by Robert Burns
20 A’ GUDE THINGS MAY ATTEND good
YOU.
Robt Burns. St James’ Square, Saturday even:
This was sent to Miss Jane Ferrier (1767–1846), daughter of James Ferrier, Writer to the Signet. Burns met her in Edinburgh, during July 1787. The poem first appears in the Glasgow College Album in 1828, where it is recorded that Miss Ferrier asked Burns for a copy of one of his poems. The 1828 text is inadequate. For commentary, see J.C. Ewing, Burns Chronicle, 1939. Chambers is mentioned as the first genuinely public version to obtain a wide readership. Jove’s daughters (l. 5) is a reference to the nine Muses.
Verses Written on a Window of the Inn at Carron
Printed first by Stewart, 1801.
We cam’ na here to view your warks, came not, works
In hopes to be mair wise, more
But only, lest we gang to Hell, go
It may be nae surprise: no
But whan we tirl’d at your door, rattled
Your porter dought na bear us; did not, admit
Sae may, shou’d we to Hell’s yetts come, so, gates
Your billie Satan sair us! comrade, serve
These lines were written on 26th August 1787, when Burns left Falkirk and travelled to Carron Ironworks, but was refused admittance.
Reply to a Censorious Critic
First printed by Cunningham, 1834.
These imprudent lines were answered, very petulantly, by somebody, I believe a Revd. Mr Hamilton. – In a M.S.S. where I met with the answer I wrote below – R.B.
With Esop’s lion, Burns says, sore I feel
Each other blow, but damn that ass’s heel!
This couplet, based on the public reaction to the poet’s Lines on Seeing the Royal Palace at Stirling in Ruins, is included in Kinsley (no. 166B) but omitted from the canon by Mackay (1993).
The Reproof
First printed by Cunningham, 1834.
RASH mortal, and slanderous Poet, thy name
Shall no longer appear in the records of fame;
Dost not know that old Mansfield, who writes like the Bible,
Says the more ’tis a truth, Sir, the more ’tis a libel?
This appears in Kinsley, but is missing from Mackay. This seeming self-reproof was written on the window of the same Stirling Inn where he had dangerously diamond-inscribed his pro-Stuart anti-Hanoverian lines. He is really, of course, re-asserting his anti-Hanoverian position. William Murray (1705–93), the Earl of Mansfield, was a friend of Graham of Fintry. Burns met the Earl and his sons sometime after writing these lines. Kinsley remarks that there is no manuscript authority for these lines. The current editors were allowed to view these lines and the associated anti-Hanoverian Stirling verses in a privately owned transcript collection and have no doubt of their provenance.
Epitaph for William Michie
A Schoolmaster of Cleish Parish, Fifeshire
First published by Cromek, 1808.
Here lie Willie Michie’s banes, bones
O Satan, when ye tak him, take
Gie him the schulin o’ your weans; give, schooling, children
For clever Deils he’ll mak ’em! devils
Burns is supposed to have met William Michie, according to Chambers-Wallace, in Edinburgh. The story goes that Michie fell asleep drunk at a party in Burns’s Edinburgh lodgings. Chambers gives Michie’s first name as Ebenezer, not William and in line 1, his version reads ‘Eben Michie’ (Chambers-Wallace, Vol. IV, p. 304).
Amang the Trees
Tune, The King of France, he rade a race.
First printed by Cromek, 1808.
AMANG the trees, where humming bees
At buds and flowers were hinging, O! hanging
Auld Caledon drew out her drone, old
And to her pipe was singing, O!
5 ’Twas Pibroch, Sang, Strathspey, or Reels, bagpipes, songs
She dirl’d them aff, fu’ clearly, O! rang, off full
When there cam a yell o’ foreign squeels, came
That dang her tapsalteerie, O! knocked upside down
Their capon craws an’ queer ha, ha’s,
10 They made our lugs grow eerie, O! ears, strange
The hungry bike did scrape and pike1 swarm, pick [at strings]
Till we were wae and weary; O! sad
But a royal ghaist, wha ance was cas’d ghost, who once
A prisoner aughteen year awa, eighteen
15 He fir’d a Fiddler in the North inspired
That dang them tapsalteerie, O!
