by Robert Burns
O’ laughin at us:
Curse Thou his basket and his store,
Kail an’ potatoes. — cabbage/greens
Lord, hear my earnest cry and prayer
80 Against that Presbytry of Ayr!
Thy strong right hand, Lord, mak it bare
Upon their heads!
Lord visit them, and dinna spare, do not
For their misdeeds!
85 O Lord my God, that glib-tongu’d Aiken! smooth-
My very heart and flesh are quaking
To think how I sat, sweating, shaking,
An’ pish’d wi’ dread, wet myself
While Auld wi’ hingin lip gaed sneaking hanging, went sneering
90 And hid his head!
Lord, in Thy day o’ vengeance try him!
Lord visit him wha did employ him! who
And pass not in Thy mercy by them,
Nor hear their prayer;
95 But for Thy people’s sake destroy them,
An’ dinna spare! do not
But Lord, remember me and mine
Wi’ mercies temporal and divine!
That I for grace an’ gear may shine,
100 Excell’d by nane! none
And a’ the glory shall be Thine!
AMEN! AMEN!
Manuscript copies of this brilliant satire, probably a broadside printing, were circulated among friends of the poet during his lifetime. It first appeared in pamphlet form in 1799 from Stewart and Meikle, Glasgow, who then included it in their 1801 volume. Holy Willie, or Willie Fisher (1737–1809), is described by Burns in the Glenriddell manuscript as an ‘Elder in the parish of Mauchline, and much and justly famed for that polemical chattering which ends in tippling Orthodoxy, and for that Spiritualised Bawdry which refines to Liquorish Devotion’. He further explains, ‘In a Sessional process with a gentleman in Mauchline, aMr Gavin Hamilton, Holy Willie, and his priest, father Auld, after full hearing in the Presbytery of Ayr, came off but second best; owing partly to the oratorical powers of Mr Robt Aitken, Mr Hamilton’s Counsel; but chiefly to Mr Hamilton’s being one of the most irreproachable and truly respectable characters in the country’. Gavin Hamilton (1751–1805) and Robert Aitken (1739–1807) were intimate friends of Burns.
Again, like To A Haggis, this poem is over-used but it is, even by Burns’s standards, a quite astonishing dramatic monologue as he gets under the alien skin of his subject. The idea of self-destructive monologue has medieval roots and the poem may have a specific origin in Ramsay’s Last Speech of a Wretched Miser but Burns has a talent for the genre only equalled by Swift and Browning. Formally, as Kinsley notes, the poem is precisely a prayer which ‘follows the traditional scheme of invocation (ll. 1– 6) and praise (ll. 7–30); confession and penitence (ll. 37–60); intercession (ll. 61–2) and petition (ll. 63–102). As well as parodying form, Burns parodies language. Kinsley notes that: ‘The poem is written in the “language of the saints” – that improbable amalgam of Biblical English and colloquial Scots which was characteristic of the Covenanter and the Presbyterian evangelical … and which, in Burns as in Galt, has an almost miraculous unction’ (Vol. 3, p. 1048). The poem is saturated by the crazily inverted use of specific Biblical texts. Kinsley mentions one marvellous example from Deuteronomy, xxviii, 15–19: ‘Ll. 77–8: “Curse Thou his basket and his store, /Kail an’ potatoes”.’ A mean version of the magnificently comprehensive curse laid by Jehovah on the ungodly: ‘Cursed shalt thou be in the city … Cursed be thy basket and thy store … and the flocks of thy sheep’ (Vol. III, p. 1052).
