the Fifteen, but escaped the night before the execution. She married William Haggerston Constable of Everinghame, and began rebuild- ing the old family mansion, Terreagles, or Terregles, Kirkeudbrightshire, in 1789. Burns has stated, for the sake of ‘‘ vive la bagatelle,” that his Jacobitism was mostly matter of sport. But, in a letter of the 16th December, 1789, he, as Sir Walter put it, plays “ high Jacobite to that singular old curmudgeon Lady Wini- fred Constable: ”’ roundly asserting that they were “common sufferers in a cause where even to be unfortunate is glorious, the cause of heroic loyalty ;” and that his forefathers, like her own, had shaken ‘hands with ruin for what they esteemed the cause of their King and country.’’ I Tue noble Maxwells and their powers Are coming o’er the border; And they ’ll gae big Terreagles’ towers, And set them a’ in order; And they declare Terreagles fair, For their abode they choose it: There ’s no a heart in a’ the land But’s lighter at the news o’t ! II Tho’ stars in skies may disappear, And angry tempests gather, The happy hour may soon be near That brings us pleasant weather; The weary night o’ care and grief May hae a joyfu’ morrow; So dawning day has brought relief — Fareweel our night o’ sorrow ! IN SIMMER, WHEN THE HAY WAS MAWN I In simmer, when the hay was mawn And corn wav’d green in ilka field, While claver blooms white o’er the ley, And roses blaw in ilka bield, Blythe Bessie in the milking shiel Says: — “Ill be wed, come o’t what will!” Out spake a dame in wrinkled eild: — “Q’ guid advisement comes nae ill. II “JTt’s ye hae wooers monie ane, ’ And lassie, ye ’re but young, ye ken! Then wait a wee, and cannie wale A routhie butt, a routhie ben. There Johnie o’ the Buskie-Glen, Fw’ is his barn, fu’ is his byre. Tak this frae me, my bonie hen: It’s plenty beets the luver’s fire !”’ Ill “For Johnie o’ the Buskie-Glen I dinna care a single flie: He lo’es sae weel his craps and kye, He has nae love to spare for me. But blythe’s the blink o’ Robie’s e’e, And weel I wat he lo’es me dear: Ae blink o’ him I wad na gie For Buskie-Glen and a’ his gear.” Iv ‘“‘O thoughtless lassie, life’s a faught ! The canniest gate, the strife is sair. But ay fu’-han’t is fechtin best: A hungry care ’s an unco care. But some will spend, and some will spare, An’ wilfu’ folk maun hae their will. Syne as ye brew, my maiden fair, Keep mind that ye maun drink the yill!” v “O, gear will buy me rigs o’ land, And gear will buy me sheep and kye! But the tender heart o’ leesome loove The gowd and siller canna buy ! We may be poor, Robie and I; Light is the burden luve lays on; Content and loove brings peace and joy: What mair hae Queens upon a throne ?” 242 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” FAIR ELIZA Two copies in Burns’s hand are in the Hastie Collection. In the earlier the lady’s name is Robina. According to Stenhouse, she was “a young lady to whom Mr. Hunter, a friend of Mr. Burns, was much attached.” Hunter died shortly after going to Jamaica. The verses appear, however, to have been written on some lady suggested by Johnson: ‘‘So much for your Robina — how do you like the verses? I assure you I have tasked my muse to the top of her performing. However, the song will not sing to your tune in Macdonald’s Collection of Highland Airs, which is much admired in this country; I intended the verses to be sung to that air. It is in page 17th and No. 112. There is another air in the same collection, an Argyleshire Air, which, with a trifling alter- ay will do charmingly.” (R. B. to John- son. Johnson set the words to both these tunes. I Turn again, thou fair Eliza ! Ae kind blink before we part ! Rew on thy despairing lover — Canst thou break his faithfu’ heart ? Turn again, thou fair Eliza ! If to love thy heart denies, For pity hide the cruel sentence Under friendship’s kind disguise ! II Thee, dear maid, hae I offended ? The offence is loving thee. Canst thou wreck his peace for ever, Wha for thine wad gladly die ? While the life beats in my bosom, Thou shalt mix in ilka throe. Turn again, thou lovely maiden, Ae sweet smile on me bestow ! III Not the bee upon the blossom YE JACOBITES BY NAME I Yr Jacobites by name, Give an ear, give an ear ! Ye Jacobites by name, Give an ear ! Ye Jacobites by name, Your fautes I will proclaim, Your doctrines I maun blame — You shall hear ! II What is Right, and what is Wrang, By the law, by the law ? What is Right, and what is Wrang, By the law ? What is Right, and what is Wrang ? A short sword and a lang, A weak arm and a strang For to draw! II What makes heroic strife Famed afar, famed afar ? What makes heroic strife Famed afar ? What makes heroie strife ? To whet th’ assassin’s knife, Or hunt a Parent’s life Wi bluidy war ! IV Then let your schemes alone, In the State, in the State ! Then let your schemes alone, In the State ! Then let your schemes alone, Adore the rising sun, And leave a man undone To his fate ! THE POSIE In the pride o’ sinny noon, Not the little sporting fairy All beneath the simmer moon, Not the Poet in the moment Fancy lightens in his e’e, Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture, That thy presence gies to me. “The Posie inthe Museum is my composi- tion; the air was taken down from Mrs. Burns’s voice. It is well known in the west country ; but the old words are trash.”’? (Burns to Thomson, 19th October, 1794.) ‘‘ It appears evident to me that Oswald composed his Roslin Castle on the modulation of this air. . . . The old verses to which it was suhg, when I took THE BANKS O’ DOON 243 down the notes from a country girl’s voice, had no great merit. The following is a specimen : — “ ¢ There was a pretty May, and a milkin she went, Wi’ her red rosy cheeks, and her coal-black hair; And she had met a young man comin o’er the bent, With a double and adiew to the fair May,’ etc. (BR. B.) and so on for four other stanzas.” I QO, Luve will venture in where it daur na weel be seen ! O, luve will venture in, where wisdom ance hath been ! But I will doun yon river rove amang the wood sae green, And a’ to pu’ a posie to my ain dear May! II The primrose I will pu’, the firstling o’ the year, And I will pw’ the pink, the emblem o’ my dear, For she’s the pink o’ womankind, and blooms without a peer — And a’ to be a posie to my ain dear May! iI Ill pu’ the budding rose when Phebus peeps in view, For it’s like a baumy kiss o’ her sweet, bonie mou. The hayacinth ’s for constancy wi’ its un- changing blue — And a’ to be a posie to my ain dear May! Iv The lily it is pure, and the lily it is fair, And in her lovely bosom Ill place the lily there. The daisy’s for simplicity and unaffected air — And a’ to be a posie to my ain dear May! v The hawthorn I will pu’, wi’ its locks o’ siller gray, Where, like an agéd man, it stands at break o’ day; But the songster’s nest within the bush I winna tak away — And a’ to be a posie to my ain dear May! VI The woodbine I will pu’ when the e’ening star is near, And the diamond draps o’ dew shall be her een sae clear ! The violet ’s for modesty, which weel she fa’s to wear — And a’ to be a posie to my ain dear May! VII I'll tie the posie round wi’ the silken band o’ luve, And I’ll place it in her breast, and Ill swear by a’ above, That to my latest draught o’ life the band shall ne’er remove, And this will be a posie to my ain dear May ! THE BANKS O’ DOON “ An Ayrshire legend,” according to Allan Cunningham, “ says the heroine of this affect- ing song was Pegg Kennedy of Daljarroch;” and Chambers also supposed the ballad to be an allegory of the same “ unhappy love-tale.” See ante, p. 201, Prefatory Note to Young Peggy, but even if the “ love-tale ” were then known, it was not then “ unhappy.” For other sets, Sweet are the Banks and Ye Flowery Banks, see post, pp. 309, 310. I Ye banks and braes o’ bonie Doon, How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair ? How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae weary fw’ o’ care! Thou ’ll break my heart, thou warbling bird, That wantons thro’ the flowering thorn ! Thou minds me o’ departed joys, Departed never to return. II Aft hae I rov’d by bonie Doon To see the rose and woodbine twine, And ilka bird sang o’ its luve, And fondly sae did I o’ mine. Wi lightsome heart I pu’d a rose, Fw’ sweet upon its thorny tree ! And my fause luver staw my rose — But ah! he left the thorn wi’ me. 244 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” WILLIE WASTLE The heroine is said to have been the wife of a farmer who lived near Ellisland. A cottage in Peeblesshire, which stood where a muirland burn, the Logan Water, joins the Tweed, was known by the name of Linkumdoddie, but probably it was so named after Burns wrote his song. The earliest authenticated appear- ance of Willie Wastle in rhyme is in Cock- burn’s (Governor of Dunse Castle) reply to Colonel Fenwick : — “T, Willie Wastle, Am in my castle ; All the dogges in the towne Shall not dinge me downe.”’ This same rhyme was, and is, used in the mimie warfare of Scottish children; but whether they were the inspirers of Cockburn, or he of them, it is impossible to affirm. I WILu Wast ez dwalt on Tweed, The spot they ca’d it Linkumdoddie. Willie was a wabster guid Could stown a clue wi’ onie bodie. He had a wife was dour and din, O, Tinkler Maidgie was her mither ! Sic a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a button for her. Ir She has an e’e (she has but ane), The cat has twa the very colour, Five rusty teeth, forbye a stump, A clapper-tongue wad deave a miller ; A whiskin beard about her mou, Her nose and chin they threaten ither: Sic a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a button for her. III She’s bow-hough’d, she’s hem-shin’d, Ae limpin leg a hand-breed shorter; She ’s twisted right, she’s twisted left, To balance fair in ilka quarter; She has a hump upon her breast, The twin o’ that upon her shouther: Sic a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a button for her. IV Auld baudrans by the ingle sits, An’ wi’ her loof her face a-washin; But Willie’s wife is nae sae trig, She dights her grunzie wi’ a hushion; Her walie nieves like midden-creels, Her face wad fyle the Logan Water: Sie a wife as Willie had, I wad na gie a button for her. LADY MARY ANN Burns got the germ of his song from a frag- ment in the Herd ms. “ Lady Mary Ann” and “Young Charlie Cochrane” are his own, as are the last three stanzas of the ballad. I O, Lapy Mary Ann looks o’er the Castle ? wa’, She saw three bonie boys playing at the ba’, The youngest he was the flower amang them a’ — My bonie laddie’s young, growin yet ! but he’s II “O father, O father, an ye think it fit, We’ll send him a year to the college yet; We ’ll sew a green ribbon round about his hat. And that will let them ken he’s to marry yet!” Ill Lady Mary Ann was a flower in the dew, Sweet was its smell and bonie was its hue, And the longer it blossom’d the sweeter it grew, For the lily in the bud will be bonier yet. Iv Young Charlie Cochran was the sprout of an aik; Bonie and bloomin and straucht was its make; The sun took delight to shine for its sake, And it will be the brag o’ the forest yet. Vv The simmer is gane when the leaves they were green, And the days are awa that we hae seen; But far better daysI trust will come again, For my bonie laddie’s young, but he’s growin yet. KELLYBURN BRAES SUCH A PARCEL OF ROGUES IN A NATION I FAREWEEL to a’ our Scottish fame, Fareweel our ancient glory ! Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name Sae famed in martial story ! Now Sark rins over Solway sands, An’ Tweed rins to the ocean, To mark where England’s stands — Such a parcel of rogues in a nation ! province II What force or guile could not subdue Thro’ many warlike ages Is wrought now by a coward few For hireling traitor’s wages. The English steel we could disdain, Secure in valour’s station; But English gold has been our bane — Such a parcel of rogues in a nation ! III O, would, or I had seen the day That Treason thus could sell us, My auld grey head had lien in clay W? Bruce and loyal Wallace ! But pith and power, till my last hour I’ll mak this declaration: — “We’re bought and sold for English gold’? — Such a parcel of rogues in a nation! KELLYBURN BRAES The Kelly burn (7. e. brook) forms the north- ern boundary of Ayrshire, and the ballad has no connexion with Nithsdale or Galloway. I THERE lived a carl in Kellyburn Braes (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme 3), And he had a wife was the plague o’ his days (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). . 245 Ir Ae day as the carl gaed up the lang glen (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !), He met wi’ the Devil, says: — “ How do you fen ?” (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). I “T’ve got a bad wife, sir, that’s a’ my com- plaint (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !), For, saving your presence, to her ye’re a saint.” (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). IV “Tt’s neither your stot nor your staig I shall crave (Hey and the rue grows bonnie wi’ thyme !), But gie me your wife, man, for her I must have ” (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). v “O welcume most kindly !” the blythe carl said (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !), “ But if ye can match her ye’re waur than ye’re ca’d” (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). VI The Devil has got the auld wife on his back (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi? thyme !), And like a poor pedlar he’s carried his pack (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). VII He’s carried her hame to his ain hallan- door (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !), 246 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” Syne bade her gae in for a bitch and a whore (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). Vill Then straight he makes fifty, the pick o’ his band (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !), Turn out on her guard, in the clap o’ a hand (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). Ix The carlin gaed thro’ them like onie wud bear (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !): Whae’er she gat hands on cam near her nae mair (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). x A reekit wee deevil looks over the wa (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !): — “O help, maister, help, or she ’ll ruin us 2 ! » . (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). XI The Devil he swore by the edge o’ his knife (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !), He pitied the man that was tied to a wife (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). XII The Devil he swore by the kirk and the bell (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ -thyme !), He was not in wedlock, thank Heav’n, but in Hell (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). XIII Then Satan has travell’d again wi’ his pack (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !), And to her auld husband he’s carried her back (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). xIV “TI hae been a Devil the feck o’ my life (Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme !), But ne’er was in Hell till I met wi? a wife” (And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime !). THE SLAVE’S LAMENT I Ir was in sweet Senegal That my foes did me enthral For the lands of Virginia, -ginia, O ! Torn from that lovely shore, And must never see it more, And alas ! I am weary, weary, O! Ii All on that charming coast Is no bitter snow and frost, Like the lands of Virginia, -ginia, O ! There streams for ever flow, And the flowers for ever blow, And alas ! Iam weary, weary, O! TI The burden I must bear, While the cruel scourge I fear, In the lands of Virginia, -ginia, O! And I think on friends most dear With the bitter, bitter tear, And alas! I am weary, weary, O! THE SONG OF DEATH I FAREWELL, thou fair day, thou green earth,. and ye skies, Now gay with the broad setting sun ! Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear-- tender ties — Our race of existence is run ! BONIE BELL 247 Thou grim King of Terrors! thou Life’s gloomy foe, Go, frighten the coward and slave ! Go, teach them to tremble, fell tyrant, but know, No terrors hast thou to the brave ! Ir Thou strik’st the dull peasant — he sinks in the dark, Nor saves e’en the wreck of a name ! Thou strik’st the young hero — a glorious mark, He falls in the blaze of his fame ! In the field of proud honour, our swords in our hands, Our king and our country to save, While victory shines on Life’s last ebbing sands, O, who would not die with the brave ? SWEET AFTON Flow Gently, Sweet Afton was sent to Mrs. Dunlop, 5th February, 1789, and in the enclos- ing letter Burns explicitly declares that it was written for Johnson’s Musical Museum, as a “ compliment” to the “small river Afton that flows into Nith, near New Cumnock, which has some charming wild romantic scenery on its banks,” etc. It seems certain, therefore, that the name Mary was introduced euphonie gratia, or at least that the heroine — if heroine there were — was another than Mary Camp- bell. Also, the song was clearly suggested by one of David Garrick’s, to the Avon, which Burns saw in A Select Collection of English Songs (London, 1763). I Fiow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes ! Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise ! My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream — Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream ! II Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro’ the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear — I charge you, disturb not my slumbering ’ fair! III How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills 2 Far mark’d with the courses of clear, wind- ing rills ! There daily I wander, as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary’s sweet cot in my eye. IV How pleasant thy banks and green vallies below, Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow There oft, as mild Ev’ning weeps over the lea, The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. v Thy erystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, And winds by the cot where my Mary resides ! How wanton thy waters her snowy feet. lave, As, gathering sweet flowerets, she stems thy: clear wave ! vI Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green: braes ! Flow gently, sweet river, the theme of my lays ! My Mary ’s asleep by thy murmuring stream — Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream ! BONIE BELL I THE smiling Spring comes in rejoicing, And surly Winter grimly flies. Now crystal clear are the falling waters,. And bonie blue are the sunny skies. 248 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” Fresh o’er the mountains breaks forth the morning, The ev’ning gilds the ocean’s swell: All creatures joy in the sun’s returning, And I rejoice in my bonie Bell. II The flowery Spring leads sunny summer, The yellow Autumn presses near; Then in his turn comes gloomy Winter, Till smiling Spring again appear. Thus seasons dancing, life advancing, Old Time and Nature their changes tell; But never ranging, still unchanging, I adore my bonie Bell. THE GALLANT WEAVER Supposed by some to refer to Armour’s visit to Paisley in the spring of 1786, [after the quarrel, and to an unauthenticated story of a flirtation with a weaver named Wilson. The song To the Weaver's Gin Ye Go (ante, p. 202) is also referred to the same episode, but with little ground.] The Cart flows past Paisley. A song, The Lass of Cartside, which we have found in an old Dumfries chap, may or may not have suggested this one to Burns : — “‘ Where Cart gently glides thro’ the vale, And nature, in beauty arrayed, Perfumes the sweet whispering gale, ‘That wantons in every green shade,” etc. [As published in Thomson (vol. i.), the song is of a gallant sailor.] I Wuere Cart rins rowin to the sea By monie a flower and spreading tree, ‘There lives a lad, the lad for me — He is a gallant weaver! ‘O, I had wooers aught or nine, They gied me rings and ribbons fine, And I was fear’d my heart wad tine, And I gied it to the weaver. II My daddie sign’d my tocher-band To gie the lad that has the land; But to my heart Ill add my hand, And give it to the weaver. While birds rejoice in leafy bowers, While bees delight in opening flowers, ‘While corn grows green in summer showers, I love my gallant weaver. HEY, CA’ THRO’ CHORUS Hey, ca’ thro’, ca’ thro’, For we hae mickle ado ! Hey, ca’ thro’, ca’ thro’, For we hae mickle ado ! I Up wi’ the carls of Dysart And the lads o’ Buckhaven, And the kimmers o’ Largo And the lasses o’ Leven ! II We hae tales to tell, And we hae sangs to sing; We hae pennies to spend, And we hae pints to bring. II We ’Il live a’ our days, And them that comes behin’, Let them do the like, And spend the gear they win! CHORUS Hey, ca’ thro’, ca’ thro’, For we hae mickle ado ! Hey, ca’ thro’, ca’ thro’, For we hae mickle ado ! O, CAN YE LABOUR LEA The first stanza and the chorus are well-nigh word for word from the Merry Muses set, which, however, may have been retouched by Burns. The rest appears to be his own ; though in one of his letters he describes his stanza ili. as a favourite song ‘‘o’ his mither’s.” CHORUS O, can ye labour lea, young man, O, can ye labour lea ? Gae back the gate ye came again — Ye ’se never scorn me ! I I FEeE’D a man at Martinmas Wi’ airle-pennies three; But a’ the faut I had to him He cauldna labour lea. THE DEIL ’S AWA WI’ TH’ EXCISEMAN 249 I O, clappin’s guid in Febarwar, An’ kissin’s sweet in May; But what signifies a young man’s love, An’t dinna last for ay ? TIT O, kissin is the key 0’ love An’ clappin is the lock; An’ makin of’s the best thing That e’er a young thing got ! CHORUS O, can ye labour lea, young man, O, ean ye labour lea ? Gae back the gate ye came again — Ye’se never scorn me! THE DEUK’S DANG O’ER MY DADDIE I Tue bairns gat out wi’ an unco shout: — “The deuk’s dang o’er my daddie, O!” “The fien-ma-care,” quo’ the feirrie auld wife, «¢ He was but a paidlin body, O! He paidles out, and he paidles in, An’ he paidles late and early, O! This seven lang years I hae lien by his side, An’ he is but a fusionless carlie, O!” II “ O, haud your tongue, my feirrie auld wife, O, haud your tongue, now Nansie, O ! I’ve seen the day, and sae hae ye, Ye wad na been sae donsie, O. I’ve seen the day ye butter’d my brose, And cuddl’d me late and early, O; But downa-do’s come o’er me now, And och, I find it sairly, O !” SHE’S FAIR AND FAUSE The general allusion is to the girl who jilted Alexander Cunningham (see ante, p. 95, Pre- fatory Note to Song: Anna, Thy Charms; and p. 140, Prefatory Note to To Alexander Cun- ningham). I Sur ’s fair and fause that causes my smart; I lo’ed her meikle and lang; She’s broken her vow, she’s broken my heart; \ And I may e’en gae hang. A coof cam in wi’ routh o’ gear, And I hae tint my dearest dear; But Woman is but warld’s gear, Sae let the bonie lass gang ! II Whae’er ye be that Woman love, To this be never blind: Nae ferlie ’tis, tho’ fickle she prove, A woman has’t by kind. O Woman lovely, Woman fair, An angel form ’s faun to thy share, *T wad been o’er meikle to gien thee mair!... I mean an angel mind. THE DEIL’S AWA WI’ TH” EX- CISEMAN CHORUS The Deil’s awa, the Deil’s awa, The Deil ’s awa wi’ th’ Exciseman ! He’s dane’d awa, he’s dane’d awa, He’s dane’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman ! I Tue Deil cam fiddlin thro’ the town, And dane’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman, And ilka wife cries: —“ Auld Mahoun, I wish you luck o’ the prize, man! II “Well mak our maut, and we ’ll brew our drink, We'll laugh, sing, and rejoice, man, And monie braw thanks to the meikle black Deil, That dane’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman.” HI There ’s threesome reels, there’s foursome reels, There’s hornpipes and strathspeys, man, But the ae best dance e’er cam to the land Was The Deil’s Awa wi’ th? Exciseman. 250 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” CHORUS The Deil’s awa, the Deil’s awa, The Deil ’s awa wi’ th’ Exciseman ! He’s dane’d awa, he’s danc’d awa, He ’s dane’d awa wi’ th’ Exciseman ! THE LOVELY LASS OF INVER- NESS I TuE lovely lass of Inverness, Nae joy nor pleasure can she see; For e’en to morn she cries “ Alas !” And ay the saut tear blin’s her e’e: — Il «“ Drumossie moor, Drumossie day — A waefu’ day it was to me! For there I lost my father dear, My father dear and brethren three. Til “Their winding-sheet the bluidy clay, Their graves are growin green to see, And by them lies the dearest lad That ever blest a woman’s e’e. IV « Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord, A bluidy man I trow thou be, For monie a heart thou hast made sair That ne’er did wrang to thine or thee !” A RED, RED ROSE I O, my luve is like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June. O, my luve is like the melodie, That’s sweetly play’d in tune. II As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I, And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. TI Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun ! And I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run. Iv And fare thee weel, my only luve, And fare thee weel a while ! And I will come again, my luve, Tho’ it were ten thousand mile ! AS I STOOD BY YON ROOFLESS TOWER The ‘‘ roofless tower’ was part of the ruins of Lincluden Abbey, situate at the junction of the Cluden with the Nith. See ante, p. 198, Pre- fatory Note to Epitaph On Grizzel Grimme. CHORUS A lassie all alone was making her moan, Lamenting our lads beyond the sea: — “In the bluidy wars they fa’, and our honor’s gane an’ a’, And broken-hearted we maun die.” I As I stood by yon roofless tower, Where the wa’flow’r scents the dewy air, Where the houlet mourns in her ivy bower, And tells the midnight moon her care: II The winds were laid, the air was still, The stars they shot along the sky, The tod was howling on the hill, And the distant-echoing glens reply. III The burn, adown its hazelly path, Was rushing by the ruin’d wa’, Hasting to join the sweeping Nith, Whase roarings seem’d to rise and fa’. Iv The cauld blae North was streaming forth Her lights, wi’ hissing, eerie din : Athort the lift they start and shift, Like Fortune’s favours, tint as win. Vv Now, looking over firth and fauld, Her horn the pale-faced Cynthia rear’d, AULD LANG SYNE 251 When lo! in form of minstrel auld A stern and stalwart ghaist appear’d. CHORUS Sing, round about the fire wi’ a rung she Me ran, And frae his harp sic strains did flow, An’ round about the fire wi’ a rung she Might rous’d the slumbering Dead to ran: — hear, But O, it was a tale of woe As ever met a Briton’s ear ! VII He sang wi’ joy his former day, He, weeping, wail’d his latter times: But what he said — it was nae play ! — I winna ventur’t in my rhymes. CHORUS A lassie all alone was making her moan Lamenting our lads beyond the sea: — “In the bluidy wars they fa’, and our honor’s gane an’ a’, And broken-hearted we maun die.” 0, AN YE WERE DEAD, GUID- MAN CHORUS Sing, round about the fire wi’ a rung she ran An’ round about the fire wi? a rung she ran: — “Your horns shall tie you to the staw, An’ I shall bang your hide, guidman! ” I O, AN ye were dead, guidman, A green turf on your head, guidman | I wad bestow my widowhood Upon a rantin Highlandman ! II There ’s sax eggs in the pan, guidman, There ’s sax eggs in the pan, guidman, There ’s ane to you, and twa to me, And three to our John Highlandman ! II A sheep-head’s in the pot, guidman, A sheep-head ’s in the pot, guidman ! The flesh to him, the broo to me, An’ the horns become your brow, guidman ! “Your horns shall tie you to the staw, An’ I shall bang your hide, guidman ! ” AULD LANG SYNE Sent to Mrs. Dunlop, 17th December, 1788 : “* Apropos, is not the Scotch phrase Auld Lang- syne exceedingly expressive ? There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul,” ete. To Thomson he wrote: ‘‘ One song more and I have done—‘ Auld Lang Syne.’ The air is but mediocre; but the fol- lowing song — the old song of the olden times, and. which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, until I took it down from an old man’s singing, is enough to recommend any air.’ Thomson in Scottish Airs expressed the opinion that Burns thus wrote “merely in a playful humour.” It may algo be that the story was a device to make sure that he (Thomson) would accept a piece which the writer was far too modest to describe as his own improvement on the earlier sets, the one published in Watson (1711), the other credited to Allan Ramsay. But, after all, it is byno means impossible that he really got the germ of his set as he says he did. CHORUS For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We ’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet For auld lang syne ! I SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind ? Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And auld lang syne ! II And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp. And surely Ill be mine, , And we ’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet For auld lang syne ! TI We twa hae run about the braes, And pou’d the gowans fine, 252 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” But we’ve wander’d monie a weary fit Sin’ auld lang syne. IV We twa hae paidl’d in the burn Frae morning sun till dine, But seas between us braid hae roar’d Sin’ auld lang syne. Vv And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere, And gie’s a hand o’ thine, And we’ll tak a right guid-willie waught For auld lang syne ! CHORUS For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet For auld lang syne ! LOUIS, WHAT RECK I BY THEE Probably made soon after his marriage, and certainly before the Revolution of 1795. I Louis, what reck 1 by thee, Or Geordie on his ocean ? Dyvor beggar louns to me ! I reign in Jeanie’s bosom. II Let her crown my love her law, And in her breast enthrone me, Kings and nations — swith awa ! Reif randies, I disown ye. HAD I THE WYTE? I Hap I the wyte? had I the wyte? Had I the wyte? she bade me! She watch’d me by the hie-gate side, And up the loan she shaw’d me; And when I wadna venture in, A coward loon she ca’d me! Had. Kirk and State been in the gate, I’d lighted when she bade me. II Sae craftilie she took me ben And bade me mak nae clatter: — “ For our ramgunshoch, glum guidman Is o’er ayont the water.” Whae’er shall say I wanted grace When I did kiss and dawte her, Let him be planted in my place, Syne say I was the fautor ! TIL Could I for shame, could I for shame, Could I for shame refus’d her ? And wadna manhood been to blame Had I unkindly used her ? He claw’d her wi’ the ripplin-kame, And blae and bluidy bruis’d her — When sic a husband was frae hame, What wife but wad excus’d her ! Iv I dighted ay her een sae blue, An’ bann’d the cruel randy, And, weel I wat, her willin mou’ Was sweet as sugarcandie. At gloamin-shot, it was, I wot, I lighted — on the Monday, But I cam thro’ the Tyseday’s dew To wanton Willie’s brandy. COMIN THRO’ THE RYE CHORUS O, Jenny ’s a’ weet, poor body, Jenny ’s seldom dry: She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie, Comin thro’ the rye! I Comin thro’ the rye, poor body, Comin thro’ the rye, She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie, Comin thro’ the rye ! II Gin a body meet a body Comin thro’ the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, Need a body ery ? CHARLIE HE ’S MY DARLING 253 III Gin a body meet a body Comin thro’ the glen, Gin a body kiss a body, Need the warld ken ? CHORUS O, Jenny ’s a’ weet, poor body, Jenny ’s seldom dry: She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie, Comin thro’ the rye ! YOUNG JAMIE I Youne Jamie, pride of a’ the plain, Sae gallant and sae gay a swain, Thro’ a’ our lasses he did rove, And reign’d resistless King of Love. II But now, wi’ sighs and starting tears, He strays amang the woods and breers; Or in the glens and rocky caves His sad complaining dowie raves: — TI “T, wha sae late did range and rove, And chang’d with every moon my love — I little thought the time was near, Repentance I should buy sae dear. Iv “The slighted maids my torments see, And laugh at a’ the pangs I dree; While she, my cruel, scornful Fair, Forbids me e’er to see her mair.” OUT OVER THE FORTH I Out over the Forth, I look to the north — But what is the north, and its Highlands to me ? The south nor the east gie ease to my breast, The far foreign land or the wide rolling sea ! II But I look to the west, when I gae to rest, That happy my dreams and my slumbers may be; For far in the west lives he I loe best, The man that is dear to my babie and me. WANTONNESS FOR EVERMAIR Wanronness for evermair, ‘Wantonness has been my ruin. Yet for a’ my dool and care It’s wantonness for evermair. I hae lo’ed the Black, the Brown; I hae lo’ed the Fair, the Gowden! A’ the colours in the town — I hae won their wanton favour. CHARLIE HE’S MY DARLING CHORUS An’ Charlie he ’s my darling, My darling, my darling, Charlie he ’s my darling — The Young Chevalier ! I °T was on a Monday morning Right early in the year, That Charlie came to our town — The Young Chevalier ! II As he was walking up the street The city for to view, O, there he spied a bonie lass The window looking thro’ ! III Sae light ’s he jimpéd up the stair, And tirl’d at the pin; And wha sae ready as hersel’ To let the laddie in! Iv He set his Jenny on his knee, All in his Highland dress; For brawlie weel he kend the way To please a bonie lass. 254 Bi It’s up yon heathery mountain And down yon scroggy glen, We daurna gang a-milking For Charlie and his men ! CHORUS An’ Charlie he’s my darling, My darling, my darling, Charlie he’s my darling — The Young Chevalier ! THE LASS O’ ECCLEFECHAN Burns, in the’course of his “ duty as super- visor,’’ was accustomed to “ visit this unfortu- nate wicked little village,” and slept in it on 4th February, 1795 (R. B. to Thomson), about two months after the birth of Thomas Carlyle. It was long a favourite resort of such vaga- bonds as are pictured in The Jolly Beggars: which may —or may not— account in some measure for Carlyle’s affection for that admir- able piece. Thus, in The Trogger, a ballad in The Merry Muses, which may very well be from Burns, the hero and heroine, their business done, proceed to “Tak the gate, An’ in by Ecclefechan, Where the brandy stoup we gart it clink, An’ the strong beer ream the quaich in.’ I “Gat ye me, O, gat ye me, Gat ye me wi’ naething ? Rock an’ reel, an’ spinning wheel, A mickle quarter basin: Bye attour, my gutcher has A heich house and a laich ane, A’ forbye my bonie sel, The toss 0’ Ecclefechan !” Ir “O, haud your tongue now, Lucky Lang, O, haud your tongue and jauner ! I held the gate till you I met, Syne I began to wander: I tint my whistle and my sang, I tint my peace and pleasure; But your green graff, now Lucky Lang, Wad airt me to my treasure.” SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” THE COOPER O’ CUDDY CHORUS We ’ll hide the cooper behint the door, Behint the door, behint the door, We ‘ll hide the cooper behint the door, And cover him under a mawn, O. I Tue Cooper o’ Cuddy came here awa, He ca’d the girrs out o’er us a’, An’ our guidwife has gotten a ca’, That ’s anger’d the silly guidman, O. II He sought them out, he sought them in, Wi? “ Deil hae her!” an’ “ Deil hae him !” But the body he was sae doited and blin’, He wist na where he was gaun, O. III They cooper’d at e’en, they cooper’d at morn, Till our guidman has gotten the scorn: On ilka brow she’s planted a horn, And swears that there they sall stan’, O ! CHORUS We ’ll hide the cooper behint the door, Behint the door, behint the door, We'll hide the cooper behint the door, And cover him under a mawn, O. FOR THE SAKE O’ SOMEBODY I My heart is sair —I dare na tell — My heart is sair for Somebody: I could wake a winter night For the sake o’ Somebody. O-hon ! for Somebody ! O-hey ! for Somebody ! I could range the world around For the sake o’ Somebody. II Ye Powers that smile on virtuous love, O, sweetly smile on Somebody ! Frae ilka danger keep him free, And send me safe my Somebody ! SAE FLAXEN WERE HER RINGLETS 255 O-hon ! for Somebody ! O-hey ! for Somebody ! I wad do — what wad I not ? — For the sake o’ Somebody ! THE CARDIN 0O’T Suggested, perhaps, by Alexander Ross’s : — “There was a wifie had a wee pickle tow, And she wad gae try the spinning o’t.’’ CHORUS The cardin o’t, the spinnin o’t, The warpin o’t, the winnin o’t ! When ilka ell cost me a groat, The tailor staw the lynin o’t. I I cort a stane o’ haslock woo, To mak a wab to Johnie 0’t, For Johnie is my only jo— I lo’e him best of onie yet! Ir For tho’ his locks be lyart gray, And tho’ his brow be beld aboon, Yet I hae seen him on a day The pride of a’ the parishen. CHORUS The cardin o’t, the spinnin o’t, The warpin o’t, the winnin o’t ! When ilka ell cost me a groat, The tailor staw the lynin o’t. THERE’S THREE TRUE GUID FELLOWS I THERE’s three true guid fellows, There’s three true guid fellows, There’s three true guid fellows, Down ayont yon glen ! It It’s now the day is dawin, But or night do fa’ in, Whase cock ’s best at crawin, Willie, thou sall ken ! SAE FLAXEN WERE HER RING-— LETS “Do you know, my dear sir, a blackguard Irish song called Oonagh’s Waterfall? ,.. The air is charming, and I have often regretted the want of decent verses to it. It is too much, at least for my humble, rustic muse, to expect that every effort of hers must have merit; still I think that it is better to have mediocre verses to a favourite air, than none at all. On this principle I have all along proceeded in the Scots Musical Museum; and, as that publica- tion is at its last volume, I intend the follow- ing song, to the air above-mentioned, for that work.” (R. B. to Thomson, September, 1794.) For Chloris, see post, p. 289. I Sax flaxen were her ringlets, Her eyebrows of a darker hue, Bewitchingly o’er-arching Twa laughing een o’ bonie blue. Her smiling, sae wyling, Wad make a wretch forget his woe . What pleasure, what treasure, Unto those rosy lips to grow ! Such was my Chloris’ bonie face, When first that bonie face I saw, And ay my Chloris’ dearest charm — She says she lo’es me best of a’! II Like harmony her motion, Her pretty ankle is a spy Betraying fair proportion Wad make a saint forget the sky ¢ Sae warming, sae charming, Her faultless form and gracefw’ air, Ik feature — auld Nature Declar’d that she could dae nae mair ! Hers are the willing chains o’ love By conquering beauty’s sovereign law, And ay my Chloris’ dearest charm — She says she lo’es me best of a’. III Let others love the city, And gaudy show at sunny noon ! Gie me the lonely valley, The dewy eve, and rising moon, Fair beaming, and streaming Her silver light the boughs amang, While falling, recalling, The amorous thrush concludes his sang ! 256 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” There, dearest Chloris, wilt thou rove By wimpling burn and leafy shaw, And hear iny vows o’ truth and love, And say thou lo’es me best of a’ ? THE LASS THAT MADE THE BED “The Bonie Lass made the Bed to Me was composed on an amour of Charles II. when skulking in the North about Aberdeen, in the time of the Usurpation. He formed une petite affaire with a daughter of the House of Port Letham, who was the lass that made the bed to him.” I WHEN Januar’ wind was blawin cauld, As to the North I took my way, The mirksome night did me enfauld, I knew na where to lodge till day. By my guid luck a maid I met Just in the middle o’ my care, And kindly she did me invite To walk into a chamber fair. Il I bow’d fu’ low unto this maid, And thank’d her for her courtesie; I bow’d fu’ low unto this maid, An’ bade her mak a bed to me. She made the bed baith large and wide, Wi’ twa white hands she spread it down, She put the cup to her rosy lips, And drank:— “Young man, now sleep ye soun’,” TIT .She snatch’d the candle in her hand, And frae my chamber went wi’ speed, But I call’d her quickly back again To lay some mair below my head: A cod she laid below my head, And servéd me with due respeck, And, to salute her wi’ a kiss, I put my arms about her neck. IV “Haud aff your hands, young man,” she said « And dinna sae uncivil be; Gif ye hae onie luve for me, O, wrang na my virginitie !” Her hair was like the links o’ gowd, Her teeth were like the ivorie, Her cheeks like lilies dipt in wine, The lass that made the bed to me ! Vv Her bosom was the driven snaw, Twa drifted heaps sae fair to see; Her limbs the polish’d marble stane, The lass that made the bed to me ! I kiss’d her o’er and o’er again, And ay she wist na what to say. I laid her ’tween me an’ the wa’ — The lassie thocht na lang till day. VI Upon the morrow, when we raise, I thank’d her for her courtesie, But ay she blush’d, and ay she sigh’d, And said: —“ Alas, ye ’ve ruin’d me!” I clasp’d her waist, and kiss’d her syne, While the tear stood twinklin in her e’e I said: — “ My lassie, dinna cry, For ye ay shall mak the bed to me.” VII She took her mither’s holland sheets, An’ made them a’ in sarks to me. Blythe and merry may she be, The lass that made the bed to me ! The bonie lass made the bed to me, The braw lass made the bed to me! I'll ne’er forget till the day I die, The lass that made the bed to me. SAE FAR AWA I O, sap and heavy should I part But for her sake sae far awa, Unknowing what my way may thwart — My native land sae far awa. II Thou that of a’ things Maker art, That formed this Fair sae far awa, Gie body strength, then Ill ne’er start At this my way sae far awa! III How true is love to pure desert ! So mine in her sae far awa, O, WAT YE WHA’S IN YON TOWN 257 And nocht can heal my bosom’s smart, While, O, she is sae far awa! Iv Nane other love, nane other dart I feel, but hers sae far awa; But fairer never touched a heart, Than hers, the Fair sae far awa. THE REEL O’ STUMPIE I Wap and rowe, wap and rowe, Wap and rowe the feetie o’t; I thought I was a maiden fair, Till I heard the greetie o’t ! II My daddie was a fiddler fine, My minnie she made mantie, O, And I myself a thumpin quine, And dane’d the Reel o’ Stumpie, O. I’LL AY CA’ IN BY YON TOWN CHORUS I'll ay ca’ in by yon town And by yon garden green again ! I'll ay ca’ in by yon town And see my bonie Jean again. I TuHERE’s nane shall ken, there’s nane can guess What brings me back the gate again, But she, my fairest faithfu’ lass, And stow’nlins we sall meet again. II She Il wander by the aiken tree, When trystin time draws near again; And when her lovely form I see, O haith ! she ’s doubly dear again. CHORUS I'll ay ca’ in by yon town And by yon garden green again ! I'll ay ca’ in by yon town And see my bonie Jean again. O, WAT YE WHA’S IN YON TOWN Begun at Ecclefechan, where Burns was storm-stayed, 7th February, 1795. ‘Do you know an air—TI am sure you must know it — We'll Gang Nae Mair to Yon Town. I think, in slowish time, it would make an excellent song. I am highly delighted with it; and if you should think it worthy of your attention, I have a fair dame in my eye to whom I would consecrate it ; try with this doggrel until I give you a better.” In the set sent to Johnson, Jeanie — either Jean Armour or Jean Lorimer — is the heroine. In that sent to Thomson, the name is Lucy; and Burns, enclosing a copy to Syme in an undated letter, explains its history: ‘“ Do you know that among much that I admire in the characters and manners of those great folks whom I have now the honour to eall my ac- quaintances — the Oswald family, for instance —there is nothing charms me more than Mr. Oswald’s unconcealable attachment to that incomparable woman.” The “incomparable woman ” was Oswald’s wife. He was Richard Oswald of Auchencruive, nephew of the Mrs. Oswald to whose memory Burns had devoted a savage Ode (ante, p.81). Lucy, daughter of Wynne Johnston, Esq., of Hilton, according to Sharpe, was at this time “well turned of thirty, and ten years older than her husband ; but still a charming creature.” She died at Lisbon in January, 1798. CHORUS O, wat ye wha’s in yon town Ye see the e’enin sun upon ? The dearest maid’s in yon town That e’enin sun is shining on ! I Now haply down yon gay green shaw She wanders by yon spreading tree. How blest ye flowers that round her blaw! Ye catch the glances o’ her e’e. II How blest ye birds that round her sing, And welcome in the blooming year ! And doubly welcome be the Spring, The season to my Jeanie dear ! III The sun blinks blythe in yon town, Among the broomy braes sae green; 258 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” But my delight in yon town, And dearest pleasure, is my Jean. Iv Without my Love, not a’ the charms O’ Paradise could yield me joy; But gie me Jeanie in my arms, And welcome Lapland’s dreary sky ! Vv My cave wad be a lover’s bower, Tho’ raging Winter rent the air, And she a lovely little flower, That I wad tent and shelter there. VI O, sweet is she in yon town The sinkin sun’s gane down upon ! A fairer than’s in yon town His setting beam ne’er shone upon. VII If angry Fate be sworn my foe, And suff’ring I am doom’d to bear, I’d careless quit aught else below, But spare, O, spare me Jeanie dear ! VII For, while life’s dearest blood is warm, Ae thought frae her shall ne’er depart, And she, as fairest is her form, She has the truest, kindest heart. CHORUS O, wat ye wha’s in yon town Ye see the e’enin sun upon ? The dearest maid ’s in yon town That e’enin sun is shining on ! WHEREFORE SIGHING ART THOU, PHILLIS? I WHEREFORE sighing art thou, Phillis ? Has thy prime unheeded past ? Hast thou found that beauty’s lilies Were not made for ay to last ? II Know, thy form was once a treasure — Then it was thy hour of scorn ! Since thou then denied the pleasure, Now ’tis fit that thou should’st mourn. O MAY, THY MORN Supposed to commemorate the parting with Clarinda, 6th December, 1791. I O May, thy morn was ne’er sae sweet As the mirk night o’ December ! For sparkling was the rosy wine, And private was the chamber, And dear was she I dare na name, But I will ay remember. IL And here ’s to them that, like oursel, Can push about the jorum ! And here’s to them that wish us weel — May a’ that’s guid watch o’er ’em ! Aud here’s to them we dare na tell, The dearest o’ the quorum ! AS I CAME O’ER THE CAIRNEY MOUNT CHORUS O, my bonie Highland lad t My winsome, weel-faur’d Highland laddie ! Wha wad mind the wind and rain Sae weel row’d in his tartan plaidie ! I As I came o’er the Cairney mount And down among the blooming heather, Kindly stood the milking-shiel To shelter frae the stormy weather. II Now Phebus blinkit on the bent, And o’er the knowes the lambs were bleating; But he wan my heart’s consent To be his ain at the neist meeting. CHORUS O, my bonie Highland lad ! My winsome, weel-faur’d Highland laddie ! Wha wad mind the wind and rain Sae weel row’d in his tartan plaidie ! LOVELY POLLY STEWART 259 HIGHLAND LADDIE This is chiefly an abridgment of the Jacob- ite ditty, The Highland Lad and the Highland Lass, published in A Collection of Loyal Songs (1750) and The True Loyalist (1779). The re- frain is old; stanza i. is Burns; stanza ii. is substantially stanza i. of the older set; while stanza iii. is composed of the first halves of the older stanzas viii. and ix. I Tue boniest lad that e’er I saw — Bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! Wore a plaid and was fu’ braw — Bonie Highland laddie ! On his head a bonnet blue — Bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! His royal heart was firm and true — Bonie Highland laddie ! II «Trumpets sound and cannons roar, Bonie lassie, Lawland lassie !— And a’ the hills wi’ echoes roar, Bonie Lawland lassie ! Glory, Honour, now invite — Bouie lassie, Lawland lassie !— For freedom and my King to fight, Bonie Lawland lassie !” Ti «“ The sun a backward course shall take, Bonie laddie, Highland laddie ! Ere aught thy manly courage shake, Bonie Highland laddie ! Go, for yoursel’ procure renown, Bonie laddie, Highland laddie, And for your lawful King his crown, Bonie Highland laddie !” WILT THOU BE MY DEARIE? In a Ms. sent to Maria Riddell, ‘‘ Jeanie’’ is substituted for “lassie.” In view of the fact that Burns sent the song to Captain Miller’s journal, this change confirms the statement that Wilt Thou be My Dearie was made in honour of Miss Janet Miller of Dalswinton. I Wut thou be my dearie ? When Sorrow wrings thy gentle heart, ' Jane Welsh Carlyle). O, wilt thou let me cheer thee ? By the treasure of my soul — That’s the love I bear thee — I swear and vow that only thou Shall ever be my dearie! Only thou, I swear and vow, Shall ever be my dearie ! II Lassie, say thou lo’es me, Or, if thou wilt na be my ain, Say na thou ‘lt refuse me! If it winna, canna be, Thou for thine may choose me, Let me, lassie, quickly die, Trusting that thou lo’es me! Lassie, let me quickly die, Trusting that thou lo’es me! LOVELY POLLY STEWART Polly or Mary Stewart was daughter of William Stewart, factor at Closeburn, to whom Burns addressed To William Stewart (ante, p. ue and also the lines, You ’re Welcome, Willie Stewart (post, p. 811). She was married first to her cousin, Ishmael Stewart, and then to a farmer, George Welsh (grand-uncle of Being separated from Welsh, she fell in love with a French prisoner of war, whom she accompanied to his native Switzerland. She died in Italy at the age of seventy-two. The present song, together with You’re Welcome, Willie Stewart, is modelled on a Jacobite number in Collection of Loyal Songs (1750). CHORUS O lovely Polly Stewart, O charming Polly Stewart, There’s ne’er a flower that blooms in ay, Thai’s half so fair as thou art ! I THE flower it blaws, it fades, it fa’s, And art can ne’er renew it; But Worth and Truth eternal youth Will gie to Polly Stewart ! II May he whase arms shall fauld thy charms Possess a leal and true heart ! 260 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” To him be given to ken the heaven He grasps in Polly Stewart ! CHORUS O lovely Polly Stewart, O charming Polly Stewart, There’s ne’er a flower that blooms in May, That’s half so fair as thou art ! THE HIGHLAND BALOU Stenhouse states that it is “a versification, by Burns, of a Gaelic nursery song, the literal import of which, as well as the air, were com- municated to him by a Highland lady.” But there are humorous touches in it which the original (if there was an original) could not have shown. I Hes balou, my sweet wee Donald, Picture o’ the great Clanronald ! Brawlie kens our wanton Chief Wha gat my young Highland thief. It Leeze me on thy bonie craigie ! An thou live, thou ‘ll steal a naigie, Travel the country thro’ and thro’, And bring hame a Carlisle cow ! Til Thro’ the Lawlands, o’er the Border, Weel, my babie, may thou furder, Herry the louns o’ the laigh Countrie, Syne to the Highlands hame to me! BANNOCKS O’ BEAR MEAL CHORUS Bannocks o’ bear meal, Bannocks o’ barley, Here ’s to the Highlandman’s Bannocks 0’ barley ! I Waa in a brulyie Will first ery “a parley” ? Never the lads Wi’ the bannocks o’ barley ! II Wha, in his wae days, Were loyal to Charlie ? Wha but the lads Wi’ the bannocks o’ barley ! CHORUS Bannocks o’ bear meal, Bannocks o’ barley, Here ’s to the Highlandman’s Bannocks o’ barley ! WAE IS MY HEART I W4z is my heart, and the tear’s in my e’e; Lang, lang joy ’s been a stranger to me: Forsaken and friendless my burden I bear, And the sweet voice o’ pity ne’er sounds in my ear. II Love, thou hast pleasures — and deep hae I lov’d! Love, thou hast sorrows — and sair hae I rov'd ! But this bruiséd heart that now bleeds in my breast, I can feel by its throbbings, will soon be at rest. Ir O, if I were where happy I hae been, Down by yon stream and yon bonie castle green ! For there he is wand’ring and musing on me Wha wad soon dry the tear frae his Phillis’ ee! HERE’S HIS HEALTH IN WATER I ALTHO’ my back be at the wa’, And tho’ he be the fautor, Altho’ my back be at the wa’, Yet here’s his health in water ! - O, wae gae by his wanton sides, Sae brawly ’s he could flatter ! THERE GROWS A BONIE BRIER-BUSH 261 Till for his sake I’m slighted sair And dree the kintra clatter ! But, tho’ my back be at the wa’, Yet here ’s his health in water ! THE WINTER OF LIFE Burns sent a copy to Thomson, under the title of The Old Man. The song is included in Thomson (Vol. iii.). Doubtless suggested by a song with the same title which we have found in The Gold- Jinch (Edinburgh, 1777): — ‘In Spring, my dear Shepherds, your gardens are gay, They breathe all their sweets in the sunshine of May: Their Flowers will drop when December draws near — The winter of life is like that of the year,” etc. I But lately seen in gladsome green, The woods rejoiced the day; Thro’ gentle showers the laughing flowers In double pride were gay; But now our joys are fled On winter blasts awa, Yet maiden May in rich array Again shall bring them a’. II But my white pow — nae kindly thowe Shall melt the snaws of Age ! My trunk of eild, but buss and bield, Sinks in Time’s wintry rage. O, Age has weary days And nights o’ sleepless pain ! Thou golden time o’ youthfu’ prime, Why comes thou not again ? THE TAILOR I Tue tailor he cam here to sew, And weel he kend the way to woo, For ay he pree’d the lassie’s mou’, As he gaed but and ben, O. For weel he kend the way, O, The way, O, the way, O! For weel he kend the way, O, The lassie’s heart to win, O! II The tailor rase and shook his duds, The flaes they flew awa in cluds! And them that stay’d gat fearfu’ thuds — The Tailor prov’d a man, O! For now it was the gloamin, The gloamin, the gloamin ! For now it was the gloamin, When a’ the rest are gaun, O ! THERE GROWS A BONIE BRIER-BUSH I THERE grows a bonie brier-bush in our kail-yard, There grows a bonie brier-bush in our kail- yard; And below the bonie brier-bush there’s a lassie and a lad, And they’re busy, busy courting in our kail-yard. II We’ll court nae mair below the buss in our kail-yard, We’ll court nae mair below the buss in our kail-yard: We'll awa to Athole’s green, and there we'll no be seen, Where the trees and the branches will be our safeguard. III Will ye go to the dancin in Carlyle’s ha’ ? Will ye go to the dancin in Carlyle’s ha’, Where Gaudy and Naney I’m sure will ding them a’? I winna gang to the dance in Carlyle-ha’ ! Iv What will I do for a lad when Sandie angs awa ! What will I do for a lad when Sandie gangs awa! I will awa to Edinburgh, and win a pennie fee, And see an onie lad will fancy me. Vv He’s comin frae the north that’s to marry me, He’s comin frae the north that’s to marry me, 262 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” A feather in his bonnet and a ribbon at his knee — He’s a bonie, bonie laddie, an yon be he ! HERE’S TO THY HEALTH I HERE ’s to thy health, my bonie lass ! Guid night and joy be wi’ thee! I’ll come nae mair to thy bower-door To tell thee that I lo’e thee. O, dinna think, my pretty pink, But I can live without thee: I vow and swear I dinng care How lang ye look about ye ! II Thou ’rt ay sae free informing me Thou hast nae mind to marry, I ’ll be as free informing thee Nae time hae I to tarry. I ken thy freens try ilka means Frae wedlock to delay thee (Depending on some higher chance), But fortune may betray thee. I I ken they scorn my low estate, But that does never grieve me, For I’m as free as any he — Sma’ siller will relieve me ! Il count my health my greatest wealth Sae lang as I'll enjoy it. I'll fear nae scant, I ’Il bode nae want As lang’s I get employment. Iv But far off fowls hae feathers fair, And, ay until ye try them, Tho’ they seem fair, still have a care — They may prove as bad as I am ! But at twel at night, when the moon shines bright, My dear, I’ll come and see thee, For the man that loves his mistress weel, Nae travel makes him weary. IT WAS A’ FOR OUR RIGHTFU’ KING [Suggested by the chap-book ballad of Mally Stewart, circa 1746, of which the first and last stanzas are as follows]: — “¢« The cold Winter is past and gone, and now comes in the Spring, And I am one of the King’s Life-guards, and must go fight for my King, dear, My I must go fight for my King.’ The trooper turn’d himself about all on the Irish shore, He has given the bridal-reins a shake, saying ‘ Adieu for evermore, My dear, Adieu for evermore.’ ” Burns used the last as his own central, grouping his others, which are largely suggested by it, round about it. He was also greatly influenced by the first, which undoubtedly helped him to his own beginning. For the rest, he took the situation and the characters, and touched his borrowings to issues as fine, perhaps, as the Romantic Lyric has to show. I Ir was a’ for our rightfw’ king We left fair Scotland’s strand; It was a’ for our rightfu’ king, We e’er saw Irish land, My dear — We e’er saw Irish land. Il Now a’ is done that men can do, And a’ is done in vain, My Love and Native Land fareweel, For I maun cross the main, My dear — For I maun cross the main. Tit He turn’d him right and round about Upon the Irish shore, And gae his bridle reins a shake, With adieu for evermore, My dear — And adieu for evermore ! Iv The soger frae the wars returns, The sailor frae the main, But I hae parted frae my love Never to meet again, My dear — Never to meet again. Vv When day is gane, and night is come, And a’ folk bound to sleep, I think on him that’s far awa The lee-lang night, and weep, dear — The lee-lang night and weep. MY PEGGY’S FACE, MY PEGGY’S FORM 263 THE HIGHLAND WIDOW’S LAMENT [A similar refrain occurs in an old song in Johnson (Vol. i.), said to have been a lament for Glencoe. ] I O, I am come to the low countrie — Ochon, ochon, ochrie ! — Without a penny in my purse To buy a meal to me. II It was na sae in the Highland hills — Ochon, ochon, ochrie ! — Nae woman in the country wide Sae happy was as me. III For then I had a score o”? kye — Ochon, ochon, ochrie ! — Feeding on yon hill sae high And giving milk to me. Iv And there I had three score 0’ yowes— Ochon, ochon, ochrie ! — Skipping on yon bonie knowes And casting woo’ to me. Vv I was the happiest of a’ the clan — Sair, sair may I repine ! — For Donald was the brawest man, And Donald he was mine. vI Till Charlie Stewart cam at last Sae far to set us free: My Donald’s arm was wanted then For Scotland and for me. Vil Their waefu’ fate what need I tell ? Right to the wrang did yield: My Donald and his country fell Upon Culloden field. vii Ochon ! O Donald, O! Qchon, ochon, ochrie ! Nae woman in the warld wide Sae wretched now as me! THOU GLOOMY DECEMBER I ANcE mair I hail thee, thou gloomy De- cember ! Ance mair I hail thee wi’ sorrow and care ! Sad was the parting thou makes me re- member: Parting wi’ Nancy, O, ne’er to meet mair ! II Fond lovers’ parting is sweet, painful plea- sure Hope beaming mild on the soft parting hour; But the dire feeling, O farewell for ever ! Anguish unmingled and agony pure ! Til Wild as the winter now tearing the forest, Till the last leaf o’ the summer is flown — Such is the tempest has shaken my bosom, Till my last hope and last comfort is gone ! IV Still as I hail thee, thou gloomy Decem- ber, Still shall I hail thee wi’ sorrow and care; For sad was the parting thou makes me remember: Parting wi’ Nancy, O, ne’er to meet mair ! MY PEGGY’S FACE, MY PEGGY’S FORM Written in 1787, and sent to Johnson with the following letter: “‘ Dear Mr. Publisher, — I hope, against my return, you will be able to tell me from Mr. Clarke if these words will suit the tune. If they don’t suit, I must think on some other air, as I have a very strong private reason for wishing them in the second volume. Don’t forget to transcribe me the list of the Antiquarian Music. Farewell. — R. Burns.” No reason was given by Johnson for the delay in publishing ; but it is probable 264 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” that Miss Chalmers (see ante, p. 214, at Note to Where, Braving Angry Winter’s Storms objected. I My Peggy’s face, my Peggy’s form The frost of hermit Age might warm. My Peggy’s worth, my Peggy’s mind Might charm the first of human kind. II x love my Peggy’s angel air, Her face so truly heavenly fair, Her native grace so void of art; But I adore my Peggy’s heart. III The lily’s hue, the rose’s dye, The kindling lustre of an eye — Who but owns their magic sway ? Who but knows they all decay ? IV The tender thrill, the pitying tear, The generous purpose nobly dear, The gentle look that rage disarms — These are all immortal charms. O, STEER HER UP, AN’ HAUD HER GAUN The first half stanza is Ramsay’s, from a set founded on an old, improper ditty. I O, STEER her up, an’ haud her gaun — Her mither’s at the mill, jo, An’ gin she winna tak a man, E’en let her tak her will, jo. First shore her wi’ a gentle kiss, And ca’ anither gill, jo, An’ gin she tak the thing amiss, E’en let her flyte her fill, jo. II O, steer her up, an’ be na blate, An’ gin she tak it ill, jo, Then leave the lassie till her fate, And time nae langer spill, jo ! Ne’er break your heart for ae rebute, But think upon it still, jo, That gin the lassie winna do ’t, Yell fin’ anither will, jo. WEE WILLIE GRAY A nursery ditty for the tune Wee Totum Fogg. I Wee Willie Gray an’ his leather wallet, Peel a willow-wand to be him boots and jacket ! The rose upon the brier will be him trouse and doublet — The rose upon the brier will be him trouse and doublet ! II Wee Willie Gray and his leather wallet, Twice a lily-flower will be him sark and gravat ! Feathers of a flie wad feather up his bon- net — Feathers of a flie wad feather up his bon- net ! WE’RE A’ NODDIN The present ditty is a medley of two old songs with variations and amendments, John Anderson My Jo [not Burns’s, but the sprightly old song that served as his model] — which gives us stanzas iv. and v., the best things in the Burns set, verbatim — and an unpublished fragment in the Herd ms. : — ** Cats like milk, and Dogs like Broo, Lads like lasses and lasses lads too ; And they ’re a’ nodding, nidding, nidding, nodding, They ’re a’ nodding at our house at hame. ‘* Kate sits i? the neuk supping hen broo, Deil take Kate if she does not know it too; And they ’re a’ nodding, nidding, nidding, nodding, They ’re a’ nodding at our house at hame.”’ CHORUS We’re a’ noddin, Nid nid noddin, We’re a’ noddin At our house at hame ! I “ Gurp e’en to you, kimmer, And how do ye do?” “Hiccup !” quo’ kimmer, “ The better that I’m fou!” O, GUID ALE COMES 265 Ir Kate sits i’ the neuk, Suppin hen-broo. Deil tak Kate An she be na noddin too ! IIt “How ’s a’ wi’ you, kimmer ? And bow do you fare?” “A pint o’ the best o’t, And twa pints mair!” Iv “How’s a’ wi’ you, kimmer ? And how do ye thrive ? How monie bairns hae ye?” Quo’ kimmer, “I hae five.” v « Are they a’ Johnie’s ?” “Eh! atweel na: Twa o’ them were gotten When Johnie was awa!” vI Cats like milk, And dogs like broo; Lads like lasses weel, And lasses lads too. CHORUS We’re a’ noddin, Nid nid noddin, We ’re a’ noddin, At our house at hame ! O, AY MY WIFE SHE DANG ME [Set to the tune of My Wife She Dang Me. ] CHORUS O, ay my wife she dang me, An’ aft my wife she bang’d me ! If ye gie a woman a’ her will, — Guid faith ! she ’Il soon o’ergang ye. I On peace an’ rest my mind was bent, And, fool I was! I married; But never honest man’s intent Sae cursedly miscarried. It Some sairie comfort at the last, When 2’ thir days ave done, man: My “ pains o’ hell” on earth is past, I’m sure o’ bliss aboon, mar. CHORUS O, ay my wife she dang me, An’ aft my wife she bang’d me ! If ye gie a woman a’ her will, Guid faith ! she ’1] soon o’ergang ye. SCROGGAM 4, I THERE was a wife wonn’d in Cockpen, Seroggam ! She brew’d guid ale for gentlemen: Sing Auld Cowl, lay you down by me — Seroggam, my dearie, ruffum ! II The guidwife’s dochter fell in a fever, Seroggam ! The priest o’ the parish fell in anither: Sing Auld Cowl, lay you down by me— Scroggam, my dearie, ruffum ! Ill They laid the twa i’ the bed thegither, Scroggam ! That the heat o’ the tane might cool the tither: Sing Auld Cowl, lay you down by me — Scroggam, my dearie, ruffum ! O, GUID ALE COMES CHORUS O, guid ale comes, and guid ale goes, Guid ale gars me sell my hose, Sell my hose, and pawn my shoon — Guid ale keeps my heart aboon ! I I wap sax owsen in a pleugh, And they drew a’ weel enengh: I sell’d them a’ just ane by ane— Guid ale keeps the heart aboon ! 266 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” II Guid ale hauds me bare and busy, Gars me moop wi’ the servant hizzie, Stand i’ the stool when I hae dune — Guid ‘ale keeps the heart aboon ! CHORUS O, guid ale comes, and guid ale goes, Guid ale gars me sell my hose, Sell my hose, and pawn my shoon — Guid ale keeps my heart aboon ! ROBIN SHURE IN HAIRST “T am still catering for Johnson’s publica- tion, and among others, I have brushed up the following old favourite song a little, with a view to your worship. I have only altered a word here and there; but if you like the hu- mour of it, we shall think of a stanza or two to add to it.” (R. B. to Robert Ainslie, Janu- ary 6th, 1789.) CHORUS Robin shure in hairst, I shure wi’ him: Fient a heuk had I, Yet I stack by him. I I Garp up to Dunse To warp a wab o’ plaiden At his daddie’s yett Wha met me but Robin ! II Was na Robin bauld, Tho’ I was a cottar ? Play’d me sic a trick, An’ me the Eller’s dochter ! III Robin promis’d me A’ my winter vittle: Fient haet he had but three Guse feathers and a whittle ! CHORUS Robin shure in hairst, I shure wi’ him: Fient a heuk had I, Yet I stack by him. DOES HAUGHTY GAULINVASION THREAT? I Doss haughty Gaul invasion threat ? Then let the loons beware, Sir ! There ’s wooden walls upon our seas And volunteers on shore, Sir ! The Nith shall run to Corsincon, And Criffel sink in Solway, Ere we permit a foreign foe On British ground to rally ! II O, let us not, like snarling tykes, In wrangling be divided, Till, slap ! come in an unco loun, And wi’ a rung decide it ! Be Britain still to Britain true, Amang oursels united ! For never but by British hands Maun British wrangs be righted ! III The kettle o’ the Kirk and State, Perhaps a clout may fail in ’t; But Deil a foreign tinkler loon Shall ever ca’ a nail in’t! Our fathers’ blude the kettle bought, And wha wad dare to spoil it, By Heav’ns! the sacrilegious dog Shall fuel be to boil it! Iv The wretch that would a tyrant own, And the wretch, his true-sworn brother, Who would set the mob above the throne, May they be damn’d together ! Who will not sing God save the King Shall hang as high’s the steeple; But while we sing God save the King, We'll ne’er forget the People ! O, ONCE I LOV’D A BONIE LASS “The following composition was the first of my performances, and done at an early period of life, when my heart glowed with honest warm simplicity; unacquainted, and uncor- rupted with the ways of a wicked world. The performance is, indeed, very puerile and silly: but I am always pleased with it, as it recalls MY LORD A-HUNTING 267 to my mind those happy days when my heart was yet honest and my tongue was sincere. The subject of it wasa young girl who really de- served all the praises I have bestowed on her.” (R. B.) In the Autobiographical Letter to Dr. Moore, he states that the young girl was his partner in “the labors of harvest.” “ Among her other love-inspiring qualifications,” so he further relates, “she sung sweetly; and ’t was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptive as to imagine that I would make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin; but my girl sung a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird’s son, on one of his father’s maids, with whom he was in love; and I saw _no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he, for except shearing sheep and casting peats, his father living in the moors, he had no more scholarcraft than I had.” His criticism of the song (in the First Com- mon Place Book) is interesting enough to re- print in full: “The first distich of the first stanza is quite too much in the flimsy strain of our ordinary street ballads; and on the other hand, the second distich is too much in the other extreme. The expression is a little awkward, and the sentiment too serious. Stanza the second I am well pleased with, and I think it conveys a fine idea of that amiable part of the Sex —the agreeables; or what in our Scotch dialect we call a sweet sonsy Lass. The third stanza has a little of the flimsy turn in it; and the third line has rather too serious a cast, The fourth stanza is a very indifferent one; the first line is, indeed, all in the strain of the second stanza, but the rest is mostly an exple- tive. The thoughts in the fifth stanza come finely up to my favourite idea, a sweet sonsy Lass; the last line, however, halts a little. The same sentiments are kept up with equal spirit and tenderness in the sixth stanza, but the second and fourth lines ending with short syllables hurts the whole. The seventh stanza has several minute faults; but I remember I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of passion, and to this hour I never recollect it, but my heart melts, and my blood sallies at the re- membrance.” I O, oncE I lov’d a bonie lass, Ay, and I love her still ! And whilst that virtue warms my breast, I’ll love my handsome Nell. II As bonie lasses I hae seen, And monie full as braw, But for a modest gracefu’ mien The like I never saw. III A bonie lass, I will confess, Is pleasant to the e’e; But without some better qualities She’s no a lass for me. Iv But Nelly’s looks are blythe and sweet, And, what is best of a’, Her reputation is complete And fair without a flaw. Vv She dresses ay sae clean and neat, Both decent and genteel; And then there’s something in her gait Gars onie dress look weel. VI A gaudy dress and gentle air May slightly touch the heart; But it’s innocence and modesty That polishes the dart. VII Tis this in Nelly pleases me, *T is this enchants my soul; For absolutely in my breast She reigns without controul. MY LORD A-HUNTING CHORUS My lady’s gown, there’s gairs upon’t, And gowden flowers sae rare upon ’t; But Jenny’s jimps and jirkinet, My lord thinks meikle mair upon’t! I My lord a-hunting he is gane, But hounds or hawks wi’ him are nane; By Colin’s cottage lies his game, If Colin’s Jenny be at hame. II My lady ’s white, my lady’s red, And kith and kin o’ Cassillis’ blude; But her ten-pund lands o’ tocher guid Were a’ the charms his lordship lo’ed. 268 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” I Out o’er yon muir, out o’er yon moss, Whare gor-cocks thro’ the heather pass, There wons auld Colin’s bonie lass, A lily in a wilderness. Iv Sae sweetly move her genty limbs, Like music notes o’ lovers’ hymns ! The diamond-dew in her een sae blue, Where laughing love sae wanton swims ! v My lady ’s dink, my lady’s drest, The flower and fancy o’ the west; But the lassie that a man lo’es best, O, that ’s the lass to mak him blest ! CHORUS My lady ’s gown, there ’s gairs upon ’t, And gowden flowers sae rare upon ’t; But Jenny’s jimps and jirkinet, My lord thinks meikle mair upon ’t ! SWEETEST MAY An imitation, open and unabashed, of Ram- say’s My Sweetest May, Let Love Incline Thee. I Sweetest May, let Love inspire thee ! Take a heart which he designs thee: As thy constant slave regard it, For its faith and truth reward it. II Proof o’ shot to birth or money, Not the wealthy but the bonie, Not the high-born but noble-minded, In love’s silken band can bind it. MEG O’ THE MILL I O, KEN ye what Meg o’ the Mill has got- ten? An’ ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill has got- ten? : ; A braw new naig wi’ the tail o’ a rottan, And that’s what Meg o’ the Mill has got- ten! I O, ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill lo’es dearly ? An’ ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill lo’es dearly ? A dram o’ guid strunt in a morning early, And that’s what Meg o’ the Mill lo’es dearly ! mr O, ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was mar- ried ? An’ ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was mar- ried ? The priest he was oxter’d, the clark he was earried, And that ’s how Meg o’ the Mill was mar- ried ! Iv O, ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was bedded ? An’ ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was bedded ? The groom gat sae fu’ he fell awald beside it, And that’s how Meg o’ the Mill was bedded ! JOCKIE’S TA’EN THE PARTING KISS I JocxtE ’s ta’en the parting kiss, O’er the mountains he is gane, And with him is a’ my bliss — Nought but griefs with me remain. I Spare my luve, ye winds that blaw, Plashy sleets and beating rain ! Spare my luve, thou feathery snaw, Drifting o’er the frozen plain ! III When the shades of evening creep O’er the day’s fair gladsome e’e, Sound and safely may he sleep, Sweetly blythe his waukening be ! THERE ’S NEWS, LASSES, NEWS 269 IV He will think on her he loves, Fondly he ’Il repeat her name; For where’er he distant roves, Jockie’s heart is still at hame. O, LAY THY LOOF IN MINE, LASS CHORUS O, lay thy loof in mine, lass, In mine, lass, in mine, lass, And swear on thy white hand, lass, That thou wilt be my ain! I A SLAVE to Love’s unbounded sway, He aft has wrought me meikle wae; But now he is my deadly fae, Unless thou be my ain. II There ’s monie a lass has broke my rest, That for a blink I hae lo’ed best; But thou art queen within my breast, For ever to remain. CHORUS O, lay thy loof in mine, lass, mine, lass, in mine, lass, And swear on thy white hand, lass, That thou wilt be my ain! CAULD IS THE E’ENIN BLAST I CauvLp is the e’enin blast O’ Boreas o’er the pool An’ dawin, it is dreary, When birks are bare at Yule. II O, cauld blaws the e’enin blast, When bitter bites the frost, And in the mirk and dreary drift The hills and glens are lost ! It Ne’er sae murky blew the night, That drifted o’er the hill, But bonie Peg-a-Ramsay Gat grist to her mill. THERE WAS A BONIE LASS A cento of old catch words. I THERE was a bonie lass, and a bonie, bonie lass And she loed her bonie laddie dear, Till War’s loud alarms tore her laddie frae her arms Wi’ monie a sigh and a tear. a4 Over sea, over shore, where the cannons loudly roar, He still was a stranger to fear, And nocht could him quail, or his bosom assail, But the bonie lass he loed sae dear. THERE’S NEWS, LASSES, NEWS CHORUS The wean wants a cradle, And the cradle wants a cod, An’ I'll no gang to my bed Until I get a nod. I THERE ’s news, lasses, news, Guid news I’ve to tell! There ’s a boatfu’ 0’ lads Come to our town to sell ! II “Father,” quo’ she, “ Mither,” quo’ she, “Do what you can: I'll no gang to my bed Until I get a man!” TI I hae as guid a craft rig As made o’ yird and stane; 270 SONGS FROM JOHNSON’S “MUSICAL MUSEUM” And waly fa’ the ley-crap For I maun till’d again. CHORUS The wean wants a cradle, And the cradle wants a cod, An’ I’ll no gang to my bed Until I get a nod. O, THAT I HAD NE’ER BEEN MARRIED CHORUS Ance crowdie, twice crowdie, Three times crowdie in a day ! Gin ye crowdie onie mair, Ye ’ll crowdie a’ my meal away. I O, rHat J had ne’er been married, I wad never had nae care ! Now I’ve gotten wife an’ bairns, An’ they ery “ Crowdie ” evermair. Il Waefu’ Want and Hunger fley me, Glowrin by the hallan en’; Sair I fecht them at the door, But ay I’m eerie they come ben. CHORUS Ance crowdie, twice crowdie, Three times crowdie in a day ! Gin ye crowdie onie mair, Ye’ll crowdie a’ my meal away. MALLY ’S MEEK, MALLY ’SSWEET CHORUS Mally ’s meek, Mally ’s sweet, Mally ’s modest and discreet, Mally ’s rare, Mally’s fair, Mally ’s ev’ry way complete. I As I was walking up the street, A barefit maid I chane’d to meet; But O, the road was very hard For that fair maiden’s tender feet ! IL It were mair meet that those fine feet Were weel laced up in silken shoon ! An’ ’t were more fit that she should sit Within yon chariot gilt aboon ! Ill Her yellow hair, beyond compare, Comes tumbling down her swan-white neck, And her twa eyes, like stars in skies, Would keep a sinking ship frae wreck ! CHORUS Mally ’s meek, Mally ’s sweet, Mally ’s modest and discreet, Mally ’s rare, Mally ’s fair, Mally’s ev’ry way complete. WANDERING WILLIE I _ HERE awa, there awa, wandering Willie, Here awa, there awa, haud awa hame ! Come to my bosom, my ae only dearie, And tell me thou bring’st me my Willie the same. Ir Loud tho’ the Winter blew cauld at our parting, ’T was na the blast brought the tear in my e’e: Welcome now Simmer, and welcome my Willie, The Simmer to Nature, my Willie to me! TI Rest, ye wild storms in the cave o’ your slumbers — How your wild howling a lover alarms ! Wauken, ye breezes, row gently, ye billows, And waft my dear laddie ance mair to my arms. IV But O, if he’s faithless, and minds na his Nannie, Flow still between us, thou wide-roaring main ! May I never see it, may I never trow it, But, dying, believe that my Willie ’s my ain UPEN LHE DUURK TO ME, O 271 BRAW LADS O’ GALLA WATER I Braw, braw lads on Yarrow braes, They rove amang the blooming heather; But Yarrow braes nor Ettrick shaws Can match the lads o’ Galla Water. II But there is ane, a secret ane, Aboon them a’ I loe him better; And I'll be his, and he ’ll be mine, The bonie lad o’ Galla Water. IIL Altho’ his daddie was nae laird, And tho’ I hae nae meikle tocher, Yet, rich in kindest, truest love, We’ll tent our flocks by Galla Water. Iv It ne’er was wealth, it ne’er was wealth, That coft contentment, peace, and plea- sure: The bands and bliss o’ mutual love, O, that’s the chiefest warld’s treasure ! AULD ROB MORRIS I TuereE ’s Auld Rob Morris -that wons in yon glen, He’s the king o” guid fellows and wale of auld men: He has gowd in his coffers, he has owsen and kine, And ae bonie lassie, his dautie and mine. II She’s fresh as the morning the fairest in May, : She’s sweet as the ev’ning amang the new hay As blythe and as artless as the lambs on the lea, And dear to my heart as the light to my e’e. TIT But O, she’s an heiress, auld Robin’s a laird, And my daddie has nocht but a cot-house and yard ! A wooer like me maunna hope to come speed: The wounds I must hide that will soon be my dead. IV The day comes to me, but delight brings me nane; The night comes to me, but my rest it is gane; I wander my lane like a night-troubled ghaist, And I sigh as my heart it wad burst in my breast. v O, had she but been of a lower degree, I then might hae hop’d she wad smil’d upon me ! O, how past descriving had then been my bliss, As now my distraction no words can ex- press ! OPEN THE DOOR TO ME, O I O, OPEN the door some pity to shew, If love it may na be, O! Tho’ thou hast been false, Ill ever prove true — ; O, open the door to me, O! Il Cauld is the blast upon my pale cheek, But caulder thy love for me, O: The frost, that freezes the life at my heart, Is nought to my pains frae thee, O! TIT The wan moon sets behind the white wave, And Time is setting with me, O: False friends, false love, farewell ! for mair I’ll ne’er trouble them nor thee, O! Iv She has open’d the door, she has open’d it wide, She sees the pale corse on the plain, O, “My true love!” she cried, and sank down by his side — Never to rise again, O! 292 SONGS FROM THOMSON’S “SCOTTISH AIRS” WHEN WILD WAR’S DEADLY BLAST I WHEN wild War’s deadly blast was blawn, And gentle Peace returning, Wi’ monie a sweet babe fatherless And monie a widow mourning, I left the lines and tented field, Where lang I’d been a lodger, My humble knapsack a’ my wealth, A poor and honest sodger. II A leal, light heart was in my breast, My hand unstain’d wi’ plunder, And for fair Scotia, hame again, I cheery on did wander: I thought upon the banks o’ Coil, I thought upon my Nancy, And ay I mind’t the witching smile That caught my youthful fancy. II At length I reach’d the bonie glen, Where early life I sported. I pass’d the mill and trysting thorn, Where Nancy aft I courted. Wha spied I but my ain dear maid, Down by her mother’s dwelling, And turn’d me round to hide the flood That in my een was swelling ! Iv Wi alter’d voice, quoth I :— “ Sweet lass, Sweet as yon hawthorn’s blossom, O, happy, happy may he be, hat ’s dearest to thy bosom ! My purse is light, I’ve far to gang, And fain wad be thy lodger; I’ve serv’d my king and country lang — Take pity on a sodger.” Vv Sae wistfully she gaz’d on me, And lovelier was than ever. Quo’ she: — “ A sodger ance I lo’ed, Forget him shall I never. Our humbie cot, and hamely fare, Ye freely shall partake it; That gallant badge —the dear cockade — Ye ’re welcome for the sake o’t !” VI She gaz’d, she redden’d like a rose, Syne, pale like onie lily, She sank within my arms, and cried: — “ Art thou my ain dear Willie ?” “By Him who made yon sun and sky, By whom true love’s regarded, Iam the man! And thus may still True lovers be rewarded ! VII “The wars are o’er and I’m come hame, And find thee still true-hearted. Tho’ poor in gear, we ’re rich in love, And mair, we’se ne’er be parted.” Quo’ she: “ My grandsire left me gowd, A mailen plenish’d fairly ! And come, my faithfu’ sodger lad, Thou ’rt welcome to it dearly !” VIII For gold the merchant ploughs the main, The farmer ploughs the manor; But glory is the sodger’s prize, The sodger’s wealth is honour ! The brave poor sodger ne’er despise, Nor count him as a stranger: Remember he’s his country’s stay In day and hour of danger. DUNCAN GRAY Enclosed, together with Auld Rob Morris, to Thomson 4th December, 1792: “‘ The foregoing Isubmit, my dear Sir, to your better judgment; acquit them or condemn them as seemeth good in thy sight. Duncan Gray is that kind of lighthorse gallop of an air which precludes sentiment. The ludicrous is its ruling feature.” I Duncan Gray cam here to woo (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !) On blythe Yule-Night when we were fou (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !). Maggie coost her head fu’ high, Look’d asklent and unco skeigh, Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh — Ha, ha, the wooing o’t ! II Dunean fleech’d, and Duncan pray’d (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !), LET NOT WOMEN E’ER COMPLAIN 273 Meg was deaf as Ailsa craig (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !). Duncan sigh’d baith out and in, Grat his een baith bleer’t an’ blin’, Spak o’ lowpin o’er a linn — Ha, ha, the wooing o’t ! It Time and Chance are but a tide (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !): Slighted love is sair to bide (Ha, ha, the wooing 0’t !). “Shall I like a fool,” quoth he, “For a haughty hizzie die ? She may gae to— France for me !” — Ha, ha, the wooing o’t ! Iv How it comes, let doctors tell (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !): Meg grew sick, as he grew hale (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !). Something in her bosom wrings, For relief a sigh she brings, And O ! her een they spak sic things ! — Ha, ha, the wooing o’t ! Vv Duncan was a lad o’ grace (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !), Maggie’s was a piteous case (Ha, ha, the wooing o’t !): Duncan could na be her death, Swelling pity smoor’d his wrath; Now they ’re crouse and canty baith — Ha, ha, the wooing o’t ! DELUDED SWAIN, THE PLEA- SURE I DELUDED swain, the pleasure The fickle Fair can give thee Is but a fairy treasure — Thy hopes will soon deceive thee: The billows on the ocean, The breezes idly roaming, The cloud’s uncertain motion, They are but types of Woman ! II O, art thou not ashamed To doat upon a feature ? If Man thou would’st be naméd, Despise the silly creature ! Go, find an honest fellow, Good claret set before thee, Hold on till thou art mellow, And then to bed in glory ! HERE IS THE GLEN “T know you value a composition because it is made by one of the great ones as little as I do. However, I got an air, pretty enough, composed by Lady Elizabeth Heron of Heron, which she calls The Banks of Cree. Cree is a beautiful romantic stream, and, as her ladyship is a particular friend of mine, I have written the following song to it.” (R.B. to Thomson.) The tune did not please Thomson, who set the verses to The Flowers of Edinburgh. That they made a love-song for Maria Riddell, as some hold, is scarce consistent with Burns’s statement. Moreover, he must have intended that Lady Elizabeth Heron should see them. I Herz is the glen, and here the bower All underneath the birchen shade, The village-bell has toll’d the hour — O, what can stay my lovely maid ? Tis not Maria’s whispeting call — Tis but the balmy-breathing gale, Mixed with some warbler’s dying fall The dewy star of eve to hail! I It is Maria’s voice I hear ! — So calls the woodlark in the grove His little faithful mate to cheer: At once ’tis music and ’t is love ! And art thou come? And art thou true? O, welcome, dear, to love and me, And let us all our vows renew Along the flowery banks of Cree ! LET NOT WOMEN FP’ER COM- PLAIN Alternative English words to the tune Dun- can Gray: “These English songs gravel me to death. I have not that command of the language that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think my ideas are more barren in English than in Scottish. I have been at Dun- 274 SONGS FROM THOMSON’S “SCOTTISH AIRS” can Gray to dress it in English, but all I can do is deplorably stupid.” (R. B. to Thomson, 19th October, i794.) There is nothing to add to this, except that the song exists (if that can be said to exist which is never sung, never quoted, and if ever read, immediately forgot- ten) as pure Burns. I Let not women e’er complain Of inconstancy in love ! Let not women e’er complain Fickle man is apt to rove ! Look abroad thro’ Nature’s range, Nature’s mighty law is change: Ladies, would it not be strange Man should then « monster prove ? II Mark the winds, and mark the skies, Ocean’s ebb and ocean’s flow. Sun and moon but set to rise. Round and round the seasons go. Why then, ask of silly man To oppose great Nature’s plan ? We'll be constant, while we can — You can be no more, you know ! LORD “GREGORY Written, at Thomson’s request, to the air of The Lass of Lochryan. Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcott) wrote English verses for Thomson on the same theme. They are frigid rubbish; but “the very name of Peter Pindar is an acquisition to your work. His Gregory is beautiful. I have tried to give you a set of stanzas in Scots on the same sub- ject, which are at your service. Not that I in- tend to enter the lists with Peter — that would be presumption indeed! My song, though much inferior in poetic merit, has, I think, more of the ballad simplicity in it.” (R. B. to Thomson, 26th January, 1793.) I O, mirk, mirk is this midnight hour, And loud the tempest’s roar ! A waefu’ wanderer seeks thy tower — Lord Gregory, ope thy door. Il An exile frae her father’s ha’, And a’ for sake o’ thee, At least some pity on me shaw, If love it may na be. Ill Lord Gregory, mind’st thou not the grove By bonie Irwine side, Where first I own’d that virgin love T lang, lang had denied ? Iv How aften didst thou pledge and vow, Thou wad for ay be mine! And my fond heart, itsel’ sae true, It ne’er mistrusted thine. Vv Hard is thy heart, Lord Gregory, And flinty is thy breast: Thou bolt of Heaven that flashest by, O, wilt thou bring me rest ! vI ‘ Ye mustering thunders from above, Your willing victim see, But spare and pardon my fause love His wrangs to Heaven and me! O POORTITH CAULD Gilbert Burns told Thomson that Burns’s heroine was ‘a Miss Jane Blackstock, after- wards Mrs. Whittier of Liverpool.” But it was probably Jean Lorimer (see post, p. 289, Prefatory Note to Lassie wi’ the Lint-white Locks), who was then contemplating the mar- riage of which she instantly repented. O Poor- tith Cauld is held to refer to her rejecting a gauger for the man she married (see ante, p. 231, Prefatory Note to Craigieburn Wood). It was sent to Thomson in January, 1793, for the tune of Cauld Kail in Aberdeen; but Thomson thought the verses had ‘‘ too much of uneasy, cold reflection for the air.” To this Burns : “ The objections are just, but I cannot make it better. The stuff won’t bear mend- ing ; yet for private reasons, I should like to see it im print.” With a new chorus and other amendments, it was set in the end to I Had a Horse and I Had Nae Mair. CHORUS O, why should Fate sic pleasure have, Life’s dearest bands untwining ? Or why sae sweet a flower as love Depend on Fortune’s shining ? SAW YE BONIE LESLEY 275 I O PoorritH cauld and restless Love, Ye wrack my peace between ye ! Yet poortith a’ I could forgive, An ’t were na for my Jeanie. II The warld’s wealth when IJ think on, Its pride and a’ the lave o’t — My curse on silly coward man, That he should be the slave o’t III Her een sae bonie blue betray How she repays my passion; But prudence is her o’erword ay: She talks o’ rank and fashion. Iv O, wha can prudence think upon, And sie a lassie by him ? O, wha can prudence think upon, And sae in love as I am ? Vv How blest the wild-wood Indian’s fate ! He woos his artless dearie — The silly bogles, Wealth and State, Can never make him eerie. CHORUS O, why should Fate sic pleasure have, Life’s dearest bands untwining ? Or why sae sweet a flower as love Depend on Fortune’s shining ? O, STAY, SWEET WARBLING WOOD-LARK I O, stay, sweet warbling wood-lark, stay, Nor quit for me the trembling spray ! A hapless lover courts thy lay, Thy soothing, fond complaining. Again, again that tender part, That I may catch thy melting art ! For surely that wad touch her heart, Wha kills me wi’ disdaining. II Say, was thy little mate unkind, And heard thee as the careless wind ? O, nocht but love and sorrow join’d Sic notes 0’ woe could wauken ! Thou tells o’ never-ending care, O’ speechless grief and dark despair — For pity’s sake, sweet bird, nae mair, Or my poor heart is broken ! SAW YE BONIE LESLEY “Bonie Lesley” was Miss Leslie Baillie, daughter of Mr. Baillie of Mayfield, Ayrshire. She married, in June, 1799, Mr. Robert Cum- ming of Logie, and died in July, 1848. “The heart-strutk awe, the distant humble approach, the delight we should have in gazing upon and listening to a messenger of Heaven, appearing in all the unspotted purity of his celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior sons of men, to deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in joy, and their ima- ginations soar in transport — such, so delighting and so pure were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with Miss Lesley Baillie, your neighbour at Mayfield. Mr. B., with his two daughters, accompanied with Mr. H. of G., passing through Dumfries a few days ago on their way to England, did me the honour of ealling on me; on which I took my horse — though God knows I could ill spare the time —and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and spent the day with them. *T was about nine, I think, that I left them, and riding home I composed the following ballad, of which you will probably think you have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another groat of postage. You must know that there is an old ballad beginning with : — ‘My Bonie Lizzie Baillie, I ll rowe thee in my plaiddie,’ so I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy ‘unanointed, unannealed,’ as Hamlet says.” (R. B. to Mrs. Dunlop, 22d August, 1792.) I O, saw ye bonie Lesley, As she gaed o’er the Border ? She ’s gane, like Alexander, To spread her conquests farther ! II To see her is to love her, And love but her for ever; 276 SONGS FROM THOMSON’S “SCOTTISH .AIRS” For Nature made her what she is, And never made anither ! Tit Thou art a queen, fair Lesley — Thy subjects, we before thee ! Thou art divine, fair Lesley — The hearts o’ men adore thee. IV The Deil he could na skaith thee, Or aught that wad belang thee: He ’d look into thy bonie face, And say: —“I canna wrang thee !” Vv The Powers aboon will tent thee, Misfortune sha’na steer thee: ‘ Thou ’rt like themsel’ sae lovely, That ill they ’Il ne’er let near thee. VI Return again, fair Lesley, Return to Caledonie ! That we may brag we hae a lass There’s nane again sae bonie. SWEET FA’S THE EVE I Sweet fa’s the eve on Craigieburn, And blythe awakes the morrow, But a’ the pride o’ Spring’s return Can yield me nocht but sorrow. IL I see the flowers and spreading trees, I hear the wild birds singing; But what a weary wight can please, And Care his bosom is wringing ? IIt Fain, fain would I my griefs impart, Yet dare na for your anger; But secret love will break my heart, If I conceal it langer. Iv If thou refuse to pity me, If thou shalt love another, When yon green leaves fade frae the tree, Around my grave they 711 wither. YOUNG JESSIE “T send you a song on a celebrated fashion- able toast in this country to suit Bonie Dundee.” (R. B. to Thomson.) The lady was Miss Jessie Staig (daughter of Provost Staig of Dumfries), on whose recovery from a dangerous illness Burns afterwards wrote the epigram To Dr. Maxwell (see ante, p. 190). She married Major William Miller, son of Mr. Miller of Dalswinton, and died at twenty-six in the March of 1801. I TruE hearted was he, the sad swain o’ the Yarrow, And fair are the maids on the banks of the Ayr; But by the sweet side o’ the Nith’s wind- ing river Are lovers as faithful and maidens as fair: To equal young Jessie seek Scotia all over — To equal young Jessie you seek it in vain ! Grace, beauty, and elegance fetter her lover, And maidenly modesty fixes the chain. II Fresh is the rose in the gay, dewy morn- ing, And sweet is the lily at evening close; But in the fair presence o’ lovely young Jessie Unseen is the lily, unheeded the rose. Love sits in her smile, a wizard ensnaring; Enthron’d in her een he delivers his law; And still to her charms she alone is a stranger: Her modest demeanour ’s the jewel of a’. ADOWN WINDING NITH ‘* Another favourite air of mine is The Muckin o Geordie’s Byre. When sung slow, with expression, I have wished that it had better poetry : that I have endeavoured to sup- ply as follows. ... Mr. Clarke begs you to give Miss Phillis a corner in your Book, as she is a particular Flame of his. She is a Miss Phillis M‘Murdo, sister to the ‘Bonie Jean’ which I sent you some time ago. They are both pupils of his.” (R. B. to Thomson, Au- gust, 1793.) : BLYTHE HAE I BEEN ON YON HILL 277 Phillis M‘Murdo married Norman Lockhart, afterwards third baronet of Carnwath. Before this, Burns had sent Thomson another song on the same lady, Phillis the Fair, with which he did not pretend to be satisfied, and which Thomson did not accept (see post, p. 313). CHORUS Awa wi’ your belles and your beauties — They never wi’ her can compare ! Whaever hae met wi’ my Phillis Has met wi’ the Queen o’ the Fair ! I ADOWN winding Nith I did wander To mark the sweet flowers as they spring. Adown winding Nith I did wander Of Phillis to muse and to sing. » II The Daisy amus’d my fond fancy, So artless, so simple, so wild: “ Thou emblem,” said I, “ 0’ my Phillis ” — For she is Simplicity’s child. TIr The rose-bud’s the blush o’ my charmer, Her sweet balmy lip when ’t is prest. How fair and how pure is the lily ! But fairer and purer her breast. Iv Yon knot of gay flowers in the arbour, They ne’er wi’ my Phillis can vie: Her breath is the breath of the woodbine, Its dew-drop o’ diamond her eye. Vv Her voice is the song o’ the morning, That wakes thro’ the green-spreading grove, | When Phebus peeps over the mountains On music, and pleasure, and love. VI But Beauty, how frail and how fleeting ! The bloom of a fine summer’s day ! While Worth in the mind o’ my Phillis Will flourish without a decay. CHORUS Awa wi’ your belles and your beauties — They never wi’ her can compare ! Whaever hae met wi’ my Phillis Has met wi’ the Queen o’ the Fair ! A LASS WI’? A TOCHER “The other day I strung up a kind of rhap- sody to another Hibernian melody that I admire much.” (R. B. to Thomson, February, 1797.) The “Hibernian meiody” was Balinamona Ora. CHORUS Then hey for a lass wi’ a tocher, Then hey for a lass wi’ a tocher, Then hey for a lass wi’ a tocher, The nice yellow guineas for me ! I Awa wi’ your witchcraft o’ Beauty’s alarms, The slender bit beauty you grasp in your arms ! O, gie me the lass that has acres o’ charms ! O, gie me the lass wi’ the weel-stockit farms ! II Your Beauty ’s a flower in the morning that blows, And withers the faster the faster it grows ; But the rapturous charm o’ the bonie green knowes, Ik spring they ’re new deckit wi’ bonie white yowes ! I And e’en when this Beauty your bosom has blest, The brightest o’ Beauty may cloy when possess’d ; But the sweet, yellow darlings wi’ Geordie impress’d, The langer ye hae them, the mair they ’re carest ! CHORUS Then hey for a lass wi’ a tocher, Then hey for a lass wi’ a tocher, Then hey for a lass wi’ a tocher, The nice yellow guineas for me ! BLYTHE HAE I BEEN HILL ON YON Suggested by Fraser the oboist’s interpre- tation of The Quaker’s Wife: “Mr. Fraser plays it slow, and with an expression that 278 SONGS FROM THOMSON’S “SCOTTISH AIRS” quite charms me. I got such an enthusiast in it that I made a song for it, which I here sub- join, and enclose Fraser’s set of the tune. If they hit your fancy they are at your service ; if not, return me the tune, and I will put it in Jobnson’s Museum. I think the song is not in my worst manner.” (R.B. to Thomson, June, 1793.) Later, in his remarks on Thomson's List, he inserted Blythe Hae I Been on Yon Hill: “ which,” he wrote, ‘‘ is one of the finest songs ever I made in my life; and is composed on a young lady, positively the most beautiful lovely woman in the world. As I purpose giving you the name and designation of all my heroines to appear in some future edition of your work, perhaps half a century hence, you must cer- tainly include the boniest lass in the world in your collection.” For the ‘“‘ boniest lass in the world,” see ante, p. 275, Prefatory Note to Saw Ye Bonie Lesley. I BrytTueE hae I been on yon hill As the lambs before me, Careless ilka thought, and free As the breeze flew o’er me. Now nae langer sport and play, Mirth or sang can please me: Lesley is sae fair and coy, Care and anguish seize me. II Heavy, heavy is the task, Hopeless love declaring ! Trembling, I dow nocht but glow’r, Sighing, dumb despairing ! If she winna ease the thraws In my bosom swelling, Underneath the grass-green sod Soon maun be my dwelling. BY ALLAN STREAM ‘‘T walked out yesterday evening with a volume of the Museum in my hand, when, turning up Allan Water (‘What number shall my Muse repeat,’ etc.), it appeared to me rather unworthy of so fine an air; and recollecting it is on your list, I sat and raved under the shade of an old thorn, till I wrote one to suit the measure. I may be wrong, but I think it is not in my worst style.” (R. B. to Thomson, August, 1793.) I By Allan stream I chane’d to rove, While Phebus sank beyond Benledi; The winds were whispering thro’ the grove, The yellow corn was waving ready; I listen’d to a lover’s sang, An’ thought on youthfu’ pleasures monie, And ay the wild-wood echoes rang: — “OQ, my love Annie’s very bonie ! Il “OQ, happy be the woodbine bower, Nae nightly bogle make it eerie ! Nor ever sorrow stain the hour, The place and time I met my dearie ! Her head upon my throbbing breast, She, sinking, said: —‘I’m thine for ever !” While monie a kiss the seal imprest — The sacred vow we ne’er should sever.” III The haunt o’ Spring ’s the primrose-brae. The Summer joys the flocks to follow. How cheery thro’ her short’ning day Is Autumn in her weeds o’ yellow ! But can they melt the glowing heart, Or chain the soul in speechless plea- sure, Or thro’ each nerve the rapture dart, Like meeting her, our bosom’s treasure ? CANST THOU LEAVE ME Sent to Thomson, 20th November, 1794. “Well, I think this, to be done in two or three turns across my room, and with two or three pinches of Irish blackguard, is not far amiss. You see I am determined to have my quantum of applause from somebody.”’ (R. B.) CHORUS Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie ! Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie ! Well thou know’st my aching heart, And canst thou leave me thus for pity ? I Is this thy plighted, fond regard : Thus cruelly to part, my Katie ? Is this thy faithful swain’s reward : An aching broken heart, my Katie ? FAREWELL, THOU STREAM 279 II Farewell! And ne’er such sorrows tear That fickle heart of thine, my Katie ! Thou may’st find those will love thee dear, But not a love like mine, my Katie. CHORUS Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie ! Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie, Well thou know’st my aching heart, And canst thou leave me thus for pity ? COME, LET ME TAKE THEE “That tune, Cauld Kail, is such a favourite of yours that I once roved out yester evening for a gloamin shot at the Muses; when the Muse that presides o’er the shores of Nith, or rather my old inspiring dearest nymph, Coila, whis- pered me the following. I have two reasons for thinking that it was my early, sweet Inspirer that was by my elbow, ‘smooth-gliding without step,’ and pouring the song on my glowing fancy. In the first place, since I left Coila’s native haunts, not a fragment of a Poet has arisen to cheer her solitary musings by catch- ing inspiration from her, so I more than sus- pect she has followed me hither, or at least made me an occasional visit; secondly, the last stanza of this song I sent you is the very words that Coila taught me many years ago, and which I set to an old Scots reel, in John- son’s Museum.” (R. B. to Thomson, August, 1798.) The song referred to is And I'll Kiss Thee Yet (ante, p. 218). I Comg, let me take thee to my breast, And pledge we ne’er shall sunder, And I shall spurn as vilest dust The world’s wealth and grandeur ! And do I hear my Jeanie own That equal transports move her ? I ask for dearest life alone, That I may live to love her. II Thus in my arms, wi’ a’ her charms, I clasp my countless treasure, Ill seek nae mair o’ Heav’n to share Than sic a moment’s pleasure ! And by thy een sae bonie blue I swear [’m thine for ever, And on thy lips I seal my vow, And break it shall I never ! CONTENTED WI’ LITTLE I ConTENTED wi’ little and cantie wi’ mair, Whene’er I forgather wi’ Sorrow and Care, I gie them a skelp, as they ’re creepin alang, Wi’ a cog o’ guid swats and an auld Scot- tish sang. II I whyles claw the elbow o’ troublesome Thought; But Man is a soger, and Life is a faught. My mirth and guid humour are coin in my pouch, And my Freedom’s my lairdship nae mon- arch daur touch. Il A towmond o’ trouble, should that be my fa’, A night ° guid fellowship sowthers it a’ : When at the blythe end o’ our journey at last. Wha the Deil ever thinks o’ the road he has past ? Iv Blind Chance, let her snapper and stoyte on her way, Be ’t to me, be ’t frae me, e’en let the jade gae! Come Ease or come Travail, come Pleasure. or Pain, My warst word is :—“ Welcome, and wel-. come again !” FAREWELL, THOU STREAM The second set of a song which originally began : — ‘« The last time I came o’er the moor And left Maria’s dwelling.” The heroine was Maria Riddell, to whom’ Burns sent a copy. To this he added this note (unpublished '): “On reading over the song, I 1 That is, before the Centenary Edition. 280 SONGS FROM THOMSON’S “SCOTTISH AIRS” see it is but a cold, inanimated composition. It will be absolutely necessary for me to get in love, else I shall never be able to make a line worth reading on the subject.” In January, 1794, occurred the estrangement from Mrs. Riddell (see ante, pp. 178, 179, Prefatory Note to Impromptu on Mrs. Riddell’s Birthday) ; and. in July, 1794, Burns informed Thomson that he meant to set the verses he had sent him for The Last Time I Came O’er the Moor to Nancy’s to the Greenwood Gane, and that he had “‘ made an alteration in the beginning.” I FAREWELL, thou stream that winding flows Around Eliza’s dwelling ! O Mem’ry, spare the cruel throes Within my bosom swelling: Condemn’d to drag a hopeless chain And yet in secret languish, To feel a fire in every vein Nor dare disclose my anguish ! Il Love’s veriest wretch, unseen, unknown, I fain my griefs would cover: The bursting sigh, th’ unweeting groan Betray the hapless lover. I know thou doom’st me to despair, Nor wilt, nor canst relieve me; But, O Eliza, hear one prayer — For pity’s sake forgive me ! III The music of thy voice I heard, Nor wist while it enslav’d me ! I saw thine eyes, yet nothing fear’d, Till fears no more had sav’d me ! Th’ unwary sailor thus, aghast The wheeling torrent viewing, *Mid circling horrors sinks at last In overwhelming ruin. HAD I A CAVE “That crinkum-crankum tune, Robin Adair, has run so in my head, and I succeeded so ill in my last attempt [Phillis the Fair, see post, p. 313], that I ventured in my morning’s walk one essay more. You, my dear Sir, will remember an unfortunate part of our worthy friend Cunningham’s story, which happened about three years ago. That struck my fancy, and I endeavoured to do the idea poetic justice, as follows.” (R. B. to Thomson, August, 1793.) See further, Prefatory Notes to Anna (ante, p. 95); To Alex. Cunningham (ante, p. 140) ; and She’s Fair and Fause (ante, p. 249). I Hap I a cave On some wild distant shore, Where the winds howl To the wave’s dashing roar, There would I weep my woes, There seek my lost repose, Till grief my eyes should close, Ne’er to wake more ! II Falsest of womankind, Can’st thou declare All thy fond, plighted vows Fleeting as air ? To thy new lover hie, Laugh o’er thy perjury, Then in thy bosom try What peace is there ! HERE’S A HEALTH “‘T onee mentioned to you an air which I have long admired, Here’s Health to Them That’s Awa, Hinney; but I forget if you took notice of it. I have just been trying to suit it with verses; and I beg leave to recommend the air to your attention once more.” (R. B. to Thomson, May, 1796.) About a fortnight before his death he sent a copy to Alexander Cunningham: ‘Did Thomson show you the following song, the last I made, or probably will make for some time ? ” The heroine, Jessie Lewars, sister of John Lewars, a fellow-exciseman, was of great ser- vice to the Burns household during the last illness. She is also commemorated in certain complimentary verses (ante, pp. 148, 192), and in that very beautiful song, O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast (post, p. 315). On 3d June, 1799, she married Mr. James Thomson, Writer in Dumfries, and she died 26th May, 1855. CHORUS Here’s a health to ane I loe dear ! Here ’s a health to ane I loe dear! Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lov- ers meet, And soft as their parting tear, Jessy — And soft as their parting tear ! IT WAS THE CHARMING MONTH 281 I ALrHo’ thou maun never be mine, Altho’ even hope is denied, *T is sweeter for thee despairing Than ought in the world beside, Jessy — Than ought in the world beside ! IL I mourn thro’ the gay, gaudy day, As hopeless I muse on thy charms; But welcome the dream o’ sweet slumber ! For then I am lockt in thine arms, Jessy — For then I am lockt in thine arms ! CHORUS Here ’s a health to ane I loe dear ! Here ’s a health to ane I loe dear ! Thou art sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, And soft as their parting tear, Jessy — And soft as their parting tear ! HOW CRUEL ARE THE PARENTS ‘* A zong altered from an old English one” (R. B.), [which begins] : ‘¢ How cruel is that parents care, Who riches only prizes.”’ I How cruel are the parents Who riches only prize, And to the wealthy booby Poor Woman sacrifice ! Meanwhile the hapless daughter Has but a choice of strife: To shun a tyrant father’s hate Become a wretched wife ! II The ravening hawk pursuing, The trembling dove thus flies: To shun impending ruin Awhile her pinion tries, Till, of escape despairing, No shelter or retreat, She trusts the ruthless faleoner, And drops beneath his feet. HUSBAND, HUSBAND, CEASE YOUR STRIFE I «“ Hussanp, husband, cease your strife, Nor longer idly rave, sir ! Tho’ I am your wedded wife, Yet I am not your slave, sir.” “One of two must still obey, Nancy, Nancy ! Is it Man or Woman, say, My spouse Nancy ?” II “Tf tis still the lordly word, Service and obedience, I'll desert my sov’reign lord, And so goodbye, allegiance ! ”’ “Sad will I be so bereft, Nancy, Nancy ! Yet I'll try to make a shift, My spouse Nancy !” It “My poor heart, then break it must, My last hour I am near it: When you lay me in the dust, Think, how will you bear it ?” “T will hope and trust in Heaven, Nancy, Nancy! Strength to bear it will be given, My spouse Nancy.” Iv “Well, sir, from the silent dead, Still Ill try to daunt you: Ever round your midnight bed Horrid sprites shall haunt you !” “T’ll wed another like my dear, Nancy, Nancy! Then all Hell will fly for fear, My spouse Nancy!” IT WAS THE CHARMING MONTH Meant as English words to Dainty Davie, and abridged from a song in The Tea-Table Miscellany. “ You may think meanly of this, but take a look at the bombast original and you will be surprised that I have made so much of it.” (R.B. to Thomson, November, 1794.) 282 SONGS FROM THOMSON’S “SCOTTISH AIRS” All the same, Burns rather selected from than renewed and re-inspired the ‘‘ bombast original.” Practically nothing is his but the repeats and the chorus; and even these have their germs in the Miscellany. The rest of his set is “lifted ” almost word for word, and sim- ply edited and rearranged. CHORUS Lovely was she by the dawn, Youthful Chloe, charming Chloe, Tripping o’er the pearly lawn, The youthful, charming Chloe ! I Ir was the charming month of May, When all the flow’rs were fresh and gay, One morning, by the break of day, The youthful, charming Chloe, From peaceful slumber she arose, Girt on her mantle and her hose, And o’er the flow’ry mead she goes — The youthful, charming Chloe ! II The feather’d people you might see Perch’d all around on every tree ! With notes of sweetest melody They hail the charming Chloe, Till, painting gay the eastern skies, The glorious sun began to rise, Outrival’d by the radiant eyes Of youthful, charming Chloe. CHORUS Lovely was she by the dawn, Youthful Chloe, charming Chloe, Tripping o’er the pearly lawn, The youthful, charming Chloe ! LAST MAY A BRAW WOOER I Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen, And sair wi’ his love he did deave me. I said there was naething I hated like men: The deuce gae wi’m to believe me, be- lieve me — The deuce gae wi’m to believe me! II He spak o’ the darts in my bonie black een, And vow’d for my love he was diein. I said, he might die when he liket for Jean: The Lord forgie me for liein, for liein — The Lord forgie me for liein ! III A weel-stocket mailen, himsel for the laird, And marriage aff-hand were his proffers: I never loot on that I kenn’d it, or car’d, But thought I might hae waur offers, waur offers — But thought I might hae waur offers. IV But what wad ye think? In a fortnight or less (The Deil tak his taste to gae near her !) He up the Gate-Slack to my black cousin, Bess ! Guess ye how, the jad! I could bear her, could bear her — Guess ye how, the jad! I could bear her. Vv But a’ the niest week, as I petted wi’ care, I gaed to the tryste o’ Dalgarnock, And wha but my fine fickle lover was there ? I glowr’d as I’d seen a warlock, a war- lock — I glowr’d as Id seen a warlock. VI But owre my left shouther I gae hima blink, Lest neebours might say I was saucy. My wooer he caper’d as he’d been in drink, And vow’d I was his dear lassie, dear lassie — And vow’d I was his dear lassie ! VII I spier’d for my cousin fu’ couthy and sweet: Gin she had recover’d her hearin ? And how her new shoon fit her auld, shachl’d feet ? But heavens! how he fell a swearin, a swearin — But heavens ! how he fell a swearin ! NOW ROSY MAY 283 VIIL He begged for gude sake, I wad be his wife, Or else I wad kill him wi’ sorrow; So e’en to preserve the poor body in life, I think I maun wed him to-morrow, to- morrow — I think I maun wed him to-morrow ! MY NANIE’S AWA ‘‘There is one passage in your charming letter. Thomson nor Shenstone never exceeded it, nor often came up to it. I shall certainly steal it, and set itin some future poetic produc- tion and get immortal fame by it. ’T is where you bid the scenes of Nature remind me of Clarinda.”” (Sylvander to Clarinda [see Prefa- tory Note, ante, p. 138], 7th February, 1'788.) It may be, as some suppose, that this smooth and pleasant ditty represents the theft. I Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays, And listens the Jambkins that bleat o’er the braes, While birds warble welcomes in ilka green shaw, But to me it’s delightless —my Nanie’s awa. II The snawdrap and primrose our woodlands adorn, And violets bathe in the weet o’ the morn. They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw: They mind me o’ Nanie—and Nanie ’s awa! II Thou lav’rock, that springs frae the dews of the lawn The shepherd to warn o’ the grey-breaking dawn, And thon mellow mavis, that hails the night-fa, Give over for pity — my Nanie’s awa. Iv Come Autumn, sae pensive in yellow and grey, acre And soothe me wi’ tidings o’ Nature’s de- cay ! The dark, dreary Winter and wild-driving snaw Alane can delight me — now Nanie ’s awa. NOW ROSY MAY A rifaccimento of The Gard’ner wi’ his Paidle (ante, p. 218), adapted to the tune of Dainty Davie. The original Dainty Davie, on which the chorus is modelled, is preserved in the Herd ms. and The Merry Muses. See also, post, p. 335, Notesto The Jolly Beggars. “ The words ‘ Dainty Davie’ glide so sweetly in the air, that to a Scots ear, any song to it, without Davie being the hero, would have a lame ef- fect.” (R. B. to Thomson, August, 1793.) CHORUS Meet me on the Warlock Knowe, Dainty Davie, Dainty Davie! There Ill spend the day wi’ you, My ain dear Dainty Davie. I Now rosy May comes in wi’ flowers To deck her gay, green-spreading bowers; And now comes in the happy hours To wander wi’ my Davie. II The crystal waters round us fa’, The merry birds are lovers a’, The scented breezes round us blaw, A wandering wi’ my Davie. Til When purple morning starts the hare To steal upon her early fare, Then thro’ the dews I will repair To meet my faithfu’ Davie. Iv When day, expiring in the west, The curtain draws o’ Nature’s rest, I flee to his arms I loe the best: And that’s my ain dear Davie ! CHORUS Meet me on the Warlock Knowe, Dainty Davie, Dainty Davie ! There Ill spend the day wi’ you, My ain dear Dainty Davie. 284 SONGS FROM THOMSON’S “SCOTTISH AIRS” NOW SPRING HAS CLAD I Now spring has clad the grove in green, And strew’d the lea wi’ flowers; The furrow’d, waving corn is seen Rejoice in fostering showers; While ilka thing in nature join Their sorrows to forego, O, why thus all alone are mine The weary steps o’ woe! II The trout within yon wimpling burn Glides swift, a silver dart, And, safe beneath the shady thorn, Defies the angler’s art: My life was ance that careless stream, That wanton trout was I, But Love wi’ unrelenting beam Has scorch’d my fountains dry. Ill The little floweret’s peaceful lot, In yonder cliff that grows, Which, save the linnet’s flight, I wot, Nae ruder visit knows, Was mine, till Love has o’er me past, And blighted a’ my bloom; And now beneath the withering blast My youth and joy consume. Iv The waken’d lav’rock warbling springs, And climbs the early sky, Winnowing blythe his dewy wings In Morning’s rosy eye: As little reck’t I Sorrow’s power, Until the flowery snare O’ witching Love in luckless hour Made me the thrall o’ care ! Vv O, had my fate been Greenland snows Or Afric’s burning zone, Wi’ man and Nature leagu’d my foes, So Peggy ne’er I’d known ! The wretch, whose doom is “hope nae mair,” What tongue his woes can tell, Within whose bosom, save Despair, Nae kinder spirits dwell ! O, THIS IS NO MY AIN LASSIE “This is No My Ain House puzzles me a good deal; in fact, I think to change the old rhythm of the first, or chorus part of the tune, will have a good effect. I would have it some- thing like the gallop of the following.” (R. B. to Thomson, June, 1795.) In the first draft of the Chorus he wrote “Body” for “ Lassie;” but in August he directed Thomson to substi- tute ‘‘ Lassie.” CHORUS O, this is no my ain lassie, Fair tho’ the lassie be: Weel ken I my ain lassie — Kind love is in her e’e. I I sre a form, I see a face, Ye weel may wi’ the fairest place: It wants to me the witching grace, The kind love that’s in her e’e. II She ’s bonie, blooming, straight, and tall, And lang has had my heart in thrall; And ay it charms my very saul, The kind love that’s in the e’e. TI A thief sae pawkie is my Jean, To steal a blink by a’ unseen ! But gleg as light are lover’s een, When kind love is in the e’e. IV It may escape the courtly sparks, It may eseape the learned clerks; But well the watching lover marks The kind love that’s in her e’e. CHORUS O, this is no my ain lassie, Fair tho’ the lassie be: Weel ken I my ain lassie — Kind love is in her e’e. O, WAT YE WHA THAT LO’ES ME CHORUS O, that’s the lassie o’ my heart, My lassie ever dearer ! SCOTS, WHA HAE 285 O, that’s the queen o’ womankind, And ne’er a ane to peer her ! I O, waT ye wha that lo’es me, And has my heart a keeping ? O, sweet is she that lo’es me As dews o’ summer weeping, In tears the rosebuds steeping ! II If thou shalt meet a lassie In grace and beauty charming, That e’en thy chosen lassie, Erewhile thy breast sae warming, Had ne’er sic powers alarming: — It If thou badst heard her talking (And thy attention ’s plighted), That ilka body talking But her by thee is slighted, And thou art all-delighted: — Iv If thou hast met this fair one, When frae her thou hast parted, If every other fair one But her thou hast deserted, And thou art broken-hearted: — CHORUS O, that’s the lassie o’ my heart, My lassie ever dearer ! O, that’s the queen o’ womankind, .And ne’er a ane to peer her ! SCOTS, WHA HAE First published in The Morning Chronicle, May, 1794. Replying to Perry’s offer of an engagement on that print, Burns wrote: ‘‘ In the meantime they are most welcome to my ode; only let them insert it as a thing they have met with by accident and unknown to me.” Accordingly, the ode was thus ingenuously prefaced: “ If the following warm and animat- - ing ode was not written near the times to which it applies, it is one of the most faithful imita- tions of the simple and beautiful style of the Scottish bards we ever read, and we know but of one living Poet to whom to ascribe it:” a piece of criticism which, if you reflect that in grammar, style, cast, sentiment, diction, and turn of phrase, the ode, though here and there its spelling deviates into Scots, is pure High- teenth Century English, says little for the soundness of Perry’s judgment, however it may approve the kindness of his heart. Varying accounts are given of the time and circumstances of its origin. John Syme con- nects it with a tour with Burns in Galloway in July, 1793: “I told you that in the midst of the storm on the wilds of Kenmure, Burns was rapt in meditation. What do you think he was about? He was charging the English army along with Bruce at Bannockburn. He was engaged in the same manner on our ride from St. Mary’s Isle, and I did not disturb him. Next day he produced me the following address of Bruce to his troops, and gave me a copy for Dalzell.” Burns tells a different tale. After some remarks to Thomson (August or September, 1793), on the old air Hey Tutti Taiti, and on the tradition that ‘‘ it was Robert Bruce’s march at the battle of Bannockburn,” he introduces Scots Wha Hae : ‘‘ This thought, in my yesternight’s evening walk, roused me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of lib- erty and independence, which I threw into a kind of Scots ode, fitted to the air, that one might suppose to be the gallant royal Scot’s address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning.’”’ The two statements are irreconcil- able ; and we must conclude either that Syme misdated the tour, and that the “ yesternight ” of Burns was the night of his return to Dum- fries, or that Burns did not give Syme a copy until some time after his return, and that, like some other circumstances he was pleased to father, his “ yester-night’s evening walk ” need not be literally interpreted. Thomson reprobated the “ idea of giving it a tune so totally devoid of interest or grandeur” as Hey Tuttie Taitie, and suggested certain additions in the fourth line of each stanza to fit it to that of Lewie Gordon. To accept these expletives was to ruin the effect; but as in the case of Ye Flowery Banks o’ Bonie Doon, ac- cepted they were. Some other suggestions Burns declined: “I have scrutinized it over and over; and to the world, some way or other, it shall go as it is.’ At the same time, he seems to have been scarce reconciled to the change to Lewie Gordon, for says he: “It will not in the least hurt me, tho’ you leave the song out altogether, and adhere to your first idea of adopting Logan’s verses.”? But hav- ing agreed to it, he adopted the changes in all such copies as he sent out in ms. After the publication of the Thomson Correspondence, general opinion pronounced in favour of Hey Tuttie Taitie ; and Thomson published the ode as written, and set it to the air for which it was made, and to which (as sung by Braham and others) it owes no little of its fortune. 286 SONGS FROM THOMSON’S “SCOTTISH AIRS” In sending a copy (now in Harvard Univer- sity Library) to Lord Buchan, Burns was moved to descant on the battle itself: “ Inde- pendently of my enthusiasm as a Scotsman, I have rarely met with anything in history which interests my feelings as a man equal with the story of Bannockburn. On the one hand a cruel, but able usurper, leading on the finest army in Europe, to extinguish the last spark of freedom among a greatly-daring and greatly- injured people ; on the other hand, the desper- ate relics of a gallant nation, devoting them- selves to rescue their bleeding country or perish with her. Liberty! thou art a prize truly and indeed invaluable, for never canst thou be too dearly bought.” Some have con- cluded therefrom that the writer had mixed his usurpers, and thought that the Edward beaten at Bannockburn was the Malleus Scoto- rum, the victor of Falkirk and the hangman of Sir William Wallace. But if he did, he was afterwards better informed ; for to a copy (now in the Corporation Council Chamber, Edinburgh) presented to Dr. Hughes of Here- ford (8th August, 1795) he appended the fol- lowing note: “This battle was the decisive blow which first put Robert the First, com- monly called Robert de Bruce, in quiet pos- session of the Scottish throne. It was fought against Edward the Second, son to that Ed- ward who shed so much blood in Scotland in consequence of the dispute between Bruce and Baliol.” It is also to the purpose to note that, on the poet’s own showing (letter to Thomson), this very famous lyric was inspired, not only by the thought of Bannockburn, but also “ by the glowing ideas of some other struggles of the same nature not quite so ancient :” that, in other words, it is partly an effect of the French Revolution. The stanza, binding-rhyme and all, is that of Helen of Kirkconnel, a ballad which Burns thought “ silly to contemptibility : — “‘I wish I were where Helen lies! Night and day on me she cries ; O, that I were where Helen lies On fair Kirkconnel Lea!” I Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed Or to victorie ! II Now ’s the day, and now’s the hour: See the front o’ battle lour, See approach proud Edward’s power — Chains and slaverie ! It Wha will be a traitor knave ? Wha can fill a coward’s grave ? Wha sae base as be a slave ? — Let him turn, and flee! IV Wha for Scotland’s King and Law ‘Freedom’s sword will strongly draw, Freeman stand or freeman fa’, Let him follow me ! Vv By Oppression’s woes and pains, By your sons in servile chains, We will drain our dearest veins But they shall be free! VI Lay the proud usurpers low ! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty ’s in every blow ! Let us do, or die! THEIR GROVES O’ MYRTLE SWEET “ The Irish air, Humours of Glen, is a great favourite of mine, and as, except the silly verses in The Poor Soldier, there are not any decent words for it, I have written for it as follows.” (R. B. to Thomson, April, 1795.) I THEIR groves o’ sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon, Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume ! Far dearer to me yon lone glen o’ green breckan, Wi’ the burn stealing under the lang, yellow broom; Far dearer to me are yon humble broom bowers, Where the blue-bell and gowan lurk lowly, unseen; For there, lightly tripping among the wild flowers, A-list’ning the linnet, aft wanders my Jean. HIGHLAND MARY 287 II Tho’ rich is the breeze in their gay, sunny vallies, And cauld Caledonia’s blast on the wave, Their sweet-scented woodlands that skirt the proud palace, What are they?— The haunt of the tyrant and slave ! The slave’s spicy forests and gold-bubbling fountains The brave Caledonian views wi’ disdain: He wanders as free as the winds of his mountains, Save Love’s willing fetters — the chains o’ his Jean. THINE AM I Intended as English words to The Quaker’s Wife. It is possible that the verses had done duty with Clarinda: “I have altered the first stanza, which I would have to stand thus: “Thine am I, my faithful Fair, Well thou may’st discover ! Every pulse along my veins Tells the ardent Lover.’ ” (R. B. to Thomson, 19th October, 1794.) But on 2d August, 1795, being long, long off with Clarinda and very much on with Jean Lorimer, he wants his first line changed to ‘‘ Thine am I, my Chloris fair: ” “If you neglect the al- teration, I call on all the Nine conjunctly and severally to anathematise you.” as Burns genteelly describes her — be- longed. Page 170. Tum Ronaps or THE BENNALS. St. xu. 1.2. Twal’ hundred. ; Linen woven in a reed of twelve hundred di- visions. Page 172. Tur FAREWELL. St.1.1.7. My Bess. Z The poet’s child by Elizabeth Paton, born in November, 1784. See ante, p. 113, Prefatory Note to A Poet's Welcome. St.1.1.12. My Smith. ; See ante, e 15, Prefatory Note to Epistle to James Smith, : , St. 11.1.7. Thee, Hamilton, and Aiken dear. For Gavin Hamilton see ante, p. 41, Prefatory Note to A Dedication; for Aiken see ante, p. 330, Notes to The Cotter’s Saturday Night. Page 173. Execy on THe Drats or Sim James Hunter Briar. k St.a.1.2. Once the lov’d haunts of Scotia’s royal train. ae King’s Park, at Holyrood House.” St. as 3. Where limpid streams, once hal- low’d, well. “Saint Anthony’s Well.” (R. B.) St.u.1.4. Mould’ring ruins mark the sacred ‘ane. “St. Anthony’s Chapel.” (R.B.) The well and ruins are situated on the heights a little to the southeast of Holyrood House. Page 182, SkErcH FoR aN Exzcy. St.1.1.1. Craigdarroch. . Alexander Fergusson of Craigdarroch, the hero of The Whistle (ante, p. 99). St.m.11. Black James. Possibly James Boswell. : St. 1.1.1. Philosophic Smellie. William Smellie. See ante, p. 181, Prefatory Note to On William Smellie. Page 183. Passion’s Cry. | “T burn, I burn, as when thro’ ripened corn By driving winds the crackling flames are borne. ey Quoted from Pope’s Sappho. Page 183. In vain woutD PRUDENCE. “Wrong d, injur’d, shunn’d, unpitied, unredrest, The mock’d quotation of the scorner’s jest.” [These lines, slightly modified, appear in the preceding poem, Passion’s Cry (ante p. 183).] Page 193. On MARRIAGE. The best of things. The nickname ‘ the Best,” or “the Best in Christendom,” is classic slang. Cf. Dorset, Song, Methinks the Poor Town: “1 know what I mean when I drink to the Best ;”” and Roches- ter, The Rehearsal (Works, 1718, i. 131): ‘* Mine Host drinks to the Best in Christendom, And decently my Lady quits the Room.” Page 194. On Jonuw RanxkINe. By Adamhiil. Rankine’s farm. In Scotland it is still the custom among farmers to call each other by their territorial names. Page 197. Monopy on A Lapy FAMED FOR HER CAPRICE. . St.v.12. Her idiot lyre. ‘* The lady affects to be a poetess.”’ He had carefully fostered the illusion. Page 201. Bonre DunpEE. St.1.1.1. Hauver-meal bannock. A synonym (common in the North of England and some parts of Scotland) for the oaten cake, the staple bread of old Scotland. Page 202. To THz WEAVER’S GIN YE GO. St.u.1.2. To warp a plaiden wad. To form threads into a warp for a web of coarse woollen. Page 203. I’m o’ER YOUNG TO MARRY YET. St.1.1.4. Eerie. Apprehensive of ghosts, but the word is used. here in a humorous sense. Perhaps the nearest English equivalent is ‘* creepy.” age 204. My Hicuianp Lassiz, O. [It seemed inexpedient to lengthen the Prefa- tory note by a discussion of the relation held by Burns to Mary Campbell, but inasmuch as the subject is one much contested by commentators. of Barns, the statement of the editors is repro- duced here.] On the strength of spor: (R. B.) adie allu- sions by Burns — meant, as it seems, to dissem- ble more than they reveal—and especiallv of certain ecstatic expressions in the song, 2now Ling’ring Star (ante, p. 226), and in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop — penned when the writer was ‘‘eroaning under the miseries of a diseased ner- vous system ’’ — Mary Campbell has come to be regarded less as an average Scots peasant, to whom a merry-begot was then, if not a neces- sary of life, at all events the commonest effect of luck, than as a sort of bare-legged Beatrice —a Spiritualised Ideal of Peasant Woman- hood. Seriously examined, her cult — for cult it is — is found an absurdity ; but persons of re- pute have taken the craze, so that it is useful to remark that the Mary Campbell of tradition is a figment of the General Brain, for whose es- sential features not so much as the faintest out- line is to be found in the confusion of amorous. plaints and cries of repentance or remorse, which is all that we have to enlighten us from. Burns. Further, it is forgotten that Mary: Campbell’s death revealed her to her Poet ina. 344 NOTES new and hallowed aspect. Whatever the date — whether 1786 or an earlier year: whether, that is to say, she preceded Armour in Burns’s regard, or consoled him episodically after Ar- mour’s repudiation of him—assigned to the famous farewell on the banks of Ayr, the un- derhandedness of the engagement, with the ex- treme discretion of, not merely his references to it, but the references of his relatives and hers, leaves room for much conjecture. Here Burns, for once in his life, was reticent. Yet, what reason had he for reticence if, as is hotly con- tended by the more ardent among the Mariola- ters, the affair belonged to 1784, or earlier ? And why, in 1784, when he had no particular reputation, good or bad, should Mary’s kins- folk (or Mary herself) have conceived so arrant a grudge against him that it impelled them (or her) to obliterate the famous Inscription in his Bible, with its solemn scriptural oaths — which were unusual under the circumstances, and which, a hein seceded for the girl’s comfort, tend to show that those circumstances were pe- culiar — and _ to destroy his every scrap of writ- ing to her? It were less difficult to explain the position if the amour belonged to 1786 ; for then the Armour business was notorious. But then, too, Burns’s constancy in crying out for Jean must of necessity impeach the worth of his pro- fessions to Mary. In any case, it is a remarka- ble circumstance that the latter heroine left her situation with the vaguest possible outlook on marriage ; for, though Burns does say that she went to make arrangements for their union, there is no scrap of peace that immediate espou- sals were designed. Indeed, no progress at all ap- pears to have been made in such arrangements in all the five months preceding her death ; and as- suredly Burns did not intend to take her with him to Jamaica in 1786. Finally, there is the guarded, the official, statement of Currie that ‘the banks of Ayr formed the scene of youth- ful passions,” the *‘ history of which it would be tniproper to reveal were it even insone’s power, and the traces of which will soon be discover- able only in those strains of nature and sensibil- ity to which they gave birth.”’? On the whole, it is a very pretty tangle; but the one thing in it worth acknowledgment and perfectly plain is that the Highland Mary of the Mariolater is but a ‘devout imagination.” Page 208. Duncan Davison. St.3.1. 8. Temper-pin. The pin which regulated the motion of the a wheel. Cf. Allan Ramsay’s vamp, ry Jo Janet: — “To keep the temper-pin in tiff Employs right aft my hand, Sir.”’ Page 208. Lapy Onum, Honzsr Lucky. Cho.1.1. Honest Lucky. “Lucky” is a common designation for ale- wives. See further, ante, p. 340, Notes to To Major Logan. Page 209. Duncan Gray. [For another set of Duncan Gray stanzas, see ante, p. 272. Both are] founded on a song pre- served in the Herd MS. Page 211. BuyTHE was SHE. Cho. 1.2. Butt and ben. ; See ante, p. 327, Notes to The Holy Fair. Page 220, E Suver Tassie. St.1.1.7. The Berwick-Law. North Berwick Law, a conspicuous height 4 Haddimatonshire overlooking the Firth of orth. Page 222. O, wERE Ion Parnassus Hitt. St.1.1.2. Helicon. . See ante, p. 336, Notes to The Jolly Beggars. St.1.1.7. Cornsincon. Corsancone, a hill in New Cumnock parish, Ayrshire (visible from Ellisland), where the Bard (not quite correctly) placed the sources of the Nith. Page 225. Tur Brazs 0’ BALLOCHMYLE. St.1.11. The Catrine woods. Catrine was the residence of Professor Dugald ies aia (See ante, p. 328, Notes to The Vi- sion. St.1.1.5. Maria. Mary Anne Whitefoord, the eldest daughter, who married Henry Kerr Cranstoun, grandson of William, fifth Lord Cranstoun. Page 226. Tue Rantin Doe, roe Dappm o'r. St.u.1.2. The groanin maut. The ale for the midwife and her gossips. For the epithet, ‘‘ groaning ’’ is good English for a lying-in. C; ‘amilet, iii. 2: ‘‘It would cost you a groaning to take my edge off.” St.m.11. The creepie-chair. The stool of repentance. See ante, p. 338, Notes to Address to the Toothache. St.1v.1.2. Fidgin fain. Tingling with fondness. Cf. Tam o’ Shan- ter, ante, p. 92: “Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain : ?? — and the old song Maggie Lauder : — “ ¢ Maggie,’ quoth he, ‘and by my bags I’m fidgin fain to see thee.’ ” Page 228. Youne Jockiz was THE Buyts- rst Lap. St.1.1.3. Gaud. The plough-oxen were driven with a goad. Page 230. LIECRANKIE. St.mr.11. The bauld Pitcur. Haliburton of Pitcur, slain at Killiecrankie. A Jacobite song in the Pitcairn MS., entitled Answer to Killiecrankie, has this stanza: — ‘“* My Lord Dundee the best 0’ ye Into the fields did fa’ then ; And great Pitcur fell in a furr Wha could not win awa' then.” Page 230. Tur Bangs or Nira. St. 1.1. 4. Where Cummins ance had high command. ‘*My landlord Millar is building a house on the banks of the Nith, just on the ruins of the Comyn’s Castle.” (R. B.) Page 231. Tam GLEN. St.vn. The last Halloween, etc. See ante, pp. 329, 330, Notes to Halloween. Page 233. GuIDWIFE, counT THE LAWIN. St.m. My coggie is a haly pool, ete. NOTES 345 [This stanza] was inscribed by Burns on a window-pane of the Globe Tavern, Dumfries (see ante, p. 188). Page 238. I wan a Wire 0’ MY AIN. St. ry. Il. 3,4. Ni mil caren Jor me, care for naebody. Cf. The Jolly Miller. He lived on the river Dee, and this was the burden of his song: — “I care for nobody, no, not I, And nobody cares for me.” Page 239. O, ror ANE-AND-T'WENTY, Tam. St.u.1.1. A gleib o’ lan’. The common meaning of gleib (i. e. glebe) in Scotland is church land— that is the land pos- sessed by the parish minister. Here it probably means a portion of land about the average size of a kirk glebe — 30 acres or thereby. Page 244. Witire WastLe. St. m.1.1. Hem-shin’d. Sometimes wipeely rinted ‘t Hen-shin’d,”’ and more often ‘‘ Hein-shin’d.”” The reference is to the ‘Haims’? or ‘‘Hems”’ of a horse’s collar, which bend outwards. St. 1v. 1.5. Midden-creels. _Manure-baskets slung across horses like pan- niers. Page 248. Hy, ca’ THRO’. St.111. Upwi’. The phrase resembles the German Hoch. Page 248. O, CAN YE LABOUR LEA. Cho. 1.1. O, can ye labour lea. “Labour lea’? = plough pasture-land; but the phrase is used in an equivocal sense. Page 249. St. ur. 1.3. Makin of. Probably not to be understood in the literal English sense, but as ‘‘ fondling ”’ or ‘‘ petting.”’ Page 249. Tue Druk’s DANG O’ER MY Dappisz. St. 0.1.5. Butter’d my brose. Cf. the song For A’ That in The Merry Muses: ““Put butter in my Donald’s brose.”’ Also, in the same collection the old song, Brose and Butter : — ‘*O, gie my love brose, lasses, Gie my love brose and butter,” etc. St. 0.1.7. But downa-do’s come o'er me now. This line is found in She’s Hoved Me Out of Lauderdale, 2 song preserved’ in The Merry Muses. Page 249. Tue Der’s awa wr TH’ Ex- CISEMAN. St.1.1. 3. Mahoun. That is, Mahomet, an old name for the Devil. Cf£, Dunbar’s Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins: «‘ Then cried Mahoun for a Hieland Padyane.”’ The scene of the song is a Highland village or clachan. Hence the reference to ‘‘ hornpipes and strathspeys.”” Page 251. Autp Lane Synu. Cho. 1.3. A cup. | Some sing ‘‘ kiss ’’ in place of “‘cup.’’ (Note in Johnson, probably by R. B.) | Page 252. St.v. 1.3. Guid-willie waught. There has been some unnecessary discussion as to the meaning of this phrase. It is of course analogous to that of ‘‘ cup of kindness’’ in the Chorus. Page 252. Hap I rae Wyte? St. 1v.1.8. Wanton Willie. , Hamilton of Gilbertfield sometimes so signed himself; but there is a certain ‘‘ Wanton Wil- lie” referred to in the Poems of Alexander Tait (1790). As Tait made both Burns and Sil- lar subjects of his satire, it may be that Burns here refers to the same ‘‘ Willie,’’ whoever he may have been. Page 253, CHARLIE HE’s My DaRLING. St.u1.12. Tirl’d at the pin. Sounded the “‘rasping-pin,’? which was a notched rod of iron, with a ring attached. Page 254. Tur Lass o’ EccuErecHan. St.1.1.4. Quarter basin. For holding meal. Cf. the song, Woo'’d and Married and A’: ‘* Ye’ll hae little to put in the bassie.”’ St.1.1.6, A heich house and a laich ane. A house with a porch, or it may be pantry, attached. Cf. the old song: — “* He keepit ay a gude kale-yaird, A ha’ house and a pantry.” St.1n1.1. Lucky. See ante, p. 340, Notes to To Major Logan. Page 255. Tae Carvin o'r. St.1.11. Haslock woo. Fine wool from the neck of the sheep. St.o.1.1. Lyart gray. Here ‘‘hoary gray.”’ C£. Henryson’s_Res- souning Betwen Age and Youth, |. u, ‘“* Lyart lokkis hoir,’? and Sir Richard Maitland’s Folye of an Auld Man, “* Quhan that his hair is turnit lyart gray.’ ‘*Lyart,’’ though, like the Old nglish ““‘lyard’’ (Latin liardus, Ital. leardo, Old Fr. liart), it originally was equivalent to ‘“oray,”? and was also, like the English ‘‘ lyard,”’ used as a general nickname for a gray horse, gradually came, as in the preceding examples, to signify the peculiar discoloration caused by age and decay. Thus also in the ballad of ‘amie Telfer :— ‘‘The Dinlay snaw was ne’er mair white Nor the lyart lockes of Harden’s hair:” and in Dunbar’s Petition: ‘‘In lyart changed is his hue,” the meaning really is that the ““oray horse’? (whose “‘mane is turned into quhyt’’) is no longer “‘ gray.’? The most strik- ing example of this use is probably that in the first line of The Jolly Beggars (ante, p. 102), ‘* Lyart leaves,’’ where ‘“‘lyart”’ clearly means ‘‘old,”’ ‘‘ faded,”” or “‘ withered.” Cf, too, “‘ Lyart Time,” in Fergusson’s Ode to the ee. Page 257. Tur Reet o’ Srumpim. St.u.1.2. Made mantie. “Manty”’ (from Fr. manteau) is Scots for a gown, and ‘“‘Mantymaker” Scots for dress- maker. This seems to be the meaning here, unless the word be related to “mantic” (= prophetiels and the meaning be that she told ‘ortunes. 346 NOTES Page 257. I’nu ay ca’ In BY Yon Town. ““Town’? in Scots is commonly applied to a set of farm-buildings. Page 257. O, wAT YE WHA’S IN YON Town. See supra, Note to preceding song, I’ll ay ca’ in by Yon Town. Page 263. THou Groomy DEcEMBER. St. u. 11. Fond lovers’ parting is sweet, painful pleasure. Cf. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act a. Scene 3: — “ Good night! Good night! parting is such sweet sor- row.”” Page 266. Dors Haucury Gauu Invasion THREAT ? St.1.1.5. Corsincon. ‘* A high hill at the source of the Nith.” (R. B. in Courant, ete.) See ante, p. 344, Notes to O, were I on Parnassus Hill. St.1.1.6. Criffel. ‘* A mountain at the confluence of the Nith with the Solway Firth.’? (R. B. in Courant, etc. Page 268. Msc 0’ THE MiLL. St. iv. 1.1. O, ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was bedded ? Among the Scots lower classes the newly married pair were bedded in presence of the company. Page 272. LAST. St.0.1.5. Coil. A stream in the Kyle district of Ayrshire. Page 272. Duncan Gray. [For another set of Duncan Gray stanzas see ante, p. 209.1 Both are founded on a song pre- served in the Herd MS. Page 273. St.11.1/3. Ailsa craig. A rocky islet in the Firth of Clyde, opposite Ayr, much frequented by sea-towl, whose screaming it has endured for ages without re- monstrance. Page 278. By ALLAN STREAM. St.1.1.2. Benledi. * A mountain to the north of Stirling.’? (R. B. in Lochryan MS.)_ ‘‘ A mountain in Strath- allan, 3009 feet.’? (R. B. in Thomson MS.) His geography is faulty ; Strathallan is to the north of Stirling (the Allan flows by Dunblane and Bridge of Allan into the Forth) but Ben Ledi is about 20 miles west-north-west. Page 279. ConrTENTED wi’ LitTLE. St.1.1.4. Cog. See ante, p. 325, Notes to Scotch Drink. Page 282. Last May 4 Braw Wooemr. St. rv. 1.3. Gate-Slack. *** Gate-Slack,’ the word you object to in my last ballad, is positively the name of a particu- lar place, a kind of passage up among the Low- ther hills, on the confines of this county [Dum- fries]. . . . However, let the line run, ‘He up the lang loan.’*? (R. B. to Thomson.) St. v1.2. Dalgarnock. ‘* Also the name of a romantic spot near the Nith, where are still a ruined church and a burial place.’ . B.) Page 286. Scots WHA HAE. Wuen Witp War’s Deapiy St. vi. “‘T have borrowed the last Stanza from the common stall edition of Wallace: — ‘A false usurper sinks in every foe, And liberty returns with every blow :’ a couplet worthy of Homer.” (R. B. to Thom- son. Page 291. Yon Rosy Brizr. St. 1v.1.2. Chloris. aul See ante, p. 289, Prefatory Note to Lassie wi’ the Lint-white Locks. t Page 292. Foriorn, my Love. ! St.1v.1.4. Chloris. . See ante, p. 289, Prefatory Note to Lassie wi the Lint-white Locks. Page 292. Ca’ tHE YowESs TO THE KNowEs St.1.1.3, Bout, about. Bow-hough’d, bandy-thighed : hough’d, she ’s hem-shin’d, ““seabs and aie a’s bow 352 GLOSSARIAL INDEX Bow-kail, cabbage: ‘‘ wandered thro’ the bow- kail,”’ 34: “his bow-kail runt,’’ 24. Bow’ t bent: “‘like a sow-tail, sae bow’t,”’ 24, Brachens, ferns: ‘* amang the brachens,” 26. See also Breckan. Brae, a small hill, the slope of a hill. Braid, broad. Braid- claith, ‘proad-cloth. Braik, a harrow: “in pleugh or braik,”’ 46, ou ulled rashly : ‘‘ thou never braing’t, ce 4, an’ fliskit,’’ 27. Brak ale, broke. Brankie, erage ‘*whare hae ye been sae bran- oar a wooden curb, a bridle: ‘as cheeks 0? branks,’’ 57; oavin ’s he ’d ae led wi’ branks,”’ 1175, ‘“if the beast and branks be spar’d, by 126; “‘ wi’ braw new branks,’’ 131. Bran’y, ie Brash, short illness : ‘“monie a pain an’ brash,”’ Brats, small pieces, ieee ‘brats o’ claes,”’ 8; “* brats o’ duddies,”’ 144. Brats, small children: ‘ our ragged brats and eallets,”’ 107 ; ‘‘ wives an’ dirty. brats, ” 153, Brattle, (1) a spurt, a secamper: “waur’t thee for a brattle,” 27; wi bickering brattle,” 31; (2) noisy onset: “ rattle o’ winter war,’ 68. ee gaily es fine, handsome. See also otes, p Brawilie, ae erfectly, heartily. Brazies, sheep that have died of. braxie (a dis- ease): ‘‘guid fat braxies,”’ 49. Breastie, dim. of breast. Breastit, sprang forward : “ thou never lap, an’ sten’t, an’ breastit,”’ 27. Brechan, a horse collar: “‘a braw new brech- an,”’ 181. Breckan, ferns : “‘ yon lone glen o’ green breck- »” 286. See also Brachens. Brecdin, eeeau 7. e. manners: ‘‘ has nae sic preedin,”’ 120, Breeks, Tee. Breer, briar. Brent, brand: ‘“‘ brent new frae France,” 91. See also Notes, p. 333. Brent, ats steep (i.e. not sloping from baldness) : * your bonie brow was brent,’’ 223. Brief, writ: ing David o’ poetic brief, 7 133, Brig, bridge. Brisket, breast: ‘thy weel-fill’d brisket,’’ 27. Brither, brother. Brock, a badger: ‘ ‘a stinking brock,”’ 3; “ wil- cat, ‘prock, an’? tod, 108. Brogue, a trick: ‘an’ play’d on man a cursed progue,’’ 13. Broo, soup, broth 3 Hapid, broo rowes,”’ *ve borne aboon the broo,” 62; “ thet flesh to him, the broo to me, ” 251; ¢ “suppin hen-broo,’’ 265; ‘‘ dogs like broo, #965, Brooses, wedding races to the home of the bridegroom after the ceremony: ‘at brooses thou had ne’er a fellow,”? 27. Brose, a thick mixture of meal and warm wa- ter, also a synonym for porridge: ‘*‘ they maun water: “the snaw- hae brose,’’ 144; ‘their cogs o’ brose,’’ 227 ; okt butter’d my brose,’’ 249, See Notes, p. Browst, malt liquor (and properly the whole liquor brewed at one time): “the browst she brew’d,”’ Browster’ wide, ale wives: ‘“‘browster wives whisky-stills,”’ 26. See also Notes, p. Brug a trate a borough. Brulyie, uate, a brawl: ‘“‘than mind sie brulzie,”’ ‘Hell mixed in the brulyie,”’ ag ae ina brulyie,’’ 260. Brunstane, eens Brunt, burne Brust, burst. Buckie, dim, of buck, a smart younker : daft buckie, Geordie Wales,” 145 ; pee” 146. Bats, acurl: “‘his hair has a natural buckle,” ‘tthe buckskins claw,”’ 15. Buckskin, Virginian: ‘‘ the buckskin kye,”’ 51. See also Notes, p. 331. Budget, a tinker’s bag of tools: ‘the budget and the apron,’’ 106; ‘‘here’s to budgets,” Pra See also Notes, ' p. 835, uff, to bang, to ey “buff our beef,’’ 108. Bughtn folding (7. e. gathering sheep into the : ‘tells bughtin time is near, my jo,”’ Buirlly, (1) stout, stalwart: ‘“‘ buirdly chiels,” 3; (2, ‘stately : “9 filly buirdly,’’ 26. Bum, to hum: ‘‘ yont the dyke she’s heard you pao 13; ‘‘ bum owre their treasure,’’ “‘that ‘envious Buckskin, a Virginian : Bum-clock, a humming beetle: ‘the bum-clock humm’d wi’ lazy drone,”’ 4. Bummle, a drone, a useless fellow: drowsy bummle,’’ Bunker, a@ seat: east,”’ Bunters, harlots: ‘and kissing barefit bunt- ers,’’ 163. Bodie, dim. of bird or burd (a lady), a maiden: ‘*ae blink o’ the bonie burdies,’’ 92. See also Birdie. C&. Burd Ellen. Bure, bore, did bear. Burn, a rivulet. Burnewin, the blacksmith (i.e. burn the wind) :. ‘‘ then Burnewin comes on like death,” 5. Burnie, dim. of burn (a rivulet). Burr-thistle, spear-thistle: ‘‘ the rough burr-- thistle spreading wide,” 135. ‘some ‘ea “Winnock-bunker in the Busk, (1) to dress, to garb : **New Bri ; buskit in a braw new coat,”’ 60; ‘‘ they ’ "it bask her like a fright,’’ 119; ‘ busking bowers,”’ 159; (2) to dress up: ‘busks his skinklin patches,” 318; (3) to trim, to adorn: ‘‘ her basta buskit nest, 7119; ‘* weel buskit up sae gaudy Buss, a bush: “but buss and pield,” 261. See. Rash-buss. Bussle, bustle. But, without. But, butt, in the kitchen (7. e. the outer apart-- GLUSSARKRLAL INDEX 353 ment), ‘‘ butt the house’? =in the kitchen, aoe See Bie Ben. 'y, past, aside. By, beside. By himsel, beside himself, off his wits: ‘‘ monie a day was by himsel,’’ 25, Bye attour (i. e. ‘‘by and attour’’), moreover: ‘bye attour my gutcher has,” 254. Byke, bike, (1) a bees’ nest, a hive : ‘‘ assail their byke,’’ 92 ; (2) a swarm, a crowd: “the glow- rin byke,” 106; ‘‘ the hungry bike,’’ 308. Byre, a cowhouse. Ca’, a call, a knock. Ca’ (1) to call; (2) to knock, to drive (e.g. a nail), to drive (e. g. cattle). Cadger, a hawker: ‘‘ acadger pownie’s death,”’ 44; ‘' like onie cadger’s whup,” 102, ‘ Cade, caddie, a varlet: *‘ e’en cowe the cadie,”’ 8; ‘* Auld-Light caddies,’’ 49. Caff, chaff. Caird, a tinker. ; [f-ward, a grazing plot for calves (i.e. a hurchyard). Callan, callant, a stripling. . Caller, cool, refreshing: ‘‘the caller air,’ 9; “little fishes’ caller rest,’” 240. Callet, a trull: ‘‘my bottle, and my callet,”’ 103; ‘‘ our ragged brats and callets,’’ 107. Cam, eame. A Canie, cannie, (1) gentle, tractable: “tawie, quiet, an’ cannie,”’ 27; ‘‘ cannie young man,’ 217; ‘‘bonie wee thing, cannie wee thing,’ 236; (2) quiet: ‘‘then cannie, in some cozie lace,’’ 17; ‘‘a cannie errand,”’ 28 ; ‘‘a cannie our at e’en,”’ 77; ‘‘kind and cannie,” 146; (3) prudent, careful : ‘‘ wi’ cannie care,”’ 24, 50, 115, 139; “‘ cannie for hoarding o’ money,”’ 470. Cankrie, erabbed: ‘0’ cankrie Care,”’ 134. Canna, cannot. Cannie, v. Canie. i 4 Cannie, (1) gently: ‘‘ straik her cannie,” 7 ; (2) quietly : ‘‘slade_cannie to her bed,”’ 58; (3) carefully, sensibly: ‘““I maun guide it can- nie,” 76; ‘‘and cannie wale,’’ 241; (4) ex- pertly: ‘‘nickin down fu’ cannie,”’ 125, Canniest, quietest: ‘“‘the canniest gate, the strife is sair,”’ 241. . Cannilie, cannily, quietly, prudently, cautious- ly: ‘‘cannilie he hums them,” 11; ‘‘ cannily Keekit ben,’’ 214; ‘‘ cannily steal on a bonie moor-hen,”’ 306. : Cantie, cheerful, lively, jolly, merzy. Cantraip, magic, witching: by, eantraip wit,” 13; ‘cantraip sleight,”’ 91; “‘some cantraip hour,’’ 134. : Cants, (1) merry stories: ‘‘monie cracks and eants,’”’ 50; (2) sprees or merry doings : ‘‘a’ on, eants,’’ 133. . ‘ape-stane, cope-stone. Coton a “ their capon craws,’’ 308, See also Notes, p. 347. : Care na by, to eare not, to care nothing, 76, 221, 214; “I car’d na. by,” 237. Carl, carle (churl), a man, an old man. ; Carl-hemp, male-hemp : “thou stalk o’ carl- hemp,’’ 145. 8.8 Carlie, a mamnikin: ‘‘a fusionless carlie,”’ 249. Carlin, carline, a middle-aged, or old woman, a beldam, a witch. Carmagnole, a violent Jacobin: “that curst earmagnole Auld Satan,’? 148. See also Notes, p. 341. Cartes, Bayi cards, Cartie, dim. a cart: ** or hurl in a cartie,” 130. Catch-the-plack, the hunt for coin, 45. Caudron, cauldron, a caldron : ‘‘ fry them in his caudrons,”’ 64; “‘ clout the cauldron,” 105. Cauf, a calf. Cauf-leather, calf-leather. Cauk, chalk : “‘o’ cauk and keel’? =in chalk and ruddle, 94. Cauld, cold. Cauld, the cold. Cauldness, coldness. Cauldron, v. Caudron. Caup, a wooden drinking-vessel (7. e. cup) : “ th? lugget caup,” 5; ‘‘yill-caup commentators,” 11; ‘tin cogs an’ caups,”’ 11; ‘‘ that kiss’d his caup,”’ 161. Causey - cleaners, cleaners. Cavie, a hen-coop: *‘ behint the chicken cavie,”’ causeway ~cleaners, street - Chamer, chaumer, chamber. Change-house, tavern. Chanter, (1) bagpipes, the pipe of the bagpipes which produces the melody : ‘‘ your chanters tune,’”’? 15; ‘‘chanters winna hain,” 48; (2) syn. for song: ‘‘ quat my chanter,”’ 126, 143. Chap, a fellow, a young fellow. Chap, v. Chaup. Chap, to strike: ‘‘ ay chap the thicker,” 125. Chapman, a pedlar. Chaumer, v. Chamer. Chaup, chap, a stroke, a blow: ‘‘at ev’ry chaup,”’ 5. Chear, cheer. Chear, to cheer. Chearfu’, cheerful. Chearless, cheerless. heary, cheery. Cheek-for-chow, cheek-by-jow] (i. e. close beside, side by side): ‘‘cheek-for-chow, a chuffie vintner,” 7; ‘“‘cheek-for-chow, shall jog thegither,’’ 134. Chee squeak, peep: ‘‘ wi’ tunefu’ cheep,” 64; “* cheeps like some bewilder’d chicken,” 119, Chiel, chield (child) a fellow, a young fellow (indicates approval). Chimla, chimney. Chow, v. Cheek-for-chow. Chows, chews. Chuck, a hen, a dear: ‘‘ the martial chuck,” 103. Chuckie, dim. of chuck, but usually signifies mother-hen, an old dear: ‘auld chuckie Reekie,” 119; ‘‘a daintie chuckie,” 145; “a dainty chuckie,”’ 208. Chuffie, fat-faced : ‘‘ a chuffie vintner,”? 7. Chuse, to choose. Cit, the eivet: ‘‘ the cit and polecat stink,” 85. Cit, a citizen, 2 merchant. Clachan, a_small village about a church, a hamlet (R. B.): ‘‘the clachan yill,”” 57; 354 GLOSSARIAL INDEX “¢ Jock Hornbook i’ the clachan,”’ 58 ; ** within the clachan,”’ 115. : Claeding, claithing, clothing. Claes, claise, clothes. Claith, cloth. . Claithing, v. Claeding. Claivers, v. Clavers. Clankie, a severe knock: ‘“‘Clavers gat a elankie, O,”’ 230, ett as ; Clap, the clapper of a mill: “‘ and still the clap lays clatter,”’ 66. : Clark, a clerk: ‘like onie clark,” 126. ; Clark, clerkly, scholarly : ‘‘ learned and clark,” 173. ‘ Clarkit, clerked, wrote: ‘“‘in a bank and Ginny. dite © ty barm,” 187 arty, y: clar arm, . Clash, an idle tale, the story of a day (R. B.): ‘the countra clash,” 16. Clash, to tattle: ‘‘e’en let them clash,”’ 113. Clatter, (1) noise: ‘‘ the clap plays clatter,’’ 66 ; “bade me mak nae clatter,’’ 252; (2) tattle, ossip: “ kintra clatter,” 113, 261; (8) talk : ‘sangs and clatter,’ 91; ‘‘ anither gies them clatter,” 159; (4) disputation : ‘a’ this elat- ter,” 50; (5) babble: ‘‘ rhymin clatter,” 128. Clatter, (1) to make a noise by striking: “the pint-stowp clatters,” 11; ‘‘ gar him clatter,” 45; ‘clatter on my stumps,” 103; (2) to to prattle: ‘tthe gossips clatter bright,” 5; ‘‘clatters, ‘Tam Samson ’s dead,’ ’’ 67. : i Claucht, claught, clutched, seized : “ claught her by the rump,”’ 92; ‘‘ claucht th’ unfading arland,” 177. See also Cleek. : Claughtin, clutching, grasping: ‘ claughtin ’t together,” 170. : Claut, (1) a clutch: *‘ our sinfu’ saul to get a claut on,”’ 148; (2) a handful: “a claut o’ ear,’’ 239, Claut, to scrape : ‘‘ the laggen they hae clautet,”” 19. Claver, clover. Clavers, claivers, (1) gossip, nonsense: ‘‘ clay- ers and havers,” 185; “heaps o’ clavers,”’ 318. Claw, a scratch, a blow. Claw, to scratch, to strike. Clay-cauld, clay-cold. : Claymore, a two-handed Highland sword : ‘‘ an’ guid claymore,” 104; ‘‘ wi’ dirk, claymore,” 153. Cleckin, a brood : ‘‘its minnie and the cleckin,” 119, Cleed, to clothe. Cleek, (1) to take hold: “ they cross’d, they cleekit,”’ 92; (2) to snatch: “‘ cleek the ster- lin,”” = pinch the ready, 104. See also Claucht. Cleg, a gadfly: ‘‘the clegs o’ feeling stang,”’ 134, Clink, (1) a sharp stroke: ‘‘ her doup a clink,” 116; (2) jingle: ‘‘o’ rhymin clink,” 128; (3) coin, money, wealth : ‘‘ o’ needfu’ clink,” 143; “the name o’ elink,”’ 214. Clink, (1) to chink: “he'll clink in the hand,” 169; (2) to jingle, to rhyme: ‘‘ mak it clink,” 46; ‘‘ gar them clink,”’ 128. Clinkin, with a smart motion: “‘ clinkin’ down beside him,”’ 10. Clinkum, Clinkumbell, the beadle, the bellman: “auld Clinkum at the inner port,’’ 133; “ Clinkumbell, wi’ rattlin tow,” 11. Clips, shears: ‘‘ne’er cross’d the clips,”’ 15. Clish-ma-claver, nonsense, idle talk, gossip, tale-telling: ‘‘for a’ their clish-ma-claver,” 19; ‘‘what farther clish-ma-claver might been said,’’ 62. . Clockin-time, clucking- (= hatching-) time: ‘* the clockin-time is by,’’ 51. Cloot, a cloven hoof, one of the divisions of a cloven hoof: ‘‘ upon her cloot she coost a hitch,” 14 ; “‘ an’ wear his cloots,”’ 14. Clootie, Cloots, Hoofie, Hoofs (a nickname of the devil): ‘‘ Nick, or Clootie,’’ 12; ‘‘ Auld Cloote," 14; “auld Cloven-Clootie’s haunts,”’ 133, Clour, a bump or swelling after a blow (R. B.): ‘* clours an’ nicks,’’ 49. Clout, (1) a cloth, a rag; (2) a patch: “* perhaps a clout may fail in ’t,’’ 266. See also Babie- clout. Clout, to patch : “‘ reft and clouted,”’ 18; ‘‘ clout the cauldron,” 105; ‘‘ clout the bad girdin o’t,’’ 209; ‘* cloutin a kettle,’’ 224. Clud, a cloud. Clunk, to make a hollow sound: “‘ made the bottle clunk,” 106. See also Notes, p. 335. Coatie, dim. of coat. Coble, a broad and flat boat: ‘t wintle like a saumont-coble,”’ 27. Cenk the mark (in curling): ‘‘ station at the cock, a Cockie, dim. of cock (applied to an old man): ‘*my guid auld cockie,”’ 145. Cocks, fellows, good fellows: ‘‘my hearty eocks,”’ 8; ‘‘ the wale o’ cocks,”’ 50. Cod, a pillow: ‘‘acod she laid below my head,” 256 ; ‘‘ the cradle wants a cod,’’ 269. Coft, bought: ‘‘ coft for her wee N: annie,”? 92; **T coft a stane o’ haslock woo,’’ 255; ‘‘ that eoft contentment,”’ 271. Cog, (1) a wooden drinking-vessel : ‘‘in cog or bieker,”’ 5; ‘‘in cogs an’ caups,”’ 11; “cog, an ye were ay fou,” 210; ‘ta cog o’ guid swats,’’ 279; (2) a porridge-dish : ‘+ their cogs 0’ brose,’’ 227; (8) a corn measure for horses : “ thy cog a wee bit heap,’ 27. See also Notes, p. 325. : Coagie, dim. of cog, a little dish. Coil, Coila, Kyle (one of the ancient districts of Ayrshire}. See Notes, p. 325. Collie, (1) a general, and sometimes a particular, name for country curs (R. B.); (2) a sheep= dog: ‘‘a ploughman’s collie,”’ 2. Collteshangie, a squabble : ‘‘or how the collie- shangie works,’’ 145. Cood, cud. Coof, v. cuif. Cookin, cooking. Cookit, disappeared suddenly: “‘cookit under neath the raes,”’ 26. Coor, cover: ‘* coor their fuds,”’ 106. Cooser, a stallion: “‘a perfect kintra cooser,” GLOSSARIAL INDEX 355 Coost (cast), (1) looped: “coost a hitch,” 14; (2) threw off: i coost their claise,” 76; coost her duddies,”’ 92 ; (3) toss’d: ‘* Mag- gie coost her head,” 272 ; (4) chucked: ‘‘ coost it in a corner,”’ 191. aan, a wooden dish: ‘‘ the brunstane cootie,”’ Cootie, leg-plumed : ‘“ cootie moorcocks,”’ 67. aR ves, ravens, crows: ‘‘corbies and clergy,”’ Core, corps, or mou, corn heap: ‘‘and the corn mou,” Corn’t, fed with corn (oats) : ‘ thou was corn’t,”” Corss, cross: ‘* Mauchline Corss,’’ 128. Cou’dna, couldna, could n’t. Countra, country. Comp, % sapeles “ coup the cran’’ = upset the pot, 133. Couthie, couthy, kind, loving, affable : ‘‘ couthie Fortune,” 146; “‘fu’ couthy and sweet,” 282. Couthie, comfortably : ‘‘ kindle couthie, side by _ side,’’ 24, Cowe, to cow, to scare, to daunt: ‘‘ cowe the ' eadie,”’ 8; *t cowe the louns,’’ 49; ‘* cowe the lairds,” 109; ‘‘cowe the blellums,” 127; “* cowe the rebel generation,”’ 153, Cowe, to crop: ‘‘cowe her measure shorter,”’ Crack, (1) a tale: ‘‘tell your crack,” 7; (2) a ‘ chat: ‘ta hearty crack,” 194; ‘“‘ca’ the erack,’’ = have a chat, 44; (3) talk: ‘‘ for erack that day,’ 11; ‘‘ hear your erack,’’ 45. Crack, to converse, to chat, to talk: ‘ crackin crouse,”’ 3; ‘‘the father cracks of horses,” 29; ‘‘ wha will crack to me my lane,’ 226. Cracks, (1) stories: ‘‘ cracks and cants,’’ 50; (2) conversation : ‘‘ gashing at their cracks,” 24; ‘*an’ friendly ecracks,’’ 26. Craft, croft. Craft-rig, croft-ridge. ; Craig, the throat: ‘‘ that nicket Abel’s craig,” 5. Craig, a crag. : Craigie, dim. of craig, the throat: “‘ weet my eraigie,’’ 106 ; ‘‘ thy bonie craigie,’’ 260. Craigy, craggy. ; Craik, the eorn-crake, the land-rail: ** mourn, clam’ring craiks, at close o’ day,” 83; ‘the eraik amang the clover hay,’’ 240. : Crambo-clink, crambo-jingle, rhyming: ‘‘ live by crambo-clink,’’ 40; we to the crambo-jingle fell,” 45. : Cran, the support for a pot or kettle: ‘ coup the eran,”’ 133. Crankous, fretful: ‘‘ in crankous mood,”’ 7. Cranks, creakings : ‘‘ what tuneless cranks,”’ 6. Cranreuch, hoar- frost, rime: ‘ cranreuch cauld,”’ 32; ‘in hoary cranreuch drest,”’ 102. Crap, crop. Cran, to eee ‘“‘that crap the heather bud,” 82. 1) tops: ‘ craps o’ heather ’’ = heather- oe g } i ceope : ‘his eraps and kye,” 241. Craw, crow: ‘i Creel, an osier basket: ‘“‘ my senses wad be in a ! i | ereel’? =I should be perplexed, 47 (see also Notes, p. 331); ‘‘in Death’s fish-creel,”’ 67 ; - “nieves, like midden-creels,” 244 (see also Notes, p. 345). Creepie-chair, stool of re ereepie-chair,”’ 226. S Cc Cutty-stools 22). Creeshie, greasy. Cooctie, old ewes: ‘‘tent the waifs an’ crocks,”’ pentance : “mount the ee also Notes, p. 338, Cronie, a crony. Crood, to coo: “the cushat croods,” 48; ‘a eushat crooded o’er me,”’ 304, Croon, (1) a moan: “ wi? eldritch croon,” 13; ‘“‘the melancholious eroon,” 15; ‘gat up an gae a croon,’”’ 26; ‘‘melancholious, sairie eroon,’’ 134, Croon, (1) to boom : “* jow an’ croon,” 11; (2) to um : ‘‘ crooning to a body’s sel,’’ 45 ; ‘* croon- ing o’er some auld Scots sonnet,”’ 91 ; ‘‘ eroon’d his gamut,’ 105. Croose, crouse, (1) cocksure: “ keen an’ croose,’’ 18; (2) lively, jolly: ‘‘ when I grow crouse,” 132; ‘‘ crouse and canty,”’ 273. Crouchie, hunchbacked; ‘‘crouchie Merran Humpbhie,’’ 25. Crouse, v. Croose. Crouse, cheerfully : ‘‘ crackin crouse,”’ 3. Crousely, confidently: ‘‘ crousely craw,’’ 67. Crowdie, oatmeal and cold water, oatmeal and milk, porridge : ‘t wi’ crowdie unto me,’’ 227 ; “ ance crowdie, twice crowdie,”’ etc., 270. Crowdie-time, porridge-time (i. e. breakfast- time), 9. Crowlin, crawling: ‘‘ ye crowlin ferlie,”’ 43. Crummie, a horned cow: “auld Crummie’s nicks,’’ 129 Crummock, cummock, a cudgel, a crooked staff (cf. the Gaelic or Welsh cam or cum =the erook of a stick, and camon = Irish hockey) : “louping and flinging on a crummock,”’ 92; ‘*on a cummock driddle,” 134, Crump, crisp: ‘‘farls . . . fu’ erump,’’ 10. Crunt, a blow on the head with a cudgel: “‘ wi’ hearty crunt,”’ 49. Cuddle, to fondle: ‘‘ bairns’ bairns kindly eud- dle,’’ 128 ; “‘ cuddle my kimmer,”’ 224 ; ‘‘ cud- dl’d me late and early,”’ 249, Cutf, coof, a dull, spiritless fellow, a dolt, a ninny: ‘‘fumbling cuifs,” 5; ‘‘ blockhead ! eoof!?? 20; ‘teoofs on countless thousands rant,’’ 32 ; “* cuifs of later times,”’ 61; “a cuif like him,’’ 194; ‘‘a wealthy coof,”’ 239; “a coof .. . wi’ routh o’ gear,” 249; ‘he’s but a euif,”’ 294; ‘‘ will be nae coof,’’ 304, Cummock, v. Crummock. Curch, a kerchief for the head : ‘‘ her curch sae clean,’? 208; ‘‘I tint my eurch,’’ 209, Curchie, a curtsy: ‘‘ wi’ a curchie low did stoop,” 9. Curler, one who plays at curling (a game on the ice): ‘‘the curlers quat their roaring play,” 20 ; ‘‘to the loughs the curlers flock,” 67. Curmurring, rumbling: ‘‘curmurring in his guts,”’ 58. Curpin, the crupper of a horse : ‘‘ haurls at his eurpin,”’ 25, 356 GLOSSARIAL INDEX Curple, the crupper (i. e. buttocks): ‘‘hingin owre my curple,’’ 135. Cushat, the wood pigeon. ; Custock, the stalk of the colewort: ‘gif the custock ’s sweet or sour,”’ 24, ats Geers ankles is her Bont enue sae sma’,’’ 121. ‘utty, short: ‘‘ cutty sark, i Guteratooln stools of repentance: ‘daft bar- gains, cutty-stools,”’ 118. See also Notes, p. 338. °D, it: ‘I maun till ’d again,” 270. Dad, daddie, father. Daez’t, dazed. . Daffin, larking, fun: ‘“‘to spend an hour in affin,’ 9; ‘fits o’ daffin,” 65; ‘‘towsing a lass i? my daffin,”’ 104, Daft, mad, foolish. : ; Daiils, deals, planks: ‘‘ some carryin dails,”’ 10. Daimen icker, an occasional ear of corn: ‘‘ a dai- men icker in a thrave,”’ 31. J Dam, pent up water, urine: “ye tine your dam,” 9. Damie, dim. of dame. | Dang, dung (pret. of ding). anton, v. Daunton. Darena, dare not. Darg, daurk, labour, task, a day’s labour: “nought but his han’ darg,” 3; ‘‘monie a sair darg,’’ 27. Darklins, in the dark : ‘‘ an’ darklins grapit for the bauks,”’ 24. Dashing, confounded, put to shame, abashed: ‘bashing and dashing, I fearéd ay to speak,”’ 135. (This seems to be an intransitive and reflexive use of a word which is used not un- commonly in the sense of ‘‘ to confound, to abash.”’ ‘‘ Bashing” is a similar case, but there is good authority for its use in this in- transitive sense.) Daud, to pelt: ‘set the bairns to daud her,”’ 63; ‘the bitter, daudin showers,”’ 126, Daunton, danton, to daunt. Daur, dare. Daurk, v. Darg. Daurna, dare not. Daur’t, dared. Daut, dawte, to fondle, to pet: ‘‘ dawtit, twal- pint hawkie,’? 13; ‘“‘unco muckle dautet,”’ 19; ‘‘kiss and daut,’’ 113, 232; ‘‘kiss and dawte,”’ 252, Daw, to dawn: ‘‘ the day may daw,” 229. Bast, lumps, large portions: ‘‘ an’ dawds that a 11. Dawtingly, pettingly, caressingly: ‘‘ dawtingly did cheer me,’’ 237. Dead-sweer, extremely reluctant, 43. Dearie, dim. of dear. Dearthfw’, high-priced. Deave, to deafen. Deevil v. Deil. Deil, deevil, devil. Deii-haet, (1) nothing (the devil have it) : ‘‘ tho’ deil-haet ails them,’’ 4; (2) the devil have my soul ; ‘‘the devil-haet that I sud ban,”? 128, Deil-ma-care, no matter (the devil may care, put not I), 50, 58, 129. Deleeret, delirious, mad : “ an’ liv’d an’ died deleeret,’”’ 25, oh Pegin, digging: ‘‘dubs of your ain delvin, Dern’d, hid (from the Old Eng. dearn or dern: “ that dern time,”’ Craig’s Oxford Shak. Kin Lear, iii. 1. 62): ‘‘dern’d in dens and hol- lows,’’ 116. Descrive, to deseribe. Deuk, a duck: “your deuks an’ geese,’ 153; “the deuk ’s dang o’er my daddie,’’ 249, Devel, a stunning blow: ‘‘ an unco devel,”’ 67, Diddle, to move quickly (of fiddling) : “ elbuck jink an’ diddle,’’ 128, 133. Dight (1) to wipe ; (2) to winnow : “‘ the cleanest corn that e’er was dight,”’ 65, Din, dun, muddy of complexion: “dour and din,”’ 169, 244. Ding, (1) to beat, to surpass; (2) be beaten or upset: ‘‘ facts are chiels that winna ding,” 18, ink, trim: “my lady’s dink, my lady’s drest,’”’ 268. Dinna, do not. Dirl, a vibration ; ** played dirl,” 58. Dirl, to vibrate, to ring: “roof and rafters a’ did dirl,’? 91; ‘“‘she dirl’d them aff fu’ clearly,”’ 308. Diz’n, dizzen, dozen. Dochter, daughter. Doggie, dim. of dog. Doited, muddled, stupid, bewildered: ‘‘ doited Lear,’’ 5; ‘‘a doited monkish race,’ 61; ‘‘doited stots,’? 121; ‘‘the doited beastie stammers,’”’ 131; ‘‘my very senses doited,’’ 187; “sae doited and blin’,”’ 254. Donsie, (1) unlucky : ‘‘ their donsie tricks,’’ 66 ; (2) vicious, restive, testy: ‘‘ ye ne’er was don- a 27; ‘tye wad na been sae donsie, O,” Dool, woe, sorrow: ‘‘ sing dool’’ = lament, 55; ‘* may dool and sorrow be his lot,’’ 84; ‘‘ dool to tell’? —sad to tell, 108; ‘‘to sit in dool,” 224; ‘bitter in dool,’’ 225 ; ‘‘ care and dool,” 233; ‘*O, dool on the day,’ 234; ‘‘ dool and eare,”’ 253. Doolfu’, doleful, woful: ‘‘ doolfa’ clamour,” 119; “‘the doolfu’ tale,’’ 240. Dorty, pettish : ‘‘ tho’ a minister grow dorty,’’ 8. Douce, douse, sedate, sober, serious, prudent: ““douce honest woman,’’ 13; ‘‘O ye douce follx,”’ 17 ; ‘‘ douce or merry tale,”’ 44 i “* douce , conveeners,”’ 62; ‘* douce folk,’ 62; ‘‘ thri citizens, an’ douce,” 62; ‘‘douce Wisdom’ door,”’ 66; ‘‘for yousae douce,” 77; ‘‘sae. . curséd douse,’ 143. Douce, doucely, dousely, sedately, Beqdendy: ‘“douce hingin owre my curp) e,”” 35 5 ““doucely manage our affairs,’’ 6; ‘ doucely fill a throne,”’ 19. Doudl’d, dandled: ‘‘doudl’d me up on his knee,”’ 201. Dought (pret. of dow), could: ‘‘as lang ’s he dought,”’ 75; ‘‘do what I dought,’? 