This song is based on a traditional work (See Kinsley, Vol. III, p. 1245). The song is a robust defence of Scottish bagpipe and fiddle music, in contrast to ‘foreign squeels’ of Italian and German music, then popular among many aristocrats of Scotland. The ‘royal ghaist’ refers to King James I. Kinsley suggests that the song is a compliment to the brilliant Scots fiddler Neil Gow, ‘fir’d’ or inspired by King James I. Burns met the great musician at Dunkeld, 31st August, 1787. It was Neil’s son, Nathaniel Gow, who met Burns in Dumfries in 1793. Burns was a competent fiddler of slow airs, as Mrs Burns has recollected, but unable to play reels, jigs or strath-speys with any skill. This association of music with the national spirit was partly derived from Fergusson and Burns’s letters are replete with his keen awareness for the ethnic identity of national music.
1 Scott Douglas changed this original word to ‘fyke’, meaning to make a fuss or fidget. His so-called correction was carried by Henley and Henderson and repeated by Mackay. It is correct in Kinsley.
A Highland Welcome
First printed by Currie, 1800.
When Death’s dark stream I ferry o’er,
A time that surely shall come;
In Heaven itself, I’ll ask no more,
Than just a Highland welcome.
The poet’s headnote reads ‘A verse composed and repeated by Burns, to the Master of the House, on taking leave at a place in the Highlands, where he had been hospitably entertained’. It was written on 2nd September, 1787, during the poet’s Highland tour, when, accompanied by William Nicol, they dined at Dalnacardoch or Dalwhinnie.
Castle Gordon
First printed in The Morning Chronicle, 25th September, 1800.
Streams that glide in Orient plains,
Never bound by Winter’s chains;
Glowing here on golden sands,
There immixed with foulest stains
5 From Tyranny’s empurpled hands:
These, their richly gleaming waves,
I leave to tyrants and their slaves,
Give me the stream that sweetly laves
The banks by CASTLE GORDON. —
10 Torrid forests, ever gay,
Shading from the burning ray
Hapless wretches sold to toil;
Or the ruthless Native’s way,
Bent on slaughter, blood and spoil:
15 Woods that ever verdant wave,
I leave the tyrant and the slave,
Give me the groves that lofty brave
The storms, by CASTLE GORDON. —
Wildly here without control,
20 Nature reigns and rules the whole;
In that sober, pensive mood,
Dearest to the feeling soul,
She plants the forest, pours the flood:
Life’s poor day I’ll musing, rave,
25 And find at night a sheltering cave,
Where waters flow and wild woods wave
By bonny CASTLE GORDON. —
This song appeared in the London Morning Chronicle just prior to being printed in Currie’s edition. The political content of the first two stanzas may have led the Chronicle to print it. During his time in Edinburgh, Burns was invited to Castle Gordon by Jane Maxwell, the Duchess of Gordon. His visit occurred on 7th September, 1787. William Nicol did not attend the meeting with Alexander, Duke of Gordon, but stayed at the Inn in Fochabers and later refused to accompany Burns back to the Duke’s castle. Burns sent the Duke this song as an a
pology for their non-appearance.
My Peggy’s Face
Tune: My Peggy’s Face
First printed in Currie, 1800, then in the S.M.M., 1803.
My Peggy’s face, my Peggy’s form,
The frost of hermit Age might warm;
My Peggy’s worth, my Peggy’s mind,
Might charm the first of human kind.
5 I love my Peggy’s angel air,
Her face so truly heav’nly fair,
Her native grace so void of art,
But I adore my Peggy’s heart.
