by Robert Burns
Addressed to Mr John Ranken
In Reply to an Announcement
First published by Thomas Stewart, Glasgow, 1801.
I am a keeper of the law
In some sma’ points, altho’ not a’; small, all
Some people tell me, gin I fa’, if, fall
Ae way or ither, one, other
5 The breaking of ae point, tho’ sma’, one, small
Breaks a’ thegither. all together
I hae been in for ’t ance or twice, have, in trouble, once
And winna say o’er far for thrice, would not
Yet never met wi’ that surprise
10 That broke my rest,
But now a rumour’s like to rise,
A whaup’s i’ the nest. curlew’s
This was written after Epistle to J. Ranken, in either late 1784 or early 1785, in reply to Ranken’s continued correspondence about Elizabeth Paton. The earlier work was provoked by news of the pregnancy, while this was written after news of the birth. The first stanza engages in expressing a Biblical notion that ‘whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all’ (James, ch. 2, verse x.) The final stanza is a confession of having been in front of the Church clergy once or twice for alleged fornication. This time, however, there is real danger as the woman is pregnant.
Lines to John Ranken –
First printed by Stewart in 1801.
He who of Ranken sang, lies stiff and dead, song
And a green grassy hillock hides his head;
Alas! Alas! a devilish change indeed.
This is often described as lines written by Burns when on his death-bed and forwarded to Ranken in Ayrshire after the poet died. Given there is no evidence that Burns kept in touch with Ranken after leaving Ayrshire this story can be discarded as folklore.
Address of Beelzebub
First printed in The Scots Magazine, February 1818.
To the Right Honorable the Earl of Breadalbane, President of the Right Honorable the HIGHLAND SOCIETY, which met on the 23rd of May last, at the Shakespeare, Covent Garden, to concert ways and means to frustrate the designs of FIVE HUNDRED HIGHLANDERS who, as the Society were informed by Mr. M’Kenzie of Applecross, were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and masters whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of Mr. Macdonald of Glengary to the wilds of CANADA, in search of that fantastic thing — LIBERTY.
LONG LIFE, My Lord, an’ health be yours,
Unskaith’d by hunger’d HIGHLAN BOORS!
Lord grant, nae duddie, desp’rate beggar, no ragged
Wi’ dirk, claymore, or rusty trigger highland knife
5 May twin auld SCOTLAND O’ A LIFE, rob old
She likes — as BUTCHERS like a KNIFE!
Faith! you and Applecross1 were right
To keep the Highlan hounds in sight!
I doubt na! they wad bid nae better not, would, no
10 Than let them ance out owre the water; once, over
Then up amang thae lakes an’ seas they
They’ll mak what rules and laws they please.
Some daring Hancocke,2 or a Frankline,3
May set their HIGHLAN bluid a-ranklin; blood, boiling
15 Some Washington4 again may head them,
Or some MONTGOMERY,5 fearless, lead them;
Till, God knows what may be effected,
When by such HEADS and HEARTS directed:
Poor, dunghill sons of dirt an’ mire,
20 May to PATRICIAN RIGHTS ASPIRE;
Nae sage North,6 now, nor sager Sackville,7 no
To watch an’ premier owre the pack vile!
An’ whare will ye get Howes8 and Clintons9 where
To bring them to a right repentance,
25 To cowe the rebel generation,
An’ save the honor o’ the NATION?
They! an’ be damn’d! what right hae they have
To Meat or Sleep or light o’ day,
Far less to riches, pow’r, or freedom,
30 But what your lordships PLEASE TO GIE THEM? give
But, hear me, my lord! Glengary,10 hear!
Your HAND’S OWRE LIGHT ON THEM, I fear: over
Your FACTORS, GRIEVES, TRUSTEES,
AN’ BAILIES,
I canna say but they do gailies; cannot, gaily
35 They lay aside a’ tender mercies
An’ tirl the HALLIONS to the BIRSIES; strip, sluts, bristle
Yet, while they’re only poin’d, and herriet, goods seized, harried
They’ll keep their stubborn Highlan spirit.
