by Robert Burns
Shame fa’ my een,
If e’er I have seen
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
From this memorable phrase, Burns creates a song which combines defiance and despair where his two great national heroes are entombed beyond resurrection. The song, thus, is the antithetical companion piece to Scots Wha Hae. Consciously or otherwise on the part of the modern poets, it prefigures poems like Muir’s Scotland’s Winter and MacDiarmid’s At Dunbar’s Grave which also enact burial rites for the Scottish spirit. The song was published unsigned partly because its political vision is the reverse of the soon to be wholly triumphal forces of pro-Union Scottish Toryism, most manifest in Walter Scott’s writings.
Kellyburn Braes –
First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
There lived a carl in Kellyburnbraes, old man
Hey and the rue grows bonie wi’ thyme;
And he had a wife was the plague o’ his days,
And the thyme it is wither’d and rue is in prime;
5 And he had a wife was the plague o’ his days,
And the thyme it is wither’d and rue is in prime. —
Ae day as the carl gaed up the lang-glen, one, went, long
Hey and the rue &c.
He met wi’ the Devil, says how do you fen? fend/how are you
10 And the thyme it is wither’d and rue is in prime;
I’ve got a bad Wife, sir, that’s a’ my complaint,
Hey and the rue &c.
For, saving your presence, to her ye’re a saint,
And the thyme &c.
15 It’s neither your stot nor your staig I shall crave, bullock, colt
Hey and the rue &c.
But gie me your wife, man, for her I must have, give
And the thyme &c.
O, welcome most kindly! the blythe carl said; old man
20 Hey and the rue &c
But if ye can match her — ye’re waur than ye’re ca’d, worse, called
And the thyme &c.
The Devil has got the auld wife on his back, old
Hey and the rue &c.
25 And like a poor pedlar he’s carried his pack,
And the thyme &c.
He’s carried her hame to his ain hallan-door, home, own, front-
Hey and the rue &c.
Syne bade her gae in for a bitch and a whore, go
30 And the thyme &c.
Then straight he makes fifty, the pick o’ his band,
Hey and the rue &c.
Turn out on her guard in the clap o’ a hand,
And the thyme &c.
35 The carlin gaed thro’ them like onie wud bear, went, any mad
Hey and the rue &c.
Whae’er she gat hands on, cam ne’er her nae mair, got, no more
And the thyme &c.
A reekit, wee devil looks over the wa’, smoking devil, wall
40 Hey and the rue &c.
O help, Master, help!, or she’ll ruin us a’, master
And the thyme &c.
The Devil he swore by the edge o’ his knife,
Hey and the rue &c.
45 He pitied the man that was ty’d to a wife,
And the thyme &c.
The Devil he swore by the kirk and the bell,
Hey and the rue &c.
He was not in wedlock, thank Heaven, but in Hell,
50 And the thyme &c.
Then Satan has travell’d again wi’ his pack,
Hey and the rue &c.
And to her auld husband he’s carried her back, old
And the thyme &c.
55 I hae been a Devil the feck o’ my life, have, most
Hey and the rue &c.
But ne’er was in Hell till I met wi’ a wife,
And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime.
But ne’er was in Hell till I met wi’ a wife,
60 And the thyme it is wither’d, and rue is in prime.
This is signed by Burns in the S.M.M. It is partly based on an old English song, The Farmer’s Old Wife, but the body of the lyric is by Burns. It has all the hallmarks of a traditional male drinking club song combined with the wit of Burns, humorously lamenting the old man’s marriage to a wife who is so difficult to live with that even the Devil returns her to him.
Jockey Fou and Jenny Fain
First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
[I thers seek they kenna what,
Features, carriage, and a’ that,
Gie me loove in her I court;
Loove to loove maks a’ the sport.]
Let loove sparkle in her e’e; love, eye
Let her loe nae man but me; love, no
That ’s the tocher gude I prize, dowry, good
There the Luver’s treasure lies. —
The second stanza is by Burns and was written to accompany an old song he lifted from The Tea-Table Miscellany (1726) and printed by Johnson with the poet’s additional stanza.
