by Robert Burns
Willie Brew’d a Peck o’ Maut
O Willie 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.
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.
Here are we met, three merry boys,
Three merry boys I trow are we;
And mony a night we’ve merry been,
And mony mae we hope to be!
We are na fou, &c.
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!
We are na fou, &c.
Wha first shall rise to gang awa,
A cuckold, coward loun is he!
Wha first beside his chair shall fa’,
He is the king amang us three!
We are na fou, &c.
The last three minutes of the old year and the first two minutes of the new one provide a caesura of pure sentiment in the average Scots household: a perfectly encapsulated delirium of happy sadness and lost time. When I think back over nearly forty of those five-minute intervals, I see a procession of departed relatives and rosy-cheeked First Foots – coal in hand, whisky bottle under the arm, tears forming in the corners of eyes – waiting at the front door to grasp a hand and take a cup of kindness. One year, an old gentleman called Robbie Proudfoot came to the house. A recovering alcoholic from a village near Stranraer, he stood in our living-room with a glass of dandelion-and-burdock and toasted all the handsome drinks – ‘the right gude-willie-waught’ – of former days and we drove through the snow to a hall in Irvine. In that Drill Hall stood all the recovering alcoholics of Ayrshire, passing those dangerous hours after the Bells in the company of one another, and they danced and sang in an absence of drink. It happened a long time ago, as did everything in its turn, and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ brings the colour of those nights back to life, a song with a precise gift for mellowing our regrets and putting out a hand to all that is human and passing.
Auld Lang Syne
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!
CHORUS
For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fitt,
Sin auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
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.
For auld, &c.
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught,
For auld lang syne.
For auld, &c.
If nobody restrains us, we will drink ourselves to destruction. Apart from the Russians and Scandinavians, I know of no people so dedicated as the British to stupefying themselves with alcohol.
Hogarth’s biting depiction of Gin Lane and Cruickshank’s great anti-alcohol paintings are there to remind us of the hoggish, violent and self-destructive state we get into when we can, and the trail of wreckage we leave in broken marriages, neglected children and destroyed lives.
Peter Hitchins, Daily Mail, April 2004
Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous
My Son, these maxims make a rule,
And 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.
Solomon—Eccles., vii:16
O ye wha are sae guid yoursel,
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell
Your Neebours’ fauts and folly!
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supply’d wi’ store o’ water,
The heaped happer’s ebbing still,
And still the clap plays clatter.
Hear me, ye venerable Core,
As counsel for poor mortals,
That frequent pass douce Wisdom’s door
For glaikit Folly’s portals;
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes
Would here propone defences,
Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes,
Their failings and mischances.
Ye see your state wi’ theirs compar’d,
And shudder at the niffer,
But cast a moment’s fair regard
What maks 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’ hiding.
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 scud your sea-way;
But, in the teeth o’ baith to sail,
It maks an unco leeway.
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 expences!
Ye high, exalted, virtuous Dames,
Ty’d up in godly laces,
Before ye gie poor Frailty names,
Suppose a change o’ cases;
A dear-lov’d lad, convenience snug,
A treacherous inclination—
But, let me whisper i’ your lug,
Ye’re aiblins nae temptation.
Then gently scan your brother Man,
Still gentler sister Woman;
Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human:
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.
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.
1 It is a well known fact that witches, or any evil spirits, have no power to follow a poor wight any farther than the middle of the next running stream.—It may be proper likewise to mention to the benighted traveller, that when he falls in with bogles, whatever danger may be in his going forward, there is much more hazard in turning back.
1 This was wrote before the Act anent the Scotch Distilleries, of session 1786; for which Scotland and the Author return their most grateful thanks.
2 A worthy old Hostess of the Author’s in Mauchline, where he sometimes studies Politics over a glass of
guid auld Scotch Drink.
1 The old Scotch name for the Bat.
2 The Hostess of a noted Caravansary in Mauchline, well known to and much frequented by the lowest orders of Travellers and Pilgrims.
3 A peculiar sort of Whiskie so called: a great favourite with Poosie Nansie’s Clubs.
4 Homer is allowed to be the eldest Ballad singer on record.
The Immortals
The Ayrshire fiction-writer John Galt – Coleridge’s favourite novelist – must have got the idea of the pawky, double-dealing minister from Burns, for in Annals of the Parish he presents a man totally relentless in his scraping manners and his pantomimic piety. The combination is native to Holy Willie, who reminds us that self-abasement is merely the queasier partner of personal ambition. Galt’s satire has the warm colours of the Flemish masters; so does Burns’s portrait of Holy Willie, whose roseate face and watery eye we might imagine peeping over a guttering candle flame.