But smash them! crush them a’ to spails! splinters
40 An’ rot the DYVORS i’ the JAILS! rogues
The young dogs, swinge them to the labour,
Let WARK an’ HUNGER mak them sober! work
The HIZZIES, if they’re oughtlins fausont, girls, quite good looking
Let them in DRURY LANE be lesson’d! turned to whores
45 An’ if the wives, an’ dirty brats,
Come thiggan at your doors an’ yetts, begging, gates
Flaffan wi’ duds, an’ grey wi’ beese, flogging rags, vermin
Frightan awa your deucks an’ geese; away, ducks
Get out a HORSE-WHIP, or a JOWLER, hound
50 The langest thong, the fiercest growler,
An’ gar the tatter’d gypseys pack make
Wi’ a’ their bastarts on their back!
Go on, my Lord! I lang to meet you long
An’ in my HOUSE AT HAME to greet you; home
55 Wi’ COMMON LORDS ye shanna mingle, shall not
The benmost newk, beside the ingle nearest corner, fire
At my right hand, assign’d your seat
’Tween HEROD’S hip an’ POLYCRATE;11
Or, if you on your station tarrow,
60 Between ALMAGRO12 and PIZARRO;13
A seat, I’m sure ye’re weel deservin’t;
An’ till ye come — your humble servant,
BEELZEBUB. Hell, 1st June, Anno Mundi 5790
That this poem did not appear till 1818 is evidence of the virulent intensity of its political dissent. Carol McGuirk has considered it Burns’s perhaps most underrated dramatic monologue. It should, in fact, be seen as doing for reactionary, repressive political values what Holy Willie’s Prayer does for the values of ‘Auld Licht’ Calvinism. If the devil is implicit in Willie’s perverted, inverted values, here he is present in all his crazed, persuasive, sadistic rhetorical splendour. Unlike Pope, there is little direct evidence of Burns’s knowledge of Swift but Swift, especially the monologue form and content of his demonic prose masterpiece, A Modest Proposal, is the obvious comparison. Like Swift, Burns demolishes his opponent’s case by allowing him full reign for his social values. Like Swift he is making a persona who, out of his own eloquent mouth, destroys the case he is making. Again like Swift, Burns also concentrates his image of the most acute social deprivation on the Celtic part of their society; people – ‘highland hounds’ – treated literally as animals.
Some critics have misunderstood Burns’s ferocious anger in this poem because they did not understand, unlike the subsequent Clearances, the desire in the Highland population to escape the breakdown of post-Culloden Highland society by emigrating to Canada and North America. For the actual context see ‘British Diaspora: Emigration from Britain, 1680–1815’, in The Eighteenth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. P. J. Marshall (Oxford, 1998). At this point the feudal chieftains, unknowing of the commercial value of sheep, wish, while utterly careless of their needs, to keep their retainers at home. Consciously or not, this poem echoes another great poem of the late eighteenth-century diaspora, Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village. Burns adored Goldsmith’s poetry but his vision in this poem, as his general politics, is quite different. Goldsmith’s exiles vanish into the jungle; Burns’s Highlanders arrive in a landscape which mirrors their democratic ambitions. This also allows hi
m to place in opposition his sense of an ideal America as opposed to extreme British distress and corruption. As in his first political poem ‘When Guilford Good’ he celebrates both American democratic values and American military success. Thus three leaders of the American revolution are eulogised: John Hancock (1737–93), Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) and George Washington (1732–99). Richard Montgomery, the Ayrshire American hero, we have already met with in ‘When Guilford Good’. North, Sackville, Howe and Clinton also featured in that poem as British villains of the piece. Burns, in a sort of brilliant double irony, postulates that the very British politicians and soldiers who had lost America might bring the escaped Highlanders to order. This is to add satirical insult to the injury he had already delivered to the British imperial cause.
In a slightly later poem A Winter Night, Burns blows up a rhetorical storm to describe the sufferings of the common man at the hands of growing aristocratic, commercial power, partly by use of Augustan personification:
See stern Oppression’s iron grip,
Or mad Ambition’s gory hand,
Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip,
Woe, Want, and Murder o’er a land!
Here, however, his dense use of vernacular Scots makes extraordinarily tangible the sufferings of these Gaelic-speakers driven Southward in search for survival under the terms of varied sadistic punishments. Dispossession and exile were ever present in Burns’s consciousness as central elements of his time’s common experience. The Highland women in Drury Lane (l. 44) have resorted to prostitution. This ironically echoes the real prostitution of the absentee landlords who populate another but genuinely degenerate London.
The last lines of the poem list comparable imperial villains from the often genocidal régimes of Rome, Greece and Spain. Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, executed John the Baptist and judged Jesus. Polycrates used his fleets in the fifth century B.C. to establish an Aegean empire. Diego D’Almargo (1475–1538) was put to death by his commander, Francisco Pizarro (1478–1541) during the conquest of Peru. It is with such monsters that our Highland Chiefs are to toast themselves in the after-life fireside of hell. Burns’s apparently peculiar assortment of such historical figures is explained by his reading about their histories in an article in The Annual Register. Publication of this poem during the poet’s life would have infuriated members of the Highland Society, so that it is somewhat ironic that one of the poet’s first reviewers, Henry Mackenzie, later became President of the Highland Society.
1 Thomas McKenzie of Applecross.
2 John Hancock.
3 Benjamin Franklin.
4 George Washington, American President.
5 Richard Montgomery.
6 Lord Frederick North.
7 Lord George Sackville.
8 Viscount William Howe.
9 Sir Henry Clinton.
10 MacDonell of Glengarry.
11 Polycrates, 522 B.C. – tyrant of Samos.
12 Diego D’Almagro, chief officer in the Inca conquest of Peru, killed by Pizarro.
13 Francisco Pizarro, leader of the Spaniards who took Peru.
Epitaph on John Dove, Innkeeper, Mauchline
First printed by Thomas Stewart, 1801.
Here lies Johnie Pidgeon,
What was his religion,
Whae’er desires to ken, know
To some other warl’ world
5 Maun follow the carl, must, old man
For here Johnie Pigeon had nane. none
Strong ale was ablution,
Small beer persecution,
A dram was memento mori;
10 But a full flowing bowl,
Was the saving his soul,
And Port was celestial glory.
John Dove is reputed to have been a native of Paisley. He became landlord of the Whitefoord Arms where Burns held meetings of the Bachelors’ Debating Club.
Epitaph on a Wag in Mauchline
First printed by the London Telegraph, August 16th, 1796.
The Schoolmaster of MACHLEN [sic], in Ayrshire, was an intimate companion of the lately deceased Caledonian bard, ROBERT BURNS. One Evening after a long, convivial Repast, the former observed that, it was most probable his Friend, the Poet, would survive him, and he was persuaded that his Muse would be invoked to celebrate his Virtues, and the endearing Society in which they had together passed so many festive Hours. ‘Come BURNS (said he) let me hear what you will say upon that melancholy occasion’. Burns took up the Pen; and, alluding to the Schoolmaster’s general character as an Admirer of the softer sex, wrote the following:
Ye Machlen HUSBANDS, mourn him a’, Mauchline, all
The man who did assist ye;
For, had ye been Seven Years awa’, away
Your Wives wad ne’er ha’ mist ye! would, have, missed
Ye Machlen BAIRNS, as ye gae to children, go
The School in Crouds together,
Tread lightly on his green Grass-Turf:
Perhaps he was your Father!
