by Robert Burns
Wi’ weans I’m mair than weel contented, children, more, well
Heav’n sent me ane mair than I wanted. one more
My sonsie, smirking, dear-bought Bess, plump, Elizabeth Burns
55 She stares the daddy in her face,
Enough of ought ye like but grace;
But her, my bonny, sweet wee lady,
I’ve paid enough for her already,
An’ gin ye tax her or her mither, if, mother
60 By the Lord! ye ’se get them a’ thegither. together
And now, remember Mr. Aiken,
Nae kind of licence out I’m takin; no
Frae this time forth, I do declare, from
I’se ne’er ride horse nor hizzie mair; women more
65 Thro’ dirt and dub for life I’ll paidle, mire, wade
Ere I sae dear pay for a saddle; so
My travel a’ on foot I’ll shank it, walk
I’ve sturdy bearers, Gude be thankit. — legs, God, thanked
The Kirk and you may tak’ you that,
70 It puts but little in your pat; pot
Sae dinna put me in your buke, so do not, book
Nor for my ten white shillings luke. look
This list, wi’ my ain han’ I wrote it, own
Day and date as under notit, noted
75 Then know all ye whom it concerns,
Subscripsi huic, I have endorsed this
Robert Burns.
Mossgiel, Feb. 22nd 1786.
This poem is a witty deviant form of Burns’s standard satirical practice of reducing the great world of politics to the dimensions of his farmyard so that, for example, Pitt and Fox become midden-contending cock-erels. The political event that intrudes on him here is Pitt’s attempt in May 1785 to create a new tax system based on carriages, windows, married status, female servants and numbers of children. This was to pay for the growing debt initiated by the loss of America and a series of loans to foreign powers. This allows for a series of running jokes through the poem mainly based on the disparity between the poet’s paucity of worldly goods and Pitt’s fiscal intentions. He has no carriage horses but plough horses about which we are, characteristically, intimately informed as to their nature and function. The energy of the horse both for itself and as a metaphor for raw, randy male sexual energy also runs though the poem. First recorded in medieval texts, ‘riding’ has had extensive, ambivalent usage. See ll. 13–19 and ll. 63–4. Sexually, too, we are treated to the temptations for him of female servants (ll. 46–7) and, of course, his illegitimate daughter who is the beloved outcome of just such a previous encounter (ll. 52–60). Burns’s near patriarchal appetite for surrounding himself with progeny derived in and out of wedlock also extends to wee Davoc the orphan son of a ploughman adopted by the family who, according to tradition, Burns carried on his shoulders round Lochlea while teaching him English. What he certainly would not be doing is imposing on Davoc and the older boys (ll. 40–5) the rote religious instruction of The Shorter Catechism. As Liam McIlvanney has noted, it was precisely against this kind of doctrinaire environment that their father hired Murdoch to give his sons an alternative, relatively liberal education. The intimate, wry, knowing tone of the poem is influenced, of course, by the addressee who is his true friend Robert Ai [t] ken (ironically governmentally appointed for this task), a powerful, practical supporter of the Kilmarnock edition and Gavin Hamilton’s lawyer in their legal savaging of ‘Holy Willie’.
1 The fore-horse on the left hand, in the plough. R.B.
2 The hindmost horse on the lefthand, in the plough. R.B.
3 Kilmarnock. R.B.
4 The hindmost horse on the right hand, in the plough. R.B.
5 Wee Davoc was David Hutcheson, whom Burns took around with him on Lochlea farm and according to tradition carried him on his shoulders and taught him English.
6 This is one of the Shorter Catechisms to answer the question What is Effectual Calling?
To John Kennedy,
Dumfries House, Mossgiel, 3rd March, 1786.
First printed in 1834, by Cunningham.
