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ROBERT BURNS
HOW TO KNOW HIM
By
WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON
Professor of English, Harvard University
Author of
Essentials of Poetry, etc.
WITH PORTRAIT
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1917
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N.Y.
TO
MY BROTHER
The Nasmyth Portrait of ROBERT BURNS
LIST OF POEMS
Address to the Deil 282 Address to the Unco Guid 176 Ae Fond Kiss 56 Afton Water 116 Auld Farmer's New-Year Morning Salutation, The 278 Auld Lang Syne 100 Auld Rob Morris 121 Bannocks o' Barley 165 Bard's Epitaph, A 308 Bessy and Her Spinnin'-Wheel 145 Blue-Eyed Lassie, The 117 Bonnie Lad that's Far Awa, The 139 Bonnie Lesley 118 Braw Braw Lads 140 Ca' the Yowes 115 Charlie He's My Darling 168 Clarinda 58 Come Boat Me o'er to Charlie 163 Comin' through the Rye 154 Contented wi' Little 126 Cotter's Saturday Night, The 8 Death and Doctor Hornbook 287 Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, The 23 De'il's Awa wi' th' Exciseman, The 154 Deuk's Dang o'er My Daddie, The 155 Duncan Davison 153 Duncan Gray 152 Elegy on Capt. Matthew Henderson 298 Epistle to a Young Friend 200 Epistle to Davie 193 For the Sake o' Somebody 136 Gloomy Night, The 40 Go Fetch to Me a Pint o' Wine 88 Green Grow the Rashes 123 Had I the Wyte? 148 Halloween 209 Handsome Nell 20 Highland Balou, The 151 Highland Laddie, The 164 Highland Mary 113 Holy Fair, The 228 Holy Willie's Prayer 173 How Lang and Dreary 138 I Hae a Wife 59 I Hae Been at Crookieden 167 I'm Owre Young to Marry Yet 143 It Was a' for Our Rightfu' King 162 John Anderson, My Jo 146 Jolly Beggars, The 241 Kenmure's On and Awa 165 Lassie wi' the Lint-White Locks 119 Last May a Braw Wooer 135 Lea-Rig, The 120 MacPherson's Farewell 150 Man's a Man for a' that, A 158 Mary Morison 28 Montgomerie's Peggy 120 My Father Was a Farmer 126 My Heart's in the Highlands 140 My Love Is Like a Red Red Rose 102 My Love She's but a Lassie Yet 144 My Nannie O 29 My Nannie's Awa 57 My Wife's a Winsome Wee Thing 108 O for Ane an' Twenty, Tam! 129 O Merry Hae I Been 148 O This Is No My Ain Lassie 107 O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast 123 Of a' the Airts 106 On a Scotch Bard, Gone to the West Indies 42 On John Dove, Innkeeper 205 Open the Door to Me, O! 137 Poet's Welcome to His Love-Begotten Daughter, The 33 Poor Mailie's Elegy 26 Poortith Cauld 107 Prayer in the Prospect of Death, A 32 Rantin' Dog the Daddie o't, The 134 Rigs o' Barley, The 30 Scotch Drink 301 Scots, Wha Hae 160 Simmer's a Pleasant Time 131 Tam Glen 133 Tam o' Shanter 257 Tam Samson's Elegy 294 There Was a Lad 125 There'll Never Be Peace till Jamie Comes Hame 166 To a Haggis 306 To a Louse 274 To a Mountain Daisy 276 To a Mouse 272 To Daunton Me 142 To Mary in Heaven 114 To the Rev. John McMath 181 Twa Dogs, The 219 Wandering Willie 138 Weary Pund o' Tow, The 147 Wha Is that at My Bower Door? 156 What Can a Young Lassie 142 Whistle, and I'll Come to Ye, My Lad 132 Will Ye Go to the Indies, My Mary? 40 Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut 238 Willie's Wife 156 Ye Banks and Braes (two versions) 130 Yestreen I Had a Pint o' Wine 104
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I BIOGRAPHY 1 1. Alloway, Mount Oliphant, and Lochlea 3 2. Mossgiel 31 3. Edinburgh 44 4. Ellisland 58 5. Dumfries 62
II INHERITANCE: LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 69
III BURNS AND SCOTTISH SONG 90
IV SATIRES AND EPISTLES 171
V DESCRIPTIVE AND NARRATIVE POETRY 206
VI CONCLUSION 310
INDEX 325
ROBERT BURNS
BURNS
CHAPTER I
BIOGRAPHY
"I have not the most distant pretence to what the pye-coated guardians of Escutcheons call a Gentleman. When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted at the Herald's office; and looking thro' the granary of honors, I there found almost every name in the kingdom; but for me,
My ancient but ignoble blood
Has crept thro' scoundrels since the flood.