This is the text printed in the London newspaper. It differs from the text normally printed, given below for comparison. Previous editors are wrong to record that it was first printed by Thomas Stewart, 1801. The version in the opposition London newspaper the Telegraph, a few weeks after the poet’s death, reveal the poet’s peculiar use of capitals and the italicisation of ‘Perhaps’, pointing to an original manuscript. Hitherto the possible candidates for this randy Mauchline ‘wag’ were James Smith, the poet’s friend, or ‘Clockie Brown’ as Kinsley’s suggests. With the rediscovery of this first printed version it is evidently about Smith the schoolmaster. It may even have been sent to the newspaper by Smith.
The standard version is:
Lament ’im Mauchline husbands a’,
He aften did assist ye; often
For had ye staid whole weeks awa’ stayed, whole, away
Your wives they ne’er had missed ye.
Ye Mauchline bairns as on ye pass,
To school in bands thegither, together
O tread ye lightly on his grass,
Perhaps he was your father!
This standard text may have been a version updated and improved by Burns.
To Willie Chalmers’ Sweetheart
First printed in The Edinburgh Literary Journal, 21st November, 1829.
Madam,
Wi’ braw new branks in mickle pride, fine, bridle, much
And eke a braw new brechan, also, fine, collar
My Pegasus I’m got astride,
And up Parnassus pechin; panting
5 Whyles owre a bush wi’ downward crush, sometimes over
The doited beastie stammers; half-stupid
Then up he gets, and off he sets,
For sake o’ Willie Chalmers.
I doubt na, lass, that weel kend name not, well-known
10 May cost a pair o’ blushes;
I am nae stranger to your fame, no
Nor his warm-urged wishes.
Your bonie face sae mild and sweet, so
His honest heart enamours,
15 And faith ye’ll no be lost a whit, fragment
Tho’ wair’d on Willie Chalmers. bestowed
Auld Truth hersel might swear ye’re fair, old
And Honour safely back her,
And Modesty assume your air,
20 And ne’er a ane mistak her: one
And sic twa love-inspiring een, such two, eyes
Might fire even holy Palmers; pilgrims
Nae wonder then they’ve fatal been no
To honest Willie Chalmers.
25 I doubt na Fortune may you shore not
Some mim-mou’d pouthered priestie, prim-, powdered
Fu’ lifted up wi’ Hebrew lore, full
And band upon his breastie; breast
But oh! what signifies to you
30 His lexicons and grammars;
The feeling heart ’s the royal blue,
And that’s wi’ Willie Chalmers.
Some gapin’ glowrin’ countra laird, big-mouthed, staring
May warsle for your favour; struggle
35 May claw his lug, and straik his beard, scratch, ear, stroke
And hoast up some palaver. cough, story
My bonie maid, before ye wed
Sic clumsy-witted hammers, such, dunces
Seek Heaven for help, and barefit skelp bare-foot, run
40 Awa wi’ Willie Chalmers.
Forgive the Bard! my fond regard
For ane that shares my bosom, one
Inspires my Muse to gie’m his dues, give him
For deil a hair I roose him. not, rouse
45 May Powers aboon unite you soon, above
And fructify your amours, —
And every year come in mair dear more
To you and Willie Chalmers.
This work was written sometime in 1786. In the Don manuscript Burns wrote ‘Mr Chalmers, a gentleman in Ayrshire, a particular friend of mine, asked me to write a poetical epistle to a young lady, his Dulcinea. I had seen her, but was scarcely acquainted with her, and wrote as follows’.
To Dr. John Mackenzie
An Invitation to a Masonic Gathering
First printed by Motherwell and Hogg, 1834.
Friday first’s the day appointed
By our Right Worshipful Anointed,
To hold our grand Procession,
To get a blade o’ Johnie’s Morals, screed
5 An’ taste a swatch o’ Manson’s barrels, drop
I’ th’ way of our Profession:
Our Master and the Brotherhood
Wad a’ be glad to see you; would all