Now, Kennedy, if foot or horse
E’er bring you in by Mauchline Corss, cross
Lord, man, there’s lasses there wad force would
A hermit’s fancy,
5 And down the gate in faith they’re worse road
An’ mair unchancy. more dangerous
But as I’m sayin, please step to Dow’s Whitefoord Arms
An’ taste sic gear as Johnnie brews, such liquor
Till some bit callan bring me news young lad
10 That ye are there,
An’ if we dinna hae a bouze, do not, booze
I’se ne’er drink mair. more
It’s no I like to sit an’ swallow
Then like a swine to puke an’ wallow,
15 But gie me just a true guid fallow give, good fellow
Wi’ right ingine, wit/inclination
And spunkie ance to mak us mellow, whisky once
An’ then we’ll shine.
Now if ye’re ane o’ warl’s folk, one, world’s
20 Wha rate the wearer by the cloak who
An’ sklent on poverty their joke look down on the poor
Wi’ bitter sneer,
Wi’ you nae friendship I will troke, no, exchange
Nor cheap nor dear.
25 But if as I’m informed weel well
Ye hate as ill’s the vera deil very Devil
The flinty heart that canna feel — cannot
Come Sir, here’s tae you: to
Hae there’s my han’, I wiss you weel have, hand, wish, well
30 An’ Gude be wi’ you. good attend you
This occasional poem was sent to John Kennedy on 3rd March, 1786 in response to his request (Letter 22) for a copy of The Cotter’s Saturday Night. Johnie Dow (l. 7) was the proprietor of the Whitefoord Arms, Mauchline. Kennedy was related to Gavin Hamilton’s wife, Helen Kennedy and factor to the Earl of Dumfries. What the poem represents is clever sounding-out of the socially superior Kennedy as possible friend by a series of suggestions as to the degree of his liberalism on matters of drink, women and social sympathy.
Adam Armour’s Prayer
First published in The Edinburgh Magazine, January 1808.
GUDE pity me, because I’m little, God
For though I am an elf o’ mettle,
And can, like ony wabster’s shuttle, any weaver’s
Jink there or here; dodge
5 Yet, scarce as lang’s a guid kail whittle, long as, good cabbage knife
I’m unco queer. very odd
An’ now Thou kens our woefu’ case, knows
For Geordie’s Jurr we’re in disgrace, maid
Because we stang’d her through the place, rode her on a stake
10 An’ hurt her spleuchan, purse/vagina
For which we daurna show our face that reason, dare not
Within the clachan.
An’ now we’re dern’d in dens and hollows, hidden
And hunted as was William Wallace,
15 Wi’ Constables, those blackguard fallows, they, fellows
An’ Sodgers baith; soldiers, both
But Gude preserve us frae the gallows, God, from
That shamefu’ death!
Auld, grim, black-bearded Geordie’s sell; old
20 Oh, shake him owre the mouth o’ Hell, over
There let him hing, an’ roar, an’ yell,
Wi’ hideous din,
And if he offers to rebel,
Then heave him in.