The lily’s hue, the rose’s die, dye
10 The kindling lustre of an eye;
Who but owns their magic sway,
Who but knows they all decay!
The tender thrill, the pitying tear,
The generous purpose nobly dear,
15 The gentle look that Rage disarms,
These are all Immortal charms. —
This work was supposed to have appeared with Where, Braving Angry Winter Storms, in the second Volume of Johnson’s S.M.M. Margaret (Peggy) Chalmers did not want either song published and in this case, was successful. Burns appears, in so far as he was able, to have had a Platonic devotion to Peggy Chalmers which she did not reciprocate. Alluding to the awe he felt towards her he wrote, ‘I look on the sex [women in general] with something like the admiration with which I regard the starry sky in a frosty December night. I admire the beauty of the Creator’s workmanship; I am charmed with the wild but graceful eccentricity of their motions, and – wish them, good night’ (Letter 143). This was probably an apt metaphor for their relationship.
Epitaph for William Nicol
First printed by Motherwell and Hogg, 1826.
Ye maggots, feed on Willie’s brains,
For few sic feasts you’ve gotten; such
And fix your claws into his heart,
For fient a bit o’t ’s rotten. not a bit of
William Nicol (1744–97) was the classics master of Edinburgh High School. Originally from Annan, Nicol was one of the versatile and able sons of the people who educated themselves into the new professional middling classes of Edinburgh, having studied theology and medicine. He toured the Highlands with Burns and, being one of the poet’s intimate friends, was honoured that Burns named one of his sons after the wayward Latin teacher. Scott Douglas makes the error of stating that Nicol outlived Burns by ‘some years’ (Vol. 2, p. 332). Douglas meddled with the text and his amended text survives in Henley and Henderson (1896) and Mackay (1993).
On the Death of Lord President Dundas –
First printed in The Edinburgh Magazine, June 1818.
LONE on the bleaky hills, the straying flocks
Shun the fierce storms among the sheltering rocks;
Down foam the rivulets, red with dashing rains,
The gathering floods burst o’er the distant plains;
5 Beneath the blast the leafless forests groan,
The hollow caves return a sullen moan. —
Ye hills, ye plains, ye forests and ye caves,
Ye howling winds, and wintry-swelling waves,
Unheard, unseen, by human ear or eye,
10 Sad to your sympathetick glooms I fly;
Where to the whistling blast and water’s roar,
Pale Scotia’s recent wound I may deplore. —
O heavy loss thy Country ill could bear!
A loss these evil days can ne’er repair!
15 Justice, the high vicegerent of her God,
Her doubtful balance ey’d and sway’d her rod;
Hearing the tidings of the fatal blow,
She sunk abandon’d to the wildest woe. —
Wrongs, Injuries, from many a darksome den,
20 Now gay in hope explore the paths of men:
See from his cavern grim Oppression rise,
And throw on Poverty his cruel eyes;
Keen on the helpless victim let him fly,
And stifle, dark, the feebly-bursting cry. —
25 Mark ruffian Violence, distain’d with crimes,
Rousing elate in these degenerate times;
View unsuspecting Innocence a prey,
As guileful Fraud points out the erring way:
While subtle Litigation’s pliant tongue
30 The life-blood equal sucks of Right and Wrong. —
Hark, injur’d Want recounts th’ unlisten’d tale,
And much-wrong’d Mis’ry pours th’ unpitied wail!
