by Robert Burns
And the muir-cock springs on whirring wings
Amang the blooming heather:
Now waving crops, with yellow tops.
Delights the weary Farmer;
An’ the moon shines bright, when I rove at night
To muse on Jeanie Armour.
This early version is included in the printed Sales Catalogue of the London auction house, Puttock & Simpson, 1862, printed by R. Bigmore, Mitchell Library Collection.
It appears in SMM, no. 351, 1792 and later in SC, with a minor textual ammendment by Thomson, who characteristically softens the opening line from ‘slaught’ring guns’ to ‘sportsmen’s guns’. An early manuscript copy was sold in London, May, 1862, with different text from the final published song, suggesting that the poet improved the lyric considerably prior to the 1786 edition. Although begun around 1775, the song bears the mark of the mature poet during the winter of 1785–6. The Peggy referred to is Margaret Thompson of Kirkoswald. Burns told Dr Moore of his rapture with her, ‘… stepping out to the garden one charming noon, to take the sun’s altitude, I met with my Angel “Like Prosperine gathering flowers, / Herself a fairer flower”. [Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book IV, line 269.] It was vain to think of doing any more good at school … I did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, or steal out to meet her …’ (Letter 125). The modern folk singer Dick Gaughan enhances the old music with a haunting re-tuned guitar (DAGDAD) pick style. Gaughan does not miss the dark, forceful condemnation, ‘tyrannic man’s dominion’ whose ‘murdering, gory pinion’ claims to be sport being interwoven amid a song of love and nature.
From Thee Eliza
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Tune: Gilderoy
From thee, ELIZA, I must go,
And from my native shore:
The cruel fates between us throw
A boundless ocean’s roar;
5 But boundless oceans, roaring wide
Between my Love and me,
They never, never can divide
My heart and soul from thee.
Farewell, farewell, ELIZA dear,
10 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,
15 That throb, ELIZA, is thy part,
And thine that latest sigh!
This song appears to have been composed just prior to publication in 1786, when the poet considered a plan of emigration to Jamaica. However, possible exile may have occurred to Burns at an earlier stage in his life, given that he informs Dr Moore that the song was already written by the time he was twenty-three years old (Letter 125). The heroine, ‘my quondam Eliza’ (Letter 113) may be Elizabeth Miller of Mauchline, although Mackay (1993) suggests an earlier acquaintance, Elizabeth Gebbie (1762–1823), as an alternative.
The Farewell to The Brethren of St James’s Lodge, Tarbolton
Tune: Good-Night, and Joy be wi’ You A’ First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Adieu! a heart-warm, fond adieu;
Dear Brothers of the mystic tye! fellow Masons
Ye favour’d, ye enlighten’d Few,
Companions of my social joy!
5 Tho’ I to foreign lands must hie, speed
Pursuing Fortune’s slidd’ry ba’, slippery ball
With melting heart and brimful eye,
I’ll mind you still, tho’ far awa. away
Oft have I met your social Band,
10 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!
15 Strong Mem’ry on my heart shall write
Those happy scenes when far awa. away
May Freedom, Harmony, and Love,
Unite you in the grand Design,
Beneath th’ Omniscient Eye above,
20 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. away
25 And YOU farewell! whose merits claim
Justly that highest badge to wear:
Heav’n bless your honour’d, noble Name,
To MASONRY and SCOTIA dear! Scotland
A last request permit me here,
30 When yearly ye assemble a’,
One round, I ask it with a tear,
To him, the Bard, that’s far awa. away
The poet became an ordinary member of the Freemason movement in October 1781. He became Depute Master of the St James’s lodge on 27th July 1784, where his oratorial skills in debate and discussion were clearly acknowledged. This song was written for his brother masons of the St James’s lodge as the Kilmarnock edition was going to press. Burns used his influential contacts within the Ayrshire masonic movement to further his poetic career, particularly in selling the Kilmarnock and Edinburgh editions. Moreover, many of the leading Whigs and radicals of this period who were sympathetic to the poet’s outspoken values, were brother masons.
Epitaph on a Henpecked Squire
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
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.
This was aimed at William Campbell and his wife, Lilias Campbell, of Netherplace who lived near Mauchline. This and the following two epigrams were dropped from the Edinburgh edition. Scott Douglas’s comment on this is typical of reactionary conservativism, devoid of humour: ‘Burns had a strong aptitude for producing these smart and often very biting things’ (Vol. 1, p. 128).