The Slave’s Lament
First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthrall
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!
Torn from &c.
5 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! I am weary, weary, O!
There streams &c.
The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear,
10 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!
And I think &c.
No less an authority than Maya Angelou has discovered in Burns, most specifically in this song, an empathy with the enslaved, brutalised quality of Black experience. Kinsley, however, would have absolutely no truck with such a relationship. Here is his dismissive treatment of the song:
Burns’s part in this song is uncertain. It is ascribed to him only on the evidence of the Hastie MS. There is nothing in the argument that it represents 29 [The Ruined Farmer] (Chambers–Wallace, IV, 355). It is related in form and theme, with some verbal correspondences, to the broadside The Trapann’d Maid (Roxburghe Ballads, ed. Ebsworth, vii 513). (Vol. III, p. 1405.)
Kinsley’s peremptory rebutal of the Chambers-Wallace claim that the refrain from Burns’s early song The Ruined Farmer, ‘It’s O fickle fortune O’ has no resonance with ‘And alas! I am weary, weary O!’ is, at least, debatable. What is certain is that Kinsley had neither knowledge nor sympathy for the radical social context out of which this song emerged. Anti-slavery was the integrative factor in all the varied British radical and reform groupings in the latter eighteenth century. It was particularly strong in Scotland which had over sixty anti-slave societies. Further, the successful legal appeal by Joseph Knight, which particularly interested Dr Johnston, to repeal his slave status created a connection with the white Scottish colliers whose actual status was little better than that of plantation slaves. This enlightened Scottish impulse, of which Burns is the creative voice, to see history as an evolving process of the mass of humanity freeing itself from bondage is most cogently and powerfully dicovered in the writings of that great, now sadly submerged, figure of the Scottish radical Enlightenment, Glasgow University’s Professor John Millar. Thus Millar on American slavery:
It affords a curious spectacle to observe that the same people who talk in a high strain of political liberty, and who consider the privilege of imposing their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights of mankind, should make no scruple of reducing a great proportion of their fellow creatures into circumstances by which they are not only deprived of property, but of almost every species of right. Fortune p
erhaps never produced a situation more calculated to produce a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the conduct of men is at the bottom directed by philosophical principles. (William C. Lehmann, John Millar of Glasgow, 1735–1801, C.U.P., 1960, p. 321).
The Song of Death
or Orananaoig – A Gaelic Air.
First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
Scene – A Field of Battle – Time of the day, evening – The wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to join in this song.
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.
5 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.
Thou strik’st the dull peasant, he sinks in the dark,
10 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,
15 While victory shines on Life’s last ebbing sands,
O, who would not die with the Brave?
As we saw in the Introduction, this poem was seized on by Robert Nares, the governmental reviewer of The British Critic, as evidence that Burns, particularly with l. 14’s apparent patriotism, had seen the gross error of his political ways. This poem was allegedly the antidote to the seditious Scots Wha Hae with its connection of the fourteenth-century Scottish Wars of Independence with the ongoing French Revolution. Nares further claimed that:
In 1795 when we were first threatened with invasion, he appeared in the ranks of the Dumfries Volunteers and contributed to rouse the martial genius of his countrymen, by the following animated and almost sublime war-song.
Unfortunately for this conservative argument the song was written as early as May 1791, a few years before Britain went to war with France and at a time when many people in Britain still supported the French experiment. Explaining the song to Mrs Dunlop he wrote:
I have just finished the following Song, which to a lady the descendant of Wallace, & many heroes of his truly Illustrious line: & herself the mother of several Soldiers, needs neither preface nor apology.… The circumstance that gave rise to these verses was – looking over with a musical friend, McDonald’s collection of Highland airs, I was struck with one, an Isle of Skye tune, entitled ‘Oran an Aoig ‘or ‘The Song of Death’, to the measure of which I have adapted my stanzas’ (Letter 453).