In her detailed, perceptive treatment of the poem, McGuirk remarks:
Willie sees himself as marked by God for ‘gifts an’ grace’; readers experience him differently, however – as marked by Burns for ridicule. Yet this is not one of Burns’s bitter or angry satires. Willie’s spite comes to so little, after all. And he is so fluent in his self-love … Willie’s prayer, for all its scriptural allusion, is notable mainly for its perverse projection of Willie’s own spitefulness onto the deity … Burns was reared to scepticism about the Auld Licht …: William Burns taught all his children to reject the exclusive focus on divine election – salvation through grace alone – that has corrupted Willie. So Burns mocks Willie as any son of his father would. He also wrote as a grateful friend of Hamilton, who had generously provided shelter for the Burns family in its worst crisis – a kindness fresh in the poet’s mind, as the bankruptcy trial and subsequent death of Burns’s father had occurred only a year before ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ was written (p. 202).
We are not so certain of how we laugh at Willie Fisher who died, probably due to drink, frozen in a ditch in February 1809 and was buried in Mauchline cemetery near Mary Morison.
Epitaph on Holy Willie
First published by Stewart, 1801.
Here Holy Willie’s sair worn clay sore
Taks up its last abode; takes
His saul has taen some other way, soul, taken
I fear, the left-hand road. towards hell
5 Stop! there he is as sure’s a gun,
Poor, silly body, see him;
Nae wonder he’s as black’s the grun, no, ground
Observe wha’s standing wi’ him! who is
Your brunstane devilship I see
10 Has got him there before ye:
But haud your nine-tail cat a wee, hold, a while
Till ance you’ve heard my story. once
Your pity I will not implore,
For pity ye have nane; none
15 Justice, alas! has gi’en him o’er, given
And mercy’s day is gaen. gone
But hear me, Sir, deil as ye are, devil
Look something to your credit;
A coof like him wad stain your name, blockhead, would
20 If it were kent ye did it. — known
This was probably composed in 1785 after feedback from the private circulation of Holy Willie’s Prayer.
On Tam the Chapman
First printed by Willam Cobbett, circa 1820s.
As Tam the chapman on a day pedlar
Wi’ Death forgather’d by the way,
Weel pleas’d, he greets a wight sae famous, well, sturdy person
And Death was nae less pleas’d wi’ Thomas, no
Wha cheerfully lays down his pack, who
And there blaws up a hearty crack: starts up, conversation
His social, friendly, honest heart
Sae tickled Death, they could na part; so, not
Sae after viewing knives and garters, so
Death taks him hame to gie him quarters. home, give
In the Aldine edition (1839), noted for its retrieval of radical and bawdy works, this poem was allegedly printed by William Cobbett. Kinsley accepts this, though he could not locate it in The Political Register which, however, was not Cobbett’s sole publication. Cobbett, like all English radicals, was certainly sympathetic to Burns. Thus in his 1832 Tour in Scotland, a travel journal which Burns would have appreciated, given its preoccupation with the degree to which he found both Highland and Lowland Scotland ravaged by agrarian capitalism, Cobbett reports his Dumfries visit thus:
We reached DUMFRIES about five o’clock in the evening of Tuesday, the 6. And I lectured at the Theatre at half-after seven; and, considering, that the people have been frightened half to death about the cholera morbus (of which disease great numbers have actually died here), the attendance was wonderfully good. Poor BURNS, the poet, died in this town, an exciseman, after having written so well against that species of taxation, and that particular sort of office. Oh! Sobriety! How manifold are thy blessings! How great thy enjoyments! How complete the protection which thou givest to talent; and how feeble is talent unless it has that protection! I was very happy to hear that his widow, who still lives in this town, is amply provided for; and my intention was to go to her, to tell her my name, and to say, that I came to offer my respects as a mark of my admiration of the talents of her late h
usband, one single page of whose writings is worth more than a cart load that has been written by WALTER SCOTT (p. 235).
Loving Burns, he loathed Scott as much as Coleridge did, seeing in his endless best-selling pages a sordid inflation of literature, analogous to the replacement of gold by paper currency.
A Poet’s Welcome to his Love-Begotten Daughter
First printed in Stewart, 1801.