Ye dark, waste hills, ye brown, unsightly plains,
Congenial scenes! ye soothe my mournful strains:
35 Ye tempests, rage; ye turbid torrents, roll;
Ye suit the joyless tenor of my soul:
Life’s social haunts and pleasures I resign,
Be nameless wilds and lonely wanderings mine,
To mourn the woes my Country must endure,
40 That wound degenerate ages cannot cure. —
Robert Dundas of Arniston (1713–87), Lord Advocate in 1754 and Lord President from 1760, died on 13th December, 1787. He was a brother of Henry Dundas, Lord Melville who ruled Scotland during the political storm of the 1790s. It was Alexander Wood, an Edinburgh surgeon who asked Burns to write an elegy on the death of Dundas, not, as Scott Douglas suggests, Charles Hay, advocate. Aware that such an act might be seen to be a coded request for patronage from the Dundas dynasty, the poet felt considerable anxiety at the request but complied. He wrote, in retrospect to Alexander Cunningham, on 11th March, 1791:
I have two or three times in my life composed from the wish, rather from the impulse, but I never succeeded to any purpose. One of these times I shall ever remember with gnashing of teeth. – ’Twas on the death of the late Lord President Dundas…. Mr Alexander Wood, Surgeon, urged me to pay a compliment in the way of my trade to his Lordship’s memory. – Well, to work I went, & produced a copy of Elegiac verses, some of them I own rather commonplace, & others rather hide-bound, but on the whole though they were far from being in my best manner, they were tolerable; & had they been the production of a Lord or a Baronet, they would have been thought very clever. – I wrote a letter, which however was in my best manner, & enclosing my Poem, Mr Wood carried altogether to Mr Solicitor Dundas that then was, & not finding him at home, left the parcel for him. – His Solicitorship never took the smallest notice of the Letter, the Poem, or the Poet. From that time, highly as I respect the talents of their Family, I never see the name, Dundas, in the column of a newspaper, but my heart seems straightened for room in my bosom; & if I am obliged to read aloud a paragraph relating to one of them, I feel my forehead flush, & my nether lip quivers. – Had I been an obscure Scribbler … or had I been a dependant Hangeron for favour or pay … Mr Solicitor might have had some apology (Letter 441).
There is a terrible historical and personal irony present in Burns’s ill-judged, sycophantic, if unpublished, poem. Dundas’s death, Scotland’s perhaps ‘mortal wound’, turns flood water into blood. In this stormy, apocalyptic landscape we see the degenerate breakdown of civil order due to political oppression, collapse of legality, criminality, and chronic poverty. It is perhaps, in theme and language, closest to A Winter’s Night. For Burns and the radicals, this nightmare was to become, in the 1790s, not the consequence of this Dundas’s death, but the very creation of his successors in the Dundas dynasty. Sadly the true Dundas poem of the 1790s, The Lucubrations of Henry Dundass, exists only in its asinine title as the page was torn from Riddell’s copy of the Interleaved S.M.M.
Sylvander to Clarinda
First printed in The Clarinda Correspondence, 1834.
When dear Clarinda, matchless fair,
First struck Sylvander’s raptur’d view,
He gaz’d, he listen’d to despair,
Alas! ‘twas all he dared to do. —
5 Love, from Clarinda’s heavenly eyes,
Transfix’d his bosom thro’ and thro’;
But still in Friendship’s guarded guise,
For more the demon fear’d to do. —
That heart, already more than lost
10 The imp beleaguer’d all perdue; lost
For frowning Honor kept his post,
To meet that frown he shrunk to do. —
His pangs the Bard refus’d to own,
Tho’ half he wish’d Clarinda knew:
15 But Anguish wrung the unweeting groan —
Who blames what frantic Pain must do?
That heart, where motley follies blend,
Was sternly still to Honor true:
To prove Clarinda’s fondest friend,
20 Was what a Lover sure might do. —
The Muse his ready quill employ’d,
No nearer bliss he could pursue;
That bliss Clarinda cold deny’d —
‘Send word by Charles how you do!’ —
25 The chill behest disarm’d his Muse,
Till Passion all impatient grew:
He wrote, and hinted for excuse,
‘’Twas ’cause he’d nothing else to do.’ —
But by those hopes I have above!
30 And by those faults I dearly rue!
The deed, the boldest mark of love,
For thee that deed I dare to do! —
O, could the Fates but name the price,
Would bless me with your charms and you!