25 When Death comes in wi’ glimmering blink, glance
An’ tips auld drucken Nanz the wink, old drunken
May Satan gie her arse a clink give, smack
Within his yet, gate
An’ fill her up wi’ brimstone drink
30 Red, reeking, het. smoking, hot
There’s Jock an’ the hav’rel Jenny, half-witted
Some Devil seize them
in a hurry,
An’ waft them in th’ infernal wherry
Straught through the lake,
35 An’ gie their hides a noble curry give
Wi’ oil of aik. a beating with oak
As for the Jurr, puir worthless body, maid, poor
She’s got mischief enough already,
Wi’ stanget hips and buttocks bloody, wounds from the stake
40 She’s suffer’d sair; sore
But may she wintle in a woodie, swing from a noose
If she whore mair. more
This poem involves an explosive clash between two worlds: the licentious hostelry tribe of The Jolly Beggars and its would-be repressors, the lads of ‘Auld Licht’ conviction led by Jean Armour’s brother, Adam. Sleeping with Jean, Burns was sleeping with a daughter of the enemy. Here, indeed, hatred for his wife’s clan bursts forth in this vicious, strange account of her brother, Adam, and the state of mind he represents. The apparent biographical source of the story is that George Gibson, landlord of Poosie Nancy’s, had hired a maid (Agnes Wilson) who was really a prostitute. Adam and his gang had responded by ‘stanging’ her; riding her out of town on a rail with all the bloody, bruising consequences to a drawerless woman of a rough wooden pole thrust between her legs. Gibson had sought legal reparation and the lads had made themselves scarce. Armour’s identification of his cowardly brutality with Wallace’s natural heroism is as crazily ironic as William Fisher’s identification with God in that companion-piece prayer of total hypocrisy, Holy Willie’s Prayer. Armour’s rhetoric displays a similar level of hate-filled imaginings of eternal damnation being visited on his enemies. His apparent sympathy in the last stanza for the woman having suffered enough is undermined by the fact that any more whoring should lead to her lynching. Indeed, Auld Lichts’ pathologically sadistic rhetoric becomes, in this poem, tangible sadism. Adam Armour was small but the first stanza seems to describe not as a human being but, surreally, a free-floating phallus. He is, indeed, ‘unco queer’. The half-witted girl (l. 31) is Poosie Nansie’s own daughter, known as ‘Racer Jess’. The word ‘arse’ (l. 27) in often printed as ‘doup’.
The Bonie Lass o’ Ballochmyle
Tune: Etterick Banks. First printed by Currie, 1800.
’Twas ev’n, the dewy fields were green,
On ev’ry blade the pearls hang,
The Zephyr wanton’d round the bean,
And bore its fragrant sweets alang; along
5 In ev’ry glen the Mavis sang, thrush
All Nature list’ning seem’d the while;
Except where greenwood Echoes rang
Amang the braes o’ Ballochmyle. hill slopes
With careless step I onward stray’d,
10 My heart rejoic’d in Nature’s joy,
When, musing in a lonely glade,
A Maiden fair I chanc’d to spy:
Her look was like the Morning’s eye,
Her air like Nature’s vernal smile,
15 The lilies’ hue and roses’ dye
Bespoke the Lass o Ballochmyle.
Fair is the morn in flow’ry May,
And sweet an ev’n in Autumn mild; evening
When roving through the garden gay,
20 Or wand’ring in the lonely wild;
But Woman, Nature’s darling child,
There all her charms she does compile,
And all her other works are foil’d
By the bony Lass o’ Ballochmyle.
25 O if she were a country Maid,
And I the happy country Swain!
Though shelter’d in the lowest shed
That ever rose on Scotia’s plain:
Through weary Winter’s wind and rain,
30 With joy, with rapture I would toil,
And nightly to my bosom strain
The bony Lass o’ Ballochmyle.
Then Pride might climb the slipp’ry steep
Where fame and honours lofty shine:
35 And Thirst of gold might tempt the deep
Or downward seek the Indian mine:
Give me the Cot below the pine,
To tend the flocks or till the soil,
And ev’ry day have joys divine
40 With the bony Lass o’ Ballochmyle.
While this is, rightly, a much loved, much sung Burns song, the circumstances both surrounding its genesis and fate provide a kind of preliminary caricature of Burns’s relationships with upper class women which, in the course of his life, evolve from this near farce to, with Maria Riddell, incipient tragedy. When actually briefly glimpsed on the autumnally wooded banks of Ayr, Miss Willhemina Alexander (1753–1843), sister of the new laird of Ballochmyle, Claud Alexander, was in her thirties, well beyond the usual marriageable age, and advancing towards permanent spinsterhood. Burns rushed home to write the song and on 18th November, 1786 wrote Miss Alexander an accompanying letter. The whole letter should be read as Burns at his excessively sentimental worst when, with the licence and identity of ‘the poetic Reveur’, he lays down his ill-disguised erotic credentials as ‘hyperman’ of feeling:
… the favorite haunts of my Muse, the banks of Ayr… The sun was flaming o’er the distant western hills; not a breath stirred the crimson opening blossom, or the verdant spreading leaf. –’ Twas a golden moment for a Poetic heart. – I listened the feathered warblers, pouring their harmony on every hand, with a congenial, kindred regard; & frequently turned out of my path, lest I should disturb their little songs, or frighten them to another station. – ‘Surely,’ said I to myself, ‘he must be a wretch indeed, who, regardless of your harmonious endeavours to please him, can eye your elusive flights, to discover your secret recesses, and rob you of all the property Nature gives you – your dearest comforts, your helpless little Nestlings’ – Even the hoary Hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart at such a time, but must have been interested in its welfare, and wished it to be preserved from the rudely browsing cattle, or the withering eastern Blast? – Such was the scene, & such the hour, when in a corner of my prospect, I spied one of the fairest pieces of Nature’s workmanship that has ever crowned a Poetic landscape; those visionary Bards excepted, who hold commerce with aerial beings (Letter 56).
Unsurprisingly shaken not stirred by this missive, Miss Alexander allegedly enquired into the nature of her admirer. Again unsurprisingly, reports of his character were such that she decided not to reply. Symptomatic of the nineteenth-century Burns cult, she died in 1843, aged ninety, with song and letter as her most treasured possession. The smart of rejection stayed with Burns to the degree that years later he recorded:
Well, Mr Burns, and did the lady give you the desired permission? No! She was too fine a Lady to notice so plain a compliment. As to her great brothers, whom I have since met in life on more equal terms of respectability – why should I quarrel their want of attention to me? When Fate swore their purses should be full, Nature was equally positive that their heads should be empty. ‘Men of their fashion were surely incapable of being impolite?’ Ye canna mak a silk-purse o’ a sow’s lug (Letter 217).
Ll. 15–16, read, in some texts, ‘Perfection whisper’d, passing by—/ “Behold the lass o’ Ballochmyle!”’ The improvement by Burns is adopted above.
To James Tennant of Glenconner
First published by Stewart, 1802.
AULD com’rade dear and brither sinner, old, brother
How ’s a’ the folk about Glenconner; all
How do ye this blae eastlin win’, biting, wind
That’s like to blaw a body blin’: blow, blind
5 For me my faculties are frozen,
My dearest member nearly dozen’d: penis, torpid
I’ve sent you here by Johnie Simson,1
Twa sage Philosophers to glimpse on! two
Smith, wi’ his sympathetic feeling,
10 An’ Reid, to common sense appealing.
Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
An’ meikle Greek an’ Latin mangled,
much
Till, wi’ their Logic-jargon tir’d,
And in the depth of science mir’d,
15 To common sense they now appeal,
What wives and wabsters see an’ feel; weavers
But, hark ye, friend, I charge you strictly,
Peruse them, an’ return them quickly;
For now I’m grown sae cursed douse, so, serious
20 I pray and ponder butt the house, within the
My shins, my lane, I there sit roastin, alone
Perusing Bunyan, Brown, and Boston;
Till by an’ by, if I haud on, hold/wait
I’ll grunt a real Gospel groan:
25 Already I begin to try it,
To cast my een up like a Pyet, eyes, magpie
When by the gun she tumbles o’er,
Flutt’ring an’ gasping in her gore:
Sae shortly you shall see me bright, so
30 A burning an’ a shining light.
My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen,2 good, old
The ace an’ wale of honest men; pick
When bending down wi’ auld grey hairs, old
Beneath the load of years and cares,
35 May He who made him still support him,
An’ views beyond the grave comfort him.
His worthy fam’ly far and near,
God bless them a’ wi’ grace and gear. wealth
My auld school-fellow, Preacher Willie,3 old
40 The manly tar, my mason billie, comrade
An’ Auchenbay,4 I wish him joy;
If he’s a parent, lass or boy,
May he be dad, and Meg5 the mither, mother
Just five and forty years thegither! together
45 An’ no forgetting wabster Charlie,6 weaver
I’m tauld he offers very fairly, told