Thou’s welcome, Wean! Mishanter fa’ me, child, mishap, befall
If thoughts o’ thee, or yet thy Mamie, mother
Shall ever daunton me or awe me, subdue
My sweet, wee lady; small
5 Or if I blush when thou shalt ca’ me call
Tyta, or Daddie. — pet-name for father
Tho’ now they ca’ me Fornicator, call
An’ tease my name in kintra clatter, country gossip
The mair they talk, I’m kend the better; more, known
10 E’en let them clash! tattle
An auld wife’s tongue’s a feckless matter old, feeble
To gie ane fash. — give one annoyance
Welcome! My bonie, sweet, wee Dochter! daughter
Tho’ ye come here a wee unsought for; a trifle
15 And tho’ your comin I hae fought for, have
Baith Kirk and Queir; both Church and Court
Yet by my faith, ye’re no unwrought for,
That I shall swear!
Wee image o’ my bonie Betty,
20 As fatherly I kiss and daut thee, pet
As dear and near my heart I set thee,
Wi’ as gude will, good
As a’ the Priests had seen me get thee
That’s out o’ Hell. —
25 Sweet fruit o’ monie a merry dint, occasion
My funny toil is no a’ tint; not all lost
Tho’ thou cam to the warld asklent, askew
Which fools may scoff at,
In my last plack thy part’s be in’t, coin
30 The better half o’t.
Tho’ I should be the waur bestead, worse provided
Thou’s be as braw and bienly clad, finely, comfortably
And thy young years as nicely bred
Wi’ education,
35 As onie brat o’ Wedlock’s bed any
In a’ thy station.
Gude grant that thou may ay inherit
Thy Mither’s looks an’ gracefu’ merit; mother’s
An’ thy poor, worthless Daddie’s spirit,
40 Without his failins!
’Twill please me mair to see thee heir it more
Than stocket mailins! stocked farms
For if thou be, what I wad hae thee, would have
An’ tak the counsel I shall gie thee, give
45 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.
Throughout his life Burn’s attitude to his illegitimate off-spring was the reverse of the sadistic stringency with which the ‘Auld Lichts’ sought to discipline his fornication. The child in this poem is his first illegitimate child, a daughter born to Elizabeth (Betsy) Paton who was a servant at Lochlea during his father’s terminal illness. Burns’s mother wanted her son to marry Betsy but his brother Gilbert and his sisters thought her unsuitable: ‘very plain looking … the faults of her character would soon have disgusted (Burns). She was rude and uncultivated to a great degree, a strong masculine understanding, with a thorough (tho’ unwomanly) contempt for every sort of refinement’ (Kinsley, Vol. III, p. 1068). The warmth of the poem combined with the social defiance that his illegitimate daughter should not be made to feel an inferior outcast is, happily, corroborated by the remarkable course of the child’s life as reported by McGuirk:
The baby Elizabeth – first grandchild of the poet’s mother – was reared by her grandmother at Mossgiel farm (Betsey Paton returning home to Lairgieside), though the poet offered to take the child when he settled down with Jean Armour in 1788. In 1786, Burns paid the elder Elizabeth £20 for the child’s support out of the profits of the Kilmarnock edition (though at this time Betsey was not raising her). Ten years later – by then married to a farm servant – Elizabeth Paton did reclaim their daughter when the poet died. Young Elizabeth received £200 of the profits from Currie’s posthumous edition of her father’s Works on her twenty-first birthday in 1806. She married John Bishop, land steward of the Baillie of Polkemmet; tradition reports that she died giving birth to her seventh child on 8 December 1816. Among her descendants is Viscount Weir of Cathcart, whose estate is near Mauchline (p. 211).
Epistle to John Goldie
of Kilmarnock, August 1785
First printed in Stewart, 1801.
O Gowdie, terror o’ the Whigs,
Dread o’ black coats and reverend wigs!
Sour Bigotry on her last legs
Girns and looks back, snarls
Wishing the ten Egyptian plagues
May seize you quick. —
Poor gapin, glowrin Superstition! wide-mouthed, staring
Wae’s me, she’s in a sad condition: woe is
Fye! bring Black Jock1 her state-physician, quick
To see her water:
Alas! there’s ground for great suspicion
She’ll ne’er get better. —
Enthusiasm’s past redemption,
Gane in a gallopin consumption: gone
Not a’ her quacks wi’ a’ their gumption doctors, intelligence
Can ever mend her;
Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption, gives
She’ll soon surrender. —
Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple long
For every hole to get a stapple; stopper
But now, she fetches at the thrapple, gurgles, windpipe
And fights for breath;
Haste, gie her name up in the Chapel,2 give
Near unto death. —
’Tis you an’ Taylor3 are the chief
To blame for a’ this black mischief;
But could the Lord’s ain folk gat leave, if, own, got
A toom tar-barrel empty
An’ twa red peats wad bring relief, two, would
And end the quarrel. —
For me, my skill’s but very sma’,
An’ skill in Prose I’ve nane ava’; none at all
But quietlenswise, between us twa, in confidence, two
Weel may ye speed; well, fare
And, tho’ they sud you sair misca’, should, sore mis-name
Ne’er fash your head. — bother
E’en swinge the dogs; and thresh them sicker! flog, sorely
The mair they squeel ay chap the thicker; more, strike
And still ‘mang hands a hearty bicker drinking vessel
O’ something stout;
It gars an Owther’s pulse beat quicker, makes, author’s
An’ helps his wit. —
There’s naething like the honest nappy; nothing, beer
Whare’ll ye e’er see men sae happy, where will, so
Or women sonsie, saft and sappy, pleasant, soft, succulent
‘Tween morn and morn,
As them wha like to taste the drappie who, drop/alcohol
In glass or horn. —
I’ve seen me daez’t upon a time, dazed
I scarce could wink or see a styme; an outline
Just ae hauf-mutchkin does me prime, one half-pint
(Ought less, is little)
Then back I rattle on the rhyme,
As gleg’s a whittle. — keen as a knife
Even among the levels of virtuosity prevailing in the less specialised Enlightenment, John Goldie (1717–1809), author of The Gospel Recovered, is an extraordinary figure. Kinsley describes him:
A Scottish example of the Augustan virtuoso and ‘projector’, he became a cabinet-maker and later a wine merchant in Kilmarnock, speculating in coal-mining and canals; he was an amateur
mathematician, astronomer, and theologian; and one of Burns’s guarantors for the Kilmarnock edition. His Essays on Various Important Subjects Moral and Divine, Goudie’s ‘Bible’, appeared in 1780 (Second edition 1785) (Vol. III, p. 1086).
Along with Dr Richard Taylor (see To William Simpson, Ochiltree) Burns considered he had created the theological break with Calvinism’s concept of eternal sin and damnation necessary for the creation of a liberal, humane, social and political life.
The whigs of l.1 are not, of course, the eighteenth-century English constitutional reformers but the traditional seventeenth-century Scottish covenanting group located in the South-West. Burns makes wicked fun of them as terminally ill, especially with the terrible Black Jock Russel as prophetic urine tester of his fallen host. As always in these clerical satires, the poem is saturated with violence. The Auld Lichts would impose fiery torture (ll. 28–30) and Burns encourages the New Lichts to strike back. Ironically, ll. 37–40 echo the brutal landlords’ violence of ll. 31–43 in ‘The Address of Beelzebub’. The poem ends in anticipation of a bibulous world freed from savage religious represssion. It was completed in August 1785.
1 Black Jock refers to the Rev. John Russel of Kilmarnock, mentioned in The Holy Fair and The Kirk’s Alarm.
2 Chapel – Mr Russel’s kirk. R. B.
3 Taylor – Dr Taylor of Norwich.
Third Epistle to J. Lapraik
Sept. 13, 1785
First published by Cromek, 1808.
Guid speed an’ furder to you Johny, good, progress/luck
Guid health, hale han’s, an’ weather bony; good, whole hands, handsome
Now when ye’re nickan down fu’ cany cutting, full well