Holy Willie’s Prayer
And send the godly in a pet to pray—
Pope
ARGUMENT
Holy Willie was a rather oldish bachelor Elder in the parish 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 Sessional process with a gentleman in Mauchline, a Mr Gavin Hamilton, Holy Willie, and his priest, father Auld, after full hearing in the Presbytry 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 Process, the Muse overheard him at his devotions as follows—
O Thou that in the heavens does dwell!
Wha, as it pleases best Thysel,
Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell,
A’ for Thy glory!
And no for ony gude or ill
They’ve done before Thee.—
I bless and praise Thy matchless might,
When thousands Thou has left in night,
That I am here before Thy sight,
For gifts and grace,
A burning and a shining light
To a’ this place.—
What was I, or my generation,
That I should get such exaltation?
I, wha deserv’d most just damnation,
For broken laws
Sax thousand years ere my creation,
Thro’ Adam’s cause!
When from my mother’s womb I fell,
Thou might hae plunged me deep in hell,
To gnash my gooms, and weep, and wail,
In burning lakes,
Where damned devils roar and yell
Chain’d to their stakes.—
Yet I am here, a chosen sample,
To shew Thy grace is great and ample:
I’m here, a pillar o’ Thy temple
Strong as a rock,
A guide, a ruler and example
To a’ Thy flock.—
O Lord Thou kens what zeal I bear,
When drinkers drink, and swearers swear,
And singin’ there, and dancin’ here,
Wi’ great an’ sma’;
For I am keepet by Thy fear,
Free frae them a’.—
But yet—O Lord—confess I must—
At times I’m fash’d wi’ fleshly lust;
And sometimes too, in warldly trust
Vile Self gets in;
But Thou remembers we are dust,
Defil’d wi’ sin.—
O Lord—yestreen—Thou kens—wi’ Meg—
Thy pardon I sincerely beg!
O may’t ne’er be a living plague,
To my dishonor!
And I’ll ne’er lift a lawless leg
Again upon her.—
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.—
Maybe Thou lets this fleshy thorn
Buffet Thy servant e’en and morn,
Lest he o’er proud and high should turn,
That he’s sae gifted;
If sae, Thy hand maun e’en be borne
Untill Thou lift it.—
Lord bless Thy Chosen in this place,
For here Thou has a chosen race:
But God, confound their stubborn face,
And blast their name,
Wha bring Thy rulers to disgrace
And open shame.—
Lord mind Gaun Hamilton’s deserts!
He drinks, and swears, and plays at cartes,
Yet has sae mony taking arts
Wi’ Great and Sma’,
Frae God’s ain priest the people’s hearts
He steals awa.—
And when we chasten’d him therefore,
Thou kens how he bred sic a splore,
And set the warld in a roar
O’ laughin at us:
Curse Thou his basket and his store,
Kail and potatoes.—
Lord hear my earnest cry and prayer
Against that Presbytry of Ayr!
Thy strong right hand, Lord, make it bare
Upon their heads!
Lord visit them, and dinna spare,
For their misdeeds!
O Lord my God, that glib-tongu’d Aiken!
My very heart and flesh are quaking
To think how I sat, sweating, shaking,
And piss’d wi’ dread,
While Auld wi’ hingin lip gaed sneaking
And hid his head.
Lord, in Thy day o’ vengeance try him!
Lord visit him that did employ him!
And pass not in Thy mercy by them,
Nor hear their prayer;
But for Thy people’s sake destroy them,
And dinna spare!
But Lord, remember me and mine
Wi’ mercies temporal and divine!
That I for grace and gear may shine,
Excell’d by nane!
And a’ the glory shall be Thine!
AMEN! AMEN!
Heresy is a model of resistance in the mind of a free man. That is perhaps why Burns admired Milton’s Satan, his ‘manly fortitude in supporting what cannot be remedied – in short, the wild broken fragments of a noble mind, exalted in ruins’. Burns was careless with the Kirk authorities, but good relations between literature and laughter must often depend on an author’s willingness to endure the penalties of public disgrace.
The Kirk of Scotland’s Garland—A New Song
Orthodox, Orthodox, who believe in John Knox,
Let me sound an alarm to your conscience;
A heretic blast has been blawn i’ the West—
That what is not Sense must be Nonsense, Orthodox,
That what is not Sense must be Nonsense.—
Doctor Mac, Doctor Mac, ye should streek on a rack,
To strike Evildoers with terror;
To join FAITH and SENSE upon any pretence
Was heretic, damnable error, &c.
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, &c.
D’rymple mild, D’rymple mild, tho’ your heart’s like a child,
And your life like the new-driven snaw;
Yet that winna save ye, auld Satan maun have ye,
For preaching that three’s ane and twa, &c.
Calvin’s Sons, Calvin’s Sons, seize your spiritual guns—
Ammunition ye never can need;
Your HEARTS are the stuff will be POWDER enough,
And your SCULLS are a storehouse o’ LEAD, &c.
Rumble John, Rumble John, moun
t the steps with a groan,
Cry, the BOOK is with heresy cramm’d;