Epigram on Said Occasion
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
O Death, had’st thou but spar’d his life,
Whom we this day lament!
We freely wad exchanged the wife, would
An’ a’ been weel content. well
Ev’n as he is, cauld in his graff, cold, grave
The swap we yet will do’t;
Tak thou the carlin’s carcase aff, off/away
Thou’se get the saul o’ boot. soul, as well
This also relates to William Campbell of Netherplace.
Another
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
One Queen Artemisa, as old stories tell,
When depriv’d of her husband she lovèd so well,
In respect for the love and affection he’d show’d her,
She reduc’d him to dust and she drank up the Powder.
But Queen Netherplace, of a diff’rent complexion,
When call’d on to order the fun’ral direction,
Would have eat her dead lord, on a slender pretence,
Not to show her respect, but — to save the expense.
When first printed, it was not possible for general readers to identify the satirical target of this epigram; the name ‘Netherplace’ was merely a line of asterisks beginning with the letter ‘N’. For notes on William Campbell of Netherplace and his wife, see Epitaph on a Henpecked Squire. This was omitted from the Edinburgh edition.
On a Celebrated Ruling Elder
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Here Sowter Hood, in Death does sleep; cobbler
To Hell, if he’s gane thither, gone that way
Satan, gie him thy gear to keep; give
He’ll haud it weel thegither. hold, well together
Composed during the poet’s Tarbolton period, on William Hood, whose surname was marked by asterisks in the 1786 publication. Dated in the First Commonplace Book for April, 1784, under the title Epitaph for William Hood, senr., in Tarbolton. Hood was
a shoemaker.
On a Noisy Polemic
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Below thir stanes lie Jamie’s banes; these stones, bones
O Death, it’s my opinion,
Thou ne’er took such a bleth’ran bitch, talkative
Into thy dark dominion.
It is believed this was written on James Humphrey (1755–1844) who, in the Scots idiom, was a blether – he talked too much and with little intelligence. It is alleged from folklore, perhaps garnished by Cromek and later Cunningham, that Humphrey’s claim to fame in his old age was that Burns targeted him with these lines.
On Wee Johnie
Hic jacet wee Johnie
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Whoe’er thou art, O reader, know,
That Death has murder’d Johnie,
An’ here his body lies fu’ low — full
For saul he ne’er had onie. soul, any
This is thought to be on John Wilson (d. 1839) who was a schoolmaster and session clerk in Tarbolton, although Mackay asserts that the object was the Reverend John Kennedy of Ochiltree.
For the Author’s Father
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
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’.
William Burn [es] s died, 13th February, 1784, at Lochlie. He is clearly the role model of manly worth and virtue which permeates the poetry and letters of Burns, an honest, hard working, honourable and noble provider who struggled against poverty, ill health and in his final year, the harshness of winter. In eight lines Burns describes his father as tender, generous, compassionate, dauntless – a man who did not defer to the ‘pride’ of the landed Gentry – a friend to manly virtue, a religious opponent to immoral behaviour and a person whose ‘failings’ were probably due to his religious beliefs. L. 8 is from Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village, l. 164.
It is remarkable that the extent of denigratory politically motivated malice expended on Burns for two decades after his death extended to examine even his father’s misfortunes and consider them as symptomatic of a hidden moral flaw. Outraged by the character assassination of the poet ‘under the dagger of literary patriots’, Alexander Peterkin in his 1816 re-edition of Currie’s edition (see Introduction) bitterly wrote of a particularly mendacious life by an alleged friend of the poet, Mr Walker of Perth:
No better illustration can be given of this unsatisfactory style of biography, than the ‘suspicion’ which is excited against the unspotted worth of William Burn [es] s, the poet’s father. We are instructed by a philosophical reverie, that the misfortunes of that worthy man must probably have arisen from some radical defect in his own character or conduct, since uniform mis-chance, it is assumed, always implies as much! How silly and cruel are such insinuations? God knows, there are many pressed down in adversity for life, without the slightest cause existing in their conduct or personal characters. We have known individuals possessing every quality that we can conceive of human worth, destined, like William Burn [es] s, to drink deeply in the cup of affliction—to struggle through life with poverty and disappointment and sorrow; and to descend, like him, into the grave with few other consolations than the prospects beyond it. The cause of William Burn [es] s’s uniform misfortune is very obvious to an ordinary observer: He had not money: that was his defect. And the want of capital alone fettered him to all the disasters which he experienced in his affectionate anxiety to keep his family around him in their tender years. There is no occasion for a refinement in speculation, when a fact stands manifestly in view sufficient to account for occurrences.