This song is an elemental, post-Ossianic in mood, account of death in battle for both rich and poor. The peasant who dies, even his name is forgotten, but he who dies in battle, is through history, remembered as a hero. Sung from the lips of the dead and wounded soldiers of the victorious army, the ‘king of terrors’ (l. 5) and ‘fell tyrant’ (l. 7) not feared by the ‘Brave’ is Death itself.
Afton Water
First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, hill slopes
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.
5 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.
How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,
10 Far mark’d with the courses of clear, winding rills;
There daily I wander as noon rises high,
My flocks and my Mary’s sweet Cot in my eye. cottage
How pleasant thy banks and green vallies below,
Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow;
15 There oft, as mild ev’ning weeps over the lea,
The sweet-scented birk shades my Mary and me. birch trees
Thy chrystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides,
And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;
How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, clean
20 As, gathering sweet flowerets she stems thy clear wave.
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.
This fine song appears first on 5th February, 1789, in a letter from Ellisland to Mrs Dunlop: ‘There is a small river, Afton, that falls into the Nith, near New Cumnock, which has some charming, wild, romantic scenery on its banks. – I have a particular pleasure in those little pieces of poetry such as our Scots songs, &c. where the names and landskip-features of rivers, lakes or woodlands, that one knows are introduced. – I attempted a compliment of that kind, to Afton, as follows’ (Letter 310). The quotation found in the letter begins ‘Flow gently, clear Afton …’, not ‘sweet Afton’, suggesting it was re-drafted before publication. The spot described by Burns would appear to be Glen Afton, near New Cumnock.
My Bonie Bell
First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
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.
5 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.
The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer,
10 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,
15 But never ranging, still unchanging,
I adore my Bonie Bell.
The metre and flow of this song is irregular and does not have the expected natural ease of Burns’s best songs. It was found in transcript, not in the poet’s holograph. It is, however, signed as from Burns in the S.M.M. It is not known for certain if it is anoriginal work or a substantially updated traditional work. If the words ‘are’ and ‘forth’ were taken from lines 4, 5, and 6 – with further minor textual changes – it would read more like Burns. Whether Johnson modified lyrics we do not know given that their correspondence is incomplete. As it is signed as from Burns in print during his lifetime, there is little to question its authenticity.
The Gallant Weaver
Tune: The Weaver’s March
First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
Where Cart rins rowin to the sea, runs
By mony a flower and spreading tree, many
There lives a lad, the lad for me,
He is a gallant Weaver. —
5 Oh I had wooers aught or nine, eight
They gied me rings and ribbans fine; gave, ribbons
And I was fear’d my heart wad tine would break
And I gied it to the Weaver. — gave
My daddie sign’d my tocher-band dowry agreement
10 To gie the lad that has the land, give
But to my heart I’ll add my hand
And give it to the Weaver. —
While birds rejoice in leafy bowers,
While bees delight in opening flowers,
15 While corn grows green in simmer showers summer
I love my gallant Weaver. —
Mackay affirms this is a ‘reworking of a traditional ballad’ (p. 464) but
it is signed in the S.M.M. This suggests it is a substantial rewrite of the old song. It is surprising that Burns allowed ‘gied’ in stanza 2 and ‘give’ in stanza 3 to stand, which, although incongruous, makes the ending of the song more English. The river Cart runs through Paisley, important to the weaving industry during the 1780s and ’90s. The weaving community was definably politically radical.
Hey, Ca’ Thro’
or The Carls of Dysart
First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
Up wi’ the carls of Dysart,
And the lads o’ Buckhaven,
And the Kimmers o’ Largo,
And the lasses o’ Leven.
Chorus
5 Hey ca’ thro’ ca’ thro’ pull
For we hae mickle ado, have much to do
Hey, ca’ thro’ ca’ thro’
For we hae mickle ado. have much to do
We hae tales to tell, have
10 And we hae sangs to sing; have songs
We hae pennies to spend,
And we hae pints to bring.
Hey ca’ thro’ &c.
We’ll live a’ our days,