Gules, purpure, argent, etc., quite disowned me. My forefathers rented land of the famous, noble Keiths of Marshal, and had the honor to share their fate. I do not use the word 'honor' with any reference to political principles: loyal and disloyal I take to be merely relative terms in that ancient and formidable court known in this country by the name of 'club-law.' Those who dare welcome Ruin and shake hands with Infamy, for what they believe sincerely to be the cause of their God or their King, are--as Mark Antony in Shakspear says of Brutus and Cassius--'honorable men.' I mention this circumstance because it threw my Father on the world at large; where, after many years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my pretensions to Wisdom. I have met with few who understood Men, their manners and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, ungainly Integrity, and headlong, ungovernable Irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born, a very poor man's son."
"You can now, Sir, form a pretty near guess of what sort of Wight he is, whom for some time you have honored with your correspondence. That Whim and Fancy, keen sensibility and riotous passions, may still make him zig-zag in his future path of life is very probable; but, come what will, I shall answer for him--the most determinate integrity and honor [shall ever characterise him]; and though his evil star should again blaze in his meridian with tenfold more direful influence, he may reluctantly tax friendship with pity, but no more."
These two paragraphs form respectively the beginning and the end of a long autobiographical letter written by Robert Burns to Doctor John Moore, physician and novelist. At the time they were composed, the poet had just returned to his native county after the triumphant season in Edinburgh that formed the climax of his career. But no detailed knowledge of circumstances is necessary to rouse interest in a man who wrote like that. You may be offended by the self-consciousness and the swagger, or you may be charmed by the frankness and dash, but you can not remain indifferent. Burns had many moods besides those reflected in these sentences, but here we can see as vividly as in any of his poetry the fundamental characteristics of the man--sensitive, passionate, independent, and as proud as Lucifer--whose life and work are the subject of this volume.
1. Alloway, Mount Oliphant, and Lochlea
William Burnes, the father of the poet, came of a family of farmers and gardeners in the county of Kincardine, on the east coast of Scotland. At the age of twenty-seven, he left his native district for the south; and when Robert, his eldest child, was born on January 25, 1759, William was employed as gardener to the provost of Ayr. He had besides leased some seven acres of land, of which he planned to make a nursery and market-garden, in the neighboring parish of Alloway; and there near the Brig o' Doon built with his own hands the clay cottage now known to literary pilgrims as the birthplace of Burns. His wife, Agnes Brown, the daughter of an Ayrshire farmer, bore him, besides Robert, three sons and three daughters. In order to keep his sons at home instead of sending them out as farm-laborers, the elder Burnes rented in 1766 the farm of Mount Oliphant, and stocked it on borrowed money. The venture did not prosper, and on a change of landlords the family fell into the hands of a merciless agent, whose bullying the poet later avenged by the portrait of the factor in The Twa Dogs.
I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day,--
And mony a time my heart's been wae,--
Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash,
How they maun thole a factor's snash;
He'll stamp and threaten, curse and swear,
He'll apprehend them, poind their gear;
While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble,
And hear it a', and fear and tremble!
In 1777 Mount Oliphant was exchanged for the farm of Lochlea, about ten miles away, and here William Burnes labored for the rest of his life. The farm was poor, and with all he could do it was hard to keep his head above water. His health was failing, he was harassed with debts, and in 1784 in the midst of a lawsuit about his lease, he died.
In spite of his struggle for a bare subsistence, the elder Burnes had not neglected the education of his children. Before he was six, Robert was sent to a small school at Alloway Mill, and soon after his father joined with a few neighbors to engage a young man named John Murdoch to teach their children in a room in the village. This arrangement continued for two years and a half, when, Murdoch having been called elsewhere, the father undertook the task of education himself. The regular instruction was confined chiefly to the long winter evenings, but quite as important as this was the intercourse between father and sons as they went about their work.
"My father," says the poet's brother Gilbert, "was for some time almost the only companion we had. He conversed familiarly on all subjects with us, as if we had been men; and was at great pains, as we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our knowledge, or confirm our virtuous habits. He borrowed Salmon's Geographical Grammar for us, and endeavoured to make us acquainted with the situation and history of the different countries in the world; while, from a book-society in Ayr, he procured for us Derham's Physics and Astro-Theology, and Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, to give us some idea of astronomy and natural history. Robert read all these books with an avidity and industry scarcely to be equalled. My father had been a subscriber to Stackhouse's History of the Bible ...; from this Robert collected a competent knowledge of ancient history; for no book was so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to dampen his researches. A brother of my mother, who had lived with us some time, and had learned some arithmetic by our winter evening's candle, went into a book-seller's shop in Ayr to purchase the Ready Reckoner, or Tradesman's Sure Guide, and a book to teach him to write letters. Luckily, in place of the Complete Letter-Writer, he got by mistake a small collection of letters by the most eminent writers, with a few sensible directions for attaining an easy epistolary style. This book was to Robert of the greatest consequence. It inspired him with a strong desire to excel in letter-writing, while it furnished him with models by some of the first writers in our language."
Interesting as are the details as to the antiquated manuals from which Burns gathered his general information, it is more important to note the more personal implications in this account. Respect for learning has long been wide-spread among the peasantry of Scotland, but it is evident that William Burnes was intellectually far above the average of his class. The schoolmaster Murdoch has left a portrait of him in which he not only extols his virtues as a man but emphasizes his zest for things of the mind, and states that "he spoke the English language with more propriety--both with respect to diction and pronunciation--than any man I ever knew, with no greater advantages." Though tender and affectionate, he seems to have inspired both wife and children with a reverence amounting to awe, and he struck strangers as reserved and austere. He recognized in Robert traces of extraordinary gifts, but he did not hide from him the fact that his son's temperament gave him anxiety for his future. Mrs. Burnes was a devoted wife and mother, by no means her husband's intellectual equal, but vivacious and quick-tempered, with a memory stored with the song and legend of the country-side. Other details can be filled in from the poet's own picture of his father's household as given with little or no idealization in The Cotter's Saturday Night.
THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT
My lov'd, my honour'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.
November chill blaws load wi' angry sough; [wail] The shortening winter-day is near a close; The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose: The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour 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.
At length his lonely cot appears in view, Beneath the shelter of an aged tree; Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin', stacher through [stagger] To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise an' glee. [fluttering] His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnilie, [fire] His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile, The lisping infant prattling on his knee, Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile, [worry] An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil.
Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, [Soon] At service out, amang the farmers roun'; Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin [drive, heedful run] A cannie errand to a neibor town: [quiet] Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown, In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, [eye] Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new gown, [fine] Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, [hard-won wages] To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.
With joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet, An' each for other's weelfare kindly spiers: [asks] The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnoticed fleet; Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears; [wonders] The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years; Anticipation forward points the view. The mother, wi' her needle an' her sheers, Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; [Makes old clothes] The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.
Their master's an' their mistress's command The younkers a' are warned to obey; [youngsters] An' mind their labours wi' an eydent hand, [diligent] An' ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk or play: [trifle] 'And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway, An' mind your duty, duly, morn an' night! Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, [go] Implore His counsel and assisting might: They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright!'
But hark! a rap comes gently to the door; Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, [knows] Tells how a neibor lad cam 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; Wi' heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name, While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak; [half] Weel pleased the mother hears it's nae wild worthless rake.
Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben; [in] A strappin' youth; he takes the mother's eye; Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en; The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. [chats, cows] The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy, But blate and laithfu', scarce can weel behave; [shy, bashful] The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave; Weel-pleased to think her bairn's respected like the lave. [child, rest]
O happy love! where love like this is found;
O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!
I've paced much this weary mortal round,
And sage experience bids me this declare:--
'If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure 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 evening gale.'
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 honour, 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?
But now the supper crowns their simple board, The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food: [wholesome] The sowpe their only hawkie does afford, [milk, cow] That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood; [beyond, partition, The dame brings forth in complimental mood, cud] To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell; [well-saved cheese, And aft he's prest, and aft he ca's it good; strong] The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell How 'twas a towmond auld sin' lint was i' the bell. [twelve-month, flax, flower] The cheerfu' 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: [family-Bible] His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare; [gray hair on temples] Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide-- He wales a portion with judicious care, [chooses] And 'Let us worship God!' he says with solemn air.
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 heav'nward flame, [fans] The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays: Compared with these, Italian trills are tame; The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise; Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise. [No, have]
The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or Moses bade eternal 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 cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.
Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless 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 a land:
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command.
Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope 'springs exulting on triumphant 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.
Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, In all the pomp of method and of art, When men display to congregations wide Devotion's every grace, except the heart! The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; But haply, in some cottage far apart, May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul; And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enrol.
Then homeward all take off their several way;
The youngling cottagers retire to rest:
The parent-pair their secret homage pay,
And proffer up to Heav'n the warm request,
That He who stills the raven's clamorous nest,
And decks the lily fair in flowery 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.
From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered 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 refin'd!
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 their 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-loved isle.
O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide
That streamed thro' Wallace's undaunted heart,
Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,
Or nobly die--the second glorious part,
(The patriot's God, peculiarly thou art,
His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)
O never, never, Scotia's realm desert;
But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard,
In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!
No less impressive than that of his father is the intellectual hunger of the future poet himself. We have had Gilbert's testimony to the eagerness with which he devoured such books as came within his reach, and the use he made of his later fragments of schooling points the same way. He had a quarter at the parish school of Dalrymple when he was thirteen; and in the following summer he attended the school at Ayr under his former Alloway instructor. Murdoch's own account of these three weeks gives an idea of Burns's quickness of apprehension; and the style of it is worth noting with reference to the characteristics of the poet's own prose.
"In 1773," says Murdoch, "Robert Burns came to board and lodge with me, for the purpose of revising English grammar, etc., that he might be better qualified to instruct his brothers and sisters at home. He was now with me day and night, in school, at all meals, and in all my walks. At the end of one week, I told him as he was now pretty much master of the parts of speech, etc., I should like to teach him something of French pronunciation, that when he should meet with the name of a French town, ship, officer, or the like, in the newspapers, he might be able to pronounce it something like a French word. Robert was glad to hear this proposal, and immediately we attacked the French with great courage.
"Now there was little else to be heard but the declension of nouns, the conjugation of verbs, etc. When walking together, and even at meals, I was constantly telling him the names of different objects, as they presented themselves, in French; so that he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes little phrases. In short, he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business; and about the end of the second week of our study of the French, we began to read a little of the Adventures of Telemachus in Fenelon's own words.
"But now the plains of Mount Oliphant began to whiten, and Robert was summoned to relinquish the pleasing scenes that surrounded the grotto of Calypso, and armed with a sickle, to seek glory by signalising himself in the fields of Ceres; and so he did, for although but about fifteen, I was told that he performed the work of a man."
The record of Burns's school-days is completed by the mention of a sojourn, probably in the summer of 1775, in his mother's parish of Kirkoswald. Hither he went to study mathematics and surveying under a teacher of local note, and, in spite of the convivial attractions of a smuggling village, seems to have made progress in his geometry till his head was turned by a girl who lived next door to the school.
So far the education gained by Burns from his schoolmasters and his father had been almost exclusively moral and intellectual. It was in less formal ways that his imagination was fed. From his mother he had heard from infancy the ballads, legends, and songs that were traditionary among the peasantry; and the influence of these was re-enforced by a certain Betty Davidson, an unfortunate relative of his mother's to whom the family gave shelter for a time.
"In my infant and boyish days, too," he writes in the letter to Doctor Moore already quoted, "I owed much to an old maid of my mother's, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country, of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors."
His private reading also contained much that must have stimulated his imagination and broadened his interests. It began with a Life of Hannibal, and Hamilton's modernized version of the History of Sir William Wallace, which last, he says, with the touch of flamboyancy that often recurs in his style, "poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." By the time he was eighteen he had, in addition to books already mentioned, become acquainted with Shakespeare, Pope (including the translation of Homer), Thomson, Shenstone, Allan Ramsay, and a Select Collection of Songs, Scotch and English; with the Spectator, the Pantheon, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Sterne, and Henry Mackenzie. To these must be added some books on farming and gardening, a good deal of theology, and, of course, the Bible.
The pursuing of intellectual interests such as are implied in this list is the more significant when we remember that it was carried on in the scanty leisure of a life of labor so severe that it all but broke the poet's health, and probably left permanent marks on his physique. Yet he had energy left for still other avocations. It was when he was no more than fifteen that he first experienced the twin passions that came to dominate his life, love and song. The girl who was the occasion was his partner in the harvest field, Nelly Kilpatrick; the song he addressed to her is the following:
HANDSOME NELL
O, once I lov'd a bonnie lass,
Aye, and I love her still,
And whilst that virtue warms my breast
I'll love my handsome Nell.
As bonnie lasses I hae seen,
And mony full as braw, [fine]
But for a modest gracefu' mien
The like I never saw.
A bonnie lass, I will confess,
Is pleasant to the e'e, [eye]
But without some better qualities
She's no a lass for me.
But Nelly's looks are blithe and sweet,
And what is best of a', [all]
Her reputation is complete,
And fair without a flaw.
She dresses aye sae clean and neat,
Both decent and genteel;
And then there's something in her gait
Gars ony dress look weel. [Makes]
A gaudy dress and gentle air
May slightly touch the heart,
But it's innocence and modesty
That polishes the dart.
'Tis this in Nelly pleases me,
'Tis this enchants my soul!
For absolutely in my breast
She reigns without control.
Since there may still be readers who suppose that Burns was a mere unsophisticated singer, without power of self-criticism, it may be as well to insert here a passage from a Commonplace Book written in 1783, ten years after the composition of the song.
Criticism on the Foregoing Song
"Lest my works should be thought below Criticism; or meet with a Critic who, perhaps, will not look on them with so candid and favorable an eye; I am determined to criticise them myself.
"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 expletive. The thoughts in the fifth Stanza come fairly up to my favorite idea [of] 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 remembrance."
In spite of the early start in poetry given him by Nelly Kilpatrick, he did not produce more than a few pieces of permanent value during the next ten years. He did, however, go on developing and branching out in his social activities, in spite of the depressing grind of the farm. He attended a dancing school (much against his father's will), helped to establish a "Bachelors' Club" for debating, and found time for further love-affairs. That with Ellison Begbie, celebrated by him in The Lass of Cessnock Banks, he took very seriously, and he proposed marriage to the girl in some portentously solemn epistles which remain to us as the earliest examples of his prose. In order to put himself in a position to marry, he determined to learn the trade of flax-dressing; and though Ellison refused him, he went to the neighboring seaport of Irvine to carry out his purpose in the summer of 1781. The flax-dressing experiment ended disastrously with a fire which burned the workshop, and Burns returned penniless to the farm. The poems written about this time express profound melancholy, a mood natural enough in the circumstances, and aggravated by his poor nervous and physical condition.
But his spirit could not remain permanently depressed, and shortly after his return to Lochlea, a trifling accident to a ewe he had bought prompted him to the following delightful and characteristic production.
THE DEATH AND DYING WORDS OF POOR MAILIE, THE AUTHOR'S ONLY PET YOWE
As Mailie, an' her lambs thegither, [together] Was ae day nibbling on the tether, [one] Upon her cloot she coost a hitch, [hoof, looped] An' owre she warsled in the ditch; [over, floundered] There, groaning, dying, she did lie, When Hughoc he cam doytin by. [doddering] Wi glowrin' een, an' lifted han's, [staring] 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 gaped wide, but naething spak; At length poor Mailie silence brak:--
'O thou, whase lamentable face Appears to mourn my woefu' case! My dying words attentive hear, An' bear them to my Master dear. 'Tell him, if e'er again he keep [own] As muckle gear as buy a sheep,-- [much money] O bid him never tie them mair Wi' wicked strings o' hemp or hair! Bat ca' them out to park or hill, [drive] An' let them wander at their will; So may his flock increase, an' grow To scores o' lambs, an' packs o' woo'! [wool] 'Tell him he was a Master kin', An' aye was guid to me an' mine; An' now my dying charge I gie him, [give] My helpless lambs, I trust them wi' him. 'O bid him save their harmless lives Frae dogs, an' tods, an' butchers' knives! [foxes] But gie them guid cow-milk their fill, Till they be fit to fend themsel: [look after] An' tent them duly, e'en an' morn, [tend] Wi' teats o' hay an' ripps o' corn. [bunches, handfuls] 'An' may they never learn the gates [ways] Of ither vile wanrestfu' pets-- [restless] To slink thro' slaps, an' reave an' steal, [holes in fences] At stacks o' pease, or stocks o' kail. [plants] So may they, like their great forbears, For mony a year come thro' the shears; So wives will gie them bits o' bread, An' bairns greet for them when they're dead. [weep] 'My poor tup-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! [put, behavior] An' warn him, what I winna name, [will not] To stay content wi' yowes at hame; [ewes] An' no to rin an' wear his cloots, [hoofs] Like ither menseless graceless brutes. [unmannerly] 'An neist my yowie, silly thing, [next] Gude keep thee frae a tether string! O may thou ne'er forgather up [make friends] Wi' ony blastit moorland tup; But ay keep mind to moop an' mell, [nibble, meddle] 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 Hughoc, 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.' [bladder]
This said, poor Mailie turn'd her head, An' closed her een amang the dead! [eyes]
POOR MAILIE'S ELEGY
Lament in rhyme, lament in prose, Wi' saut tears tricklin' down your nose, [salt] Our bardie's fate is at a close, Past a' remead; [remedy] The last sad cape-stane of his woes-- [cope-stone] Poor Mailie's dead!