187; ‘‘dought na bear us,”’ 185. Doukéd, ducked: ‘in monie a well been doukéd,’’ 104. Doup, the bottom, the buttocks. GLOSSARIAL INDEX 357 Doup-skelper, bottom-spanker: ‘‘ vile doup- skelper, Emperor Joseph,” 145. Dour, doure, @ stubborn, obstinate: “ ene doure,”’ 60; ““ and Sackville doure, ‘y 75; * tither ’s dour,’’ 120; ‘‘ dour and din,”’ 1 244; (2) severe, stern: “fell and doure,”’ 68, Douse, ¥ Douce. Dita sedater: ‘‘ oughtlins douser,”’ 145. Dow, dowe, am (is or are) able, can: ‘‘ the best ener dow,” 11; “dow but hoyte and hobble,” as lang ? sI dow,” 46; ‘‘dow scarcely Peed t her wing,”’ 50; * hirples twa-fauld as he dow,”’ 212; ‘‘ dow hhocht but glow’r,’’ 278. See also Dought, Dow, a dove, a pigeon: ‘ like frighted dows, man,’’ 227, “her dowff excuses,”’ 46; “dowf and De dowt, dal: dowff an’ dowilie,’’? 120; weary,’ 298. Dowie, drooping: mournful: ‘our Bardie, dowie,”’ 155) 48 owie, | stiff, cat erazy,” 26; dowie she saunters,’’ 139; ‘‘ I wander ‘dowie up the glen,’ 216; “some that are dowie,”’ Dowie, mournfully : “‘ his sad complaining dowie raves,”’ 253. Dowilie, , drooping: “dowff an’ dowilie they ereep,’’ 120. Downa, cannot. Downa-do, cannot-do, 24! Doylt, stupid, siupefied: te doylt, drucken hash, 7 6; ‘the’s doylt and he’s dozin,’’ 233. Doytin, doddering: “eam doytin by,”’ 14, Dozen’d, torpid: ‘* dearest member nearly doz- en’d, ? 149, Dozin, torpid : “he’s doylt and he’s dozin,”’ Draigl't, draggled. rants, prosings: ‘to wait on their drants,” 17 Drap, drop. Drappie, dim. of dra ap. Draunting, tedious: * draunting drivel,’’ 148. Dree, to suffer, to endure: “‘ the pangs T dree,”’ 253; “ dree the kintra clatter,’’ 261. Dreigh, v. Driegh. Dribble, dueale ‘‘the winter’s sleety dribble,” Driddle, to toddle: - to driddle,”’ 105; 134. Driegh, dreigh, tedious, dull : driegh,”” 27; drei eh, 7 208. Droddum, the breech: ‘‘ dress your droddum,”’ 43. Drone, part of the bagpipe. See Notes, p. 347. roop -rumpl’t, short-rumped : “‘ droop-rumpl’t, hunter cattle,’’ 27. Drouk, to, wet, to drench: ““my droukit sark- epee 231 ; “to drouk the stourie tow,’’ : Drouth, thirst : ‘‘Scotland’s drouth,” 6; “‘ their hydra drouth, MAT; j ‘*holy drouth,”’ 168. Drouthy, thirsty : ““drouthy neebors,’’ 90; ‘“* drouthy cronie,”’ 91. Druken, drucken, drunken. us’d to trystes an’ fairs ‘on a eummock driddle,” ‘* stable-meals “the moor was Drumlie, @ sony, turbid: ‘‘ drumlie German- water,” “the drumlie Dutch,’’ 145; ‘ drumlie oF at 207; ‘‘ waters never drum- : lie,”? 288; (2) dull: * Grumlie winter,” 291. Drummock, raw meal aa cold water : ‘‘ a belly- fu’ o’ drummock,”” Drasd, the huff: “ "ook the drunt,”’ oe Dub, a puddle: “ gumlie dubs,’ 42; ‘thro’ dub and mire,’ > 45, 91; “the burning dub,’’ 108; ‘thro’ dirt and dub,” 114. See Midden dub. Duddie, ragged: “ tho’ e’er sae duddie,”’ 2; ‘ duddie weans,”’ 3; ‘‘ duddie boy,”’ 44; “‘ dud- pon desperate be sar,” 153. ddies, dim. of duds, rags: ‘ eoost her dud- Dusaies 92; “* their orra duddies,’’ 102; ‘‘ brats o’ duddies,” 144, Duds, rags, clothes: “wi reekit duds, on ei ““nawn’d their duds,’’ 106; duds,”’ 153 ; ‘‘ tartan duds,”’ 227 ; ‘* shook his duds, O61, Dung, vy. Dang. Dunted, “eironeeds of 147. Dunts, blows, 238, wi’ life-blood dunted,” Durk, dirk. Dusht, pushed: “‘ eerie ’s I’d been dusht,’’ 20. Dieutlng, a ped ing. Dwalt, dwe' Dyke, a) a iis (of stone or turf), a wall : sheugh or dyke,” 2; ‘ * biggin a we?” “yont the tyke 13: ‘your lives a Skee 17; ‘‘sun oursels Ned the dyke,”’ 105; sonbout the , dykes, » 108; ‘“‘owre a dyke,’ “lap o’er the “dyke,” an ge iad the back of a fence, 44. Dyke-side, the side of a fence : side,’”’ 129. Dyvor, a bankrupt: “rot the dyvors,” 153; “* dyvor, beggar loons,’ 252. Ear’, early. Eastlin, eastern. "e, eye. Evebrie, eyebrow. Een, eyes. E’en, even. E’en, evening. E’enn, evening Eerie, (1) aj srohionaive¢ 4,2) inspiring ghostly fear. See Notes, p. Eild, | eld, age, old age. ke, ‘also. E Elbuck, elbow. a ‘a lee dyke- Eldritch, i, horrible, unearthly : “ eldritch squeel,”” ‘ eldritch croon,” 13; ‘an. el- dritch, se. tual uaick,’ ” 13; “el. “‘eldritch ‘skriech,’ 792; ee eo “‘eldritch tower, % eo haunted, ae “ eldriteh part,’’ 94, Blekt, elected. Ell (Scots), thirty-seven inches. Eller, elder: ‘‘ me the Eller’s dochter,”’ 266. En’, end. Eneugh, eapnch Enfauld, infold. Erse, Gaelic: ‘‘a Lallan tongue or Erse,’’ 14. 358 GLOSSARIAL INDEX LEther-stane, adder-stone : ‘‘and make his ether- stane,’’ 160. See also Notes, p. 341. Stile, ain: ‘‘ wi’ furious ettle,’’ 92. Lvermair, evermore. Ev’n down, downright, positive: ‘“‘ ev’n down want o’ wark,”’ 4. Eixpeckit, expected. Lydent, diligent: ‘‘ wi’ an eydent hand,” 29. Fa’, (1) a fall; (2) a lot, a portion. Fa’, (1) to fall; (2) to receive as one’s portion: ‘best deserves to fa’ that,’’ 164; ‘* weel does Selkirk fa’ that,” 165 ; (3) claim: “ guid faith, he mauna fa’ that,’’ 294, See also Notes, p. 346; and, in addition, cf. Alexander Scott’s When His Wife Left Him: “For fient a erumb of thee she fa’s”’ [7. e. claims]. Faddom'd, fathomed. Fae, foe. Faem, foam. Farket, let off, excused: ‘sic han’s as you sud ne’er be faiket,’’ 128, Fain, fond, glad. See Fidgin-fain. Fainness, fondness, gladness: ‘wi’ fainness grat, Fair fa’, good befall: ‘‘ fair fa’ your honest sonsie face,” 72; ‘‘ fair fa’ my collier laddie,”’ 241. Cf. “fair fall the bones that took the pains for me,” Shak., King John, Act i. sc. 1 Fairin, a present from a fair: ‘the gets his fairin,”’ 59 ; ‘‘ thou "ll get thy fairin,”’ 92. See Notes, p. 332. Fallow, fellow. Fand, found. Far-aff, far-off. Faris, small, thin oat-cakes: ‘‘ farls, bak’d wi’ butter,’’ 10. Fash, annoyance: ‘‘to gie ane fash,” 113; ‘or fash o’ fools,’’ 118. Fash, (1) to trouble, to bother, to worry: ““they’re fash’t eneugh,” 2; ‘‘fash your thumb” = care a rap, 6; ‘‘I never fash’? = I never trouble about, 16 ; ‘fash your head,” 32; ‘‘fash me for ’t,’’ 50; ‘‘fash’d wi’ fleshly lust,”’ 110; ‘* they seldom fash’t him,” 172; (2) to trouble one’s self, to worry: ‘‘ fash nae mair,’’ 128. Eos troublesome: ‘‘ fin’ them fashious,” 43, Fasten-e’en, Fasten’s Even (the evening before Lent), 44. Faught, a fight. Fauld , the sheep-fold. Faulding, folding, sheep-folding: ** a-faulding let us gang,’’ 293. Hailing alas fold gate: ‘‘steeks his faulding slap, a Faun, fallen. Fuse, false. Fause-house, hole in a cornstack: ‘‘kiutlin in the fause-house,”’ 24; ‘‘ the fause-house in her min’,”’ 24, See also Notes, p. 329. Faut, fault. Fautor, transgressor: ‘‘syne, say I was a fau- tor,” 252; “ tho’ he be the fautor,”’ 260. Fawsont, (1) seemly, decent: “‘ honest, fawsont folk,” 3; (2) good-looking: ‘‘aughtlins faw- sont,”’ 153. Feat, spruce: “‘ the lassies feat,” 23. Fecht, a fight. Fecht, to fight. Feck, (1) value, return: “‘ for little feck,” 120;: (2) the bulk, the most part: ‘‘ the feck of a’ the Ten Comman’s,” 9; ‘‘the feck o’ my life,’’ 246. Fecket, (1) sleeve-waistcoat (used by farm- servants as both vest and jacket): ‘‘ got me by the fecket,”’ 147; (2) waistcoat (without sleeves): ‘‘his fecket is white,’”’ 222. Feckless, weak, plies, feeble: ‘‘ as feckless as a wither’d rash,” 72; ‘‘ an auld wife’s tongue gs a feckless matiter,’”’ 113. Feckly, partly, or mostly: “carts... are feckly new,’ 114. Feg, a fig. | Fegs, faith! ‘‘ but fegs! the Session,” 133, Feide, feud: ‘‘ wi’ deadly feide,’’ 67. Feint, v. Fient. Feirrie, lusty: ‘‘ the feirrie auld wife,’’ 249. Feil, (1) keen, cruel, dreadful, deadly; (2) pungent: ‘‘her weel-hain’d kebbuck fell,” 30. Feil, ‘‘the flesh immediately under the skin ” (R. B.): “ the skin an’ fell,” 64. Cf. “flesh and fell,” Shak. King Lear, v. 3. Feil, to kill. Felly, fell, relentless: ‘‘ felly spite,”’ 231. Fen’, a shift: ‘‘ might mak a fen’,’”’ 230. Fen’, fend, (1) to look after, to care for: ‘‘ fend themsel,”? 14; (2) keep off: ‘‘fend the show’rs,”’ 10 ; (3) defend: ‘‘ fecht and fen’ ”’ = shift for themselves, 233; (4) fare, prosper: “how do you fen’ ? ’? 245. Fenceless, defenceless. Ferlie, ferly, (1) a wonder (used contemp- tuously): “ye crowlin ferlie,” 43; (2) ‘“ nae ferlie (y) ”” = no wonder, no marvel, 18, 249. Ferlie, to marvel: ‘an’ ferlie at the folk in Lon’on,” 3. Fetch, (1) to pull irregularly: ‘ braing’t, an’ fetch’t, an’ fliskit,”’ 27; (2) to catch: “‘ feteh- es at the thrapple,”’ 125. Fey, doomed to death: ‘‘ fey men died,” 227. Fidge, to fidget, to wriggle: ‘‘ fidge your back,” 7;.“‘ fidge fu’ fain ” = hug herself, 48 ; “‘ fidge an’ claw,’ 63; ‘‘fidg’d fu’ fain ” = fidgeted with eagerness, 92. Fidgin-fain, tingling with pleasure, tingling with fondness, 226; ‘‘ fidgin-fain to hear ’t,’ 44. See Notes, p. 344. a comfortable : “‘ haps me fiel and warm,” 4 Fient, feint, fiend, a petty oath (R. B.). Fient a, not a: ‘‘ the fient a’ = nothing of a. Fient haet, nothing (fiend have it). Fient haet o’, not one of. Fient-ma-care, the fiend may care (I don’t !). Fier, fiere, comrade: ‘‘ my trusty fier,” 144; ‘my trusty fiere,’’ 252. Fier, sound: “ hale and fier,” 32. Fin’, to find. Fish-creel, v. Creel. Fissle, tingle, fidget with delight (it is also used GLOSSARIAL INDEX 359 of the agitation caused b: ing): “‘ gar me fissle,”’ 46. ere Fit, foot. Fittie-lan’, the near horse of the hindmost pair in the plough: ‘a noble fittie-lan’,”’ 27. See Notes, p. 330. Flae, a flea. Flaffin, flapping: “‘ flaffin wi’ duds,”’ 153. Flainin, flannen, flannel. Flang, flung. Flee, to fly. Fleech, to wheedle: ‘‘ a fleechin, fleth’rin Dedi- cation,” 42; ‘‘ Duncan fleech’d, and Duncan ps "d,”? 272, Fleesh, fleece: ‘‘a bonier fleesh ne’er cross’d the clips,’’ 15. Fleg, (1) either a scare (as the word is used by Ramsay), ora blow: ‘ jirt an’ fleg,’’ 46 ; (2) kick: “uncouth kintra fleg,” 162. Fleth’rin, flattering: ‘‘ fleth’rin Dedication,’’ 42. Flewit, a sharp lash : ‘‘ a hearty flewit,’’ 133. Fley, to seare: ‘‘ Want and Hunger fley me,” 270; ‘‘ fley’d awa,”’ 297. Filey d, scared : ‘‘ fley’d an’ eerie,’’ 25 ; ‘‘ but be na fley’d,”’ 57. Flichterin’, fluttering: as ge nestlings when their dam _ approaches (R. B.); “ flichterin’ noise and glee,’’ 28. Flinders, shreds, broken pieces (R. B.): “‘in flinders flee,” 41. Flinging, kicking out in dancing, capering: “ louping and flinging on a crummock,”’ 92, Flingin-tree, a piece of timber hung by way of artition between two horses in a stable, a Hail (R. B.): ‘‘the thresher’s weary flingin- tree,”’ 20. Fliskit, fretted, capered: ‘‘ fetch’t, an’ fliskit,”’ 2 7. Fiit, to shift. Flittering, fluttering. Filyte, scold: “‘ e’en let her flyte her fill,” 264, Fock, focks, folk. Fodgel, dumpy : “‘ a fine, fat, fodgel wight,” 94. Foor, fared (1. e. went): ‘‘o’er the moor they lightly foor,’’ 208. Foorsday, Thursday. Forby, forbye, besides. ; . Forfairn, worn out, forlorn: “‘ wi’ crazy eild I’m sair forfairn,” 61; ‘‘ Fenwick, sair for- fairn,” 64. ; Forfoughten, exhausted (7. e. by labour or con- flict): ‘tho’ forfoughten, sair eneugh,” 135. Forgather, e meet, to fall in (with). Forgie, to forgive. Ferrake, jaded with fatigue (R. B.): ‘‘for- jesket sair, with weary legs,” 46. ore, Bria other, todder. Fou, fow, full (usually in the sense of drunk). Foughten, troubled (2. e. by conflict with diffi- culties) : ‘‘ sae foughten an’ harass’d,’’4, See Forfoughten. Foursome, by fours: ‘‘ foursome reels,”’ 249. Fouth, fulness, abundance: ‘‘ fouth o’ auld nick- nackets,’’ 94. Fow, v. Fou. Fow, a bushel. Frae, from. Freath, to froth. Fremit, estranged: ‘‘is now a fremit wight,” 161 Fw’, full. See also Fou. Fw’-han’t, full-handed (having abundance) : ‘‘ ay fu’-han’t is fechtin best,’’ 241. Fud, a short tail (of a rabbit or hare): “‘ cock your fud fw’ braw,”’ 67 ; ‘‘ to coor their fuds,”’ 106. Fuf?t, puffed: ‘‘she fuff’t her pipe wi’ sic a Tunt,”’ 25. Fur, furr, a furrow. Fur-ahin, the hindmost plough-horse in the fur- row: ‘my fur-ahin’s a wordy beast,’’ 114. See Notes, p. 338. Furder, furtherance, success. Furder, to succeed. Furm, a wooden form. Fusionless, pithless, sapless: ‘he is but a fu- sionless carlie,’’ ; Fyke, fuss: ‘‘ as bees bizz out wi’ angry fyke,”’ Fyke, to fuss, to fidget (7. e. from annoyance or pain): ‘‘fyke an’ fumble,’’ 41; ‘until ye ke,” 128, Fyle, to defile, to foul, to soil: “that fyl’d his shins,’’? 10; ‘‘her face wad fyle the Logan Water,” 244. Gab, the mouth, the jaw: ‘‘set a’ their gabs arsteerin,” 26; “‘steek your gab for ever,’’ 64; “this gab did gape,” 92; ‘‘she held up hee greedy gab,’ 102; ‘‘his teethless gab,” Gab, to talk, to speak: ‘‘ gab like Boswell,”’ 7. Gabs, talk: ‘* some wi’ gabs,’’ 24. Gae, gave. Gae, to go. Gaed, went. Gaen, gane, gone. Gaets, ways, manners: ‘‘learn the gaets,” 14. See also Gate. Gairs, gores, slashes: ‘‘ my lady ’s gown, there ’s gairs upon ’t,’’ 267. Gane, v. Gaen. Gang, to go, to walk. Gangrel, vagrant: ‘0’ 102. Gar, to cause, to make, to compel. Garten, garter. Garten’d, gartered. ash, (1) wise, sagacious: ‘‘a gash an’ faithfw’ tyke,”’ 2; (2) self-complacent (implying pru- dence and prosperity): ‘‘ here farmers gash,”’ 9; (3) talkative and self-complacent: ‘‘a gawsie, gash guid-wife,” 11. Gashing, talking, gabbing: ‘‘ gashing at their eracks,” 24, Gat, got. Gate, way, road, manner. See also Gaets.. Gatty, gouty: “‘ auld an’ gatty,’”’ 126, Gaucie, v. Gawsie, Gaud, a goad, 228. See Notes, p. 344. Gaudsman, goadsman, driver of the plough- team : ‘‘a gaudsman ane, a thrasher +’ other,” 114. See Notes, p. 344. randie, gangrel bodies,’” 360 GLOSSARIAL INDEX Gau’'n, Gavin, Gaun, going. 2 Gaunted, gaped, yawned: ‘“‘I’ve grain’d and gaunted,’’ 145. a Gawky, a foolish woman or lad (the feminine or diminutive of gowk, q. v.): ‘‘ gawkies, tawpies, gowks, and fools,” 119. See Notes, p. 339. Gawky, cuckooing, foolish: ‘‘the senseless, gawky million,” 129. Cf. A Dream, p. 18, St. o., ll. 3, 4 “ God save the King’s a cuckoo sang That ’s unco easy said ay.”’ Gawsie, gaucie, (1) buxom: “‘her strappin limb an’ gawsie middle,” 105 ; (2) buxom and jolly : “a gawsie, gash guidwife,’’? 11; (8) big and joyous: ‘‘ his gawsie tail,” 2. Gaylies, gaily: ‘* but they do gaylies,”’ 153. Gear, (1) money, wealth; (2) goods; (3) stuff: “* taste sic gear as Johnie brews,’ 128. Geck, (1) to sport: ‘“‘may Freedom geck,’’ 19; (2) to toss the head: ‘* ye geck at me because I’m poor,”’ 214. ® Ged, a pike: ‘“‘ Johnie Ged’s Hole’? = the grave-digger (R. B.), 58, ‘‘and geds for greed,’ 67. See Notes, p. 331. Gentles, gentry. ? Genty, trim and elegant: ‘‘ genty waist,” 217; ‘her genty limbs,’’ 268. Genty, trimly: ‘‘ sae gener sma’,”’ 228, Geordie, (1) dim. of George; hence (2) a guinea, bearing the image and superscription of King George. Get, issue, offspring, breed : “‘nae get o’ moor- lan tips,” 15; ‘‘a true, guid fallow’s get,’’ 19. Ghaist, ghost. Gie, to give. Gied, gave. Gien, given. Gif, if. . Goftie, dim. of gift. Giglets, giggling youngsters or maids: ‘‘ the giglets keckle,” 118. Cf. ‘‘a giglet wench”’ =a light woman, Shak. 1 Henry VI, iv. 7. Gillie, dim. of gill (glass of whisky). Gilpey, young girl: “‘I was a gilpey then,’ 25. immer, a young ewe. Gin, if, should, whether. Gin, against, by: ‘‘ their hearts o’ stane, gin night, are gane,”’ 11; ‘beside me gin the gloaming,”’ 237. Girdle, a plate of metal for firing cakes, ban- nocks, ete. ; ‘‘ the vera girdle rang,’’ 102. See Notes, p. 335. Girn, (1) to grin, to twist the face, (but from pain or rage, not joy); ‘‘it maks guid fellows girn an’ gape,” 15; ‘‘wi’ girnin spite,”’ 49, 134; ‘‘ every sour-mou’d girnin blellum,”’ 119; “thy pen laugh,” 148; (2) gapes: ‘“‘that gimms for the fishes and loaves,’ 166; (8) snarls: ‘‘ girns and looks back,” 125. Gizz, wig: ‘‘an’ reestit gizz,” 138. See also Jiz. Glaikit, foolish, thoughtless, giddy: “ glaikit Folly’s portals,’ 66; ‘‘I’m red ye’re glai- kit,” 128; ‘‘ye glaikit, gleesome, dainty damies,”’ 144; ‘‘ glaikit Charlie,’ 145. Glaizie, glossy, shiny: ‘‘ sleek, an’ glaizie,”’ 26. aum’d, grasped: “glaum’d at kingdoms three, man,”’ 227. Gled, a hawk, a kite (Anglo-Saz. ‘‘ Gleida’’ = the glider): ‘‘ a bizzard gled,”’ 168 ; ‘‘ or [had fed an Athole gled,”’ 230, Gleede, a glowing eoal, a blaze (. lo-Sax, ““Gled;’’ cf. “the cruel ire reed [red] as any gleede,’’ Chaucer, Knight’s Tale, Canter- bury Tales, 1997): ‘cheery blinks the ingle- leede,’’ 208. Gileg, sharp. quick, keen: ‘“‘gleg as onie wum- ble,” 41; “‘ Death’s gleg gullie,”’ 68; ‘‘ wee Davoc’s grown sae gleg,” 114; ‘“‘as gleg’s a whittle,”’ 125; ‘‘he’s gleg enough,” 129; ‘* pleg as light are lover’s een,”’ 284. oe smartly: ‘“‘he ’ll shape you aff fu’ gleg,”’ Gleib, a glebe, a portion (of land): ‘a gleib o’ lan,’’ 289. See Notes, p. 345. Glib-gabbet, smooth-tongued, 7. Glint, (1) to shine, to gleam, to peep: ‘‘ wi’ glo- rious light was glintin,’’ 9; ‘‘thou glinted forth,’ 38 ; (2) to flit: ‘‘ glinted by,’’ 211. Gloamin, gloaming, twilight, dusk: ‘an’ darker gloamin brought the night,” 4; ‘‘ when ance life’s day draws near the gloamin,”’ 17; ‘‘ be- side me gin the gloaming, 237; ‘‘now it was the gloamin,” 261; ‘the hour o’ gloamin ey,’ 298. Gloamin-shot, sunset, 252, Glow’r, a stare. Glow’r, to stare. Glowrin, staring. Glunch, a frown, a sour look: “‘ twists his grun- tle wi’ a glunch,”’ 6. Glunch, to frown, to look sour: ‘‘glunch an’ gloom,”’ 6. Goavin, looking dazedly, mooning: ‘‘ goavin’s he ’d been led wi’ branks,”’ 117; ‘‘ idly goavin whyles we saunter,” 133. Gorcock, the moorcock: ‘the gorcock springs on Ww. ig wings,”’ 52; ‘‘whare gor-cocks thro’ the heather pass,”’ 268. Gowan, the wild daisy. Gowany, covered with wild daisies. Gowd, gold. Gowdie, the head: “heels o’er gowdie,”’ 148. Gowff'd, struck as in the game of golf: ““cowff’d Willie like a ba’, man,” 76, Couk, (1) the euckoo ; (2) a dolt: ‘‘ conceited gowk,” 61; ‘‘ Andro’ Gowk,’ 112; “ gowks and fools,” 119. See Notes, p. 339. Gowling, howling: ‘‘ Misfortune’s gowling bark,”’ 43. Graff, a grave, a tomb, a vault; ‘‘cauld in his graff,” 54; ‘‘ your marble grafts,” 182; ‘your green graff,”’ 254, Grain’d, groaned. Graip, a dung-fork. Graith, (1) implements, tools, gear: ‘' plough- men gather wi’ their graith,”’ 5; ‘“‘her spin- nin-graith,”? 208; (2) furniture of all kinds: ‘‘ a) my graith,”’ 114; (3) attire, garb: ‘‘ farm- ers ae in ridin graith,’’ 9; “in shootin greit adorned,”’ 67; ‘‘in heav’nly graith,” GLOSSARIAL INDEX 361 oy eraithin: Grane, a Praia: Grane, to groan. Grannie, Graunie, grandmother. Grape, grope. Grat, wept. Graunie, vy. Grannie. Gree, (1) the prize: Fogine, vestments: ‘‘ Episcopal “ bure the gree ’’ = bore off the prize (i. e. won the victory), 48 ; “ bear'st the gree ’’ = tak’st the prize, 118 ; ‘ carry the gree ’’ = bear the bell, 169; “* * bear the gree” us = have the first place, 294; ‘‘ wan the gree ”’ = won the prize, 308, Gree, to agree. Gree’t, agreed. Greet, "to ‘weep. ie maut, groaning malt, 226. See Notes, 44. Ghoxel, a, {gooseberry : “nlump an’ grey as onie grozet,” 43. ; Geeks! the sow: ‘‘ wha was it but grum- e. P. Grun’, the ground. Gruntle, the snout, the face, the phiz: “‘ twists is gruntle,”’ 6. Gruntle, dim. of grunt: “agrane an’ gruntile,”’ 25. “* she dights her Grunzie, the snout, the mouth : je wi’ a bushion,” 244. Grushie, frowns: “+ prashie weans an’ faithfu’ wives, Grutten, ae Gude, God. ee also Guid. Gnas gude, & Sed Guid-een, een, * eood evening. Guid; vation. father-in-law. Guid-man, gude-man, the husband. Guid-wife, gude-wife, the mistress of the house, the landlady. Guid- willie, pudewiie, hearty, full of good- will: ‘‘a right guid-willie waught,’’ 252, See Notes, p. 345. Gullie, gully, a large knife: ‘‘see, there ’s a gully,’ “* Death’s gleg gullie,”’ 68 ; ‘‘ lang- Kail allie” 95. See Notes, p. 334, Gulrannge, E borse-play: ‘in gulravage, rinnin, scowr, fan, muddy :* ‘gumlie dubs of your ain del- ‘*oumlie jaups up to the pouring ees 36 61. Gumption, “ her quacks wi a’ their gumption,’’ 12 Gusty, tasty : ‘‘ an’ gusty sucker,” Gutcher, goodsire, grandfather : my gutcher has,” 254. _practical common sense : ee ne attour, ‘the ha’ folk fill their “Hell for his Ha’, hall. Ha’ folk, ie servants : echan, Haddin, holding, inheritance : padding a8 165 Hae, hi Haet. i. ends haet and. Fient-haet. Haft, hauffet, the temple, the side of the head : “his lyart haffets,” 30; ‘tin some beg- gax’s hauffet,” 43 ; “her haffet locks as brown ’s a berry,” 308, Hafflins, half, partly: “like hafflins-wise o’er- comes him ”’ = nearly half o oe him, 11; ‘* hafflins is aes to speak,” 2! Hag, hagg,a moss, 2 broken mae ‘ owre monie a weary hag,’’ 67; ‘‘sendin the stuff o’er muirs an’ hages, vet Haggis, a special Scots pudding, made of sheep’s entrails, onions, and oatmeal boiled in a sheep’s stomach (the piéce de résistance at Burns Club Dinners, and an esteemed anti- dote to whisky). Hain, to spare, to save. Hairst, har’ st, harvest. Haith, ‘faith ! 2 petty oath), Haivers, v. Havers. Hal’, hald, holding, abiding-place: “* house an’ hal’ =house and Lacie ae ‘house or hald,”’ 32; ‘‘ house or hal’,’’ 3. Hale, hail, the whole. Hale, hail, whole, healthy. Halesome, wholesome. Hallan, a partition between the door of a cot- tage an the fireplace: ‘‘’yont the hallan,” 29; ‘‘ne’er at_your Han, ca’, ? 135; “to his ain hallan-door,’? 245 5 “ slowrin b the Pallan en’,” 270: “ jouk behint the hallan,”’ ST wate, All Saints’ Eve (31st October). Hallowmass, All Saints’ Day (1st November). aly, holy. Hame, home. Han’, haun, han Han-darg (or oe. See Darg. Hand-wal’d, Hand igied (i. e. choicest) : hand-wal’d eurse,’’ 134. Hangie, hangman * (nickname of the devil): “hear me, Auld _Hangie, for a wee,’’ 12. Hansel, the first gift : ‘“‘ blew hansel in on Rob- in,” Hap, 7 ark @ covering against, cold : uc the stacks get on their winter hap,” 60; ‘ mair vauntie o’ my hap,”’ 135, Hap, to cover, to wrap: ‘‘hap him in a cozie piel,”’ 41; “and haps me fel, 7 240 Hap, to hop: ‘“* while tears hap ae Yer her auld brown nose,” Happer, hopper (of a mill), Happing, hopping (as a bird). Hap-step-an’-lowp, hop-step-and-leap (an im- ortant item in Scots athletic gatherings, but ere used metaphorically of course), 9. Harn, Cone. - (cloth spun of ‘ hards,’’ 7. e. a a ): “her eutty sark, o’ Paisley rm Harst,’ v. Hairst. Hash, an oaf, a dunderhead : fly drucken hash,” 6; ‘conceited hashes,” Hasiock won, th the wool on the na (i. e. throat) of a sheep, 2 Pando to ho! ia to keep. ‘auf, half. Haughs, low: -lying rich jandss valleys (R. B.): se ‘let husky wheat the haughs adorn,” 5; an’ woods,’ 48; ‘ holms’ ani a Haun, v Haurl, we i "ail: “haurls at his eurpin,” 25; 362 GLOSSARIAL INDEX (2) to peel: ‘‘ till skin in blypes cam haurlin,” 26; (3) to drag: ‘‘haurl thee hame to his black smiddie,”’ 82. Hause, to embrace, to cuddle: “ hause in ither’s arms,”’ 232, Haveril, hav’rel, one who talks nonsense, a alf-witted person: ‘‘ poor hay’rel Will,”’ 24; ‘* hay’rel Jean,” 116. Havers, haivers, nonsense. Havins, good manners, good conduct: “ pit some havins in his breast,’’ 14; ‘*havins, ae an’ grace,” 45; ‘‘ to havins and sense,”’ 11 Hawkie, a white-faced cow, a cow. Heal, v. Hale. Healsome, v. Halesome. Hecht, (1) to promise: ‘‘ they hecht him some e braw ane,’’ 25; ‘‘hecht them courtly gifts,” 161; ‘‘hecht an honest heart,’ 161; (2) to menace: “‘some mortal heart is hech- tin,’’ 130. Heckle, a flax-comb. Heels-o’er-gowdie. See Gowdie. Heeze, to hoist: ‘‘ higher may they heeze ye,” 19; ‘‘heeze thee up a constellation,” 139. Heich, heigh, high. Eee, crooked-shinned, 244. See Notes, Flere awa, here about. Herry, to harry, to plunder. Herryment, spoliation: ‘‘the herryment and ruin of the country,”’ 62. Hersel, herself. Het, hot. Heugh, (1) a crag, a steep bank: ‘‘the water rins owre the heugh,’’ 217; (2) a hollow or it: ‘‘ yon lowin heugh,”’ 12. euk, a hook, a reaping-hook. Hiilch, to hobble, to halt: “hilchin Jean Bl ae 25; “hilch, an’ stilt, an’ jimp,”’ Hiltie-skiltie, helter-skelter, 128. Himsel, himself. Hiney, hinny, honey. Hing, to hang. Hirple, to limp, to hobble: ‘‘the hares were hirplin down the furs,”’ 9; ‘‘ hirplin owre the field,” 17; ‘‘ November hirples o’er the lea,” 99; ‘the hirpl’d up, an’ lap like daft,’ 106; ‘the hirples twa-fauld as he dow,’’ 212; ‘the hoasts and he hirples,”’ 233. Hissels, so many cattle as one person can at- tend (R. B.): “the herds an’ hissels were alarm’d,”’ 49. Histie, bare : ‘‘ histie stibblefield,”’ 38. Hizzie, a hussy, a wench, a young woman. Hoast, a cough : “ an’ barkin hoast,”’ 6 ; ‘* hoast- rovoking smeek,’’ 20. Hoast, host, to cough: ‘‘hoast up some pala- ver,’’ 131; ‘‘ he hoasts and he hirples,”’ 233. Hoddin, the motion of a sage countryman rid- ing on a cart horse (R. B.): ‘* gaed hoddin by their cotters,’’ 9. Hoddin-grey, coarse grey woollen (and retaining the natural colour of the wool): ‘‘ wear hod- din grey, an’ a’ that,” 294, Hog, a young sheep. Hoggie, dim. of hog: “‘my hoggie,’’ 206. Hog-score, a term in qualiig Death's hog- score,’’ 67. See Notes, p. 333. Hog-shouther, a kind of horse-play by justling with the shoulder, to justle (E. B.), 48. Hoodie-craw, the hooded crow, 119. Hoodock, grasping, miserly: ‘‘ the harpy, hoo- dock, purse-proud race,’’ 134, Hooked, caught, stolen: ‘‘monie a pursie she had hooked,”’ 104. See Notes, p. 335. Hool, a hull, a husk, an outer ease: ‘‘ poor Lee- zie’s heart maist lap the hool,” 26. Hoolie, slowly : ‘‘ something eries, ‘ Hoolie!’” 16. Hoord, hoard. Hoordet, hoarded. Horn, ahorn oe :“ horn for horn, they stretch an’ strive, . : Hornie, the devil. Host, v. Hoast. Hotch’d, hitched. piper’s arm): and main,”’ 92, Hough, to hamstring : ‘‘ they hough’d the clans like nine-pin kyles,’’ 227. (The word is not. e pe ren literally in this done course, ut rather as meaning ‘‘ cut down. Houghmagandie, fornication (R. B.), 12. Houlet, v. Howlet. Houpe, hope. Howdie, howdy, a midwife: ‘‘nae howdie gets a social night,”’ 5; ‘‘ afore the howdy,” 133. Howe, a hollow, a dell. Howe, hollow. Hs Y to A die oe : = fae ane tenements they howkit,’’ 2; owkit de: = disin- terred dead, 13; 2) to dig: “howkin in a sheugh,”’ 2. Howlet, houlet, an owl. Hoyse, A pases ‘they ’ll gie her on the rape a oyse,”’ 64, Hoy’t, urged (R. B.): ‘‘ they hoy’t out Will, wi’ sair advice,’’ 25. Hoyte, to amble_ crazily (R.B.): ‘“‘now ye dow but hoyte and hobble,’ 27. See also Notes, . 330. Au hoc, dim. of Hugh. Hullions, slovens: ‘‘tirl the hullions to the birses,’’ 153. Hunder, a hundred. Tights hams: ‘‘upon his hunkers bended,’’ Hurcheon, the hedgehog: ‘‘o’er hurcheon hides,’’ 82. Hurchin, urchin. Hurdies, the loins, the crupper (R. B.) (. e. the buttocks): ‘‘hung owre his hurdies wi’ a swirl,” 2; ‘‘row’t his hurdies in a ham- mock,”’ 41; ‘‘ meekly gie your hurdies to the smiters,’’ 62; ‘‘ your hurdies like a distant hill,” 72; ‘‘I wad hae gi’en them off my hurdies,’’ 92; ‘‘ their ample hurdies,’’ 115. Hurl, to be wheeled, to trundle: ‘‘ or hurl ina eartie,” 130. Hushion, a footless stocking: ‘‘she dights her grunzie wi’ a hushion,”’ 244, : Hyte, furious : “‘ hae put me hyte,’’ 134. jerked (the action of a bag- hotch’d and blew wi’ might GLOSSARIAL INDEX 363 LP, in. Icker, an ear of corn: ‘‘a daimen icker in a thrave,”’ 31. Ter-oe, a reat-grandchild + * ‘ wee, curlie John’s ier-oe,’ Ik, ilka, cae every Hii o’t, bad at it: “ iti ill o’t,”’ 43. dl-taen, ill-taken. Ill-Thief, the devil: ‘‘the Il-Thief blaw the Heron south,”’ 144. U-willie, ill-natured, malicious, niggardly (R. ‘your native soil was right ill-willie,’’ 41. Indentin, indenturing : “ his saul indentin,” 3. Ingine, a) genius, ingenuity (R. B.): “he had - ingine,”’ 44; (2) wit: ‘‘ wi’ right ingine,”’ 128. Ingle, the fire, the fireplace Ingle-cheek, fireside (oeapenly the jamb of the replace) : ‘‘lanely by the ingle-cheek,”’ 20, dns gle-gleede, v. Gleede. In te ain ingle low, the flame or light of the by my ingle-lowe I saw,’’ 20; ‘‘ be: ee the ingle low = at the back of the firep. 238. L’se, I shall, I will. Ither,. other, each other, one another. Itsel’, itself. dad, a jade. Janwar, January Jauk, (1), to trifle, to dally: jaukin,’ 724; “to ane or play,’’ 29. Jauner, Foolish talk talk: ‘‘haud your eons and jauner,” 254. Taueetey dim, of jaunt: ‘“‘ your wee bit jauntie,” vie made nae “ that jaups in luggies,” 72. ‘*dash the gumlie jaups up to 58 aup, to splash : Jaups, splashes : the pouring skies,” 61. Jaw, talk, jmpudence : their jaw,” Jaw, to throw, to dash: jaw, man,” 5. ' . Jeeg, to jog: “* and jeeg the cradle wi’ my tae,’ 209. Jeuk, v. Jouk. Ji illet, a jilt: ‘* deil-ma-care about ‘“and in the sea did ‘a jillet brak his heart at last,”’ Jimp, small, slender: ‘‘ thy waist sae jimp,” ‘sae Jimply lae’d,” 217. fat Jenny’s jimps,” 267. ‘ our billie’s gien us a’ a jink,” J imply, neatly : dJimps, ey Ji ink, the slip: 40. Tink, ql) to frisk, to sport, to move nimbly : “ thro’ wimplin worms thou jink,”’ 5; “ond jinkin hares, in amorous whids,”’ 48; ‘‘ jink an’ diddle’’ = dance and shake, 128, 133 ; (2) to to dodge, to dart about: ‘‘ he gu turn a corner jinkin,”’ 14; ‘‘ Rab slips out, an’ jinks about,” 24; eh pote there or here,” 115; “ the swallow ji a move out and in: “and AT ene jak 7115, Jinker, (1) one who moves quickly: inker noble,”’ 27; (2) a gay, sprightly an nai ly jinkers,” 134, dirkinet, bodice: “ jimps and jirkinet,”” 267. Jirt, a jerk: ‘‘ monie a jirt an fleg,”’ 46. dig a wig, ‘his Sunday’s jiz,’’ 115. See also 122. vo, a sweetheart: ‘‘ John Anderson my jo,” 223, Jocteleg, a jack-knife, 24, 95, 126, Jouk, jeuk, to duck, to crouch : Misfortune’ 's blows,” 17; “to 165; ‘‘ jouk behint the hallan, 22-8 Jow, a verb which includes both ae swinging ete and pealing sound of a large bell (R. B.) : ** to jow an’ oo 7411, Jundie, to justle (R. B.), to jostle : “hog- shouther, jundie, stretch, an’ strive,” 48, Jurr, a servant wench: ‘‘ Geordie’s jure,” 115. Kae, a jackdaw: “ thievish kaes,’’ 8. Kail, kale, (1) the ecolewort (also cabbage, but see » Bow-katl) : (2) Scots broth. See also Lang- ail, Kail- blade, a leaf of the ecolewort, 58. Kail-runt, ‘the stem of the colewort, 58. Kail-whittle, a cabbage knife, 115. Kailyard, a kitchen garden. Kain, kane, rents in kind: ‘‘ his kain, an’ a’ his stents,” 2; ‘‘to Death she’s dearly pay’d the kain,” 67. Kale, v. Kail. Kame, a comb: kame,” 252. Kebars,” piers sheuk,”’ Kebbuck, a ae an’ her knife,” 11; ‘jouk beneath pbles jeuk,” “claw’d her wi’ the ripplin- “he ended; and the kebars ‘syne draws her St ‘a, kebbuck-heel,”’ “ her weel-hain’d kebbuck fell,”’ 30. Keckle, to cackle, to gigele loudly (as a girl): - the iglets keckle,”’ a es look, a glance, a a a stolen glance : he by his s houther 820 a keek,”’ 25; ‘‘at ry kindling keek,”’ 135, Kook, A) to look, to peep, to glance : ‘‘ now the sinn keeks a the wast,” 126; ie cannily keekit ben,” ; “‘the gossip keekit in his loof,” 304; @. to look searchingly : “but keek thro’ ev’ry other man,” 40. Keekin-glass, a looking-glass, 188. Keel, v. Cauk. Kelpies, river-demons (usually shaped as horses) : ‘“water-kelpies haunt the foord,” 13; ‘‘fays, spunkies, kelpies,”’ 60. Ken, to know. Kend, kent, known. Kenna, know not. Kennin, a very, little (merely as much as can be perceived): ‘‘a kennin wrang,”’ 66. Kent, v. Kend. Kep, to catch @ ia thrown or falling): “‘ shall kep a tear,’ Ket, the fleece on, a as s body: ‘‘ tawted ket, an’ hairy hips,”’ Key, quay. Key-stane, key-stone. Kiaugh, eark, ae ‘““his weary kiaugh and care beguile,”’ Kilt, to tuck ie “her tartan petticoat. she 1 kilt, 7; “she kiltit up her kirtle weel,” 121. are the kit~ Kimmer, (i) a wench, a soem: a ‘ortune], 46 ; ** loosome tle kimmer”’ [Dame 364 GLOSSARIAL INDEX kimmers ’”’ = lovable girls, 130; ‘‘ye weel ken, kimmers a’,” 161; ‘guid e’en to you kimmer,”’ 264; (2) a wife or bed-fellow: uy cuddle my kimmer,”’ 224; ‘‘ the kimmers 0’ Largo,” 248. Kin’, kind. : aise King’s-hood, the second stomach in a ruminant equivocal for the scrotum): ‘‘ Deil mak his ing’s-hood in a spleuchan,’’ 58. Kintra, country. Kirk, church. Kirn, a churn: ‘ plunge an’ plunge the kirn in vain,” 13. Kirn, harvest-home: ‘the jovial, ranting i ns,” 3; ‘tan’ ay a rantin kirn we gat,”’ 25; ‘‘at kirns an’ weddins we’se be there,”’ 105. Kirsen, to christen: ‘* and kirsen him wi’ reekin water,’’ 45. Kist, (1) a chest; (2) a counter (humorous) : “ behint a kist to lie an’ sklent,’’ 47. Kitchen, to relish (to add relish to): ‘‘thou kitchens fine,” 5. Kittle, difficult, ticklish, delicate, vexatious: “despite the kittle kimmer,’’ 46; ‘‘kittle to be mislear’d,’’ 57 (see Notes, p. 331); ‘are a shot right kittle,’’ 62; ‘‘to paint an angel’s kittle wark,”’ 184. Kittle, to tickle : “ to kittle up our notion,’ 11; “*kittle up your moorland harp,’’ 46; “TT kit tle up my rustic reed,’’ 48; ‘while I kittle hair on thairms,”’ 105. Kittlin, a kitten: ‘‘ as cantie as a kittlin,’’ 26. Kiutlin, cuddling: ‘‘kiutlin in the fause- house,” 24. Knaggie; knobby: ‘‘tho’ thou’s howe-backit now, an’ knaggie,”’ 26, Knappin - hammers, hammers for breaking stones (from knap, to crack, to break in oo with blows), 45. nowe, @ knoll, a hillock. Knurlin, a dwarf. 1s, kine, cows. yles, skittles: ‘‘they hough’d the clans like nine-pin kyles,” 227. Kytes, bellies: ‘* weel-swall’d kytes,’’ 72. ythe, to show: ‘‘fu’ sweetly kythe hearts leal,”’ 23. | Labour, to plough. Laddie, dim. of lad. Lade, a load, Lag, slow: ‘‘ thou’s neither lag nor lame,”’ 12. Laggen, the angle between the side and the bottom of a wooden dish: ‘* the laggen they hae clautet,” 19. Laich, laigh, low. aik, lack. Lair, lore, learning. Laird, landowner (the lord of houses or lands). Lairing, sticking or sinking when wading in OW gees, or mud: ‘‘deep-lairing, sprat- tle 5 Laith, loath, loth. Laithfu’, (oathful) sheepish: ‘‘ but blate and laithfu’, scarce can weel behave,’’ 29. Lallan, Lalland, Lowland: ‘ wad ding a Lallan tongue, or Erse,” 14; “the Lalland laws he held in scorn,” 104; ‘“‘a Lalland face he fearéd none,’’ 104. Lallans, Scots Lowland vernacular: ‘in plain, braid Lallans,”’ 49. Lammie, dim. of lamb. Lan’, land. Lan’-afore, the foremost horse on the un- ploughed land side, 114. See Notes, p. 338. Lan’-ahin, the hindmost horse on the un- ploughed land side, 114. See Notes, p. 338, Lane, lone. My lane, thy lane, etc. = alone. Lang, ene Lang-kail, coleworts not cut or chopped. See also Kail. Lang syne, long since, long ago. Lap, leapt. Lassie, dim. of lass. Lave, the rest, the remainder, the others, Laverock, lav’rock, the lark. Lawin, the reckonin , “landlady, count the lawin,” 210; ‘‘guidwife, count the lawin,” 232, 233, Lawlands, the Lowlands. Lea, grass land, untilled land, pasture land (also used in an equivocal sense). Lear, lore, learning. Leather, (1) leather; (2) leather breeches; (3) skin. Leddy, lady. Lee-lang, live-long. Leesome, agreeable, pleasant: “‘the tender heart o’ leesome loove,’’ 241. Leeze me on (from leis me = dear is to me), how we love, blessings on, commend me to: ‘*leeze me on thee, John Barleycorn,’ 5; ‘‘leeze me on drink,” 11; ‘‘leeze me on rhyme,’’ 128; “‘leeze me on the calling,” 207; ‘°O, leeze me on my spinnin-wheel,”’ 240; ‘‘leeze me on thy bonie craigie,’’ 260. Leister, a fish-spear: ‘‘a three-tae’d leister on the ither,”’ 57. Len’, to lend. “ Leugh, laughed: ‘‘ how graceless Ham leugh at. his dad,’’ 64, Leuk, look. Ley-crap, lea-crop (used equivocally): “ waly fa’ the ley-crap,”’ 270. Libbet, castrate: ‘‘how libbet Italy was sing- ing,” 145, Licket, lickit, licked, beaten, whipt: ‘‘ ye sud be lickit,”’ 128 ; ‘‘ how I’ve been licket,’’ 147, _ Licks, a beating, punishment: ‘‘ monie a fallow gat his licks,” 49. Lien, lain. Lieve, lief. Lift, the sky. Lift, as much. as one may lift, a load: ‘‘ gie me o’ wit an’ sense a lift,’’ 47. Lighily, (1) to disparage: ‘‘whyles ye may ightly my beauty a wee,” 202; (2) to scorn: “for laik o’ gear ye lightly me,”’ 214, Lilt, to sing: ‘lilt wi’ holy clangor,”’ 63. Limmer, (1) a jade: ‘ ye little skelpie-limmer’s- face,’’ 25 (see Notes, p. 329); ‘‘still perse- cuted by the limmer,”’ 46; (2) a mistress: ‘* or speakin lightly o’ their limmer,’’ 4, GLOSSARIAL INDEX 365 Lin, v. Linn. Link, (1) to trip or dance with activity: ‘‘ and ee ee Oe Ww nD. - Linn, lin, a waterfall. ; aa die: ae lint was iz fhe pe 30; “I ought my wife a stane o’ lint \. Eee eh; pecoloured (6 pals yellow), flaxen : assie wi’ the lint-white loc. 289. Lintwhite, the Hnnet : “the lintwhites chant oe eee the lintwhite clear,” 97; ‘‘ the lintwhites in the Len braes,’’? 240; the little lintwhite’s nest. Te Lippen’d, trusted: ‘“‘I lippen’d to the chiel,”’ 144 Lippie, dim. of lip. Loan, a lane, a field-path, the private road to a farm or house: ‘‘the kye stood rowtin i’ the loan,’”’ 4; ‘‘and up the loan she shaw’d me,”’ 252, Loanin, the open grassy place where the cows are milked: ‘wi’ double plenty o’er the loanin,”’ 147. Lo’ed, loved. Lon’on, London. Loof, (pl. looves), the palm of the hand: ‘‘an’s loof upon her bosom,” 10; ‘‘an’ heav’d on high my waukit loof,” 20; ‘‘ wi’ weel-spread looves, an’ lang, wry faces,”’ 42; ‘‘ hear’st thou, laddie—there’s my loof,” 239; ‘‘an wi’ her loof her face a-washin,” 244; ‘‘O, lay thy loof in mine, lass,” 269; ‘‘the gossip keekit in his loof,’’ 304. Loon, loun, lown, a clown, a rascal. Loosome, lovable: ‘'loosonie kimmers,”’ 130, Loot, let, uttered: ‘' loot a-winze,’’ 26 ; ‘‘ Inever loot on that I kenn’d it,” 282. Loove, v. Luve. Looves, v. Loof. Losh, a minced oath (a mild form of ‘* Lord): ” = Losh, man, hae mercy wi’ your natch,” 132. Lough, a loch, a lake: ‘‘ ayont the lough,” 13; ‘when to the loughs the curlers flock,’ 67. Loun, v. Loon. Loup, eg, to leap. Louse, v. Lowse. : Low, lowe, aflame: ‘‘the sacred lowe o’ weel- plae’d love,” 40. See also Ingle-lowe. Lowin, lowing, (1) flaming : ‘* lowin brunstane,” 11 ; ‘tho’ yon lowin heugh ’s thy hame,”’ 12; (2) burning : “* to quench their lowin drouth,” 106 Lown, v. Loon. Lowp, a leap. owp, Vv. Loup. Lowse, louse, (1) to loose, to untie: ‘‘lowse his pack,’’ 106; (2) let loose: ‘‘lows’d his ill- tongu’d wicked scaul,’’ 14; ‘‘lows’d his tink- ler jaw,”’ 75; ‘‘louse Hell upon me,” 126. Lucky, (1) a grandmother, an old woman: ‘honest Lucky,’ 134, 145; (2) an ale-wife : ‘Lady Onlie, honest Lucky,’’ 208. See Notes, p. 340. Lug, the ear. Lugget, having a handle: ‘“‘lugget caup,’’ 5. Luggie, a small wooden dish with a handle: “the Jnggics three are ranged,” 26; ‘‘that jaups in luggies,”’ 72. Lum, the ohamang Lume, (1) a utensil: ‘ wark-lume”’ = a tool, 13; (2) a loom. Lunardi, a balloon - bonnet (named after Lu- nardi, a famous balloonist): ‘‘ Miss’s fine Lunardi,’ 44, Iunches, full portions: ‘dealt about in lunches,’ 11. Lunt, a column of smoke or steam: “she fuff’t her pipe wi’ sic a lunt,’’ 25; ‘‘ butter’d sown’s, wi’ fragrant lunt,”” 26. Luntin, smoking: “‘ the luntin pipe,”’ 3. Luve, loove, love. Lyart, (1) grey in general: ‘‘ but ane wi’ lyart lining,”’ 9; (2) grey from decay or old age, faded: ‘“‘lyart haffets wearing thin and bare,” 30; “lyart pow,” 46 ; “lyart leaves,”’ 102; ‘‘lyart gray,” 255. See Notes, p. 345. Lynin, lining. Mae, more. Mailen, mailing a farm: ‘“‘than stocket mai- lins,”’ 113; ‘‘there’s Meg wi’ the mailen,” 222; ‘‘a mailen plenish’d fairly,” 272; “a weel-stocket mailen,”’ 282. Mailie, Molly. See also Mall. Mair, more. Maist, most. Maist, almost. Mak, make. Mak o’, make o’, to pet, to fondle: “I will mak o’ my guidman,”’ 232; “‘ makin of ’s the best: thing. 7 249, Mall, Mally, Moll, Molly, (nickname for Mary).. Mantie,a gown: ‘* she made mantie,”’ 257. Bes Notes, p. 345. Manteele, a mantle, 9. Mark, merk, an old Scots. coin (133d.. sterling). Mashlum, of mixed meal; “ mashlum bonnocks;” Maskin-pat, a teapot, 75. ‘aukin, a hare : ‘‘hunger’d maukin taen her way,’ 20; ‘‘ye maukins, eock your fud fw’ braw,” 67; ‘‘ye maukins, whiddin through the glade,”’ 82; ‘‘and_ coward maukin sleep secure,” 97; ‘‘skip’t like a maukin owre a Gn 121; ‘“‘are hunted like a maukin,’” Maun, must. Mauna, maunna, must not. Maut, malt. Mavis, the thrush. Maw, to mow. Mawn, mown. Mawn, a large basket : ‘‘ and cover him under- a mawn, O,” 254. Cf. ‘A thousand favors. from a maund she drew,” Shakespeare, Lov-- er’s Complaint, 1. 36. Mear, a mare. Meikle, mickle, muckle, (1) much, (2) great. Melder, the quantity of corn sent to be ground :: ‘*ilka melder wi’ the miller,’? 90. 366 GLOSSARIAL INDEX Meil, to meddle, to be intimate, to mix: “ wi’ bitter, fee wines to mell,”’ 6; ‘‘to moop an’ mell,”’ 1 Melvie, to aie with meal: claithing, v2 Vs Men’, to mend. ‘“Mense, tact, discretion, good manners : ** could behave hersel wi’ mense,’’ 15; ‘ye but show we little mense,”’ 61. mseless, unmannerly : aceless brutes,”’ 14. Merle, the blackbird : tide bower,”’ 84. Merran, Marian, 24, 25 Mess John, Mass John (the parish priest, the minister ; in Chaucer and Shakespeare hgh John”’ is the name for the priest), 133, 209. See Notes, p. 340 Messin, a little dog, a cur : messin,”’ 2. Mickle, v. Meikle. Midden, a dunghill : a midden,”’ 120. Midden-creels, manure-baskets: ‘‘her_walie meres like midden-creels,”? 244. See Notes, wide aden “dub, dunghill puddle, 121, See Notes, Mii ew hole spantter at the bottom of the ‘““melvie his braw ‘like other menseless, ‘* the merle, in his noon- ‘*a, tinkler-gipsy’s “better stuff ne’er claw’d dunghi ill an’ ran thro’ midden-hole an’ a’,”’ 25, Milking’ shie, the milking shed, 241, 258. Min, prim, affectedly meek ( BD): ‘San? meek an’ mim has view’d | it, 710. Mim-mowd, prim-lipped: ‘‘some mim-mou’d pouther’d eae 181 ; ‘‘mim-mou’d Meg o’ Nith,”’ 161. Min’ mind, aaa M ind, to remember, to bear in mind. Minnie, mother. Mirk, dark, gloomily dark. ‘Misca *, to miscall, to abuse : ‘an’ Russell sair misea’d her,”’ 63; ‘‘they sair misca’ thee,” 95; ‘‘ misca’d waur than a beast,” 127. Mishanter, misfortune, mishap : ‘‘ mishanter fa’ me,”’ 113; “* til] some or 133. Mislear'd, mischievous, upmannerly (R. B.) 57. See Notes, p. 331. _Miss’t, mist, missed. Mistak, mistake. Misteuk, mistook. Mither, mother. Monie, many. Mools, mould, crumbling earth, the earth, the ground the dust, the grave : ‘‘ worthy frien’s laid i’ the mools, 418: ‘he wha could brush them down to mools, 119, Moop, (1) to nibble: “ to moop an * mell,”? 