The Canongate Burns (145 page)

This is essentially the complete version of a song Burns wrote for the S.M.M. Only the first, ‘clean' stanza appeared in Johnson's volume in 1796. Regarding the first stanza, it was a symbolic Jacobite ritual to toast Charles Edward Stewart across a bowl of water, given that the exiled King was physically ‘o'er the water' in France, until his death in 1790. ‘To a Scots critic,' says Burns in the interleaved copy of S.M.M., the pathos of the line ‘Tho his back be at the wa' must be very striking. It needs not a Jacobite prejudice to be affected with this song.'

This is generally accepted as a song partly improved by Burns but not entirely his own composition. For a detailed argument, see De Lancey Ferguson's essay in
Modern Philology
, XXX, 1932, pp. 53–60. ‘Kail' at l. 12 refers to semen; ‘beef' implies penis.

There is no manuscript evidence for this song, but editors since Scott Douglas (a pencilled note in his private copy of the M.M.C.) have attributed it to Burns without definitive proof. Goodsir Smith and Barke note ‘Quite likely' (p. 80) and Kinsley concurs ‘almost certainly his work' (Vol. III, p. 1526). A ‘fairin' was an exchange of presents from a fairground as a token of love.

This section contains two categories. First, undetermined poems and songs. Second, those rejected from the canon. Those considered undetermined are listed because the weight of evidence makes the attribution to Burns problematic or reasonably uncertain. A few works placed within the canon may be classified as doubtful but, for specific reasons, they have been included because there is more evidence
for
provenance than
against
. The category of old songs merely improved by Burns is one where the canonical line often blurs with Scottish folk tradition. The listing of undetermined or rejected works here is not definitive. We have not tried to list all works that were, at one time, placed in the canon and then rejected by subsequent editors. Where we have disagreed with twentieth-century editors, Kinsley or Mackay, those specific poems are printed or listed with commentary as to their status. Where the evidence is overwhelmingly against Burns's composition, the text has been left out and only the title mentioned. In a few rejected examples, the text is given to illustrate that some quite atrocious lyrics were attributed to Burns at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Unlike the
Dubia
section in Kinsley's edition, undated poems which we know to be by Burns are
not
included here, but placed as close to the date of publication as possible.

It is believed that at least part of this work was written by Burns after he and Nasmyth the painter had been drinking late in Edinburgh in the early summer of 1787. After walking up Arthur's Seat to watch the sunrise, they breakfasted at Roslin Inn. The landlady was a Mrs Wilson. Nasmyth recollects that Burns wrote an epigram on the back of the bill. There is no Burns manuscript to prove Nasmyth's view other than Dewar's transcript, given as version I.

Version II, which appears first in Hogg and Motherwell, then in Chambers, was supposedly etched on the back of a wooden plate by Burns. Kinsley suggests this second version was probably changed or ‘improved' by Hogg and Motherwell. The evidence to judge whether version I or II is authentic is heavily based on reminiscence. The shorter version is based directly on Nasmyth's testimony. It is unlikely that both versions are authentic, unless Burns made a fair copy and developed version I in the process. The first version reads as the more probable.

This is not included in any recent edition. It appears in
The Burns
Chronicle
of 1935 (p. 104). It was supposedly in holograph form, on the reverse of a fragment detailing rules of the Tarbolton Bachelor's Club. The prose notes in which it features were in the hand of David
Sillar, the poet's Ayrshire friend. If genuine, the lines probably date from sometime in 1780. They are in accord with the poet's embryonic ideals expressed in his First C
ommonplace Book
regarding his classification of various types of personality. The lines were in the Alloway Birthplace Museum during the 1930s but the current Curator, John Manson, has kindly confirmed they no longer exist. Unable to verify the original hand, the lines are considered possibly authentic.

Chambers' authority for this was merely the word of a traveller. Kinsley accepts it (539). Mackay also accepts it, stating that ‘William Stewart's sister Catherine married John Bacon in 1782'. Bacon was the landlord of the Brownhill Inn. The English traveller claimed he had dined with Burns. There is no manuscript. While this reminiscence of an unknown traveller may be genuine, it is scarcely a scholarly basis of admitting work to the canon.

The subtitle given above is that printed in
The Scots Magazine,
February 1803, where the poem first appeared. After its first appearance, this work was included in Hogg and Motherwell (1834), Scott Douglas (1876), William Wallace (1896) and Henderson and Henley (1896). It was dropped by Kinsley (1968) and Mackay (1993). Having been rejected from the canon, it is included here because the rationale for omission is not conclusive. Rejection by Mackay et al is based on the claim by Henry Mackenzie, in a letter to Dr James Currie, that he was the author. Mackenzie, though, places himself in a position of little credibility, by first declaring that he made up the story that the poem was by Burns, then announces to Currie that he himself wrote it in order to stop its publication. When it did appear in 1803, there is no evidence that Mackenzie admitted authorship or corrected the apparent error in attribution. As a figure of considerable social standing in Edinburgh, with ardent Pittite Tory views and a pivotal figure of the Highland Society, it is rather incongruous that he would pen the final line against the Duke of Queensbery, ‘That reptile – wears a Ducal crown'. Such a line is far more like Burns than Mackenzie. Indeed, Mackenzie was quick to denounce any poems in Cromek's 1808 edition of Burns which criticised anyone of rank and title and suggested several works should have been suppressed.

Here is Mackenzie's letter to Currie of 22nd October, 1802:

If true, why did Mackenzie not claim the poem after it appeared in
The Scots Magazine
in 1803?

The question of authorship, due to Mackenzie's possible deceit ought to remain open: either he is the author and pretended the poem was from Burns, or he found it, realised it was an unpublished work of Burns and, for whatever reason, privately claimed it. If the poem appeared via the hands of Mackenzie, then it is questionable as to whether he would have changed passages of which he did not approve. There are several small textual differences between various printed copies of this poem, revealing some changes made probably by nineteenth-century editors.

Scott Douglas states in 1876 that the woods at Drumlanrig shared the same fate as the woods around Neidpath in Peeblesshire, where Mackenzie was a visitor. There is no documented evidence that Mackenzie visited anyone in 1801 on a journey that would have taken him by Drumlanrig, although he was at Neidpath. If the woodlands of Drumlanrig were felled during the poet's lifetime, then the poem may be his. If it is by Mackenzie, it is better than most of his, at best, mediocre poetry. There is nothing distinctive in the language of the poem to suggest that Burns could not have been the author. It is very similar to
The Humble Petition of Bruar Water
, stanzas 5 and 10. If by MacKenzie, then it is highly imitational of Burns. No manuscript has been preserved. The poem
may
be
from Burns, but MacKenzie could have cleared this situation up by including it in his collected works which he chose not to do.

To accept the confession of a liar is never safe ground. Mackenzie lived to deny most of his anti-radical activities during the ideological war of the 1790s. In Mackenzie's post-1800 life, he never admitted the true extent of his anti-radical past: attacking the Scottish Friends of the People under various pen-names in the press, prompting Robert Heron to do likewise and his role as a witness against William Skirving (S.R.O., JC 26/280) in the 1794 Scottish Sedition Trials. The Mackenzie who survived Burns was a man of mediocre literary talent who envied Burns as an artist. In the Burns story, Mackenzie is not so much the benevolent sentimental figure he stimulated, but a deceitful and powerful villain whose claim to this poem should not be accepted at face value.