It's no the loss o' warl's gear [worldly lucre]
That could sae bitter draw the tear,
Or mak our bardie, dowie, wear [downcast]
The mourning weed:
He's lost a friend and neibor dear
In Mailie dead.
Thro' a' the toun she trotted by him;
A lang half-mile she could descry him;
Wi' kindly bleat, when she did spy him,
She ran wi' speed:
A friend mair faithfu' ne'er cam nigh him
Than Mailie dead.
I wat she was a sheep o' sense, [wot] An' could behave hersel wi' mense; [manners] I'll say't, she never brak a fence Thro' thievish greed. Our bardie, lanely, keeps the spence [parlor] Sin' Mailie's dead. [Since]
Or, if he wanders up the howe, [glen] Her living image in her yowe [ewe-lamb] Comes bleating to him, owre the knowe, [knoll] For bits o' bread, An' down the briny pearls rowe [roll] For Mailie dead.
She was nae get o' moorland tups, [issue] Wi' tawted ket, an' hairy hips; [matted fleece] For her forbears were brought in ships Frae 'yont the Tweed; A bonnier fleesh ne'er cross'd the clips [fleece, shears] Than Mailie's, dead.
Wae worth the man wha first did shape [Woe to] That vile wanchancie thing--a rape! [dangerous] It maks guid fellows girn an' gape, [growl] Wi' chokin' dread; An' Robin's bonnet wave wi' crape For Mailie dead.
O a' ye bards on bonnie Doon!
An' wha on Ayr your chanters tune! [bagpipes]
Come, join the melancholious croon
O' Robin's reed;
His heart will never get aboon! [rejoice]
His Mailie's dead!
How long he continued to mourn for Ellison Begbie, it is hard to say; but the three following songs, inspired, it would seem, by three different girls, testify at once to his power of recuperation and the rapid maturing of his talent. All seem to have been written between the date of his return from Irvine and the death of his father.
MARY MORISON
O Mary, at thy window be,
It is the wish'd, the trysted hour!
Those smiles and glances let me see,
That make the miser's treasure poor:
How blythely wad I bide the stoure, [bear, struggle]
A weary slave frae sun to sun,
Could I the rich reward secure,
The lovely Mary Morison.
Yestreen, when to the trembling string [Last night] The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha', [went] To thee my fancy took its wing, I sat, but neither heard nor saw: Tho' this was fair, and that was braw, [fine] And yon the toast of a' the town, [the other] I sigh'd, and said amang them a', 'Ye are na Mary Morison.'
O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace,
Wha for thy sake wad gladly die?
Or canst thou break that heart of his,
Whase only faut is loving thee? [fault]
If love for love thou wilt na gie,
At least be pity to me shown!
A thought ungentle canna be
The thought o' Mary Morison.
MY NANNIE O
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 Nannie, O.
The westlin wind blaws loud an' shill, [western, keen] The night's baith mirk and rainy, O; [both dark] But I'll get my plaid, an' out I'll steal, An' owre the hill to Nannie, O. [over]
My Nannie's charming, sweet, an' young:
Nae artfu' wiles to win ye, O:
May ill befa' the flattering tongue
That wad beguile my Nannie, O.
Her face is fair, her heart is true,
As spotless as she's bonnie, O:
The opening gowan, wat wi' dew, [daisy, wet]
Nae purer is than Nannie, O.
A country lad is my degree,
An' few there be that ken me, O;
But what care I how few they be,
I'm welcome aye to Nannie, O.
My riches a's my penny-fee, [wages] An' I maun guide it cannie, O; [carefully] But warl's gear ne'er troubles me, [lucre] My thoughts are a'--my Nannie, O.
Our auld guidman delights to view His sheep an' kye thrive bonnie, O. [cows] But I'm as blythe that hauds his pleugh, [holds] An' has nae care but Nannie, O.
Come weel, come woe, I care na by, [reck not]
I'll tak what Heav'n will send me, O;
Nae ither care in life have I,
But live, an' love my Nannie, O.
THE RIGS O' BARLEY
It was upon a Lammas night,
When corn rigs are bonnie, [ridges]
Beneath the moon's unclouded light
I held awa to Annie: [took my way]
The time flew by wi' tentless heed, [careless]
Till, 'tween the late and early,
Wi' sma' persuasion she agreed
To see me thro' the barley.
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;
I kent her heart was a' my ain; [knew, own]
I loved her most sincerely;
I kissed her owre and owre again [over]
Amang the rigs o' barley.
I locked 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 aye shall bless that happy night
Amang the rigs o' barley.
I hae been blythe wi' comrades dear;
I hae been merry drinking;
I hae been joyfu' gatherin' gear; [property]
I hae been happy thinking:
But a' the pleasures e'er I saw,
Tho' three times doubled fairly,
That happy night was worth them a',
Amang the rigs o' barley.
Corn rigs, an' barley rigs,
An' corn rigs are bonnie:
I'll ne'er forget that happy night,
Amang the rigs wi' Annie.
2. Mossgiel
On the death of their father, Robert and Gilbert Burns moved with the family to the farm of Mossgiel in the next parish of Mauchline. By putting in a claim for arrears of wages, they succeeded in drawing enough from the wreck of their father's estate to supply a scanty stock for the new venture. The records of the first summer show the poet in anything but a happy frame of mind. His health was miserable; and the loosening of his moral principles, which he ascribes to the influence of a young sailor he had met at Irvine, bore fruit in the birth to him of an illegitimate daughter by a servant girl, Elizabeth Paton. The verses which carry allusion to this affair are illuminating for his character. One group is devout and repentant; the other marked sometimes by cynical bravado, sometimes by a note of exultation. Both may be regarded as genuine enough expressions of moods which alternated throughout his life, and which corresponded to conflicting sides of his nature. Here is a typical example of the former:
A PRAYER IN THE PROSPECT OF DEATH
O Thou 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 formed 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.
In his Epistle to John Rankine, with a somewhat hard and heartless humor, he braves out the affair; in the following Welcome he treats it with a tender pride, as sincere as his remorse:
THE POET'S WELCOME TO HIS LOVE-BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER
Thou's welcome, wean! Mishanter fa' me, [child! Misfortune befall]
If ought of thee, or of thy mammy,
Shall ever daunton me, or awe me,
My sweet wee lady,
Or if I blush when thou shalt ca' me
Tit-ta or daddy.
What tho' they ca' me fornicator, An' tease my name in kintra clatter: [country gossip] The mair they talk I'm kent the better, [more] E'en let them clash; [tattle] An auld wife's tongue's a feckless matter [feeble] To gie ane fash. [give one annoyance]
Welcome, my bonnie, sweet wee dochter--
Tho' ye come here a wee unsought for,
An' tho' your comin' I hae fought for
Baith kirk an' queir; [choir]
Yet, by my faith, ye're no unwrought for!
That I shall swear!
Sweet fruit o' mony a merry dint, My funny toil is no a' tint, [not all lost] Tho' thou came to the warl' asklent, [askew] Which fools may scoff at; In my last plack thy part's be in't-- [a small coin] The better half o't.
Tho' I should be the waur bested, [worse off]
Thou's be as braw an' bienly clad, [finely, comfortably]
An' thy young years as nicely bred
Wi' education,
As ony brat o' wedlock's bed
In a' thy station.
Wee image of my bonnie Betty,
As fatherly I kiss and daut thee, [pet]
As dear an' near my heart I set thee
Wi' as guid will,
As a' the priests had seen me get thee
That's out o' hell.
Gude grant that thou may aye inherit [God]
Thy mither's looks and gracefu' merit,
An' thy poor worthless daddy's spirit,
Without his failins;
'Twill please me mair to see thee heir it,
Than stockit mailins. [farms]
An' if thou be what I wad hae thee, [would have]
An' tak the counsel I shall gie thee,
I'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.
At Mossgiel the Burns family was no more successful than in either of its previous farms. Bad seed and bad weather gave two poor harvests, and by the summer of 1786 the poet's financial condition was again approaching desperation. His situation was made still more embarrassing by the consequences of another of his amours. Shortly after moving to the parish of Mauchline he had fallen in love with Jean Armour, the daughter of a mason in the village. What was for Burns a prolonged courtship ensued, and in the spring of 1786 he learned that Jean's condition was such that he gave her a paper acknowledging her as his wife. To his surprise and mortification the girl's father, who is said to have had a personal dislike to him and who well may have thought a man with his reputation and prospects was no promising son-in-law, opposed the marriage, forced Jean to give up the paper, and sent her off to another town. Burns chose to regard Jean's submission to her father as inexcusable faithlessness, and proceeded to indulge in the ecstatic misery of the lover betrayed. There is no doubt that he suffered keenly from the affair: he writes to his friends that he could "have no nearer idea of the place of eternal punishment" than what he had felt in his "own breast on her account. 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." This is in a later letter than that in which he has "sunk into a lurid calm," and "subsided into the time-settled sorrow of the sable widower."
Yet other evidence shows that at this crisis also Burns's emotional experience was far from simple. It was probably during the summer of the same year that there occurred the passages with the mysterious Highland Mary, a girl whose identity, after voluminous controversy, remains vague, but who inspired some of his loftiest love poetry. Though Burns's feeling for her seems to have been a kind of interlude in reaction from the "cruelty" of Jean, he idealized it beyond his wont, and the subject of it has been exalted to the place among his heroines which is surely due to the long-suffering woman who became his wife.
In this same summer Burns formed the project of emigrating. He proposed to go to the West Indies, and return for Jean when he had made provision to support her. This offer was refused by James Armour, but Burns persevered with the plan, obtained a position in Jamaica, and in the autumn engaged passage in a ship sailing from Greenock. The song, Will Ye Go to the Indies; My Mary, seems to imply that Highland Mary was invited to accompany him, but substantial evidence of this, as of most things concerning his relations with Mary Campbell, is lacking. From Thee, Eliza, I Must Go, supposed to be addressed to Elizabeth Miller, also belongs to this summer, and is taken to refer to another of the "under-plots in his drama of love."
Meantime, at the suggestion of his friend and patron, Gavin Hamilton, Burns had begun to arrange for a subscription edition of his poems. It seems to have been only after he went to Mossgiel that he had seriously conceived the idea of writing for publication, and the decision was followed by a year of the most extraordinary fertility in composition. To 1785-1786 are assigned such satires as Holy Willie and the Address to the Unco Guid; a group of the longer poems including The Cotter's Saturday Night, The Jolly Beggars, Halloween, The Holy Fair, The Twa Dogs and The Vision; some shorter but no less famous pieces, such as the poems To a Louse, To a Mouse, To the Deil, To a Mountain Daisy and Scotch Drink; and a number of the best of his Epistles. Many of these, especially the church satires, had obtained a considerable local fame through circulation in manuscript, so that, proposals having been issued for an edition to be printed by Wilson of Kilmarnock, it was not found difficult to obtain subscriptions for more than half the edition of six hundred and twelve copies. The prospect of some return from this enterprise induced James Armour to take legal measures to obtain support for Jean's expected child, and Burns, fearing imprisonment, was forced to go into hiding while his book was passing the press. The church, too, had taken cognizance of his offense, and both Jean and he had to stand up before the congregation on three occasions to receive rebuke and make profession of repentance. He was at the same time completing the preparations for his voyage. In such extraordinary circumstances appeared the famous Kilmarnock edition, the immediate success of which soon produced a complete alteration in the whole outlook of the poet.
In the first place, the consideration Burns gained from his volume induced Armour to relax his pursuit, and in September, when Jean became the mother of twins, the poet was in such a mood that the sentiment of paternity began to weigh against the proposed emigration. Some weeks later he learned through a friend that Doctor Blacklock, a poet and scholar of standing in literary circles in Edinburgh, had praised his volume highly, and urged a second and larger edition. The upshot was that he gave up his passage (his trunk had been packed and was part way to Greenock), and determined instead on a visit to Edinburgh. The only permanent result of the whole West Indian scheme was thus a sheaf of amorous and patriotic farewells, of which the following may be taken as examples:
WILL YE GO TO THE INDIES, MY MARY?
Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary,
And leave auld Scotia's shore?
Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary,
Across the Atlantic's roar?
O sweet grows the lime and the orange,
And the apple on the pine;
But a' the charms o' the Indies
Can never equal thine.
I hae sworn by the Heavens to my Mary,
I hae sworn by the Heavens to be true;
And sae may the Heavens forget me,
When I forget my vow!
O plight me your faith, my Mary,
And plight me your lily-white hand;
O plight me your faith, my Mary,
Before I leave Scotia's strand.
We hae plighted our troth, my Mary,
In mutual affection to join;
And curst be the cause that shall part us!
The hour, and the moment o' time!
THE GLOOMY NIGHT
The gloomy night is gathering fast,
Loud roars the wild inconstant blast,
Yon murky cloud is foul with rain,
I see it driving o'er the plain;
The hunter now has left the moor,
The scatter'd coveys meet secure,
While here I wander, prest with care,
Along the lonely banks of Ayr.
The Autumn mourns her ripening 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 bonnie banks of Ayr.
'Tis not the surging billow's roar,
'Tis 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 transpierc'd with many a wound:
These bleed afresh, those ties I tear,
To leave the bonnie banks of Ayr.