15 ; (2) to keep close company, to meddle: ‘* gars me moop wi’ the servant hizzie,”” 266. Mottie, full of motes, dusty : ‘‘ mottie, misty clime,”’ 20. Mow’, the mouth. Moudieworts (Old Engl. moldwarp, i e. the ‘warper of the mold or earth) moles: ‘‘ whyles mice an’ moudieworts they howkit,”’ 2, Muckle, v. Meikle. Muslin-kail, broth composed simply of water, shelled barley, and greens: ‘‘ water brose or muslin-kail,”’ 17. Mutchkin, an English pint : “her mutchkin stowp as toom ’s a whissle,”’ 7 ; “come, bring the tither mutchkin in,” 65; ‘ae hauf- mutchkin does me prime, #7 195, Mysel, myself. Na, nae, no, not. Naething, naithing, nothing. Naig, a nag. Ni Ree dim. of naig. Nane, none. Nappy, ee “twalpennie worth o' nappy,’ * th . nappy reeks wi’ oie ream,” He ‘while we sit bousing at the nappy,’? 90; “ drown’d himsel amang the nappy,” 91; *« there ’s naething like the hon- est nappy,” 125. Natch, a notching implement : your natch,”’ 132. Nations, multitudes, crowds, nations,”’ 63. Neebor, neibor, neighbour. Needna, need not. Negleckit, neglected. Neive, meve, the fist. Neivefu’, a fistful, a pani $ neivefu’ of a soul,” Neuk, newk, a nook, a aie Ne ew-co, "d, newly-driven (not newly calved): “while new-ca’d kye rowte at the stake” (Burns’s kye did not make it a habit to calve, all, or the most of them, at a particular hour of the same evening, and that the 2ist of April), 46. Ni ew-Light. See Notes, p. 331. Nick (Auld), N’ eletecben a name of the devil. Nick, to sever, to cut, to cut down : ‘‘ to nick the thread,’ * BT; “niekin down fu’ cannie the staff o ” bread, ” 125; “‘that nicket Abel’s craig, > as a by fell Death was nearly nicket,”’ 1 Ni en ‘Nick. Nick-nackets, knicknacks, curiosities, 94. Nicks, (1) cuts : ‘clours an’ nicks,” the rings on a cow’s horns: nicks,’’ 129, Niest, next. Nieve, v. neive. Ni ifer exchange: ° ‘** hae mercy wi’ “your ereeshie “their worthless 49; (2) ‘auld Crammie’s ‘and shudder at the niffer,” wi e “a nut. No, not. Ne ocht, nothing. Norland, Novehern (Northland). Nowt, nowte (Engl. neat), cattle. O”,” of. O’erword, a refrain : ‘* prudence i is her o’erword ay,” 276 ‘‘ the o’erword o’ the spring,” 306. Onie, any. Or, ere, before. ‘a, extra: ‘‘ their orra duddies,’’ 102. O’t, of it. Ought, aught. GLOSSARIAL INDEX 367 Oughtlins, aughtlins, aught, in the least, at all: ‘oughtlins douser,”’ 145; v. Aughilins. ‘ Ourte, shivering, drooping (R. B.): ‘‘ the ourie eattle,’’ 68. Oursel, oursels, ourselves. Outler, oused, in the open fields: ‘‘ an outler quey,”’ 26. Ouwre, over, too. Owsen, oxen. Oxter’d, held up under the arms: ‘‘ the priest he was oxter’d,’’ 268. Pack an’ thick, confidential : ‘‘unco pack an’ thick thegither,”’ 2, Paidle, a spade. Paidle, (1) to paddle, to wade: ‘‘ thro’ dirt and dub for life Ill paidle,”’ 114; ‘‘ we twa hae paidl’d in the burn,”’ 252; (2) to walk with a weak action: ‘the was but a paidlin body, O,” 249; “She paidles out, and he paidles in,” 249. Painch, the paunch. Paitrick (1) a partridge; (2) used equivocally, (the bird was once esteemed salacious): ‘‘ an’ brought a paitrick to the grun’,”’ 50. ene i to pene ‘it pangs us fou o’ know- ledge 5 ; Parishen, the parish (7. e. the persons of the parish): ‘‘ the pride of a’ the parishen,” 255. Parritch, porridge. Parritch-pats, porridge-pots. Pat, pot. Pat, put. Paitile, pettle, a plough-staff : ‘my new pleugh- pettle,” 7; ‘‘wi’ murdering pattle,’’ 31; ‘as pot hase helms a pettle,” aa sisi 9 ‘aug aughty ; “yon paug! og. ; “the paughty feudal thane,”’ 47. : : Paukie, pauky, pawkie, artful, sly: “‘ the slee’st, pawkie thief,” 16; “her pauky een,” 135; ‘a thief sae pawkie is my ean,” 284. : Pechan, the stomach: ‘‘ the ha’ folk fill their pechan,” 2. ; Pechin, ‘panting, blowing: “up Parnassus pechin,”’ 131. Penny wheep, small beer: “be ’t whisky-gill or penny wheep,”’ 11. Pettle, v. Pattle._ : Philibeg, the Highlander’s kilt: ‘‘ Adam’s philibeg,”” 95 ; “with his philibeg an’ tar- on Eee a i, m the philibegs and skyrin Phraise, phrase, to flatter, to wheedle: “‘phraisin terms,’’ 47; “‘to phrase you an’ praise you,” 129. Pickle, a few, a little: ‘‘a pickle nits,” 25; ‘a pickle siller,” 143. eu (ental, two English quarts. tt, put. Plack four pennies Scots (but only the third of an English penny). Plackless, penniless: ‘‘ poor, plackless devils like mysel,”’ 6. Plaiden, coarse woolen cloth : “ to warp a plai- den wab,’’ 202; ‘‘ a wab o’ plaiden,”’ 266. See Notes, p. 343, Plaister, plaster. Plenish'd, stocked: ‘‘a mailen plenish’d fairly,”’ 272, Pleugh-pettle, v. Pattle. Pleugh, plew, a plough. Ss Pliskie, a trick: “‘ play’d her that pliskie,”’ 7. Pliver, a plover. ™ Pock, a pouch, a small bag, a wallet: “the auld guidman raught down the pock,’’ 25; ‘* they toom’d their pocks,’’ 106. : Poind, to seize, to distrain, to impound : “‘ poind their gear,”’ 3. 4 bjected to distraint: ‘‘ poind and her- Poind, su riet,’’ 153. Poortith, poverty. Pou, pu’, to pull. ‘ouch, a pocket. Pouk, to poke: ‘‘ and pouk my hips,”’ 58, Poupit, pulpit. Pouse, a push: ‘‘a, random pouse,’’ 132. See Notes, p. 334, Poussie, a hare (also a cat): ‘‘ poussie whiddin seen,’’ 44. See also Pussie. Pouther, powther Pouts, chicks : ery,” 51. Pow, the poll, the head. Pownie, a pony. ms Pow’t, pulled : ‘‘an’ pow’t, for want o’ better shift,’’ 24. Pree’d, pried (proved), tasted: ‘‘Rob, stown- ins, pried her bonie mou’,” 24; ‘‘for ay he pree’d the lassie’s mou’,”’ 261. Preen, a pin: ‘‘my memory’s no worth a preen,”’ 49, Prent, print. Pried, v. Pree’d. ' Prief, proof: ‘‘for ne’er a bosom yet was prief,” 16; ‘‘ stuff o’ prief,”’ 146. Priggin, haggling: ‘‘priggin owre hops an’ pe ee aed shag hearts rimsie, dim. of prim, precise: ‘‘ primsie Mallie,”’ 24. Proveses, provosts (chief magistrate of a Scots burgh): ‘‘ ye worthy proveses,”’ 62. Pu’, v. Pou. Puddock-stools toad-stools, mushrooms: ‘‘ like simmer puddock-stools,” 119. Puir, poor, Pun’, pund, pound. Pursie, dim. of purse. Pussie, a hare: ‘‘as open pussie’s mortal foes,” See also Poussie. ae a magpie: “ cast my een up like a pyet,” 1 powder. ‘an’ the wee pouts begun to Pyke, to pick: ‘“‘sae merrily the banes we ll Pre 105. Eu s, grains: “' may hae some pyles o’ caff in,” Quat, quit, quitted. Quean, a young woman, a lass: ‘now Tam, O Tam! had thae been queans,” 92; ‘the sonsie quean,’’ 135; ‘‘ wha follows onie saucie quean,” 214, uewr, quire, choir. uey, a young cow (that has not calved), a heifer. 368 GLOSSARIAL INDEX Quo’, quod, quoth. Rab, Rob (nickname for Robert). Rade, rode. Raep, rape, a rope. agweed, ragwort, benweed (Senecio Jacobea, inn.): ‘*on ragweed nags,” 18. See p. 89, Prefatory Note to Tam o Shanter. Raible, to gabble: ‘‘ an’ orthodoxy raibles,’’ 10. Rair, to roar. Raise, rase, rose. Howe, to excite: Ramfeezl’d, ezhausted : ‘that daur’t to raize thee,”’ “the tapetless, ram- feezl’d hizzie,” Ramgunshoch, aa : “ our ramgunshoch, glum guidman,”’ Ram-stam, thoughtless, rash, headstrong : ““harum-searum, ram-stam bo: ys," 718. Randie, lawless, obstreperous : ‘a merrie core o’ randie, » gangrel bodies,’’ 102. Randie, a , asturdy beggar, aruffian : ‘' reif randies, I disown ye,’’ 252; ‘‘ ‘pann’d the cruel randy,” 252. Rant, to be jovial in a noisy way. Rantin, panne, rollicking, poisterine: Rantingly, with boisterous jolli Rants, (1) merry meetings, sprees : ‘our fairs and rants,’’? 5; ‘‘ drucken rants,” a 133; (2) rows: “an? bloody rants,’’ 133. Rape, v. Raep. Adolick, homespun: ‘‘ tho’ rough an’ ee be her measure, >? 198, Rash, a rush: ‘‘as feckless as a wither’d ras 72; ‘* green grow the rashes,” 16, Ti. Rash- buss, a clump of rushes: “‘ ye, like a rash- buss, stood i in sight, "13. Rashy, rushy : ‘‘ aboon the plain sae rashy, O,” 205. Rattan, ratton, a rat: ‘an’ heard the restless rattons squeak,” hoe ‘a ratton rattl’d up the wa’,”’ 25; ‘‘ while frighted rattons backward leuk, ae 1085 “like baudrons by a ratton,”’ 148; vy. Rott Fen Kees F ; the pee 61. See Notes, p. 332, Raucle, (1) rash, fearless : ‘a raucle tongue,”’ 83 (2) sturdy: ‘“‘a raucle cain » 104, Raught, rhea “the auld guidman raught down the pock,’’ 25, Raw, a row. Raz, to stretch, to extend : Corruption’s neck,” 19 ; ‘‘rax your leather” = stretch your hide, fill your stomach, OTs ‘ye wha leather rax,’’ 63; ‘‘raxin con- science ’’ = elastic conscience, 126; ‘how cesses, stents, and fees were rax’d,”” 145. eam, foam: ‘‘ the nappie reexs wi’ mantling ream,”’ 3. Ream, to foam: ‘tream owre the brink,’’ 5; ‘* thou reams fhe horn in,’ 5; ‘* wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely, uM 91; - ae swats sae ream’d in Tammie’s noddle,” “but. there it streams, and richly reams, ” 108, Reave, to rob: (reave an’ steal,”’ 14, Rebute, rebuff: ‘‘ne’er break your heart for ae rebute,’’ 264. ‘an’ may ye Trax Red, afraid: ‘‘ I’m red ye’re glaikit,’’ 128. Red, rede, to advise, to counsel, Rede, counsel: ‘‘ and may ye better reck the rede,” 40, Cf. ‘‘Recks not his own rede,” Shakespeare, Hamlet, i. 3. eager red-wet-shod, wading in blood: ressing onvant, red-wat-shod, ”? 48, Redioud, stark mad: ‘‘an’ now she’s like to rin red. oot Reek, shige Reel, to ee xy. eekie, reeky, smao Reekit, smoked, smoky. Reestit, singed: ‘‘ wi’ F radicit duds an’ reestit gizz,”’ 13. Reestit, refused to go, balked: thou never reestit,”’ 27. Rez Ue thieving: reif randies,’’ 252. See also ‘in cart or car Rome, remedy. Rickles, toklot "(small stacks of corn in the folds} co nor kick your rickles aff their le Rug, robbery: “that e’er attempted stealth or 16. See also Reif. Rey a ridge (of land). Riggin, a ridge (of a house), 2 roof : “*rattons squeak about the riggin,” 20; ‘or kirk deserted by its riggin,”’ 94. Rigwoodie, ancient, lean : ‘‘ rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,” 92, See Notes, p. 333. Rin, to run. Ripp, a handful of corm from the sheaf: “ teats o” hay an’ ripps o’ corn,”’ 14; ‘‘there’s a ripp” 6 thy auld baggie,”’ 26. Ripplin-kame, a flax-comb : the ripplin-kame,”’ 252. Riskit, made a cracking sound: riskit,” Rive, (1) - “split, to cleave, to rend, to tear: ‘are riven out baith root an’ branch, "By “he rives his father’s auld entails, hy 33 “ rives ¢ aff their back, ” 50; ‘‘they ‘il rive it wi’ the plew,’’ 58; ‘‘ rivin the words to gar them clink,” 128; “til him rives Horatian fame, 2 318; (2) to be split, to split, to burst : ““maist like to rive,’’ 72. Rock, a distaff. Rockin, a social meeting, 44. See Notes, p. 330. Roon, shred: ‘‘ wore by degrees, till her last roon,’’ 49. Roose, to praise, to flatter. Roose, reputation: ‘‘ye hae made but toom roose,’’ 112, Roosty,, rusty. Rottan, a rat: also also Rattan. Roun’, round. Roupet, exhausted i in voice: ‘‘ my roupet Muse is haerse,’’ 6; ‘‘ till ye be haerse an’ roupet,”’ 120, See Notes, p. 325, Routh, v. Rowth. Routhie, well - stocked: routhie ben,’’ 241. Row, rowe, (1) to roll: ‘if bowls row right,” 151; (2) to roll or flow, as ariver; (8) to roll or wrap. ‘*he claw’d her wi’ “wad rair’t an’ “the tail o’ a rottan,’’ 268. See ‘*a routhie butt, « GLOSSARIAL INDEX 369 Rowte, to low, to bellow : ‘‘ the kye stood row- tin,” 45 ‘“‘ while new-ca’d kye rowte at the stake,’’ 46; ‘‘ rowte out-owre the dale,” 64; ‘“ to hear you roar and rowte,”’ 65. Rowth, routh, plenty, a store: “‘rowth o’ rhyme,” 6; ‘‘ rowth o’ rhymes,” 17; “ay a rowth,”’ 148 ; ‘‘routh o’ gear,’’ 249, Rozet, rosin: ‘" mercurial rozet,’’ 43, Run-deils, downright devils, 4, 114. Rung, a cudgel: ‘* she’s just a devil wi’ a rung,”’ 8; ‘ta meikle hazel-rung,” 228; ‘round about the fire wi’ a rung she ran,” 251 ; ‘ wi’ a rung decide it,’’ 266. Runkl’d, wrinkled : ‘‘ yon runkl’d pair,” 9. Runt, a cabbage- or colewort-stalk: ‘a runt was like a sow-tail,”’ 24 j “his bow-kai runt,’’ 24; ‘‘runts o’ grace,’’ 64, Ryke, to reach: “let me ryke up,”’ 105. Sab, to sob. Sae, so. Saft, soft. Sair, sore, hard, severe, strong. Sair, to serve: ‘“‘ what sairs your grammers’’ = what avail your grammars, 45; ‘‘I’d better gaen an’ sair’t the king,’”? 50; ‘‘some less maun sair,”’ 128; ‘‘ your clerkship he should sair,”? 129; ‘‘he ll sair them as he sair’t his King,’’ 162 ; ‘‘ your billie Satan sair us,’’ 185. Sair, sairly, sorely, ete. Sairie, (1) sorrowful : ‘‘ the melancholious, sairie eroon,”’ 134; (2) sorry: ‘some sairie comfort at the last,’’ 265, Sail, shall. Sandy, Sannock, Sawney, dim. of Alexander. Sark, a shirt, a shift. Saugh, a sallow, a willow : “‘ 0’ saugh or hazle,” 27; “saugh woodies ’’ = willow withes, 145. Saul, soul, Saumont, sawmont, the salmon. Saut, salt. Saut-backets, v. Backets. Saw, to sow. Sawney, v. Sandy. axe, SIX. : Scaith, v. Skaith. Scar, to scare. Scathe, vy. Skaith. Scaud, to scald, _ Scaul, scold: ‘‘ his ill-tongu’d wicked scaul,” 14. Scauld, to scold. Scaur, scary, timid: ‘‘nor blate nor scaur,”’ 12. Scaur, a jutting cliff or bank of earth: ee whyles round a rocky scaur it strays,’’ 26; ‘beneath a scaur,”’ 68, Scho, she. Scone, a soft cake: ‘‘souple scones,’ 5; “‘ hale breeks, a scone, an’ whisky gill,’’6; ‘an’ parley-scone shall cheer me,’’ 129, See Notes, p. 325. Sconner, loathing, 72. Sconner, to sicken (with disgust): “ until they sconner,” 17. Scraichin, calling hoarsely: ‘‘and paitricks scraichin loud at e’en,”’ 44, Screed, a rip, a rent: ‘a screed some day,” 9; ‘‘ or lasses gie my heart a screed,”’ 48. Screed, to repeat rapidly, to rattle: ‘‘he ll screed you aff ‘ Effectual Calling,’ ’’ 114. Scriechin, screeching : ‘‘ and scriechin out pro- saic verse,” 6. See also Skriech. Scriegh, v. Skriegh. Scrievin, movi swiftly: ‘‘gae downhill, serievin,’’ 5; ‘‘owre the hill gaed scrievin,’ a j “ then hiltie-skeltie, ‘we gae scrievin,”’ Scroggie, scroggy, scrubby; ‘“‘amang the braes sae scroggie,’’ 206; ‘‘ down yon scroggy glen,’’ Sculdudd’ry, bawdry : ‘‘ sculdudd’ry an’ he will be there,’’ 166. See’d, saw (pret. of see). eisins, freehold possessions: ‘‘in bonds and seisins,’’ 62. Sel, sel’, sell, self. Sell’d sell’t, sold. Semple, simple : folk, 233. Sen’, send. Set, (1) to set off, to start: “ while for the barn she sets,’’ 25; ‘‘for Hornbook sets,’ 59; (2) to become, to suit: “it sets you ill,” 6; “nane sets the lawn-sleeve sweeter,” 19. Set, sat. Shachl’d, shapeless: ‘‘how her new shoon fit her auld, shachl’d feet,’’ 282. Shaird, a shred, a shard: ‘‘the hindmost shaird,” 50. Shangan, a cleft stick: ‘hell clap a shangan on her tail,”’ 63, Shanna, shall not. Shaul, shallow: ‘‘an’ Peebles shaul,”’ 108, Shaver, a funny fellow: ‘“‘he was an unco shaver,’ 19. Shaw, a wood. Shaw, to show. Shearer, a reaper. Sheep-shank, ““nae sheep-shank bane’? = a person of no small importance, 47; ‘‘nae sheep-shank ’’ = a person of no small import- ance, 61. Sheerly, absolutely, wholly : “‘ priests wyte them sheerly,”’ 134. 2 Sheers, shears, scissors. Sherra-moor, Sheriffmuir. Sheugh, a ditch, a furrow: ‘‘as ever lap a sheugh or dyke,” 2; ‘‘a cotter howkin ina sheugh,’”’ 2; ‘‘they’ll a’ be trench’d wi’ monie a sheugh,”’ 58; ‘“‘and reekin-red ran monie a sheugh,’’ 227. Sheuk, shook. Shiel, a shed: “the swallow jinkin round my shiel,’’ 240. See also Milking-shiel. Shill, shrill. Shog, a shake: ‘an? gied the infant warld a shog,” 13, Cf. “His gang garis all your chalmeris schog,”? Dunbar, On James Dog. Shool, a shovel. Shoon, shoes. Shore, (1) to offer: ‘‘even as I was, he shor’d me,” 96; ‘‘ an’ shor’d them ‘ Dainty Davie,’ ” 106; “T doubt na Fortune may you shore,” “semple folk’? = humble 37° 131; (2) to menace, to threaten: ‘‘ had shor’d them with a ‘limmer of his amp,’ 62; “has shor’d the Kirk’s undoin,” 64; ‘an’ * shore him weel wi’ ‘ Hell,’ ”’ 129’. ‘if eer Detrac- tion shore to smit you,” 130; “like good mithers, shore before ye strike,” 151; ‘‘ first shore her wi’ a gentle kiss,”’ 264. Short syne, a little while ago: ‘“‘as short syne broken-hearted,” 237. Shouldna, should ‘hot. Shouther, showther, shoulder. Shure, sheared, reaped: Bait ”7 266. Sic, such Siccan, such, such like, such kind of, Sticker, secure, firm, certain: ‘to keep me sicker,” 57; ‘‘sicker score’? =strict condi- tions, 113 ; é thy sicker treasure,”’ 148, Sidelins, sideways: “* sidelins sklented,”’ 47. Siller, silver, money in general, wealth. Simmer, summer. ie ason: “his sin gat Eppie Sim wi’ wean,’ “Robin shure in Sin’, since. Sindry, sundry, Singet, singed, ‘“‘ singet Sawnie,”’ 112. Sinn, the sun : «the sinn keeks, 77 126. Sinny sunny: ‘‘in the pride o’ sinny noon,”’ 242. Skaith, scaith, Rt dama; ¥ Skaith, to harm, to injure: ner, wha ye ’re chalice?” 50; couldna skaith thee,”’ 2v6, Skeigh, skiegh, skittish : “ when thou an’ I were young and skiegh,’”? 27; ‘‘and Meg was skeigh,’”’ 208; ‘* look’d asklent and unco skeigh,”’ 272. Skellum, a good- for-nothing: ‘‘ thou wasa skell- um,”’ 90; ‘‘ ilk self-conceited critic-skellum,”’ 119; “ by worthless skellums,”’ 127. Skelp. a slap : “skelp —a shot”? = crack —a shot, 8; “I gie them a skelp, as they ’re ereepin alang,’ * 279. Skelp, (1) to spank, to slap, to strike + “to a and scaud poor dogs like me,” 12 ; ‘or else, fear, some ill ane skelp him,” 42: ‘wi? your priest-skelping turns,” 112; (2) to a to move quickly : ‘‘ cam skel, pin up the way,’’9; “ skelpin barefit, bh Ce ~ the words come skelpin rank an’ ‘file, a2 ‘Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire, % Gi ‘ *\ skelpin at it’? = driving at it, 126; “and barefit skelp,”’ 131; (8) * “skelpin jig an’ reel”? = dancing jig and pel a 147; (4) ‘‘askelpin kiss”? =a sounding $8, Skelnie Viner? s face, a technical term in female scolding (R. B.): ‘‘ ye little skelpie-limmer’s- ink, wicked sin- % the Deil he face,”’ 25. Coe alee: ‘foaming down the skelvy rock: Skier i v. Sieigh. Skinking, watery: ‘‘nae skinking ware,”’ 72. Skinklin, small: ‘‘ ee patches,” 318, Skirl, to (ty, or sound shrilly, to squeal, to squall : ‘ ‘skirlin weanies,”” 5; ‘loud skirl’d a’ the lasses,” 24; ‘‘an’ skirl up the Bangor,” 63; ‘he screw'd his ipes, and gart them skirl.” 91; ‘the skinl'd out Encore,” 103. GLOSSARIAL INDEX Shlent, a slant, a turn: “‘my notion ’s taen a sklent,’’ 16. ae () to slant, to squint: “‘ wi’ sklentin * 13; ‘tan’ sklented on 2 The man of teas 13; (2) to cheat: “ to lie an’ sklent,”” 47; (8) to cast obliquely : ‘ironic satire, side- lins sklented,’’ 47; ‘‘an’ sklent on poverty their joke,” 128, Piel vent: “‘to gie their malice skouth,” Skrisch, a screech: ‘‘wi’ monie an eldritch skriech and hollo,”’ o See also Scriechin. Skriegh, seriegh, to seen to whinny: “‘ prance an’ snore an’ skriegh, ay Siar: flaring : wee ein as trews, man,” Skate, a dash, a sudden and violent shower (the primary meaning of to skyte is to eject forcibly = to stool): ‘‘ when hailstanes drive wi’ bitter skyte,’’ 102. Slade, slid. lae, the sloe. Slap, (1) a breach in a fence, an opening: ‘‘at slaps the billies halt a blink,”’ 11; ‘‘ to slink thro’ slaps,”’ ae “ the mosses, waters, slaps and styles,” (2) a gate: ane sheep-her steeks his Faulding slap,’’ 78 Slaw, slow. Slee, sly, ingenious. Sleekit; (1) sleek: ‘“*wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous pease: oo (2) crafty : “* sleekit Chatham Will,” 1 Slidd’ry, slippery : é ee 's slidd’ry ba’,”’ 53. Sloken, to slake: ‘‘their hydra drouth did sloken,”” 117. Slypet, slipped: smoothly over, 27. Sma’, sm Smeddum, a powder: 4 ‘*an’ slypet owre’’ = fallen ‘or fell, red smeddum,” Smeek, smoke. Smiddy smithy. Smoor' d, smothered. Smoutie, smutty. Smytrie, a large collection of small individuals, a litter: “a smytrie °” wee duddie weans, 73) Snakin, sneering: ‘‘ wi’ hingin lip an’ snakin, 2 110, Snapper, to stumble: ‘‘ Blind Chance let her cee and stoyte on her way,”’ 279. Snash, abuse : ‘* how they maun thole a factor’s snash, 22.3, Snaw, snow. Snaw-broo, snow-broth or melted snow: ‘‘the snaw-broo rowes,’’ 61. Cf. man whose blood is very snow-broth,”’ Shak., Measure for Measure, i. Sned, to lop, to cut: heads will sned,”’ - legs, an’ arms, an’ 3 x 7 an t Il sned besoms, 145. Sneeshin mill, a ae -box: ‘‘the luntin pipe, the sneeshin mill,”’ Snell, bitter, biting: “spell and keen,” 31; ‘the snellest blast at mirkest hours,’’ 295. Snick, a latch: ‘‘ when click! the string the sniek | did draw,’’ 20 ; snick-drawing = schem- ing: ‘ye auld, ” snick-drawing dog,” 13; “‘he GLOSSAKIAL INDEX 371 ‘ood at cheat- . Engl. draw- weel asnick can draw ”’ = he is ing, 129, See Notes, p. 340. C: latch. Snirtle, to snigger: ‘‘he feign’d to snirtle in his sleeve,” 05. Snood, a fillet worn by maidens: ‘and silken snoods he gae me twa,” 234. | Snool, () to cringe, to crawl: ‘‘owre proud to ace 55; (2) tosnub: Pe snool me sair,”’ Snoove, to go Lcprpene ls and constantly : “ thou snoov "+ awa’? = ogeed along, 27; “*snoov’d awa’ ”? = tanlted oft, 133. gant snuffed (expressive of the sound made by the dog’s nose): ‘* snuff’d and snowkit,’’ 2. Sodger, soger, a soldier. Sonsie, sonsy, pleasant, good- untae, jelly; honest, sonsie, bawsn’t face,” unco sonsie,”’ 27; ‘' fair fa’ your ee see sie face,”’ 723 see sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess,” 114 ; “* women sonsie, satt, and sappy,” 125; ‘ the’ sonsie quean,”’ 135; ‘‘sae sonsy and ‘ sweet,’’ 170. Soom, to swim. Soor, sour. Sough, v. Sugh. Souk, aur Z souk,”’ 238. Soupe, v. in: Souple, sepals, flexible: * souple Seance” a ‘“souple tail,’’ 67; ‘‘souple Jad. ay Souter, cobbler, a shoemaker : PR onter Hood,”’ 54; ‘‘ Souter Johnie,”’ 91. Sowp, sO a SED» a quantity of liquid: i and ay she took the tither SOWps 0 8; “the eure Am milk) thei only awe does afford,” ‘sowps o’ drink,’”’ 40. Sowth, to hum or whistle in a low tone: ‘‘ we Il sit an’ sowth a tune,” 33. Sowther, to solder : “‘sowther a’ in deep de- bauches,”” 4; “a night o’. guid fellowship sowthers it a’,’’ 279. nar, to foretell: “to spae your fortune,” S; nai, chips: ‘‘ a’ to spails, 153, Roainge, (J) to splash: ‘‘ spairges about the bestatene aoade,? 125 4, to spatter: ‘‘ a name oh oe spairges,’ Spak, spoke. spate speat, a flood: ‘‘the roaring speat,’’ 61; ‘* bombast spates, 7 318, Spavie, the spavin. Beaune spavined. mae to wean: ‘‘ wad spean a foal” (by dis- Bpeat, Vv. co Speel, to climb: “Moodie speels the holy door,” 10: ‘ance that five -an’-forty’s speel’d, ” 16; “to speel ... the braes o’ fame,” 47; “if ona beastie I can speel,”’ 130; ‘‘ now sma’ heart hae I to speel the steep Parnassus, 147, Speer, spier, to. ask. Speet, tospit: ‘* tospeet him like a pliver,” 105. Spence, the parlour: +» eeeps the spence,”’ 15 ; ‘¢ben i’ the spence,’’ 20. Spier, v. Speer. Spleuchan, (1) poker made of some sort of peltry: ‘‘ Deil mak his king’s-hood in a spleuchan,”’ 58; (2) Se “hurt her spleuchan,”’ 118. Splore, () a frolic, a carousal: ‘ta random- splore,” 41; ‘in Se igs held the splore,” 108 ; (2) a row: “he bred sie a splore,”’ 110. nee a kind of halberd, 103. See Notes, Sprachl d, clambered: ‘‘I sprachl’d up the brae,”” 117. Sprattle, to scramble: “ sprawl, ga sprattle,”’ 43; ‘' deep-lairing, sprattle,”’ Spreckled, speckled. Spring, a rely tune, : dance : te ri ve play’d maysel a bonie s * 50; he play’d a spring, and dane’ va ity it ae by oan * Charlie gat the spring to pay,’’ 208 ; «¢ the o’erword 0” the spring,”’ 306. Sprittie, full of roots of sprits (a kind of rush): “*sprittie knowes,’’ 27. Sprush, spruce. Spunk, (1. a match : ee "1 li pepeck, 3 ie (2) a spark: “a spunk a Nie °g glee,”’ (8) fire, spirit: Keg foun! Sapenile 7 106; ‘ if and spunk,” 139, . Spunkie, spirited : ‘aspunkie Norland billie,’’ 7. Spunkie, liquor, spirits : “and spunkie ance to mak us mellow,” 128. Spunkie, a _ Will- -o’-the-wisp, a jack - o’- lanthorn: ‘‘ moss-traversing spunkies,’’ 13; “ fays, spunkies, kelpies,”’ 60. Spurl, e, 2 stick used for stirring porridge ete.: ‘spurtle-blade ”? (used humorously of a sword), 94, Squattle, to squat, to settle: ‘‘ in some beggar’s auffet squattle,” 43, Stacher, to stagger, to totter: ‘th’ expectant wee-things, to dlin, stacher through,’ 28 ; ‘‘ I stacher’d whyles,”” 57; ‘‘ except when drunk he stacher’t thro’ it,”’ 139. Staggie, dim. of staig ‘a young horse). Staig, a young horse, Stan’, stand. Stane, stone. Stan sting. Stank, a ditch, a pool: ‘ out-ower a sta’ the Muses’ stank,” 106; “‘ soor pa = : stank, ”” 108, Stan’t, stood. Stap, to stop. Stapple a i stapple,”’ 125. Stark, strong: ‘‘an’ thou was stark,’”? 26; “baith wight an stark,’’ 172 Starnie, dim, of starn or star: “ye twinkling starnies bright, ”” 83, ‘ye hills, near neebors o’ the starns,’ hee Startle, to course: ‘‘or down Italian vista startles,’’ 3. headed, ee gentry,”’ 62. Staw, asi “your horns shall tie you to the staw,”’ “for every hole to get a Starns, stars: Staumrel, half -witted: “‘staumrel, corky- 72 GLOSSARIAL INDEX taw, to surfeit, to disgust : “‘ olio that wad staw asow,”’ taw, stole: “ auld hermit Ayr staw thro’ his woods,” 21; “the lasses staw frae ’man; them a?? 24s “ Staw my rose,” 243, 310; “‘staw the linin o’t,”” 255; “ staw a branch, * 390, techin, cramming, stuffing : “the gentry first are stechin,’’ 2. teek, a stiteh : “ thro’ the steeks, Hae te a wrang steek in them a’, man,’ "170. teek, to shut, to close: “ their solemn een may steek, ” 8: “steek their een,’ 24; ‘‘steek your "gab "for ever,”’ 64; 0 the, \sheep-herd steeks his faulding slap,” 78; at ponie bosoms steekit ”’ (2. e. closed in), 11 teer, (1) to stir: “ steer about the today,” 11; (2) "to rouse, to stir: “0, steer, her up,”’ 264 : (8) to meddle with, to molest: ‘nae cauld nor hunger e’er can steer them,” 4; ‘‘ thy servant true wad never steer her,”’ “10: “the Deil, he daurna steer,’’ 122, 146; ““mistortune sha” na, steer thee,”’ 276 ; @, to move, to stir: ‘set a’ their gabs a-steerin,” feeve, stiff, stanch, compact: : “a filly, buirdly, steeve, an’ swank, ”” 26. “ne’er tell, a still. ten. a leap: foaming, strang, wi’ hasty stens,” 82; ‘‘my heart to my mou gied a sten,’’ 231. ten’t, sprang : ‘thou never lap an’ sten’t an’ breastit,” 27. tented, appointed : ** my watchman stented, Yee tents, ‘assessments, dues, taxes: ‘‘an’ a’ stents,’ 2; ‘‘how cesses, stents, and fees were rax’d, 9 4145, ‘eyest. steepest: hae fac’t it,” 27. ‘ible, stubble. nes chief harvester (with the hook), 25. He k-ah-stowe, completely: ‘‘ruin’d stick-an- “the steyest brae thou wad stowe,”’ 49. alt, limp : “hileh, an’ stilt, an’ jump,”’ 34. mpart, ‘‘ the eighth part of a Winchester bushel? . B.): ‘Sa heapet stimpart,”’ 27. ‘irk, a young bullock or heifer (more than one year old). ‘ock, a plant of cabbage or colewort. ‘oited, stumbled: ‘‘down George’s Street I stoited, 7187, See also Stoyte. ‘oiter, to stagger: ° ‘ stoiter’d up ’’ = struggled up, 104; ee out thro’ the midden dub,”’ 121. ‘oor, w hoarse: ‘‘an eldritch, stoor * quaick. a 222° 13is @ ) stern: “ acarlin stoor and grim,’’ 161. ‘ot, & steer. ‘oun, stound, a sudden sharp pain: ‘‘life’s various stounds,’ ” 99; ‘“my heart it gae a stoun,”’ 202 ; ‘‘ the stound, the deadly wound,” 230. ‘ound, to any 5 pee “my heart it stounds wi’ anguish, ; ‘oure, dust. ‘oure, conflict, strife. ‘ourte, dusty. ‘own, stolen. ‘ownlins, by stealth: ‘‘ Rob, stownlins, prie’d her bonie mou,” 24; ‘‘ an’ stow’nlins we sall meet again,” 257, Stoyte, to stagger: ae her snapper and stoyte on her way,’’ 279. See also protted. Strae death, death in bed (2. e. on straw), 58, Straik, to stroke. oe "struck. trang, strong. Straught, straight. Straught, | Le stretch: “will straught on a board,”’ Streekit, ee alieal ‘*ance ye were streekit owre frae bank to bank,” 61; ‘‘streekit out to bleach,” 120. Striddle, to straddle, to stride’: ‘‘ striddle owre arig,’’ 46, Stroan't, pissed, 2. Strunt, liquor : “2 social glass o’ strunt,’’ 26 ; a dram 0’ guid strunt,’’ 268. Strunt, to strut: ‘‘ ye strunt rarely,” 43. Studdie, an anvil: *‘ till block an’ studdie ring an’ reel,’? 5; “‘come o’er his studdie,”’ 82. Stumpie, "dim, of stump (applied playfully to canis q : “doun gaed stumpie in the Sturt, worry, trouble: ‘‘sturt and strife,’ 184, 4. Sturt, to trouble, = vex: ‘‘ ay the less they hae to sturt them,” Sturtin, righted, “staggered: ‘tho’ he was something sturtin,’’ 25. Styne, the faintest outline: ‘* or see a styme,’’ 125. Sucker, sugar: ** gusty sucker,’’ 5. Sud, should. ; Sugh, sough, a sou h, a moan, a sound as of, a UES, wind, @ Si . waving sugh,”’ 13; angry sugh, 3 the clanging sugh ye whistling cna 60; ‘‘sough for sough,” 227. Sumph, a blockhead : “‘ ye surly samphs,”’ 135. une, Soon. Suthron, Southern (7. e. English). Swaird, the sward. Swall’d, swelled. Swank, limber : * ‘ steeve, an’ swank,’’ 26. Swankies, strapping fellows: “‘swankies young,” Swart, to swoon: ‘“‘amaist did swarf, man,’’ iT. Swat, sweated. Swatch, a sam le: ‘a chosen swatch,” 10;“‘a swatch 0’ peoook:s way,’’ 59; ‘a swatch o’ Manson’s barrels,” Swats, new ale: ‘ reaming swats, that drank divinely,” 91; “ a swats sae ream’d in Tam- mie’s noddle,”’ Sweer, v. Dea 252, Swither, doubt: “a hank’ring ‘a swirlie, auld moss- hesitation, GLUsSAKLAL INDEX swither,” 8; ‘‘ an eerie swither,” 57; “I’ve little swither,’’ 134, Swoom, swim. woor, Swore. Sybow, a young onion: “a sybow-tail,”’ 129. Syne, since, then, ago. Tack, a lease, a holding: “stand as tightly by your tack,”’ 7 ; “‘ or Poland, wha had now the tack o’t,”” 145; ‘“‘a tack o’ seven times seven,”’ 146, Tacket, a hob-nail: ‘wad haud the Lothians three in tackets,”’ 94. Tae, to. Tae, toe. Tae'd, toed: “‘ a three-tae’d leister,” 57. Taed, toad ; “‘ sprawlin like a taed,” 168. Taen, taken. Tairge, vex with questions, to catechise strictly : ‘Ton the Questions tairge them tightly,” 114. See Notes, p. 338. Tak, to take. Tald, told. Tane, one (in contrast to other): ‘‘ the tane is game,’’ 120; ‘‘the heat o’ the tane,’’ 265. Tangs, tongs. Tap, top. Tap o’ tow, the quantity of flax that is put upon the distaff at one time: ‘‘spin your tap o’ tow,’’ 238. Tapetless, heedless, foolish: ‘‘the tapetless, ramfeezl’d hizzie,’’ 46. Tapmost, topmost. Tappet hen, (crested hen) a pot or bottle hold- ing about three English quarts of claret or ale: “‘ the tappet hen, gae bring her ben,”’ 311. See Notes, p. 347. Tap-pickle, the grain at the top of the stalk: “her tap-pickle maist was lost,” 24. See Notes, p., 329. Tapsalteerie, topsy-turvy : 77, 308. : Tarrow, (1) to tarry (the original sense in Henryson and the older writers, a secondary sense being to haggle), to hesitate: ‘‘if you on your station tarrow,”’ 153 j (2) to murmur: “that yet hae tarrow’t at it,” 19. Tassie, a cup: “ the silver tassie,”’ 220. Tauk, talk. Tauld, told. " 7 7 ; Tawie, tractable: “‘ hamely, tawie, quiet, an oo 4 a ‘i e ‘awpie, a foo. young woman: ‘ gawkies, te eaibe, gowks, and fools,” 119. See Notes, “nae Tainted, matted, with matted hair: tawted tyke,” 2; ‘‘ wi’ tawted ket,” 15. Teats, small quantities : “‘ wi’ teats o’ hay,” 14. Teen, vexation : (common in Shakespeare, e. g. “of sorrow and of teen,’’? Love’s Labour ’s Lost, iv. 8); ‘‘spite and teen,”’ 96, Tell’d, told. a Temper-pin, (1) a fiddle-peg: “screw your temper-pins,”’ 134; (2) the regulating pin of the spinning- heel: “and ay she shook the temper-pin,”’ 208. Tent, heed: “‘ tak [or took] tent’? =take [or took] eare, 16, 57, 166. 373 Tent, to tend, to heed, to observe. ; , Tentie, watchful, careful, heedful i ‘wi’ tentie e’e,”’ 24; ‘wi’ tentie care,” 27; ‘some tentie 798, “wi? joy the tentie seedsman stalks,” 77. Tentier, more watchful: “a tentier way,” 147, Tentless, careless, heedless: ‘‘tentless heed, 16, 51. Tester (Old Fr. Test, a head), an old. Scots silver coin about sixpence in value: “‘ till she has scarce a tester,” 18. Cf. ‘‘ Hold, here ’s a tester for thee,”’ hak., 2 Henry IV., iii. 2. Teugh, tough. ‘euk, took. ; Thack, thatch: “ thack and rape ” = the cover- ing of a house, and therefore used as a simile for home necessities, 3; ‘‘thack and rape’ (of a corn-stack), 60. Thae, those. x“ 4 Thairm, (1) an intestine: ‘‘painch, tripe, or thairm,”? 72; (2) catgut (a eas ‘ thairm - inspiring,” 62, 133; ‘‘o’er the thairms be tryin,” 64; ‘‘kittle hair on thairms,’’ 105. : Theckit, thatched: ‘‘ an’ theckit right,’’ 126. Thegither, together. Themsel, themsels, themselves. Thick, v. Pack an’ thick. Thieveless, forbidding : ‘‘ thieveless sneer,” 61. Thiggin, begging: ‘come thiggin at your doors an’ yetts,”’ 153. Thir, these. Thirl’d, thrilled: “ it thirl’d the heart-strings,” 44. Thole, to endure, to suffer: “thole a factor’s snash,” 3; “‘thole the winter's sleety drib- ble,’’ 32; “‘thole their blethers,’ 51; ‘' thole their mither’s ban,” 133; ‘‘the seathe and banter we ’re forced to thole,”’ 133, Thou ’se, thou shalt, thou wilt. Thowe, thaw. Thowless, : “* Conscience,’ says I, ‘ye thowless jad,’ ”’ 46. ‘ Thrang, (1) crowded : ‘‘ the lasses, skelpin bare- fit, thrang,”? 10; “‘ thick an’ thrang,”’ 11; (2) busy: ‘‘that were na thrang at hame,” 2; “ aiblins thrang a parliamentin,”’ 3 ; “ thrang winkin on the lasses,”’ 10. Thrang, busily: ‘‘complimented thrang,” 18 ; “‘ are whistling thrang,”’ 16. Thrang, a throng: ‘aff the godly pour in thrangs,” 10; “* the jovial thrang,”” 106. Thrapple, the windpipe: ‘‘ but now she fetches at the thrapple,’’ 125; ‘‘as Murther at his thrapple shor’d,” 163. Thrave, twenty-four sheaves of corn: “a daimen icker in a thrave,”’ 31. : “she turns the key wi’ cannie 2D Thraw, ) bes to igs oe thrawin’’ = agains ting or bending, 25; “creat ackinlay thrawn his heel,’ 66; ue did one hellim thraw,” 75; ‘‘thraw saugh woodies,” 145; (2) to thwart: “the German chief +o thraw, man,”’ 75 ; “ did his measures thraw,”? 75; ‘a mortal sin to thraw that,” 106. Thraws, throes: ‘‘ ease the thraws,’’ 278, 374 GLOSSARIAL INDEX Threap, maintain (with asseverations): ‘‘ wad threap auld folk the thing misteuk,”’ 49. Threesome, by threes: ‘‘there’s threesome reels,”’ 249, Thretteen, thirteen. Thretty, thirty. Thrissle, thistle. Thristed, thirsted. Through : “mak to through ’ = make good, 62. Throu'ther, (through other) in confusion: ‘ ery a? throu’ther,”’ 24, Thummart, polecat, 108. : Tight, girt, prepared: ‘‘he should been tight that daur’t to raize thee,” 26. Till, to. tu d, till it, plough it : “I maun till’d again,” () Tilt, to it. Timmer, (1) timber; (2) material (as also timber in English), ‘‘ the timmer is scant, when ye ’re taen for a saunt’’ =the saintly material is scant when you are taken for one, 112, (Some wiseacres affirm the meaning to be the wood (for the gallows) ts scant: but (1) if this were the meaning the article ‘“‘the’’ would be su- perfluous; (2) it is absurd to suppose that there was then not wood enough to erect a gallows; (3) wood was less essential than a rope, and (4) ‘‘ material’ is quite a common meaning of “‘ timmer,”’ _ Tine, tyne, (1) to lose, (2) to be lost. Tinkler, a tinker. Tint, lost: ‘‘ tint as win ”’ = lost as soon as won, Tip, v. Toop. Tippence, twopence. het Tippenny, two-penny ale: ‘wi’ tippenny we fear nae evil,’’ 91. Tirl, (1) to strip, to uncover, to unroof: “‘ tirlin the kirks,” 12; “‘tirl the hullions to the birses,”’ 153; (2) to rattle: ‘‘tirl’d at your door,’’ 185; ‘‘tirl’d at the pin,’’ 253. See Notes, p. 345. Tither, the other. Tittlin, whispering : ‘‘a raw o’ tittlin jads,’’ 10. Tocher, dowry. Tocher, to give a dowry. Tod, the fox. To-fa’, the fall: ‘‘to-fa’ 0’ the night,’’ 166. Toom, empty. Toop, tip, a tup, a ram. Toss, 2 toast: ‘‘ the toss o’ Ecelefechan,”’ 254. Tousie, shaggy : ‘‘ his tousie back,’ 2; ‘‘ a tou- sie tyke,”’ 91. Tow, (1) flax, (2) a rope. Towmond, towmont, a twelve-month. Towsing, tousling, rampling (equivocal) : ‘‘ tows- ing a lass i’ my daffin,” 104. Cf. ‘‘ Damn me if he sha’t have the tousling of her,’’ Fielding, Tom Jones. Tots, to totter: ‘‘ toyte about wi’ ane anither,”’ Tozie, tipsy : “‘ the tozie drab,’’ 102. Trams, shafts (of a barrow or cart) : ‘‘ baith the trams are broken,” 114. Trashtrie, small trash: ‘‘ sauce, ragouts, an’ sic like trashtrie,”’ 2. Trews, trousers: “skyrin tartan trews,’’ 227. See also Trouse. Trig, neat, trim : “‘ the lads sae trig,’’ 24; ‘‘ and trig an’ braw,” 119; ‘‘he sae trig lap o’er the rig,’”’ 237; ‘‘ Willie’s wife is nae sae trig,’’ 244, te hes a wheel (especially of a wheel-barrow), Troggin, wares: ‘‘ buy braw troggin,” 167. Troke, to barter, to exchange: ‘‘ wi’ you nae friendship I will troke,”’ 128. Trouse, trousers: “will be him trouse and doublet,’’ 264. See also Trews. Trowth, truth, In truth ! Tryste, a fair, a cattle-market : ‘‘ to trystes an’ fairs to driddle,”” 105 ; ‘the tryste o’ Dalgar- nock,’’ 282; “he gaed wi’ Jeanie to the tryste,’’ 297. See Notes, p. 346. Trysted, appointed, agreed upon: ‘‘ the trysted hour,” 299, Trystin, trysting, meeting : ‘‘ trystin time,”’ 257 ; * trysting thorn,” 272. Tulyie, tulzie, a squabble, a broil: ‘‘in logic tulzie,” 50; ‘‘ The Holy Tulyie,” 107; ‘“‘ the tulyie ’s teugh ’tween Pitt and Fox,’ 120; “amid this mighty tulyie,’’ 163. Twa, two. Twafauld, two-fold, double: ‘‘ he hirples twa- fauld’”’ =he hobbles bent double, 212. Dees twelve ; ‘‘the twal’’ = twelve at night, Ca 5 Twalpennie worth =a penny worth (sterling), 3. Twang, a twinge, 118. Twa-three, two or three. Tway, two: “‘ne’er a ane but tway,” 160. Twin, twine, to deprive, to rob: ‘“‘twins. . . 0” his days,”’ 6; ‘“‘may twin auld Scotland o’ a life,” 153 ; ‘‘ has twin’d ye o’ your stately trees,”’ 319. Twistle, a twist, a wrench: “‘ the Lord’s cause gat na sic a twistle,”’ 108. Tyke, a dog. Ne, Vs Tine. Tysday, Tyseday, Tuesday. Ulzie, oil: ‘‘ wi’ powther and wi’ ulzie,’’ 115. Unchancy, dangerous: ‘‘ an’ mair unchancy,” 128. See also Wanchancie. Unco, remarkably, uncommonly, very. Unco, (1) strange: “ unco folk,’’ 203 ; (2) remark-~ able, uncommon. ' Uncos, strange things, wonders, news: ‘* each tells the uncos that he sees or hears,” 29. Unkend, unknown. Unsicker, unsecure, uncertain : ‘‘ feeble, and un- sicker,” 148, . Unskaithed , unscathed, unhurt. Usquabae, usquebae, whisky. Vauntie, vain, proud: ‘‘ and she was vauntie,”’ 92; ‘‘ vauntie o’ my hap,” 135; ‘‘ your letter made me vauntie,”’ 144, Vera, very. Virls, ferrules, rings ee as those around the ends of canes, etc.): ‘‘virls and whirlygi- gums, oO. ies Vittel, vittle, (victual) (1) provisions : ‘‘a’? my GLOSSARIAL INDEX 375 winter vittle,”’ 266; (2) grain: ‘a’ the vittel in the yard,” 126, ¥ ogie, vain: ‘‘and vow but I was vogie,”’ 206. Wa’, waw, a wall, Wab, a web. abster, a weaver. Wad, to wager: “I’ll wad my new pleugh- pettle,” 7; ‘Ill wad a groat,” 59; “wada boddle,”’ 61. es to wed: ‘‘and or I wad anither jad,” 238, Wad, would, would have, Wad ’a, would have. Wadna, would not, would not have. We deat, a mortgage: “‘here’s a little wadset,”’ Wae, woful, sorrowful (also used sarcastically). Wae, woe: ‘‘ wae’s me’’ = woe is to me. Waesucks, alas | ‘‘ waesucks ! for him that gets nae lass,” 11. Wae worth, woe befall. air, v. Ware. Wale, to choose. Wale, choice. Walie, waly, wawlie, ample, large, robust: ‘twalie nieve,” 72; ‘‘ae winsome wench ard wawlie,”’ 92; ‘* walie nieves,”’ 244; ‘‘ this waly boy,”’ 304. Wallop, to move quickly but clumsily : “ may Envy wallop in a tether,” 49; ‘“wallopad about the reel,’’ 121 ; ‘‘ wallop in a tow,”’ 238 ; See Notes, p. 339. Waly, good fortune, prosperity: “‘ waly fa’ may good fortune afall, 270. Wame, the belly. Wamefou, bellyful. an, won. Wanchancie, dangerous: ‘that vile, wanchan- cie thing — a rape,” 15. See Unchancy. Wanrestfu’, restless: ‘‘ wanrestfu’ pets,” 14, Ware, watr, to spend, bestow : ‘‘ and ken na how to ware ’t,”’ 32; “to ware his theologic care on,” 144; ‘‘tho’ wair’d on Willie Chalmers,” 181. Ware, worn: ‘‘ gratefully be ware,”’ 135, Wark, work. Wark-lume, v. Lume. Warl’, warld, world. Warlock, a wizard. Warl’y, warldly, worldly. Warran, warrant. Warse, worse. Warsle, warstle, wrestle. Wast, west. 3 4 Wastrie, waste: ‘‘ downright wastrie,”’ 2. Wat, wet. Wat, wot, know. ' Water-fit, water-foot (the river’s mouth), 10. Water-kelpies, v. Kelpies. ; ; Wauble, to wobble: “ran them till they a’ did wauble,”’ 27. 7 Pa eit Waught, a deep draught: ‘“‘a right guid-willie waught,’’ 252. Wauk, to awake, to watch. Wauken, to waken. | Waukin, awake, watching. 