If Burns’s father had Jacobite leanings, he gave his son through Murdoch an education in the key-texts, especially Addison, of the English Real Whigs which, though deliberately anti-Auld Licht Calvinism, stressed austere independence in thought and behaviour. In this sense, Gilbert, chaste and conformist, was much more his father’s son than Robert. What this elegy does not, understandably, reveal is the tension and conflict between father and son. Thus in Letter 125, Burns records his attendance at a country dancing school against his father’s wishes: ‘from that instance of rebellion he took a kind of dislike to me, which I believe was one cause of that dissipation which marked my future years!’ All Romantic literature, familial and political, pulses with oedipal conflict.
For an innovative study of Burns’s father’s educational influence on him, see Liam McIlvanney’s Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth-century Scotland (Tuckwell Press, 2001).
For Robert Aiken, Esq.
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
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
‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’ is dedicated to Robert Aitken (1739–1807), an intimate friend and correspondent of Burns who was a lawyer in Ayr. Only Aitken’s initials were given in the publication to preserve anonymity.
A Bard’s Epitaph
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule, over/too
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool, over, shy, tamely submit
Let him draw near;
5 And owre this grassy heap sing dool, over, sadly/lament
And drap a tear. drop
Is there a Bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,
10 O, pass not by!
But with a frater-feeling strong, brother-feeling
Here, heave a sigh.
Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
15 Yet runs, himself, life’s mad career
Wild as the wave,
Here pause — and, thro’ the starting tear,
Survey this grave.
The poor Inhabitant below
20 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!
25 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-controul
30 Is Wisdom’s root.
This is the final work of the Kilmarnock edition. It is a strangely sombre ending to such a virile collection. After writing an actual epitaph for his father and an apparent one for Robert Aitken, he then writes his own. His sense of the symmetry of the Kilmarnock edition may be partly responsible for this. Having begun by celebrating in Nature’s Bard a formally unrestricted poet galvanised by nature’s energy, he ends by elegising the (self) image of a poet brought to disaster by the promiscuity of both his creative mind and randy body combined with a complete lack of prudence. One of the sources for the poem is the Epitaph for the young country poet Gray placed at the end of Epitaph Written in a Country Churchyard. That poem, with its ineradicably melancholic sense that historical invisibility is the common fate for people of worth, talent, even and especially, poetic genius, ‘some mute, inglorious Milton’, was seminal for Burns. It has also been suggested that Burns thought of another deathly piece, Elegy on the Death of Robert Ruisseaux, to end the volume. As we shall see, that poem is essentially an
account of the external pressures that brought ‘Ruisseaux’ (the French for streams, i.e. burns) low. Here, however, he chooses to take upon himself the alleged burden of his self-defined failure.
While Victorian editors had no trouble with a concluding poem of such self-denigratory didacticism, it has been either forgotten or peremptorily dismissed by most modern commentators. Daiches (pp. 150–1) sees the poem as manifesting the symptoms of The Cotter’s Saturday Night and thus spoiled by ‘a combination of Scots literary influences and an exhibitionism directed at the literati and their tastes’. He further notes that it employs ‘a Scots literary form’ but is ‘otherwise English in inspiration and timidly genteel in attitude’. In actual fact, the first stanza, puzzlingly, is wholly vernacular. There was one near contemporaneous reader, however, over whom the poem had an extraordinary, almost magnetic, attraction. Wordsworth must have felt that, in some psychic way, he was the ‘Bard of rustic song’ summoned to the graveside. In his 1803 Scottish tour he and Dorothy went to Burns’s graveside which caused him to write three complex, fraught poems: At the Grave of Burns 1803; Thoughts Suggested the Day Following, on the Banks of the Nith, Near the Poet’s Residence; To the Sons of Burns, After Visiting the Grave of their Father. The degree to which Wordsworth was troubled by these poems is partly manifested in their publishing history. The first two did not appear till 1842; only the third appeared close to the event in 1807. Stanzas two and eight of the first poem intensely catch the ‘frater-feeling strong’ that Wordsworth had for Burns: