The Canongate Burns (112 page)

This was the poet's reply to a letter epistle from the Rev. Dr Thomas Blacklock (1721–91), dated from Edinburgh, 24th August, 1789. Blacklock was born at Annan, the son of English parents. He was blinded as a child by smallpox. He graduated as a divinity student in Edinburgh. In practising religion in Kirkcudbright, parishioners found his blindness a problem. He moved back to
Edinburgh in 1765 and set up a boarding school. He eventually printed his own volume of poetry, contributing songs to the Scots Musical Museum. Blacklock, by this time virtually a cult figure, contacted Burns after reading his Kilmarnock edition and suggested a larger edition to be printed in Edinburgh, which, according to the poet ‘overthrew all my schemes by rousing my poetic ambition' (Letter 125). If Blacklock helped persuade Burns not to emigrate, he played a part in Scottish literature. Blacklock, who knew Dr Johnson, John Home and David Hume, was a minor Literati figure.

The second stanza was indeed prophetic, describing as it does, Robert Heron as ‘The
Ill-thief
' or devil. The letter given by Burns to Robert Heron to pass on to Dr Blacklock never reached Blacklock (see Introduction).

Miss Margaret Burns was an Edinburgh prostitute who came originally from Durham, the daughter of a merchant. With a friend she set up a brothel in Rose Street, near to Lord Stonefield's home. It is reputed that the daughters of the Lord took action against her and she was banished from Edinburgh. An appeal at the Court of Session on 12th December, 1789 went in her favour and she was allowed to stay in Edinburgh. She died in 1792. Burns appears to have known her given his remarks to Peter Hill on 2nd February, 1790, ‘… how is the fate of my poor Namesake, Mademoiselle Burns, decided?' (Letter 387). He goes on in the letter to condemn the hypocrisy of judges who, as he asserts, have, for over 6000 years, taken advantage of such female frailty: ‘shall the unfortunate sacrifice to thy pleasures have no claim on thy humanity!' Edinburgh prostitutes were ‘advertised' in an annual pocketbook printed exclusively for ‘gentlemen', which gave descriptions of each woman, not least their dental state, and where they were to be picked up.

This is the poet's modification of the Elizabethan
Greensleeves
, the song of the inconstant female lover. The melody was still popular in the eighteenth century. Fiddling is employed as an obvious sexual metaphor in this erotic lyric. Professor De Lancey Ferguson believes this song is traditional and was merely copied by Burns. Kinsley disagrees (Vol. III, pp. 1324–5). Although there are two manuscript copies, there is no definite proof either way.

By virtue of Professor Werkmeister's scholarship, this poem gives us entry not only into some of Burns's particular difficulties with Peter Stuart, but with the often ugly publishing world where creative writers interacted with the press. In 1838 an article in
The Gentleman's Magazine
attacked Peter Stuart for ‘riding in his carriage' while ‘Coleridge, who had made his fortune, was starving in Mr Gillman's garret'. Werkmeister goes on, ‘Daniel undertook to defend his brother against attempting the charge of a similar ex-ploitation of Burns'. Daniel wrote:

Given the irretrievably missing correspondence from Burns to Peter Stuart, we will never know the full truth about Daniel Stuart's claims. Given, however, the dangerously mendacious manner in which Peter Stuart distorted
Ode on the Departed Regency-Bill
and the way he publicly revealed Burns as the author of all of the pseudonymous verses he sent to Stuart (See
Ode, Sacred To The
Memory of Mrs. Oswald Of Auchencruive
), one cannot count on either of the brothers' veracity.

The appearance of the popular newspaper and the accelerated hourly communication of events horrified Wordsworth as much as it energised Burns. This poem's newspaper flow of highly salacious European and British political gossip regarding ‘sexually' degenerate power politics runs for a full stopless, breathless thirty-eight lines of
wonderfully reductive Scottish vernacular speech. This type of concentrated narrative also features in
A New Song, A Wet Day at Walmer
Castle
. It is possible that ‘DaddieBurke' (l. 25) is a misprint for ‘Paddy Burke'. The latter nickname is used by Burns in
The Dagger
.