29) as Waukit, horny, (with toil): ‘my waukit loof,’”’ 20. aukrife, wakeful: ‘till waukrife morn,”’ 83 ; “ waukrife winkers,”’ 134; ‘‘ a waukrife min- nie,” 228; ‘‘the waukrife cock,’’ 228. Waur, worse. Waur, to worst, to beat: ‘‘ might aiblins waur’t thee for a brattle,” 27; ‘‘and faith! he’ll waur me,” 57; “ waurthem a’,”’ 161. Wean, (wee one) a child. Weantes, babies: ‘‘ when skirlin weanies see the light,”’ 5. Weary fa’, woe befall. Weason, the weasand, the windpipe. Wecht, a leather-covered hoop, resembling a sieve, but without holes, used for winnowing ain: ‘three wechts o’ naething,” 25. See otes, p. 329, Wee, little. Wee, a little, a short space or time. Wee-things, children, 24, 28. eel, well. Weel-faured, well-favoured. Weel-gaun, well-going. Weel-hain’d, well-saved: ‘her weel-hain’d kebbuck,”’ 30; ‘‘ well-hain’d gear,’ 62. Weepers, strips of cambrie or muslin worn on the sleeves as a badge of mourning: “auld. cantie Kyle may weepers wear,” 41. Weet, wet. Weet, to wet. Werena, were not. We’se, we shall, we will. Westlin, western. a, who. Whale, wheeze: ‘‘an’ gar’t them whaizle,’ 27. Whalpit, whelped. am, whom, Whan, when. Whang, a large slice : ‘‘in monie a whang,”’ 10. Where, Pa “and gloriously she ll: whang- er. 4 fs Whar, whare, whaur, where. Wha’s, whase, whose. What for, whatfore, wherefore, why: “ what for: no”’ = why not, 133. : hatna, what, what kind of, (partly in con- tempt): ‘“ whatna day o’ whatna style,”’ 304. What reck, what matter, nevertheless: ‘‘ but. yet, what reck, he at Quebec,” 75 ; “‘ when I,. what reck, did least expeck,”’ 237, Whatt, whittled, 126. See Notes, p. 339. Whaup, the curlew, 124. See Notes, p. 339. Whaur, where. heep, v. Penny-wheep. Wheep, to jerk: ‘‘to see our elbucks wheep,”’ Whid, afib : ‘‘a rousing whid at times to vend,” 7. Whiddin, scudding: ‘‘an’ morning poussie whiddin seen,” 44; ‘ye maukins whiddin through the glade,’’ 82. hids, gambols: ‘ jinkin hares, in amorous. whids,” 48. Whigmeleeries, crotchets: ‘‘whigmeleeries in. your noddle,”’ 61, 376 GLOSSARIAL INDEX Wiingia, whining: ‘if onie whiggish, whingin sot, Whins, foe ‘thro’ the whins, an’ [and] by the cairn,’’ 26, 91 Whirlygigums, flourishes, 60 Whisht, silence : ‘held my whisht’’? = kept silence, 20. Whissle, a whistle. Whissle, to whistle. Whitier, a hearty draught: “‘ tak our whitter,”’ Whittle, a knife. Wigtes, pemetes, now and then. Wicker * wick a bore,” 67. See Notes, p. 333. Wii's, with his. Wi’t, with it. Widdifu’, deserving the halter: ‘‘a widdifu’, bleerit knutl,’ > 313, “the weary Widdle, a wriggle, a struggle: widdle,’’ 128, 134. Wiel, a swhiripool: Lt, 99 9 "ight, str song stout, valiant, active: ‘“‘ wight y” 114; wight and stark,” ees Wighier, © comp. of wight: lins,’’ 160. ‘whyles in a wiel it dim- “* five wighter car- Wilcat, a wildeat. Willyart, bashful: ‘ willyart glow’r,’’ 117. Wimple, to meander. in, won: “‘tint as win’? —lost as soon as won, 250. Winn, to winnow: “‘ to winn three wechts ©’ naething,’’ 25, Winna, will not. Winnin, winding: o’t,”” 255. Winnock, window. Winnock- bunker, v. Bunker. te t, wound (did wind) : “the warpin o’t, the winnin ‘Can’ ay she win’t,” Wintle a ie areel, a roll: ‘‘tumbl’d wi’ a wintle. 5 Wintle, qy, to stagger: ** wintle like a saumont- eoble,”’? 27; (2 } to wriggle: ‘‘wintle in a woodie,”’ 116 ; ‘that wintles i ina halter,” 194. ee a a puee : “loot a winze,’’ 26. iss. B Won, to dwell: “there was a wife wonn’d in Cockpen,’’ 265; ‘‘there wons auld Colin’s bonie lass,”’ 268 ; “Auld Rob Morris that wons in yon glen,” 271. Cf. ‘‘The wild beast, where he wons,” Milton, Paradise Lost, vii. 457. .Wonner, a@ wonder, a marvel, (sometimes used contemptuously), ‘‘ blastit wonner,”’ 2, 43. Woo’, wool. Woodie woody, a rope (originally of withes): (1) ‘‘the meikle Devil wi’ a woodie,” 8 ot © See rope: “‘the waefu’ woodie,”’ earning in a a woody danee,’’ 109; in a woodie,”’ Woodies, twigs, aca “ saugh woodies,”’ 145. Le aaa love-knots (tied in the garters), Wordy, worthy : “wordy of a grace,” 72; ‘ wordy beast,’’ 114. Worset, worsted: ‘ her braw, new, worset apron,”’ 25, Worth, v. Wae worth. Wrack, wreck, destruction, ruin. rang, wrong. Wud, goed, angry, ragin, Wades ‘*as wud as wud can be,” 5; “like onie wu ‘this, 246. See also Radeon ud. Wumble, a , wimble, a gimlet: “‘gleg as onie wumble,’’ 41. Wrliecoat, underyest, 44 Wyte, blame: ‘ Had I the wyte ?”? = Was I to blame ? 252, Wyte, to blame, to reproach, **to wyte her countrymen,” 5; priests wyte them sheerly,”’ 134. ‘Yard, a garden, a stackyard. Yaud, a jade, an old mare: ‘‘ auld grey yaud,” 166, “167, Yealings, soerales ar dear-remember’d, an- cient yealings,”’ Yearth, v. Yer 77. dry (milkless) : “as yell’s the bill,”’ 3 Yerd, yird, yeas earth: the yerd,’’ 233. Yerkit. jerked : Yerl, Earl. Ye’se, ye shall. as last night. ‘their green beds in “yerkit up sublime,” 16. Yett, a gate. Yeuk, to itch: “Tf Warren Hastings’ neck was yeul a 145; ‘‘yeuks wi’ joy,’’ 148. i ill-caup ‘aup. Yird, v. Yerd. Yokin (yoking) as much work as is done by the draugh’ ht at one time, a spell : okin at the pine,” 135; ‘ta hearty yokin As sang about,’ ’’ 44, > Yont, beyond. Yowe, ewe. Yowie, dim. of ewe, Yule, Christmas. INDEX OF Aberfeldy, 203. Adair, Dr. James M‘Kittrick, 209. Adam, Robert, 59. Adamhiill, 50, 343. Afton, the river, 247. Aiken, Andrew Hunter, 39. Aiken, Miss Grace, 330. Aiken, Peter Freeland, 39. Aiken, Robert, xxivn., xlvin., lin., 39, 109, 114, 330, 337, 343, Ailsa’ Craig, 346, Ainslie, Miss, of Berrywell, 185. Ainslie, Robert, xlvii, land notes, Alexander, Miss Wilhelminia, 305. Allan, the river, re Alloway, eG xvi, 88-90. Anderson, D., of St. Germains, 342. Ta J., * of St. Germains, 342. Annai ‘Areyle, Duke of, 224, mour, Jean’s father, xxxvi and note, xxxvii, xli, 234 Armour, ‘Adam, 115. Armour, Jean, xxxvi-xlii, xlv, xlvii, xlix-li, 2 9, 34, 39, 77, 116, pide 194, 248, 303, 336, 340. See Burns, Mrs,’ R. Arnold, Matthew, col ‘Atholl, Duke of, 96. Auld, ‘Rev. William, xorxvin., 41, 109, 336, 337, Pee xvii, xlvin., 68, 110, 111. Ayr, the river, 204, 339, Ayton, Sir Robert, 234, Babington, Dr., 191. Ean. eee er at Brownhill, 341. , of Mayfield, 275, Baines Mg Leslie, 275, 278. Ballantine, John, xliii, xlvin., 59, 310, 337. Ballochmyle, 225, 305. Bannockburn, 285, 286. Barclay, Rev. John, 227. Barskimming, 328. Beattie, Dr. James, 333, Beghbie, innkeeper, 332. Begbie, Elison, xxi, 299, 301. Begg, Mrs., xxvi, 52, 76, 214, 300. Begg, Isabella, xxvi. Ben Ledi, Ben Lomond, 330. Berrywe! Berwick-. eee the, 344. Beurnonville, Marquis de, ae gm Blac. izabet! Blacklock, Dr. Thomas, xiii, 55, 144. Blacksideen 338. Blackstock, ‘Miss Jane, 274. PERSONS AND PLACES Blair, Major, of Dunskey, 343. Blair, Dr. Hugh, 338. Blair, Sir James Hunter, 173. Boswell, James, 325, 341. Boyd, Rev. William, 333. Brown, Agnes, xiv. Brown, Richard, xxi and note, xxii and note, land note. Bruar Falls, 334. Bruce, Andrew, 72. Bruce, ur, xlvi Bruce, King R Robert, 285, 286. ruces, the, 32! Buchan, Earl of, aa 93, 177, 189. Buchan, Peter, 76, 2: Buchan, Dr. illiam, 331. Buchan Bullers, the, 342. Burn, Robert, 195. Burness, William, : xiv, xix, xxiii and note, xxiv, 54, 111, 336. Burness (Burns), Mrs. William, xiv, xxvi. Burns, Robert, birth and parentage, xiii-xvi; childhood, boyhood, and education, xv-xix ; his reading, _xv-xvii, xxvii; at Mount Oli- phant, xvi-xix ; influence of "early hardships, xviii, xix; at Loehlie, xix-xxi; as a Free Mason, xx and note; _early relations _ With women, xx-xxii; at Irvine, xxi, at Lochlie again, xxiii; at Mossgiel, ‘Manchline xxiii—xliii ; ‘as a farmer, xxiv; eusersiessite with the kirk, xxv and note; Jaco- bitism, xxv n.; his affair with Elizabeth Paton and the birth of his first child, xxvi ; as a poet of the Vernacular, xxvi-xxxv ; his debt to the earlier writers of Scots verse, Xxvii-xxxii ; his humour, xxxili, xxxiv; the Scots national poet, xxxv; relations with Jean Armour, XXXVI-xxxvili, xlvii, xlix-li; the Highland Mary episode, xxxviii-xlii; publishes the first edition of his poems, xli; ; in Edinburgh, xliii-li ; publishes his first Edinburgh edition, xlvi; tours on the Border and in the High- lands and visits to Mauchline, xlvii; the Cla- als episode, xlviii-li; marries J ean Armour, li; at ilisland land, Dumfriesshire, li-lvi; as a promoter ¢ of edusation, liin.; becomes an ex- aoe se lii, liii, lv ; removes to Dumfries, liii ; his affair with Anne Park, liii; the goddesses of his later life, liv: his ‘work in folk-song, lvi-lxii; his lack of romance, lxi-lxii and note ; at Dumfries, Lxiii-lxvi; failing health and ‘dissipation, lxiii-lxv ; his Jacobinism, Ixiii-lxv; his intellect, een and. character, Ixy, Ixvi; death, ksvi Burnet, Miss Elizabeth, of Monboddo, xliv, 176, urns, “Alexander Cunningham, 140. Burns, Elizabeth, 113, 338, 343, Burns, Elizabeth "Riddell, "923, 378 INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES Burns, Gilbert, xv, xviii, xx, xxi n, xxiii, xxiv, xxvi, xl, xliii, 2, 12, 14, 28, 31, 32, 34, 37, 41; 56, 70, 76, 90, 169, 374, "999, 307, 317, 330. Burns, James Glencairn, 87. Burs, Mrs. Robert (Jean Armour), li-liii, 221, Burns, Robert, ee, 116. Burns, William, 65 Burns, William Nicol, 309. Busbby, John, 198, 3 4, Bushby, Maitland, 339, Bushby, William, "349, Byron, Lord, xiv, xxvilin., xxxiin., xliv and note. Campbell, Mr., of esa 53, Campbell’ Sir Duncan, 3 Campbell, Lord Peale 326, Campbell, Mary, xxxviii- xii, 204, 226, 235, 287, 288, 304, 316, 343, Campbell, Sir Islay, 183, 326, Campbell, Sir James, of Lawers, 328. Campbell, Thomas, 214. Campbells of Loudoun, the, 328. Candlish, James, 1 Cardoness. Se Maxwell, David. Carlyle, Thomas, lxii n., ixiii, 12, 254. Carmichael, Rebekah, 170. Carron, 185. Cart, the ee 248, Cassilis, 32 Catrine, 308 344, Chalmers, Miss ; Margaret, 209, 214, 264, 289. Chalmers, William, 130. Chambers, Robert, xl, xlvi, lili n., 54, 72, 184, 243, 294, 300, 309, 311, 320. Charles IL. 256, 3 Charles Edward, Prince, (the Young Chevalier), 207, 307. Chloris. See Lorimer, Jean, Clarinda. See M‘Lehose, Mrs. Agnes, Clarke, Mr., 276. Cleghorn, Robert, 201, 308. Clunie, Rev. John. 204. Coil (or Coilus), King, 325, 328, Coila, 331, 338. Coilsfield, 328. : Constable, Lady Winifred Maxwell, 84, 241. Copeland, Mr., of Ec olneahony 342. Corsancone, 344, 3 Cove of Colean, he ‘329, Covington, 235. Craigieburn, 231. Cranstoun, Miss, 315. Cree, the stream, 273. Creech, William, xliv, xlvi, xlvii, 55, 80, 118, 119. 482 Criffel, 346. Cromelz, R. H., 41, 90, 129, 201, 318. Cruickshank, Miss’ Jane, 95, 196, 213, Cruickshank, William, 95, 196. Cunningham, a district of . Ayrshire, 335. Cunningham, Alexander, 95, 140, 178, 184, 233, 280, 309. Cunningham, Allan, 243, 300 Cunningham, Tear Blizabeth, 87. Cunningham, William, 159. Cunninghame, Mrs., of Lainshaw, 171. Ouaynghame, Sir William Augustus, Bart., Currie, Dr. James, xl, liv, lxiv n., 114, 153, 192, 226, 317, 341, 344. Curtis, Sir Roger, 335. Dest Basil William Douglas-Hamilton, Lord, Dalgarnock, 346. alrymple, xvii. Dalrymple, James, of Orangefield, xliii, 87. Dalrymple, Rev. William, 110, 332, 336, 337. Dalswinton, 188. Dam: herre, Marquis de, 177. Davidson, John, 90 Davies, Bliss Debora, 236. Dempster, George, 325, 327. De Peyster, Colonel ‘Arent Schuyler, 143, 147. Dodsley, Robert, 237. Don, Lady Harriet, 87. Doon, the river, 88, 89. Douglas, David, tavern-keeper, 182. Douglas, Gavin or Gawain, 59, 90. Douglas, James, Douglas, Scott, xl, iti n., lviii n., 87, 95, 182, 136, 171, 180, "300, 316, 333, Douglas, Sir W: William, 342, Dove (or Dow), John, 195, 340, Drumlanrig, 342. Drummond, James, 205. Dumfries, zlvi, liii, liv n., lvin., xiii, lxiv, 160, 190, 341. Dumouriez, Charles Frangois, 177. Dunbar, William, Colonel of the Crochallan Corps, 80, 213. Dunbar, William, the poet, xxviii and note, XXXyV n., Dunblane, 216, 224, Duncan, Rev. Robert, 336. Dundas, Henry, 3: Dundas, Robert, Deas of the Faculty of Advo- cates, 16 Dundas, Hebert, Lord President of the Court of Session, 174. Dundee, Lord, 229. Dunlop, Mrs. John, of Dunlop, x1 n., xliin., xlvii n., liii and note, 84, 99, 122, 275, 316. Duns, 185, Eeclefechan, 254, 257. Edinburgh, xliii-xlviii, 55, 121, 184, 196, 199, 215, 338. Eglinton, Archibald Montgomerie, 1ith Earl of, Blioté, George Augustus, Lord Heathfield, 335. Elizabeth, Queen, 341. Ellisland, li, lvi, 80, 10; 221. Elphinstone, James, 18 Erskine, Henry, xliii, 7, 168, 183, 326, Erskine, Thomas, 326, 347, Fergusson, Provest of Ayr, xiv, xix and note. Fergusson, Sir Adam, Bart., 325, 342. Fergusson, ‘Alexander, of Craigdarroch, 100, 342, 343. Fergusson, James, Jr., of Craigdarroch, 225. \ INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES 379 Fergusson, Robert, xvii and note, xviii and note, XXX 0., XXX], Xxxv n., 1, 12, 59, 149, 195, 298. Ferintosh 325. Ferrier, Miss J ane, 137. Findlay, James, 171. Fintry, 85. Pies William (‘‘ Holy Willie”), xxxiv, 109, Fleming, Agnes, xl, 76. Fochabers, on tro Fontenelle, Miss, 151, 189. Forbes, Duncan, 325, Fox, Charles James, Ixiiin., Lriv n., 154, 347. Foyers, Fall of, 98. Fraser, Mr., the oboist, 277, 287. Friars Carse, 80, 120, 142. Fullarton, Colonel William, 328. Fryers, Fall of, 98. Galloway, 189, 192. Galloway, John Stewart, 7th Earl of, 189, 343. Garlies, Lord, 342. ‘Garpal Water, 332. Garrick, David, 247. Gatehouse, 189. Gate-Slack, the, 346. George III., 154. Gibson, Agnes (Poosie Nansie), 102, 115, 334, 338. - Gibson, George, 115, 334, Gibson, Janet, 326, 334, 338. Gibson, Jock, 338. Gillespie, Mr., 231, 289. ‘Glenbuck, 332. Glengairn, James Cunningham, 14th Earl of, a vi n., lii n., lxiii n., 55, 75, 87, 118, 173. Glenriddell. See Riddell, Captain Robert. ‘Goethe, 334. Goldie, Colonel, of Goldielea, 342. Goldie, Commissary, 188. Goldie (or Goudie), John, 125. Gordon, Duchess of, xliv, xlvi n., 95, 121. Gordon, Duke of, 121. ‘Gordon, Mrs., of Kenmore (or Kenmure), 196. Gordon, John, of Kenmore (or Kenmure), 342. ‘Gordon, Thomas, of Balmaghie, 164. Gow, Niel, 222, 308. Graham, Douglas, 90. Graham, James, Marquis of Graham, 326. Graham, Robert, of arnt lii, lxiii n., 84. ‘Graham, Mrs. Robert, of Fintry, 84. Grant, Rev. David, 337. Gray, Symon, 137. Greenfield, Prof. William, 339. Greenock, 204, 316. Gregory. Dr. James, 93, 339. Grose, Captain Francis, lii, 90, 94, 122, 339. ‘Gustavus III., of Sweden, 341. Haliburton of Piteur, 344. Hamilton, Miss Charlotte, 209, 288. ; Hemilton, Gavin, xxiv n., xxv n., xlii n., xliv, xlvi n., li, 41, 42, 109, 337, 340, 343. Hamilton, John, 41. Hamilton of Gilbertfield, 017, 019, 345. Harvieston, 185, 209, 214. Hay, Rebekah, 170, 171. Helicon, 336. Henderson, Captain Matthew, 82. Henri, M., 99. Henri, Mrs., 99, 122. Henryson, Robert, xxviii n., XXix n., XXXV-N. Heron, Colonel, 342. Heron, Major, 342. Heron, Mr., of Kerroughtrie, 164, 167, 342. Heron, Lady Elizabeth, of Heron, 273. eron, Robert, xlii n., xlv, xlvi and notes, xlvii n., lii n., liv n., 341, Fighlend Mary. See Campbell, Mary. Holy Willie. See Fisher, William, Hood, William, Sr., 54. Hopetoun, Earl of, 342, Hoy, Mr., 121, 199. Hume, David, xiii, 144. Humphry, James, 54. Hunter, We.. 242, Hutcheson, Francis, xiii. Hutchieson, David, 338. Irvine, xxi, 38, 39, 170. James I. of Scotland, 347. Jamieson, Robert, 74. Jeffrey, Jean, 230, 311. Johnson, Mr., of Clackleith, 338. Johnson, James, xlviin., 199, 242, 263. Johnson, Dr, Samuel, 184, 341. Johnstone, Sir James, 160, 161, 342. Joseph II., Emperor of Germany, 341. Kellyburn, 245. Kemble, Mrs. Stephen, 191. Kenmore, or Kenmure, 98, 285. Kenmure, William Gordon, 6th Viscount, 239. Kennedy, Jean, 333. Kennedy, John, 38, 128, 338. Kennedy, Margaret, 181, 201, 243. Kilbaigie, 335. Killiecrankie, 229. Kilmarnock, 63, 333. King’s Kyle, 325. Kirkeudbright, 164. Kirkoswald, xix, xx, 52. ox, John, xiv and note. Kyle, 325, 330, 346. Kyle-Stewart, 330. Laggan, 196. Lansdowne, John Henry Petty, 2d Marquis of, 347. Lansdowne, William Petty, 1st Marquis of, 347. Lapraik, John, 44. Lapraik, Mrs. John, 50. args, 347. Lauderdale, Earl of, 347. Laurie (Lawrie, or Lowrie), Sir Robert, of Maxwelton, 100, 342. Laurie, Sir Walter, 100. Lawrie, Mrs., of Newmilns, 181, Lawrie, Rev. Dr., xliii, 55, 70, 78. Lawrie, Walter Sloan, of Redeastle, 342. Lawson, wine merchant, 342. Lewars, Jessie, liv, 192, 280, 315. Lincluden, 198, 250. 380 INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES Lindsay, = David, 12, 339. piney, ev. William, 332. Loehlie, xix, xx, xxiii and note, 32. Lochmaben, 341. Lockhart, John Gibson, xxxiv, xlv n., xlvii n., Ixiv, 56, 90, 107. Logan, John, 133, 338. Logan, Miss Susie 72, 340. Logan, Major William, 133. Logan Water, 244. Loncartie, 347. Lorimer, Jest (Chloris), lvi, 231, 274, 287, 288, 9, 346. Loudoun, 70. Loudoun, Earl of, 210. Lunearty, 347. M‘Adan, Mr., of Craigen-Gillan, 129. M'Clure, of Ayr, William Burness’s ‘landlord, xxili and note. M‘Creddie, John, 321. M: ah Colonel Andrew, of Logan, 201, 339, Aa, Rev. Dr. William, 110, 111, 332, 337, M‘ Kay, General, 229. M‘Kenzie, Colonel, of, ieee egg 342, Mackenzie, He iv, Xlvin., sae 339. Mackenzie Dee 180, 327, M‘Kinlay, Rev. James, 63, 333, oT. M‘Lachlan, Mrs., 211. M‘Lauchlan, violinist, 332. M‘Lehose, Mrs. Agnes (Clarinda), 138, 258, 283, 287, 2! M'Leod, Miss caaite. 96, 210. M‘Leod, Jobn, 96. M‘ Leod, Colonel een, of M‘Leod, 347. M‘Math, Rev. John, 3: M'‘Murdo, Miss Jean M'Murdo, John, 100, is. 143, 338, 342. M‘Mardo, Miss Phillis, 276, 277. M'Pherson, James, 203 M‘Queen of Braxton, xlv n. M‘Quhae, Rev. Dr. William, 336, Manson, tavern-keeper, 340. Markland, Miss, 171. Marlowe, Christopher, 336. Masterton, Allan, 205, 217, 229. Masterton, Miss Ann,’ 217. Mauchline, xx, xxiv, xxv, xlii, xliii, xlvii, xlix, 2, 9, 52, 109, 115, 225 Maule, Hon. William Tae 191. Maxwell of Buittle, 342. Maxwell, David, of Cardoness, 197, 342. Maxwell, James, 185, Maxwell, John, of Terraughtie, 146, 343. Maxwell, Dr, William, Irv, 188, 196, 294, Mayne, John, 12, 23, 145. Merry, Mrs., 50. Millar, Ber Alexander, 327. Miller, Miss, of Dalswinton, 188, 259. Miller, Elizabeth, a 53, 115, 171, 338. Miller, Nell, 171, Miller, Patrick, ue Diluwinton, li, 342, 344. Miller, Captain’ Patrick, 160. Mag Sir Thomas, Bart., Lord Barskimming, xlviii-li, 84, Miller, Sir William, of Barskimming, 342. Mitehell, Collector, 147. Mitchell’ Rev. Andrew, 337, Mitchell, Rev. Thomas, 187. Moffat, 196. Moness, Fall of, 203. Montgomerte, Colonel Hugh, of Coilsfield, 325, Montgomerie, Captain James, 331. Montgomerie, Sir John Montrose, Duke of, 342, Moodie, Rev. Alexander, 107, 326, 336, 337. Morine of Laggan, 189 Borgen Mary, 299. Moro, EL, 335, Morton, Miss, of Mauchline, 171, Mossgiel, xx n., xxili, xxiv, xxxii, xxxvi, 41, Mosspaul, 206. alow Oliphant, xv-xix, 300. a Eset cm pes 4, 196. uir, am, 194, 331 Muir, Mrs. William, 194. Menhond Rev. Mr., 342, Multrie, Rev. John, '333, Murdoch, John, xv-xvii. Murray of Broughton, 342, 34 Murray, Miss Euphemia, of Lintrose, 211, Murray, Sir William, 97, 21 Nasmyth, Alexander, 184. Netherton, the, 333. New Cumnock, 81. Newmilns, 306. Nicholson, Margaret, 175 Nicol, W: William, xl xlvii and note, 175, 195, 229, Nithsdale, 225, Niven, William, 3 North Berwick "Dory, Bad Ochtertyre, 97, 211. . Oliphant, Rev. James, 332. Osnaburg, Bishop of, 328. Oswald, +, OF ‘Auchencruive, 81. Oswald, Richard, of Auchencruive, 81. Oswald, Richard, the younger, of Auchen- eruive, 257, 7, 342, Oneals, ‘Mrs. Richard (Lucy), of Auchencruive, Geen tortae: 97, 211. Paisley, xxxvi, xxxvil, xli, 248, Park, Anne, a a 308, 309. Parker, Hugh, 13: Parker, Major William, 139, 306. Paton, Elizabeth, xxin., xxv and note, xxvi, xxxvi, xl, 50, 113, 124, Paul, Rev. "Hamilton, 39, 76, 172. Peacock, of Irvine, xxi. Peebles, "Rev. Dr. William, 110, 327, 337. Pentlands, the, 184. Perry, Mr., editor of The Morning Chronicle, 160, 285. Pindar, Peter. pee Wolcott, Dr, John. Pitt, Robert, 326. Pitt, William, Ixilin., 114, 154, 326, 341. Poosie Nansie. See Gibson, Agnes, Prentice of Conington Mains, xlvi n. INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES 381 Queensberry, William Douglas, 4th Duke of, 161, 162, 342. Ramsay, Allan, xxvii, xxviii and note, xxix, xxx n., xxxi and note, xxxvn., lviii, lix, 1, 51, 59, 76, 171, 204, 205, 224, 240, 251, 264, 317; nee ia ae 347, amsay of Ochtertyre, xlv n. Rankine, Anne, 50. : Rankine, John, 50, 343. Rankine, Margaret, 50. Reid, Hugh, 56. Renton, Mr., of Lamerton, 136. Richardson, Gabriel, 198. Richmond, John, xxiv n., xxxvii, xli, xlii n., xliii, 2, 102. Riddell, Captain Robert, of Glenriddell, lii, 80, 100, 142, 219, 230, 342, Riddell, Walter, of Glenriddell, 100. Riddell, Walter, of Woodley Park, 178, 179. Riddell, Mrs. Walter (Maria), of Woodley Park, xliv u., liv, lxv, lxvi, 123, 147, 178, 179, 196, 259, 279, 280, 343. Robertson, Rev. John, 333. Ronalds of the Bennals, the, 169. Rosebery, Lord, lxv. Roslin, 184. Ross, Alexander, 255. Rothesay, 347. Russel, Rev. John, 107, 327, 336, 337, 339. Samson, Tam, 66. Sanguhar, 81, 341. i Scott, Mr. Walter, of Wauchope, 135. Scott, Mrs. Walter (Elizabeth), 134. : Scott, Sir Walter, xliv, xlvn., xlixn., xiv n., Ixvi, 191, 200, 241. Selkirk, 118. : Sempill of Beltrees, xxxi. Shaw, Professor Andrew, 336, Shaw, Rev. Dr. David, 336. Shenstone, William, 1. Shepherd, Rev. John, 338, Sheriffmuir, 227. Sillar, David, xx n., 32, 213, 340. Simpson, William, 47, 182. Sloan, John, 177. Smellie, William, 179, 181, 182, 343, Smith, Miss, of Mauchline, 171. Smith, Adam, xiii. Smith, Rev. George, 326, 327, 337, 338. Smith, James, xxxvi, xxxvii, 15, 102, 195, 343. Staig, Provost, 342. Staig, Miss Jessie, 276. Steenson (or Stevenson), Isabella, 214. Stenhouse, William, 207, 208, 212, 216, 224, 242, 360, 319. Steven, Rev. James, 65. 2 i Stevenson, Robert Louis, xv n., xxii n., XXviln., xxx n., xl, xli and note. Stewart, Mrs., of Afton, 225. Stewart of Hillside, 342. Stewart, Mrs., of Stair, 332, Stewart, Miss Anne, 95, 140. 7 a2 Stewart, Professor Dugald, xxviin., xliii, 117, 130, 338, 332, 339, 341. Stewart, Dr. Matthew, 328. Stewart, Mary, 259. Stewart, Hon. Montgomery, 167. Stewart, William, 259, 311, 341. Stewart Kyle, 325, 346. Stirling, 185. Strathallan, 346, Strathallan, James Drummond of, 205. Stuart, Charlotte, 307. Stuart, Peter, 145. Sutherland, Mr., actor, 150. yme, John, lxiti and note, Izv, 178, 188, 189, 191, 192, 285, 342, Tait, Saunders, xx n., xxin., xxiii n., xlix and note. -Tantallan, 347. Tarbolton, xix, xlix, 56, 194. Taylor, John, 177. Taymouth, 98. Tennant, J ames, 142, Tennant, John, of Glenconner (‘‘guid auld Glen”), lii, 142, 340. Thomson, George, 51, 77, 200, 251, 273, 274, 277, 285, 293, 299, 304, 313, 314, Thomson, Peggy, xx, xl, 52, 76, 131. Thurlow, Lord, 341. Tinnock, Nanse, 9, 326, Tootie, Master, 129. Tweed, the river, 244. Tytler, Professor A. F., 28, 339, Tytler, William, 135, Waddell, Hately, 56. Walker, Professor Josiah, xlv n., 78, 206. Walker, Thomas, 132. Walkinshaw, Miss Clementina, 307. Wallace, Lady, 121. Wallace of Craigie, 328. Wallace, Adam, of Richardton, 328. Warton, Thomas, 18. Welsh, Sheriff of Dumfriesshire, 342. Whigham, of Sanquhar, bailie and innkeeper, 81. Whitefoord, Sir John, Bart., 88, 225, 341, Whitefoord, Mary Anne, 344. William IV., 328. Williams, Helen Maria, lii. Williamson, Mass David, 335. Williamson, James, 123. Wilson, Agnes, 115. Wilson, Hugh, 14. Wilson, John, of Kilmarnock, 1, 54, 55, 59. Wilson, John, of Mauchline, 54. Wilson, John, of Tarbolton, 56. Wodrow, Rev. Dr. Patrick, 337. Wolcott, Dr. Jobn (‘' Peter Pindar ’’), 274, Wood, Alexander, 174. Woodley Park, 178, 179. Woods, William, 149. Wordsworth, William, xxviii n., 12." Wycombe, John Henry Petty, Earl of, 347, or ot Albany, Frederick Augustus, Duke of, 328. Young, Mrs. Grizzel, 198. Young, Rev. James, 337. Young, Rev. Stephen, 337. INDEX OF FIRST LINES [The first lines of Choruses to Songs are included in this Index] A fig for those by law protected, 107. A Guid New-Year I wish thee, Maggie, 26. A head, pure, sinless quite of brain and soul, 186. A highland Jad my love was born, 104. A lassie all alone was making her moan, 250. A little, upright, pert, tart, tripping wight, 181. A rose-bud, by my early walk, 213. ‘A slave to Love’s unbounded sway, 269. A’ the lads o’ Thorniebank, 208. A’ ye wha live by sowps o’ drink, 40. Adieu! a heart-warm, fond adieu, 53. Admiring Nature in her wildest grace, 98. Adown winding Nith I did wander, 277. Ae day, as Death, that gruesome carl, 194. Ae fond kiss, and then we sever, 237. Afar the illustrious Exile roams, 154. Again rejoicing Nature sees, 77. Again the silent wheels of time, 72. » Chloris, since it may not be, 313. Ah, woe is me, my Mother dear, 171. All hail, inexorable lord, 39. All villain as I am—a damnéd wretch, 180. Altho’ he has left me for greed o’ the siller, 315. Altho’ my back be at the wa’, 260. Altho’ my bed were in yon muir, 301. Altho’ thou maun never be mine, 281. Amang the trees, where humming bees, 308. Among the heathy hills and ragged woods, 99. An honest man here lies at rest, 194. An somebodie were come again, 221. ye had been whare I hae been, 229. An’ Charlie he’s my darling, 253. An’ O, for ane-and-twenty, Tam, 239. An’ O my Eppie, 227. Ance crowdie, twice crowdie, 270. Ance mair I hail thee, thou gloomy December, 263. And I’ll kiss thee yet, yet, 213. And maun [I still on Menie doat, 77. Anna, thy charms my bosom fire, 95. As cauld a wind as ever blew, 187. As down the burn they took their way, 316. As father Adam first was fool’d, 53. As I cam doon the banks o’ Nith, 162. As I cam o’er the Cairney mount, 258. As I gaed down the water-side, 224. As I gaed up by yon gate-end, 313. As I stood by yon roofless tower, 250. As I was walking up the street, 270. As Mailie, an’ her lambs thegither, 14. As on the banks of winding Nith, 318. As Tam the chapman on a day, 194. Ask why God made the gem so small, 187. At Brownhill we always get dainty good cheer, 187. Auld Chuckie Reekie ’s sair distrest, 119, Auld comrade dear and brither sinner, 142. Awa’, Whigs, awa’, 223. Awa wi’ your belles and your beauties, 277. Awa wi’ your witchcraft o’ Beauty’s alarms, 277. Ay waukin, O, 217. Bannocks o’ bear meal, 260. Beauteous Rosebud, young and gay, 95. Behind yon hills where Lugar flows, 76. Behold the hour, the boat arrive, 292, 312. Below thir stanes lie Jamie’s banes, 54. Beyond thee, dearie, beyond thee, dearie, 231. Bless Jesus Christ, O Cardoness, 197. Blest be M‘Murdo to his latest day, 178. Blythe, blythe and merry was she, 211. Blythe hae I been on yon hill, 278. Bonie lassie, will ye go, 203. Bonie wee thing, cannie wee thing, 236, Braw, braw lads on Yarrow braes, 271. Bright ran thy line, O Galloway, 189. But lately seen in gladsome green, 261. But rarely seen since Nature’s birth, 193, But warily tent when ye come to court me, 202. Buy braw troggin, 167. By Allan stream I chane’d to rove, 278. By love and by beauty, 227. By Oughtertyre grows the aik, 211. > By yon castle wa’ at the close of the day, 233. Ca’ the yowes to the knowes, 224, 292. Can I cease to care, 290. Canst thou leave me thus, my Katie, 278. Carl, an the King come, 221. Cauld blows the wind frae east to west, 206. Cauld is the e’enin blast, 269. Cease, ye prudes, your envious railing, 185. Clarinda, mistress of my soul, 215. Come boat me o’er, come row me o’er, 212, Come, bumpers high ! express your joy, 311. Come, let me take thee to my breast, 279. Comin thro’ the rye, poor body, 252. Contented wi’ little and cantie wi’ mair, 279, Craigdarroch, fam’d for speaking art, 182. Crochallan came, 182. Cure d be the man, the poorest wretch in life, 7. Cure on ungrateful man, that can be pleased, Daughter of Chaos’ doting years, 154. Dear ——,, I'll gie ye some advice, 184. + Dear Peter, dear Peter, 146. Dear Sir, at onie time or tide, 142. Dear Smith, the slee’st, pawkie thief, 16. Deluded swain, the pleasure, 273, INDEX OF FIRST LINES Dire was the hate at Old Harlaw, 168. ‘oes haughty Gaul invasion threat, 266. Dost ask me why I send thee here, 315. Dost thou not rise, indignant Shade, 177. uncan Gray cam here to woo, 272. Dweller in yon dungeon dark, 81. Edina ! Scotia’s darling seat, 73. Envy, if thy jaundiced eye, 186. ect na, sir, in this narration, 42. Fair Empress of the Poet’s soul, 139. Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, 72. Fair maid, you need not take the hint, 185. Fair the face of orient day, 321. Fairest maid on Devon banks, 289. Fareweel to «’ our Scottish fame, 245. Heer dear friend! may guid luck hit you, Farewell, old Scotia’s bleak domain, 172. Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies, 246. Farewell, thou stream that winding flows, 280. Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North, 223 Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong, 204. Fate gave the word — the arrow sped, 225. Fill me with the rosy wine, 192. Fintry, my stay in worldly strife, 162. First, when Maggie was my care, 221. Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, 247. For a’ that, an’ a” that, 106, 228, For a’ the joys that gowd can gie, 296. For auld lang syne, my dear, 251. For lords or sie I dinna mourn, 120. For O, her lanely nights are lang, 211. For shame. 185. For thee is laughing Nature gay, 315. Forlorn, my love, no comfort near, 292. Fourteen, a sonneteer thy i omc sings, 180, Frae the friends and land I love, 231. Friday first’s the day appointed, 130. Friend of the Poet tried and leal, 147. From the white-blossom’d sloe my dear Chloris requested, 190. From thee, Eliza, T must go, 53. From those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, 123. Full well thou know’st I love thee dear, 289. Fy, let us a’ to Kirkcudbright, 165. Gane is the day, and mirk’s the night, 233. Gat ye me, O, gat ye me, 254, Go, fetch to me a pint o’ wine, 220. Gracie, thou art a man of worth, 192. Grant me, indulgent Heaven, that I may live, es 1 the rashes, O, 77 en grow the rashes. A Gude pity me, because I’m little, 115. Guid e’en to you, kimmer, 264, _ Guid-mornin to your Majesty, 18. Guid speed and furder to you, Johnie, 125. Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie, 43. Had I a cave, 280, . Had I the wyte ? /had I the wyte, 252. \ 383 Hail, Poesie! thou Nymph reserv’d, 318. Hail, thairm-inspirin, rattlin Willie, 133. Hark, the mavis’ e’ening sang, 293. Has auld Kilmarnock seen the Deil, 66. He clench’d his pamphlets in his fist, 184. He looked, 186. He who of Rankine sang, lies stiff and deid 198. g Health to the Maxwells’ vet’ran Chief, 146, Hear, land o’ Cakes, and brither Scots, 94. Heard 7 0’ the Tree o’ France, 320.) Hee balou, my sweet wee Donald, 260. Her daddie forbad, her minnie forbad, 206. Her flowing locks, the raven’s wing, 305. Here awa, there awa, wandering Willie, 270. Here brewer Gabriel’s fire ’s extinct, 198. ere cursing, swearing Burton lies, 198. Here Holy Willie’s sair worn clay, 194. Here is the glen, and here the bower, 273. Here lie Willie Michie’s banes, 196. Here lies a mock Marquis, whose titles were shamm’d, 198. Here lies Boghead amang the dead, 193. Here lies in earth a root of Hell, 198. Here lies John Bushby — honest man, 198. Here lies Johnie Pigeon, 195, Here lies, now a prey to insulting neglect, 197. Here lyes with Dethe auld Grizzel Grimme, 198. Here ’s a bottle and an honest man, 307. Here ’s a health to ane I loe dear, 280. Here’s a health to them that’s awa, 312. Here’s to thy health, my bonie lass, 262. Here Souler’ Heed in Death does sleep, 54. Here Stewarts once in glory reign’d, 185. a where the Scottish Muse immortal lives, 14 Hey, ca’ thro’, ca’ thro’, 248. Hey the dusty miller, 207. Hey tutti, taiti, 210. His face with smile eternal drest, 186. How can my poor heart be glad, 293. met cold is that bosom which Folly once fired, 197. How cruel are the parents, 281. How daur ye ea’ me “ Howlet-face,’’ 188. How lang and dreary is the night, 211. How, 5 iberty !” Girl, can it be by thee nam’d, 190. How pleasant the banks of the clear winding Devon, 209. ei Wisdom and Folly meet, mix, and unite, Humid seal of soft affections, 321. Husband, husband, cease your strife, 281. Iam a Bard, of no regard, 106, I am a fiddler to my trade, 105, Tam a keeper of the law, 124, ; I am a son of Mars, who have been in many wars, 102. Iam my mammie’s ae bairn, 203. I bought my wife a stane o’ lint, 238. I call no Goddess to inspire my strains, 144. I coft a stane o’ haslock woo, 255. T do confess thou art sae fair, 234. I dreams I lay where flowers were springing, 384 INDEX OF FIRST LINES I fee’d a man at Martinmas, 248. I gaed a waefu’ gate yestreen, 230, I gaed up to Dunse, 266. . I gat your letter, winsome Willie, 47. T had sax owsen in a pleugh, 265. T hae a wife o’ my ain, 238. T hae been at Crookieden, 235. I hold it, Sir, my bounden duty, 129. I lang hae thought, my youthfw’ friend, 39. T°ll ay ca’ in by yon town, 257. I’m now arriv’d — thanks to the Gods, 316. I’m o’er young, I’m o’er young, 203. I ’m three times doubly o’er your debtor, 127. I married with a scolding wife, 319. I mind it weel, in early date, 135. I murder hate by field and flood, 188. I never saw a fairer, 298 T once was a maid, tho’ I cannot tell when, 103. I rede you, beware at the hunting, young men, 306. I rue the day I sought her, O, 219. I see a form, I see a face, 284. Ising of a Whistle, a Whistle of worth, 100. I fell yan now this ae night, 295. If thou should ask my love, 220. If ye gae up to yon hill-top, 169. If zon rattle along like your mistress’s tongue, 1 Tll-fated genius! Heaven-taught Fergusson, 176. In coming by the brig o’ Dye, 208. In honest Bacon’s ingle-neuk, 146. In Mawuchline there dwells six proper young belles, 171. In polities if thou wouldst mix, 188, In Berantesti Hunder ’n Forty-Nine, 191. In simmer, when the hay was mawn, 241. In Tarbolton, ye ken, there are proper young men, 169. In this strange land, this uncouth clime, 139. In vain would Prudence with decorous sneer, 183. In wood and wild, ye warbling throng, 196. Inhuman man! curse on thy barb’rous art, 93. ae of a song, boys, Ill give you a toast, 158. Is there a whim-inspired fool, 55, Is there for honest poverty, 294. Is this thy plighted, fond regard, 278. It is na, Jean, thy bonie face, 235. It was a’ for our rightfu’ king, 262. It was in sweet Senegal, 246. It was the charming month of May, 282. It was upon a Lammas night, 51. Jamie, come try me, 219. Jockie ’s ta’en the parting kiss, 268. John Anderson my jo, John, 223. Kemble, thou cur’st my unbelief, 191. Ken ye ought o’ Captain Grose, 122. Kilmarnock wabsters, fidge an’ claw, 63. Kind Siz, I’ve read your paper through, 145. Know thou, O stranger to the fame, 54. Lady Onlie, honest lucky, 208, Lament him, Mauchline husbands a’, 195. Lament in rhyme, lament in prose, 15. Landlady, count the lawin, 210. Lang hae we parted been, 218. Lassie wi’ the lint-white locks, 289. Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen, 282. . Late crippl’d of an arm, and now a leg, 85. Let loove sparkle in her e’e, 316. Let me ryke up to dight that tear, 105. Let not women e’er complain, 274, Let other heroes boast their scars, 116. Let other poets raise a fracas, 5. Life ne’er exulted in so rich a prize, 176. Light lay the earth on Billie’s breast, 197. Lone on the bleaky hills, the straying flocks, 175. Long life, my lord, an’ health be yours, 153. Long, long the night, 290. ! Lord, Thee we thank, and Thee alone, 193. Lord, to account who does Thee call, 188. Loud blaw the frosty breezes, 207.; Louis, what reck I by thee, 252. Lovely was she by the dawn, 282. Mally ’s meek, Mally ’s sweet, 270. Mark yonder pomp of costly fashign, 294. Maxwell, if merit here you crave, 190. Meet me on the Warlock Knowe, 283. Maid pephyes waft thee to life’s shore, Musing on the roaring ocean, 211. My blessings on ye, honest wife, 184. My bonie lass, I work in brass, 105. My bottle is a holy pool, 188. : My Chloris, mark how green the groves, 288. My curse upon your venom’d stang,, 118. My father was a farmer upon the Carrick border, O, 302. : My godlike friend — nay, do not stare, 140. My Harry was a gallant gay, 216... My heart is a-breaking, dear tittie, 230. My heart is sair —I dare na tell, 254. My heart is wae, and unco wae, 307 My heart ’s in the Highlands, my ere, 223, My heart was ance as blythe and free, 202, My honor’d Colonel, deep I feel, 147. My lady’s gown, there ’s gairs upon ’t, 267. My lord a-hunting he is gane, 267. | My lord, I know, your noble ear, 96 My lov’d, my honor’d, much respected friend, eart is not 'e t My love, she ’s but a lassie yet, 219.' My love was born in Aberdeen, 225.: My Fesgy's face, my Peggy’s form, 264. My Sandy gied to me a ring, 216. My Sandy O, my Sandy O, 216. Myra, the captive ribband ’s mine, 222, Nae gentle dames, tho’ ne’er sae fair, 205. Nae heathen name shall I prefix, 137. Near me, near me, 218. No churchman am I for to rail and to write, 79. No cold approach, no alter’d mien, 315. Hip anise of your guests, be they titled or not, Ne more, ye warblers of the wood, no more, INDEX OF FIRST LINES 385 Ne gountne marble here, nor pompous lay, Ne gong nor dance I bring from yon great city, No Spartan tube, no Attic shell, 158, No Stewart art thou, Galloway, 189. Now haply down yon gay green shaw, 257. Now health forsakes that angel face, 323. Now honest William ’s gaen to Heaven, 196, on her green mantle blythe Nature arrays, Now, Kennedy, if foot or horse, 128. Now Nature cleeds the flowery Tea, 290. Now Nature hangs her mantle green, 84. Now Robin lies in his last lair, 172. Now rosy May comes in wi’ flowers, 283, Now simmer blinks on flow’ry braes, 203, ow spring has clad the grove in green, 284, Now westlin winds and slaught’ring guns, 52. O @ ye pious, godt flocks, 107. O, an ye were dead, guidman, 251, , ay my wife she dang me, 265, O, bonie was yon rosy brier, 291, O, cam ye here the fight to shun, 227. O, can ye labour lea, young man, 248, O, could I give thee te ia’s wealth, 143, O Death, hadst thou but spared his life, 53, O Death! thou tyrant fell and bloody, 82. , for him back again, 216, Goudie, terror o’ the Whigs, 125, , guid ale comes and guid ale goes, 265, i had each Scot of ancient times, 186. , had the malt thy strength of mind, 192, , he’s a ranting, roving lad, 225, , how can I be blythe and glad, 234, , how shall I, unskilfu’, try, 237, , Lam come to the low countrie, 263, , Jenny ’s a’ weet, poor body, 252. John, come kiss me now, now, now, 232, , ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten, 268, 313. S09 S&S SO9999999 , Kenmure ’s on and awa, Willie, 239, O, Lady Mary Aun looks o’er the Castle wa’, 244. O lassie, are ye sleepin yet, 295, O, lay thy loof in mine, lass, 269, O, leave novéls, ye Mauchline belles, 303. O, leeze me on my spinnin-wheel, 240, O, let me in this ae night, 295. O Logan, sweetly didst thou glide, 291. O Lord, when hunger pinches sore, 193, O lovely Polly Stewart, 259. O, lave will venture in where it daur na weel be seen, 243, O Mary, at thy window be, 299, O May, thy morn was ne’er sae sweet, 258, O, meikle thinks my luve o’ my beauty, 232. O, merry hae I been teethin a heckle, 224. O, mirk, mirk is this midnight hour, 274. O, mount and go, 220. O, my bonie Highland lad, 258. O, my luve is like a red, red rose, 250, O, once I lov’d a bonie lass, 267. O, open the door some pity to shew, 271. O Philly, happy be that day, 296. O Poortith cauld and restless Love, 275. O, raging Fortune's withering blast, 302. O, rattlin, roarin Willie, 213. O rough, rude, ready-witted Rankine, 50. , sad and. heavy should I part, 256. , saw ye bonie Lesley, 275. , saw ye my Dear, my Philly, 314. , saw ye my dearie, my Eppie Macnab, 236. , Sing a new song to the Lord, 156. , Some will court and compliment, 232. , Stay, sweet warbling wood-lark, stay, 275. , steer her up, an’ haud her gaun, 264. , sweet be thy sleep in the land of the grave, 323, , tell me na o’ wind an’ rain, 295. , that I had ne’er been married, 270. , that’s the lassie o’ my heart, 284. , this is no my ain lassie, 284. Thou dread Power, who reign’st above, 70. O Thou Great Being! what Thou art, 71. O Thou, in whom we live and move, 193. O thou pale Orb that silent shines, 34. O Thou that in the Heavens does dwell, 109. O Thou, the first, the greatest friend, 71. O Thou unknown, Almighty Cause, 38. O thou! whatever title suit thee, 12. O Thou, who kindly dost provide, 193. O thou whom Poesy abhors, 184. O Tibbie, I hae seen the day, 214. , wat ye wha’s in yon town, 257. , wat ye wha that lo’es me, 285. , were I on Parnassus hill, 222. , were my love yon lilac fair, 297. , wert thou in the cauld blast, 315. , wert thou, love, but near me, 292. , wha my babie-clouts will buy, 226. , wha, will to Saint Stephen’s House, 159. , whar gat ye that hauver-meal bannock, 201. , whare live ye, my bonie lass, 240. , when she cam ben, she bobbad fu’ law, 239. , whistle an’ Ill come to ye, my lad, 202. , why should Fate sie pleasure have, 274. , why the deuce should I repine, 170. , Willie brew’d a peck o’ maut, 229, O, wilt thou go wi’ me, sweet Tibbie Dunbar,216. O ye wha are sae guid yoursel, 65, O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, 54. Of a’ the airts the winds can Blew 221, Of all the numerous ills that hurt our peace, 2 Oooo lejojejelelejlejeje) S99909909099090909990 181. Of Lordly acquaintance you boast, 187. Old Winter, with his frosty beard, 179, On a bank of flowers in a summer day, 218. On Cessnock banks a lassie dwells, 301. On peace an’ rest. my mind was bent, 265, Ones fondly lov’d and still remember’d dear, 1 One night as I did wander, 304. One Queen Artemisa, as old stories tell, 54, Oppress’d with grief, oppress’d with care, 35. Orthodox! orthodox, 111. Our thrissles flourish’d fresh and fair, 223. Out over the Forth, I look to the north, 253, Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare, 175. ‘* Praise Woman still,” his lordship roars, 190. ee mortal, and slanderous poet, thy name, 186, 386 INDEX OF FIRST LINES Raving winds around her blowing, 210. Reveréd defender of beauteous Stuart, 136. Right, sir! your text Ill prove it true, 65. Robin shure in hairst, 266. Robin was a rovin boy, 304. Rusticity’s ungainly.form, 181, eae bird of night, what sorrow calls thee forth, 21, Sad thy tale, thou idle page, 96. Sae flaxen were her ringlets, 255. Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 204. ay, sages, what’s the charm on earth, 193. Scots, wha.hae wi’ Wallace bled, 286. Searching auld wives’ barrels, 187. See the smoking bowl before us, 107. Sensibility how charming, 234, She is a winsome wee thing, 298. She kiltit up her kirtle weel, 121. She’s aye, aye sae blithe, sae gay, 311. She’s fair and fause that causes my smart, 249, Should auld acquaintance be forgot, 251, Simmer’s a pleasant time, 217. Sing hey my braw John Highlandman, 104. Seng on, sweet thrush, upon the leafiess bough, 17. Sing, round about the fire wi’ a rung she ran, Sir, as your mandate did request, 114, Sir, o’er a gill I gat your card, 129. Sir Wisdom’s a fool when he’s fou, 104. Sleep’st thou, or wauk’st thou, fairest crea- ture, 297. So heavy, passive to the tempest’s shocks, 186. coe was poor Wat, such a miscreant slave, Some books are lies frae end to end, 57. Spare me thy vengeance, Galloway, 189. Stay, my charmer, can you leave me, 205. Still anxious to secure your partial favor, 152. Stop, passenger! my story’s brief, 83. “Stop thief!” Dame Nature call’d to Death, 198 Strait is the spot, and green the sod, 316. Streams that glide in Orient plains, 121. Sweet are the banks, the banks o’ Doon, 309. Siyeet closes the ev’ning on Craigieburn Wood, Sweet fa’s the eve on Craigieburn, 276. Sweet flow’ret, pledge o’ meikle love, 99. Sweet naiveté of feature, 189. Sweetest May, let Love inspire thee, 268. Symon Gray, you’re dull to-day, 137. Talk not to me of savages, 192. That hackney’d judge of human life, 193. That there is a falsehood in his looks, 191. e bairns gat out wi’ an unco shout, 249. The blude-red rose at Yule may blaw, 212. The boniest lad that e’er I saw, 259. The cardin o’t, the spinnin o’t, 255, The cares 0’ Love are sweeter far, 183. The Catrine woods were yellow seen, 225. The Cooper o’ Cuddy came here awa, 254. The crimson blossom charms the bee, 137. The day returns, my bosom burns, 219. The Deil cam fiddlin thro’ the town, 249. The Deil’s awa, the Deil’s awa, 249. The Devil got notice that Grose was a-dying, 186. The flower it blaws, it fades, it fa’s, 259. The friend whom, wild from Wisdom’s way, 147. The gloomy night is gath’ring fast, 78. 4 The greybeard, old Wisdom, may boast of his treasures, 188, The heather was blooming, the meadows were the emp afd h ill: Jai e lamp of day with ill-presaging glare, 173. The lang lad they ca’ Jumpin Sohn 206. The lazy mist hangsfrom the brow of thehill, 220, The lovely lass of Inverness, 250. The man, in life wherever plac’d, 70. The night was still, and o’er the hill, 306. The noble Maxwells and their powers, 241. The ploughman, he’s a bonie lad, 210. The poor man weeps — here Gavin sleeps, 55. The simple Bard, rough at the rustic plough, 59. The small birds rejoice in the green leaves re- turnin; a ee The smiling Spring comes in rejoicing, 247. The Solemn League and Covenant, 191. The sun had clos’d the winter day, 20. The sun he is sunk in the west, 300. The tailor fell thro’ the bed, thimble an’ a’, 217. The tailor he cam here to sew, 261. The Thames flows proudly to the sea, 230. The tither morn, when I forlorn, 237. The wean wants a cradle, 269. The weary pund, the weary pund, 238. The wind blew hollow frae the hills, 87. The winter it is past, and the simmer comes at last, 215. The wintry west extends his blast, 37. Their groves o’ sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon, 286. Then, guidwife, count the lawin, 233. Then hey for a lass wi’ a tocher, 277. Then up wi’t a’, my ploughman lad, 210. Theniel Menzies’ bonie Mary, 208. There grows a bonie brier-bush in our kail- yard, 261. There lived a carl in Kellyburn Braes, 245. There * a youth in this city, it were a great pity, 222. There’s Auld Rob Morris that wons in yon glen, 271. There ’s Death in the cup, so beware, 192. Ti *s nane shall ken, there ’s nane can guess, 7. There’s news, lasses, news, 269. There ’s nought but care on ev’ry han’, 77. There’s three true guid fellows, 255. There wasa bonie lass, and a bonie, bonie lass, 269. There was a.lad was born in Kyle, 304. There was a lass, and she was fair, 297. There was a lass, they ca’d her Meg, 208. - There was a wife wonn’d in Cockpen, 265. There was five carlins in the South, 160. There was on a time, but old Time was then young, 310. There was three kings into the east, 74. They snool me sair, and haud me down, 239. Thickest night, surround my dwelling, 205. . Thine am I, my faithful Fair, 287. Thine be the volumes, Jessie fair, 148, ! | INDEX OF FIRST LINES 387 This day Time winds th’ exhausted chain, 123. This wot ye all whom it concerns, 117. Tho’ cruel fate should bid us part, 205. Tho’ fickle Fortune has deceived me, 302. Tho’ women’s minds like winter winds, 228. Thou flatt’ring mark of friendship kind, 171. Thou Fool, in thy phaeton towering, 191. Thou hast ‘left me ever, Jamie, 287. Thou, Liberty, thou art my theme, 157. ou ling’ring star with less’ning ray, 226, Thou of an independent mind, 192. Thou’s welcome, wean! Mishanter fa’ me, 113. Thou, who thy honour as thy God rever’st, 88. Thou whom chance may hither lead, 80, 120. Through and through th’ inspirad leaves, 184. "Ts Braudahip's pledge, my young, fair Friend, To daunton me, to daunton me, 212. To Riddell, much-lamented man, 192. To the weaver’s gin ye go, fair maids, 202. To you, Sir, this summons I’ve sent, 131. True hearted was he, the sad swain o’ the Yar- row, 276. Turn again, thou fair Eliza, 242. *T was even: the dewy fields were green, 305. T was in the Seventeen Hunder year, 166. 'T was na her bonie blue e’e was my ruin, 314. T was on a Monday morning, 253. *T was that place o’ Scotland’s isle, 2. °T was where the birch and sounding thong are ply’d, 322. Up and waur them a’, Jamie, 161. Up in the morning’s no for me, 206, Up wi’ the carls of Dysart, 248. Upon a simmer Sunday morn, 9. pon that night, when fairies light, 23. Wae is my heart, and the tear ’s in my e’e, 260, Wae worth thy power, thou cursed leaf, 172. Wantonness for evermair, 253 Wap and rowe, wap and rowe, 257. We are nae fou, we’re nae that fou, 229. ‘We cam na here to view your warks, 185. We grant they ’re thine, those beauties all, 187. We ll hide the cooper behint the door, 254. We'll o’er the water, we ‘ll o’er the sea, 212. We're a’ noddin, 264. Weary fa’? you, Duncan Gray, 209. Wee, modest, crimson-tippdd flow’r, 38. Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie, 31. Wee Willie Gray an’ his leather wallet, 264. Wha in a brulyie, 260. Wha is that at my bower door, 236. Wha will buy my troggin, 167. Wham will we send to London town, 164. Whare are you gaun, my bonie lass, 228, Whare hae ye been sae braw, lad, 229. What ails ye now, ye lousie bitch, 132. What can a young lassie, 233. What dost thou in that mansion fair, 189, What man could esteem, or what woman could love, 196: What needs this din about the town o’ Lon’on, 150. What will I do gin my hoggie die, 206. When biting Boreas, fell and doure, 68. When by a generous Public’s kind acclaim, 149. When chapman billies leave the street, 90. When chill November’s surly blast, 36. When dear Clarinda, matchless fair, 138. When Death’s dark stream I ferry o’er, 186. When Eighty-five was seven months auld, 115. When first I came to Stewart Kyle, 304. When first I saw fair Jeanie’s face, 311. : When first my brave Johnie lad came to this town, 232. When Guilford good our pilot stood, 75. When in my arms, wi’ a’ thy charms, 213. When Januar’ wind was blawin cauld, 256. When Lascelles thought fit from this world to depart, 197. When lyart leaves bestrow the yird, 102. When Morine, deceas’d, to the Devil went down, 189. When Nature her great masterpiece design’d, 140. When o’er the hill the eastern star, 298. When rosy May comes in wi’ flowers, 218. When the drums do beat, 220, When wild War’s deadly blast was blawn, 272. Where are the joys I hae met in the morning, Where, braving angry winter’s storms, 214. ere Cart rins rowin to the sea, 248. Wherefore sighing art thou, Phillis, 258. While at the stook the shearers cow’r, 126. While briers an’ woodbines budding green, 44. While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things, 151. While larks with little wing, 314. While new-ca’d kye rowte at the stake, 46. While virgin Spring by Eden’s flood, 93. ile winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw, 32, Whoe’er he be that sojourns here, 185. Whoe’er thou art, O reader, know, 54. Whose is that noble, dauntless brow, 173. Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene, 69, Why should we idly waste our prime, 319 Why, why tell thy lover, 314. Why, ye tenants of the lake, 97. Wi’ braw new branks in mickle pride, 131. Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, 304. Willie Wastle dwalt on Tweed, 244. Wilt thou be my dearie, 259. Wishfully I look and languish, 237. With Aisop’s lion, Burns says : Sore I feel, 186, With Pegasus upon a day, 177. Within the glen sae bushy, O, 205. Wow, but your letter made me vauntie, 144. Ye banks and braes and streams around, 288, Ye banks and braes o’ bonie Doon, 243. Ye flowery banks 0’ bonie Doon, 310. Ye gallants bright, I rede you right, 217. Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks, 190. Ye Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires, 6. ‘Ye Jacobites by name, 242. Ye maggots, feed on Nicol’s brain, 196. Ye men of wit and wealth, why all this sneer- ing, 190. Ye sons of old Killie, assembled by Willie, 306. ae oe “loyal Natives,’ attend to my song, 188. 388 INDEX OF FIRST LINES Ye ’ve heard this while how I’ve been licket, 147. Yestreen I.had a pint 0’ wine, 309. Yestreen I met you on the moor, 214, Yon wild mossy mountains sae lofty and wide, 235 You ’re welcome to Despots, 178. You ’re weleome, Willie Stewart, 311, Young Jamie, pride of a’ the plain, 253. Young Jockie was the blythest lad, 228. Young Peggy blooms our boniest lass, 201. Your billet, Sir, I grant receipt, 136. wou friendship much can make me blest, Your News and Review, Sir, 142. Yours this moment I unseal, 130. INDEX OF TITLES A Lass wi’ a Tocher, 277, A Rose-Bud, by my Early Walk, 213. Adam Armour’s Prayer, 115. Additional Lines at Stirling, 186. ADDITIONS IN THE EpinBuRGH EpITIoN oF 1787, 55. ADDITIONS IN THE EprnsuRGH EDITION oF 1793, 80. . Address of Beelzebub, 153. Address spoken by Miss Fontenelle, 152. Address to a Haggis, 72. Address to Edinburgh, 73. Address to the Deil, 12, Address to the Shade of Thomson, 93. Address to the Toothache, 118, Address to the Unco Guid, 65. Adown Winding Nith, 276. Ae Fond Kiss, 237. Against the Earl of Galloway (Four Epigrams), 189. Ah, Chloris, 313. , Woe is me, my Mother Dear, 171. Aiken, Robert, Esq., Epitaph for, 54. Ainslie, Miss, in Church, On, 185, Allan Stream, By, 278. Altar of Independence, For an, 192. Altho’ he has left me, 315, Amang the Trees, 308. An ye were Dead, Guidman, O, 251. And I'll kiss thee yet, 213. Apology to John Syme, 192. Apostrophe to Fe son, 170. Armour’s, Adam, Prayer, 115. Artist, To an, 184, As down the Burn, 316. As I cam doon the Banks o’ Nith, 162. As I came o’er the Cairney Mount, 258, As I stood by yon Roofless Tower, 250. At Brownhill Inn, 187. At Carron Ironworks, 185. At Friars Carse Hermitage, 192, At Inveraray, 185. At Roslin Inn, 184, At the Globe Tavern, 193. At the Globe Tavern, Dumfries, 188. At Whigham’s Inn, Sanquhar, 186, Auld Farmer’s New-Year Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare, Maggie, The, 26, Auld Lang Syne, 251. Auld Rob Morris, 271. Author, On the, 198. Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer, The, 6. Author’s Father, Epitaph for the, 54, Awa’, Whigs, Awa’, 223, Ay Waukin, O, 217. Babington’s, Dr., Looks, On, 191. Ballads on Mr. Heron’s Election, 164. Bank Note, Lines written on a, 172. Banks o’ Doon, The, 243. Banks of Nith, The, 230. Banks of the Devon, The, 209, Bannocks o’ Bear Meal, 260. Bard’s Epitaph, A, 55, Battle of Sherramuir, The, 227. Beautiful Country Seat, On a, 187. Beelzebub, Address of, 153. Behold the Hour, 292, Behold the Hour (First Set), 312. Being appointed to an Excise Division, On, 187, Belles of Mauchline, The, 171. Beware o’ Bonie 217. Birks of Aberfeldie, The, 203. Birth of a Posthumous Child, On the, 99. Birthday Ode for 31st December, 1787, 153. Blacklock, Dr., Epistle to, 144. Be Sa James Hunter, Elegy on the Death of, 173. Blue-eyed Lassie, The, 230. Blythe hae I been on yon Hill, 277. Blythe was She, 211 Bonie Bell, 247. Bonie Briar-Bush, There grows a, 261. Bonie Dundee, 201. Bonie Lad that’s far awa, The, 234. Bonie Lass of Albanie, The, 307. Bonie Lesley, Saw ye, 275. Bonie Moor-Hen, The, 306. | Bonie Wee Thing, 236. Book-Worms, The, 184. Braes o’ Ballochmyle, The, 225. Braving Angry Winter’s Storms, Where, 214. Braw Lads o’ Galla Water, 271. Brigs of Ayr, The, 59. Brownhill te. At, 187. Barely Miss, of Monboddo, Elegy on the Late, Burns, Miss, Under the Portrait of, 185. Bushby, John, of Tinwald Downs, On, 198. Bushby’s, John, Lamentation, 166 By Allan Stream, 278. Ca’ the Yowes to the Knowes, 224. Ca’ the Yowes to the Knowes (Second Set), 292. Cairney Mount, As I came o’er the, 258. Caledonia, 310. Calf, The, 65. Can ye Labour Lea, O, 248. Canst thou leave me, 278. Captain’s Lady, The, 220, Captive Ribband, The, 222. Cardin o’t, The, 255. Cares 0’ Love, The, 183. Carl, an the King come, 221, Carron Ironworks, At, 185. Castle Gordon, 121. 39° INDEX OF TITLES Cauld is the E’enin Blast, 269. ‘halmers’, Willie. Sweetheart, To, 180. Charlie, he’s my Darling, 253. Charming Month, It was the, 281. Chevalier’s Lament, The, 308. Chloris, Ah, 313. Chloris, On, 190. Clarinda, To, with a Pair of Wine-Glasses, 139. Clarinda, Mistress of my Soul, 215. Cock ee ae Beaver, 232. Collier Laddie, My, 240. Come, let me take thee, 279. Comin thro’ the Rye, 252. Cenimemorsaen of Rodney’s Victory, On the, 15. Commissary Goldie’s Brains, On, 188. Composed in Spring, f Contented wi’ Little, 279. Cooper o’ Cuddy, The, 254. Corn Rigs, 51. Cotter’s Saturday Night, The, 28. Court of Session, Extempore in the, 183. Craigieburn Wood, 231. Creech, William, On, 181, Creech, William, Publisher, Lament for the Absence of, 118. Cruickshank, Miss, To, 95. Cruickshank, William, A. M., For, 196. Cunningham, Alex., To, 140. Daer, Lord, Lines on meeting with, 117. Daisy, To a Mountain, 38. Davie, To. Second Epistle, 127. Davie, a Brother Poet, Epistle to, 32. Davies, Lovely, 237, Davies, Miss, On, 187, Day returns, The, 219. De Peyster, Colonel, To, 147. Dean of the Faculty, The, 168, Death and Dr. Hornbook, 56. Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, The, Death of a Favourite Child, On the, 323. Dedication, A, 41. Deil, Address to the, 12. Deil ’s awa wi’ th’ Exciseman, The, 249. Delia, 321. Deluded Swain, the Pleasure, 273. Departed Regency Bill, Ode to the, 154. Departed Year 1788, Elegy on the, 120. Despondency, 35. Destruction of Drumlanrig Woods, On the, 318. Deuk’s dang o’er my Daddie, The, 249. Does Haughty Gaul Invasion threat, 266. Dove, John, Innkeeper, On, 195. Dream, A, 18. Drumlanrig Woods, On the Destruction of, 318. Duchess of Gordon’s Reel Dancing, On the, 121. Dumourier’s, General, Desertion, On, 177. Duncan Davison, 207. Dunean Gray, 209. Dunean Gray (Second Set), 272. Dundas, Lord President, On the Death of, 174. Dusty Miller, The, 207. Earl of Galloway, Against the. (Four Epi- grams), 189. Earl of Glencairn, James, Lament for, 87. Earnest Cry and Prayer, The Author’s, 6. Edinburgh, Address to, 73. Election, The, 165. Election Ballad at close of the Contest for Re: neces, the Dumfries Burghs, 1790, 162. lection Ballad for Westerha’, 161. Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson, 82. Elegy on Stella, 316. Elegy on the Death of Robert Ruisseaux, 172. Elegy on the Death of Sir James Hunter Blair, 173. Elegy on the Departed Year 1788, 120. Elegy on the Late Miss Burnet of Monboddo, Elegy on Willie Nicol’s Mare, 175. Eliza, Fair, 242. Elphinstone’s Translation of Martial, On, 184. EPiIcRAMs. | Additional Lines at Stirling, 186. Against the Earl of Galloway (Four Epi- abies: > John Syme, 192 pology to John Syme, i At Brownhill Inn, 187. At Carron Ironworks, 185. . At Friars Carse Hermitage, 192, At Inveraray, 185. At Roslin Inn, 184. At the Globe Tavern, Dumfries, 188, At Whigham’s Inn, Sanquhar, 186. Book-Worms, The, 184. Extempore in the Court of Session, 183. For an Altar of Independence, 192. Highland Welcome, A, 186. In a Lady’s Pocket Book, 188. In Lamington Kirk, 187. Keekin Glass, The, 188. Kirk and State Excisemen, 190. On a Beautiful Country Seat, 187. On a Goblet, 192. On a Henpecked Squire, 53, 54. On Andrew Turner, 191. On being appointed to an Excise Division, 187. On Captain Peace Grose, 186. On Chloris, 190. On Commissary Goldie’s Brains, 188, On Dr. Babington’s Looks, 191. On Elphinstone’s Translation of Martial, 184. On Johnson’s Ceunee of Hampden, 184. On Maria Riddell, 189. On Marriage, 193. On Miss Ainslie in Church, 185. On Miss Davies, 187. On Miss Fontenelle, 189. On Miss Jean Scott, 186. On Mr. James Gracie, 192. On seeing Mrs. Kemble in Yarico, 191. | On seeing the Royal Palace at Stirling in Ruins, 185. On eee eer a National Victory, 190. On the Laird of Laggan, 189. ; Pinned to Mrs. Walter Riddell’s Carriage, 190. Reply to the Threat of a Censorious Critie, 186. Solemn League and Covenant, The, 191. To an Artist, 184. \ INDEX OF TITLES 39r To Dr. Maxwell, 190. To John Syme of Ryedale, 191. To the Beautiful Miss Eliza J—n, 190. To the Hon. Wm. R. Maule of Panmure, 191. Toadeater, The, 187. Tyrant Wife, The, 187. under the Portrait of Miss Burns, 185. Versicles on Sign-Posts, 186. Versicles to Jessie Lewars, 192. Ye True Loyal Natives, 188. 2ISTLES AND Norss, Extempore to Gavin Hamilton, 131. [Impromptu to Captain Riddell, 142. Remorseful Apology, 147. Reply to a Note from Captain Riddell, 142, only to a Trimming Epistle received from a Tailor, 132. Reply to an Invitation, 180. Sonnet to Robert Graham, Esq., of Fintry, 144, pi vender to Clarinda, 138, ‘o a Gentleman, 145. To a Young Friend, 39. To Alex. Cunningham, 140. To an Old Sweetheart, 131. To Clarinda, with a Pair of Wine-Glasses, 139. To Collector Mitchell, 147. To Colonel De Peyster, 147. To Davie, a Brother Poet, 32. To Davie. Second Epistle, 127. To Dr. Blacklock, 144. To Dr. Mackenzie, 130. To Gavin Hamilton, Esq., Mauchline, 129, To Buen Parker, 139. To J. Lapraik, 44. To J. Lapraik. Second Epistle, 46. To J. Lapraik. Third Epistle, 125. To James Smith, 15. To James Tennant of Glenconner, 142. To John Goldie, 125. To John Kennedy. A Farewell, 130. To John Kennedy, Dumfries House, 128. To John M‘Murdo, 143. To John Maxwell, Esq., of Terraughtie, 146. To John Rankine, 50. To John Rankine, in Reply to an Announce- ment, 124.. To Major Logan, 133. To Miss Ferrier, 137. To Miss Isabella Macleod, 137. Lo Miss Jessie Lewars, 148. To Mr. McAdam of Craigen-Gillan, 129. [o Mr. Renton of Lamerton, 136. To Peter Stuart, 146. ; [o Robert Graham, Esq., of Fintry, Request- ing a Favour, 140. [o Robert Graham of Fintry, Esq., 85. Lo Symon Gray, 137. [o the Guidwite of Wauchope House, 134, [o the Rev. John M‘Math, 126, Co William Simpson of Ochiltree, 47. Lo William Stewart, 146, Co Wm. Tytler, Esq, of Woodhouselee, 135. [o Willie Chalmers Sweetheart, 130. ITAPHS. 4 Bard’s, 55. for Gabriel Richardson, 198. For Gavin Hamilton, Esq., 55. For Mr. Walter Riddell, 197. For Mr. William Michie, 196, For Robert Aiken, Esq., 54. For the Author’s Father, 54. For William Cruickshank, A. M., 196. For William Nicol, 195. On a Celebrated Ruling Elder, 54. On a Galloway Laird, 197. On a Henpecked Squire, 53. On a Lap-Dog, 196. On a Lady famed for her Caprice, 196. On a Noisy Polemie, 54. = On a Noted Coxcomb, Capt. Wm. Roddick, of Corbiston, 197. On a Suicide, 198. On a Swearing Coxcomb, 198. On a Wag in Mauchline, 195, ; Ge an Innkeeper nicknamed ‘‘ The Marquis,” 98, On Capt. Lascelles, 197. On Captain Matthew Henderson, 83, On Grizzel Grimme, 198. On Holy Willie, 194. On James Grieve, Laird of Boghead, Tar- bolton, 193. ‘ On John paehy of Tinwald Downs, 198, On John Dove, Innkeeper, 195. On John Rankine, 194. On Robert Fergusson, 195. On Robert Muir, 196. On Tam the Chapman, 194. On the Author, 198. On Wee Johnie, 54. On Wm. Graham of Mossknowe, 198. On Wm. Muir in Tarbolton Mill, 194. Eppie Adair, 227. Eppie Macnab, My, 236. Esopus to Maria, From, 123. Excise Division, On being appointed to an, 187. Extempore in the Court of Beentoah 183. Extempore to Gavin Hamilton, 131. Fair Eliza, 242. Fairest Maid on Devon Banks, 288. Fall of Fyers near Loch Ness, Lines on the, 98, Farewell, The, 172. Farewell, thou Stream, 279. Farewell to the Brethren of St. James’s Lodge, The, 53. Farmer’s New-Year Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare, Maggie, The Auld, 26. Favourite Child, On the Death of a, 323, Favourite Child, On the Illness of a, 323. Fergusson, Apostrophe to, 170. Eoremiean, pe hag ee ergusson, Robert, On, '. Ferrier, Miss, To, 187. Féte Champétre, The, 159. Fickle Fortune, Tho’, 302. First Psalm, Paraphrase of the, 70. Five Carlins, The, 160. Flowery Banks, Ye, 310. Flowing Locks, Her, 305. Fontenelle, Miss, On, 189. For an Altar of Independence, 192, For Gabriel Richardson, 198. 392 For Gavin Hamilton, Esq., Epitaph, 55. For Mr. Walter Riddell, 197. For Mr. William Michie, 196. For Robert Aiken, Esq., Epitaph, 54. For the Author’s Father, Epitaph, 54. For the Sake o’ Somebody, 254. For thee is Laughing Nature, 315. For William Cruickshank, A. M., 196. For William Nicol, 195. Forlorn, my Love, 292. , Fox, Right Hon. C. J., Inscribed to the, 156. Frae the Friends and ‘Lands I love, 231. Fragment, A: When Guilford Good, 75. Friars Carse Hermitage, At, 192. Friars Carse Hermitage, Verses in, 120. Friars Carse Hermitage on Nithside, Written in, 80. : From Esopus to Maria, 123. Gallant Weaver, The, 248. Galloway, Earl of, Against the. grams), 189. Galloway Laird, On a, 197. Gard’ner wi’ his Paidle, The, 218. Gentleman, To a, 145. Glenriddell’s Fox breaking his Chain, On, 157. Globe Tavern, At the, 193. Globe Tavern, Dumfries, At the, 188. Gloomy December, Thou, 263. Gloomy Night is gathering fast, The, 78. Goblet, On a, 192. Goldie, John, To, 125. Gordon’s, Duchess of, Reel Dancing, On the, 121 Graces, 193. Gracie, Mr. James, On, 192. aham, Miss, of Fintry, Inscription to, 146. Graham, Robert, Esq., of Fintry, Sonnet to, 144. Graham, Robert, Esq., of Fintry, To, Request- ing a Favour, 140. Graham, Robert, of Fintry, mere To, 85. Graham, Wm., of Mossknowe, On, 198. Gray, Symon, To, 137. Green grow the Rashes, O, 76. Grieve, James, Laird of Boghead, Tarbolton, On, 193. Grizzel Grimme, On, 198. Grose, Captain, On, 122. Grose, Captain Francis, On, 186. Grose’s, Captain, Peregrinations thro’ Scotland, On the Late, 94. Groves o’ Sweet Myrtle, Their, 285, Guid Ale comes, O, 265. Guidwife, count the Lawin, 2322. Guidwife of Wauchope House, To the, 134. Guilford Good, When, 75. Had I a Cave, 280. Had I the Wyte, 252. Haggis, Address to a, 72. Halloween, 23. Hamilton, Gavin, Extempore to, 131. Hamilton, Gavin, Esq., A Dedication to, 41. ‘Hamilton, Gavin, Esq., Epitaph for, 55. Hamilton, Gavin, Esq., Mauchline, To, 129, Haughty Gaul Invasion threat, Does, 266; Henderson, Captain Matthew, Elegy on, 82. (Four Epi- INDEX OF TITLES Her Flowing Locks, 305. Here is the Glen, 273. Here ’s a Bottle, 307. Here’s a Health, 280. Here’s a Health to them that’s awa’, 312. Here’s his Health in Water, 260. Here’s to thy Health, 261. Heron’s, Mr., Election, Ballads on, 164, Hey, Ca’ thro’, 248. Highland Balou, The, 260. Highland Harry, 216. Highland Laddie, 259. Highland Lassie, O, My, 204. Highland Mary, 287. Highland Welcome, A, 186. Highland Widow’s ‘Lament, The, 263. Hoggie, My, 206. Holy Fair, The, 9. Holy Tulyie, The Twa Herds: or, The, 107. Holy Willie, On, 194, Holy Willie’s Prayer, 109. Hornbook, Death and Dr., 56. How can my Poor Heart, 293. How Cruel are the Parents, 281. How Lang and Dreary is the Night, 211. Humble Petition of Bruar Water, The, 96. Husband, Husband, cease your Strife, 281. I do confess thou art sae Fair, 234. I dream’d I lay, 207. Ihae a Wife o’ my Ain, 238, I hae been at Crookieden, 235. I'll ay ca’ in by Yon Town, 257. I'll go and be a Sodger, 170. I'll kiss thee yet, And, 213, Tlove my Love in Secret, 216. I’m o’er Young to marry yet, 203. Illness of a Favourite Child, On the, 323, ImPROBABLEs, 316. Impromptu on Mrs. Riddell’s Birthday, 178. Lmprompin to Captain Riddell, 142. In a Lady’s Pocket Book, 188. In Lamington Kirk, 187. In Prospect of Death, Stanzas written, 69, In Simmer, when the Hay was mawn, 241. In vain would Prudence, 183, Taeoqner nicknamed ‘‘ The Marquis,’’ On an, Inscribed on a Work of Hannah More’s, 171. Inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox, 156. Inscription (to Chloris), 148. Inscription to Miss Graham of Fintry, 146. INTERPOLATIONS, 315, Inventory, The, 114. Inveraray, At, 185. Is there for Honest Poverty, 294. It is na, Jean, thy Bonie Face, 235. It was a’ for our Rightfu’ King, 262. It was the Charming Month, 281. Jacobites by Name, Ye, 242. James, Earl of Glencairn, Lament for, 87. Jamie, come try me, 219. Jockie’s ta’en the Parting Kiss, 268. John Anderson my Jo, 223. John Barleycorn, 73. John Bushby’s Lamentation, 166. INDEX OF TITLES 393 ohn, come kiss me now, O, 232. ounson’s ‘‘ Musica Muszum”’ anp THom- son’s “‘Scorrisa Arrs,’’ Soncs FROM, 199. ohnson’s Opinion of Hampden, On, 184. —n, Miss Eliza, To the Beautiful, 190. olly Popes, The, 102, oytul Widower, The, 319. umpin John, 206. ‘eekin Glass, The, 188. ‘ellyburn Braes, 245, ‘emble, Mrs., in Yarico, On seeing, 191. ‘enmure ’s on and awa, Willie, O, ennedy, John, To. A Farewell, 130. ‘ennedy, John, Dumfries House, To, 128. illieerankie, 229. irk and State Excisemen, 190. irk’s Alarm, The, 110. iss, Toa, 321. addie, lie near me, 218. ady famed for her Caprice, Monody on a, 196. ady Mary Ann, 244. ady Onlie, Honest Lucky, 208. ady’s Pocket Book, In a, 188. aird of Laggan, On the, 189. ament, The, 34, ament for James, Earl of Glencairn, 87. ament for the Absence of William Creech, Publisher, 118. ament of Mary Queen of Scots, 84. amington Kirk, In, 187. andlady, count the Lawin, 210. ap-Dog, On a, 196, apraik, J., Epistle to, 44. apraik, J., Second Epistle to, 46. apraik, J.. To. Third Epistle, 125, ascelles, Capt., On, 197. ass o’ Ballochmyle, The, 305. ass o’ Ecclefechan, The, 254, ass of Cessnock Banks, The, 301. ass that made the Bed, The, 256, ass wi’ a Tocher, A, 277, assie wi’ the Lint-white Locks, 289, ast May a Braw Wooer, 282, ay thy Loof in mine, Lass, O, 269, azy Mist, The, 220, 2a-Rig, The, 298, save Novéls, O, 303. 3eze me on my Spinnin- Wheel, O, 240, at Loove sparkle, 316, 2t me in this ae Night, O, 295. 3t not Women e’er complain, 273, 2wars, Jessie, Versicles to, 192, >wars, Miss Jessie, To, 148, nes on Fergusson, 176, nes on meeting with Lord Daer, 117. nes on the Fall of Fyers near Loch Ness, 98. nes to Sir John Whitefoord, Bart., 88. nes written on a Bank Note, 172. gan, Major, To, 133. gan, Miss, To, 72, gan Water, 290, mg, Long the Night, 290. wd Gregory, 274, nis, what reck I by thee, 252. use, To a, 43, Lovely Davies, 237. Lovely Lass of Inverness, The, 250. Lovely Polly Stewart, 259, M'‘Adam, Mr., of Craigen-Gillan, To, 129, Mackenzie, Dr., To, 130, Macleod, Miss Ysabella, To, 137. M‘Leod, John, Esq., On reading in a News- paper the Death of, 96. M‘Math, Rev. John, To the, 126, M‘Murdo, John, On, 178, M‘Murdo, John, To, 143. M‘Pherson’s Farewell, 203. ia The Death and Dying Words of Poor, 4, Mailie’s Elegy, Poor, 15, Mally ’s Meek, Mally ’s Sweet, 270. Man was made to mourn, 36, Mark Yonder Pomp, 294. Marriage, On, 193, Mary Morison, 299, Mary Queen of Scots, Lament of, 84. Masonic Song, 306. Mauchline, The Belles of, 171. Mawuchline Lady, The, 303, Mauchline Wedding, A, 114. Masle, Hon. Wm. R.. of Panmure, To the, 191. Maxwell, Dr., To., 190. Maxwell, John, Esq,, of Terraughtie, To, 146. May, thy Morn, O, 258. Meg o’ the Mill, 268, Meg o’ the Mill (Second Set), 313 Merry hae I been, O, 224. Michie, Mr. William, For, 196, Mitchell, Collector, To, 147. Monody on a Lady famed for her Caprice, 196. Montgomerie’s Peggy, 300. ; More’s, Hannah, Inscribed on a Work of, 171. Morison, Mary, 299. Mother’s Lament, A, 225. Mountain Daisy, To a, 38, Mouse, To a, 31. Muir, Robert, On, 196. Muir, Wm., in Tarbolton Mill, On, 194. Musing on the Roaring Ocean, 211. My Chloris, mark, 288, My Collier ‘Laddie, 240. My Eppie Macnab, 236. My Father was a Farmer, 302. My Heart’s in the Highlands, 223, My Highland Lassie, O, 204. My Hoggie, 206. My Lord a-hunting, 267. My Love, she’s but a Lassie yet, 219. My Nanie, O, 76. My pane is be 283, pi a y Peggy’s Face, my Peggy’s Form, 263. My Tocher’s the Jewel, 232. ; My Wife ’s a Winsome Wee Thing, 298. My Wife she dang me, O ay, 265. Nature’s Law, 116. New Psalm for the Chapel of Kilmarnock, A, 155. New Year’s Day, 1791, 122. News, Lassies, News, There ’s, 269. 394 INDEX OF TITLES Nicol, William, For, 195. On Commissary Goldie’s Brains, 188. Nicol’s, Willie, Mare, Elegy on, 175. On Dr, Babington’s Looks, 19: Night was Still, The, 306. Ninetieth Psalm, Versified, The, 71. Nithsdale’s Welcome Hame, 241. No Churchman am I, 78. No Cold Approach, 315. Noisy Polemic, Epitaph on a, 54, Noted _Coxcomb, On a, 197 Now Rosy May, 283. Now Spring has clad, 284, QO, an ye were Dead, Guidman, 251, O, ay my Wife she dang me, 265 O, can ye labour Lea, 248. O, for Ane-and-Twenty, Tam, 239, O, Guid Ale comes, 265, O John, come kiss me now, 232, O, Kenmure’s on and awa, Willie, 239, O, lay thy Loof in mine, Lass, 269 O, leave Novéls, 303. O, leeze me on my Spinnin-Wheel, 240. O, let me in this ae Night, 295, O May, thy Morn, 258, O, Merry hae I been, 224. O, once I lov’d a Bonie Lass, 266. O Philly, Happy be that Day, 295, O Poortith Cauld, 274. O, saw ye my Dear, my Philly, 314, O, stay, Sweet Warbling Wood-Lark, 275, O steer her up, an’ haud her Gaun, 264, O, that I had ne’er been married, 270. O, this is no my Ain Lassie, 284, O Tibbie, I hae seen the Day, 214. O, wat ye wha’s in yon Town, 257. O, wat ye wha that lo’es me, 284, O, were I on Parnassus Hill, 222. O, were my Love, 296. O, wert thou in the Cauld Blast, 315. O, whistle an’ Ill come to ye, my Lad, 202. Ode for General Washington’s Birthday, 158. Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs, Oswald of Auchencruive, 81, Ode to the Departed Regency Bill, 154. O’er the Water to Charlie, 212. Of a’ the Airts, 221. Old Sweetheart, To an, 131. On a Bank of Flowers, 218. On a Beautiful Country Seat, 187. On a Celebrated Ruling Elder, Epitaph, 54. On a Galloway Laird, 197. On a Goblet, 192, On a Lap-Dog, 196. On a Noisy Polemic, Epitaph, 54, On a Noted Coxcomb, 197. On a Scotch Bard, 40. On a Suicide, 198. Ona Seroneing Voxsemib, 198. On a Wag in Mauchline, 195. On ao Innkeeper nicknamed ‘‘The Marquis,” 198, On Andrew Turner, 191. On being prpointed to an Excise Division, 187. On Captain Francis Grose, 186. On Captain Grose, 122, On Capt. Lascelles, 197, On Chloris, 190, 1. On Elphinstone’s Translation of Martial, 184. On General Dumourier’s Desertion, 177. : On Glenriddell’s Fox breaking his Chain, 157. On Grizzel Grimme, 198. , On hearing a Thrush sing in a Morning Walk in January, 178. On Holy Willie, 194. On James Grieve, Laird of Boghead, Tarbol- ton, 193. On John Bushby of Tinwald Downs, 198. On John-Dove, Innkeeper, 195. On John M‘Murdo, 178. On John Rankine, 194. On Johnson’s Opinion of Hampden, 184. On Maria Riddell, 189. On Marriage, 193. On Miss Ainslie in Church, 185. On Miss Davies, 187. On Miss Fontenelle, 189. On Miss Jean Scott, 186. On Mr. James Gracie, 192. On reading in a Newspaper the Death of John M‘Leod, Esq., 96. On Robert Fergusson, 195. On Robert Muir, 196. On Rough Roads, 316. searing some Waterfow] in Loch Turit, 97. On seeing a Wounded Hare limp by me which a Fellow had just shot at, 93. On seeing Mrs. Kemble in Yarico, 191. ve seeing the Royal Palace at Stirling in Ruins, On Some Commemorations of Thomson, 177. On Tam the Chapman, 194. On Thanksgiving for a National Victory, 190. On the Author, 198. On the Birth of a Posthumous Child, 99. On ue Commemoration of Rodney’s Victory, 15. : On the Death of a Favourite Child, 323. On the Death of Lord President Dundas, 174. On the Destruction of Drumlanrig Woods, 318, On the Duchess of Gordon’s Reel Dancing, 121. On the Fall of Fyers near Loch Ness, Lines, 98. On the Illness of a Favourite Child, 323. On the Laird of Laggan, 189. On the Late Captain Grose’s Peregrinations thro’ Scotland, 94. On Wee Johnie, Epitaph, 54. On William Creech, 181. On Wm. Graham of Mossknowe, 198. On Wm. Muir in Tarbolton Mill, 194. On William Smellie, 181. Once I lov’d a Bonie Lass, O, 266. One Night as I did wander, 304. Open the Door to me, O, 271. Ordination, The, 63. Oswald, Mrs., of Aucheneruive, Ode, Sacred to the Memory of, 81. Out over the Forth, 253. Owl, To the, 321. Paraphrase of the First Psalm, 70. Parker, Hugh, To, 139. Pagsion’s Cry, 182. fh i | INDEX Ur TITLES 395 uwstoral Poetry, Poem on, 317. 2gasus at Wanlockhead, 177. ae ae Fas, au), a i ully, Happy be that Day, O, 295. uned to Mos. Walker Riddell’s Carriage, 190. oughman, The, 21 0. vem on Pastoral Poetry, 317. .EMs CHIEFLY IN THE ScoTTisH D1AuEct, 1. vet’s Grace, A, 193. 4 Welcome’ to his Love-begotten Daughter, A or Mailie, The pee and Dying Words of, 14. vor Mailie’s Elegy, 15. vortith Cauld, O, 274. ysie, The, 242. IsTHUMOUS PrecEs, 102 rayer in ate Prospect of Death, A, 37. ‘rayer: O Thou Dread Power 70 seuee ae the Pressure of Violent Anguish, city Peg, 313. simrose, The, 314. ‘ologue for Mrs. Sutherland, Scots, 150. ats spoken at the Theatre of Dumfries, arent spoken by Mr. Woods, 149. Leni for the Chapel of Kilmarnock, A New, aging Fortune, 302. ankine, John, Epistle to, 50. ankine, John, On, 194, ankine, John, To, in Reply to an Announce- ment, 124, antin Dog, the Daddie ee The, 226. attlin, Roarin Willie, 213 ag Winds around her blowing, 210. ed Rose, A “a o’ Stumpie, rhe. 3 257, 2morse, 181. smorseful Apology, 147. snton, of Lamerton, To, sply to a Note from Captain Ridiel, 142, ly to a Trimming Epistle received from a ‘ailor, 132. sply to an Invitation, 130. ably to: the Threat of a Censorious Critic, 186. dson, Gabriel, For, 198. ddell, Captain, Impromptu to, 142. ddell; Captain, Reply to a Note from, 142. ddell, Maria, On, 189. ddell, Robert, of, Glenriddell, Sonnet on the Death of, 179. ddell, Mr. Walter, For, 197. ddell’s, Mss Birthday, Impromptu on, 178, qael 's, Mrs. Walter, Carriage, Pinned to, eh of Woman, oe 151. »b Morris,‘ Auld, 2 »bin Shure in Hint, rddick, ee Wnu., of F Corbiston, On a Noted Coxcomb, 197, idey" FS Victory, On the Commemoration of, malds of the Bennals, The, 169. se-Bud, by my Early Walk, A, 213. wslir Tan, At, 184, Rosy Brier, Yon, 291. Rosy May, Now, 283. Rough Roads, On, 316. ae al Palace’ at Stirling in Ruins, On seeing the, 185, Ruin, To, 39. Ruined Farmer, A, 300. Ruling Elder. Epitaph ona os 54, Rusticity’s Ungainly Form, 18: Sae Far Awa, 256. Sae Flaxen were ee ee 255. Samson’s, Tam, E! 66. Saturday Night, The Cotter 's, 28, Saw ye Bonie Lesley, 27! Saw ye my Dear, my Philly, O, 314. Scotch Bard, On a, Scotch. Drink, 4. Scots Prologue for Mrs. Sutherland, 150. Scots, wha hae, 285. Scott, Miss Jean, On, 186. Scroggam, 265, Second Epistle to J. Lapraik Seeing — Royal Palace at ‘Sthiling i in Ruins, On, Sensibility how Charming, 234, She’s Fair and Fause, 249. Silver Tassie, The, 220. Simpson, William, of epiltzes, To, 47. Sketch for an ae Slave’s Lament, The, 246. Been eee thou, 297. Sme! illiam, On, 181. Smith, See: Epistle to, 15. Solemn League and Covenant, The, 191. Song: Anna, thy Charms, 95, Song: Composed i a Bags 52. Song (Corn Rips) Song: From + ul “Fiza 52. Song of Death. The, 246 Sones FRom oHNGON's ; “ Musican Stueeent on AnD Tuomson’s “ScortisH Arrs,”’ Sonnet on the Death of Robert Riddell af ? Gilen- riddell, 179. Sonnet to Robert Graham, Esq., of Fintry, 144. Sonnet upon Sonnets, A, oe Spring has clad, Now, 28 Stanzas written in eres of Death, 69. Stay, my Charmer, 205. Stay, Sweet Warbling Wood-Lark, O, 275. Stella, Elegy on, 316. Stewart, Polly, ee 259, Stewart, William, 46. Stewart, Willie, you re Welcome, 311. Stirling, Additional Lines at, 186. ce in Ruins, On seeing the Royal Palace at, 1 Stvtheilan’ 's Lament, 205. Stuart, Peter, To, 146. Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation, 245. Suicide, On a, 198. Swearing Coxcomb, On a, 198. Sweet Afton, 247. Sweet are the Banks, 309. Sweet fa’s the Eve, 276. Sweet Tibbie es 216, Sweetest May, 268 396 Sylvander to Clarinda, 138. Syme, John, Apology to, 192. Syme, John, of Ryedale, To, 191. Tailor, The, 261. Tailor fell thro’ the Bed, The, 217, Tam Glen, 230. Tam o’ Shanter, 88, Tam Samson’s Elegy, 66. Tam the Chapman, On, 184. Tarbolton Lasses, The, 169. Tennant, James, of Glenconner, To, 142. Thanksgiving for a National Victory, On, 190. The Bonie Lad that’s far awa, 234. The Cardin 0’t, 255. The Day returns, 219. e Deil’s awa wi’ th! Exciseman, 249, The Deuk’s dang o’er my Daddie, 249. The Lass that made the Bed, 256. The Lazy Mist, 220. The Lovely Lass of Tngemons, 250. The Night was Still, The Rantin Dog, the De adie o’t, 226. The Tailor fell thro’ the Bed, 217, The Tither Morn, 237. e Weary Pund o’ Tow, 238. Their Groves o’ Sweet gt ag 26. Theniel Menzies’ Bonie ae There grows a Bonie Brier-Bush, 261. There ‘ll never be Peace till’ Jamie comes Hame, 233. There’s a Youth in this City, 222. There ’s News, Lassies, News, 269. There ’s Three True Guid Fellows, 255. There was a Bonie ta 269, There was a Lad, 3 There was a Lass, OT, Thine am I, 287. This is no my Ain Lassie, O, 284. Tho’ Cruel Fate, 205. Tho’ Fickle F. ‘ortune, 0. Tho’ Women’s Minds, 2! Thomson, Address to he Shade of, 93, ‘homson, On some Commemorations of, 177. Tyomson’s ‘‘Scottisa Arrs,’? Soncs FROM JoHnson’s “‘ MusicaL Museum ” AND, 199. Thou Gloomy December, 26 Thou hast left me ores Jamie, 287. Thou Lingering Star, 22 Thrush sing in a Morning Walk in January, On hearing, 178. Tibbie Dunbar, Sweet, 216. Tibbie, I hae seen pe Day, O, 214, Tither Morn, The, 237, Toa Gentleman, 145, To a Kiss, 321. Toa Louse, 43, To a Mountain Daisy, 38. To a Mouse, 31, : To Alex. Cunningham, 140. To an Artist, 184. To an Old Sweetheart, 131, To Clarinda, with a Pair of Wine-Glasses, 139, To Collector Mitchell, 147. 'To Colonel De Peyster, 147, To daunton me, 212, To Dr, Mackenzie, 129, INDEX OF TITLES To Dr, Maxwell, 190. To Gavin Hamilton, Esq., Mauchline, 129, To Hugh Parker, 139, To James Tennant of Glenconner, 142. To John Goldie, 125. To John Kennedy. A Farewell, 130. To John Kennedy, Dumfries House, 128, To John M‘Murdo, 143, To John Maxwell, ‘Esq. of Terraughtie, 146. To John Rankine, in “Renly to an Announce- ment, 124, To John Syme of Hyedale; 191. To Major Logan. To Miss Ore tehack, 95. To Miss Ferrier, 137. To Miss Isabella Macleod, 137, To Miss Jessie Lewars, 148 To Miss Logan, 72. To Mr, M‘Adam of Craigen-Gillan, 129, To Mr. Renton of Lamerton, 136, To Peter Stuart, 146. To Robert Graham, Esq., of Fintry, request- ing a Favour, 140, To Robert Graham of Fintry, Esq., 85, To Ruin, 39. To Symon Gray, 137. To the Beautiful Miss Eliza J—n, 190. To the Guidwife of Wauchope House, 134. To the Hon. Wm. R. Maule of Panmure, 191. To the Owl, 321. To the Rev. John M'Math, 126. To the Weaver’s gin ye go, 202. To William Simpson of Ochiltree, 47. To William Stewart, 146. To Wm. Tytler, Esq, of Woodhouselee, 135, To Willie bane ‘Sweetheart, 130, Toadeater, The, 187. Toothache, Address i to the, 118, Tragic Fragment, Tree of Liberty, The: 320. Trogger, The, 167, Turner, Angers Ons 191. Twa Dogs, The, Twa Herds, The: “or, The Holy Pay; 107. *T was na her Bonie Blue E’e, Tyrant Wife, The, 187, Tytler, Wm., Esq., of Woodhouselee, To, 135. Unco Guid, Address to the, 65, Under the Portrait of Miss Burns, 185. Up in the Morning Early, 206, Verses in Friars Carse Hermitage, 1 Verses intended to be written ye a Noble Earl’s Picture, 173, Verses written with a Pencil at Kenmore, Tay- mouth, Versicles on ‘Sign-Posts, 186. Versicles to Ji on Lewars, 192. Vision, The, 19, Vowels, The, 322, Wae is my Heart, 260. Wag in Mau uchline, On a, 195. Wandering Willie, 270. Wantonness for evermair, Washington’s, General, Bicthday, Ode for, 15& invoa VF TITLES 397 Wat ye wha’s in Yon Town, O, 257. Wat ye wha that lo’es me, 0, 284, Waren in Loch Turit, On scaring some, W. "erie baring A 228, We’re a’ noddi Weary Pund 0’ how. The, 238, Wee gis, Epitaph on, 54, Wee Willie Gray, 264. Were I on Parnassus Hill, O, 2: Wert thou in the Cauld Blast, "Oo a Wha is that at my Bower Door, 236 What can a Young Lassie, 233. When first I saw, 311. When Guilford Good, 7 When she cam ben, a » obbad, 239, When Wild War's Deadly Blast, 272, ‘Where are the Joys, 291. Where, ee Angry Winter’s eee 204, erefore atin art thou, Phillis, 25: Whigham’s an anquhar, At, 186, Whistle, The Whistle, an’ ta come to ye, my Lad, O, 202. Whistle o’er the Lave o "t, 221. White Cockade, The, 225. Whiteford, Sir John, Bart., Lines to, 88. Why Why should we idly waste our Prime, 319. Why, why tell thy Lover, 314. Wild War’ 's Deadly Blast, When, 272. Will ye go to the Indies, my -— 304, Willie brew’d a Peck o’ Maut, 22 Willie Wastle, 244. Wilt thou be m: ny Dearie, 259. ee wee ‘hing, My Wife ’s a, 298, Winter, Winter et is Fatt, ae 215, Winter Ragkt 2 Winter of Life, "the, 261. Women’s Minds, Tho’, 228, Wounded Hare, On seein 5 Written | in Friars Carse PE aces on Nithside, Ye Flowery Banks, 310. Ye Jacobites by Name, 242, Ye True Loyal aloes 188, Yestreen I had a Pint o’ Wine, 308. Yon Rosy Brier, 291. Yon Wild Mossy Mountains, 235, You ’re veelgn, Willie Se ae 311, Young Friend, Epistle to a, 3: oung Highland 1 over, he 207. Young Jamie, 25: Young Jessie, oe Young Jockie a the Blythest Lad, 228. Young Feewy, 201 Your Friendshi Youth in this By "There? 's a, 222, Che Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE -: MASSACHUSETTS Urs as St ee eerie Asti ate ae vat Sy eitats Sateen ety el + G Ms (hat of See eee | i) % = tas a a Bit is tae Seas See ee on Ps ee en ely : een te eae ee ee Cit teA es He rey ens SORT SES PARC bic See oe RSA tras Bain — Seats noe Sh asa we i Betray Ree See ay ete e She Sea: