The Canongate Burns (27 page)
Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
O SCOTIA! my dear, my native soil!
        For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!
Long may thy hardy sons of
rustic toil
175
        Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!
And O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent
        From
Luxury's contagion
, weak and vile!
Then, howe'er
crowns
and
coronets
be rent,
        A
virtuous Populace
may rise the while,
180
And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov'd ISLE.
O THOU! who pour'd the
patriotic tide
,
        That stream'd thro' WALLACE'S undaunted heart,
Who dar'd to, nobly, stem tyrannic pride,
        Or
nobly die
, the second glorious part:
185
(The Patriot's GOD, peculiarly Thou art,
        His
friend, inspirer, guardian
, and
reward
!)
O never, never SCOTIA'S realm desert;
        But still the Patriot, and the
Patriot-bard
In bright succession raise, her
Ornament
and
Guard
!Â
As Kinsley noted (Vol. III, p. 112): âWhat appealed to Burns contemporaries ⦠was the naturalism and the moral tone of
TC's
SN. The English Review
(Feb. 1787) thought it the best poem in the Kilmarnock book, offering âa domestic picture of rustic simplicity, natural tenderness, and innocent passion that must please every reader whose feelings are not perverted'. As Henry Mackenzie's and Robert Heron's reviews show (See Low,
The Critical Heritage
), conformist Scots were only too eager to build up such English pieties.
Unfazed that a âheaven-taught' ploughman should be so canonically allusive, we find, embryonically in these Tory sentimentalists, the enormous Victorian enthusiasm for a poem which seemed, under the growing threat of the anarchic urban, industrial crowd, to offer the security and succour of a pietistically all-accepting rural folk. (See Andrew Noble, âSome Versions of Scottish Pastoral: The Literati and the Tradition' in
Order in Space and Society
, ed. Markus (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 263â310.
Twentieth-century critics have mainly been less easy with the poem. In his masterly reading Daiches compares it unfavourably to Fergusson's formally Spenserian precursor,
The Farmer's Ingle
. Compared to Fergusson's consistent vernacular, Daiches finds the language and voice uneven in the Burns poem. The problem Daiches believes is that, beginning with its initial homage to Robert Aitken: âWhat Aitken in a Cottage would have been;/Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there I ween', a most unlikely tale, the poem is muddled, in parts, especially the ruined maid sequence, by Burns too consciously looking over his shoulder to please genteel Edinburgh.' As he further notes:
There is probably no poem of Burns in which the introduction of an artificial personality has spoiled a potentially fine work to the extent that it has in
The Cotter's Saturday Night
. The main trouble is that the poet has kept shifting his attitude, and with it his diction, between several incompatible positions. He is at one and the same time the sympathetic, realistic observer; at still another he is the sophisticated moralist acting as a guide showing off his rustic character for the benefit of a sentimental, genteel audience (p. 149).
Daiches is also rightly concerned with the semi, if not wholly, detached nature of the last two stanzas: âBut he overdoes the patriotic note, and in his final stanza seems to forget altogether the real theme of his poem.' Perhaps subconsciously, Burns did realise that some of the poem was complicit with values he detested and this invocation of a national, contractually governed common people was his attempt to deny some of the sentiments which preceded his inevitably inorganic conclusion. Certainly he is echoing the national spirit of Fergusson's
The
Farmer's Ingle:
On sicken food has mony doughty deed
        By Caledonia's ancestors been done;
By this did mony wright fu' weirlike bleed
        In brulzies frae the dawn to set o' sun:
'Twas this that brac'd their gardies stiff and strang
        That bent the deidly yew in antient days,
Laid Denmark's daring sons on yird alang,
        Gar'd Scottish thristles bang the Roman bays;
For near our crest their heads they doughtna raise.
It would be hard to overestimate Fergusson's influence in both national style and substance on Burns. From Fergusson, albeit often more elegiacally expressed, come the sense of the food, drink, music and personages that make up the Scottish spirit. Burns also understood that Fergusson was, if covertly, a profoundly political poet. Like himself, Fergusson was socially displaced because he also existed in a hierarchical world between masters and men. Their political poetry, then, had to be ironic, oblique, comically masked. In defining Fergusson as âbauld and slee' (bold and sly) Burns, knowingly, defined himself. As we have already seen, Fergusson's brilliant
Hame Content: A Satire
with its denunciation of those Europhiliac, decadent aristocrats who will not remain responsibly at home was put, in
The Twa Dogs
, to equally brilliant use. These lines from the same Fergusson poem should remind us simultaneously of the relatively uneven failure of
The Cotter's Saturday Night
and the greatness in representing the harshness, beauty and injustice in the life of the common people found in so much of Burns's other poetry, significantly due to Fergusson's influence on him:
Now whan the Dog-day heats begin
To birsel and to peel the skin,
May I lie streetkit at my ease,
Beneath the caller shady trees,
(Far frae the din o' Borrowstown,)
Whar water plays the haughs bedown,
To jouk the simmer's rigor there,
And breath a while the caller air
'Mang herds, an' honest cotter fock
That till the farm and feed the flock;
Careless o' mair, wha never fash
To lade their kist wi' useless cash
But thank the gods for what they've sent
O' health eneugh, and blyth content,
An' pith, that helps them to stravaig
Owr ilka cleugh and ilka craig,
Unkend to a' the weary granes
That aft arise frae gentler banes,
On easy-chair that pamper'd lie,
Wi' banefu' viands gustit high,
And turn and fald their weary clay,
To rax and gaunt the live-lang day.
On Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough November 1785
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous
beastie
,
small, sleek
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
breast
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
away, so
                  Wi' bickering brattle!
hasty, scurry
5
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
would, loath, run
                  Wi' murdering
pattle
!
a wooden plough-scraper
Â
I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion
10
                  Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion
                  An'
fellow mortal
!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
not, sometimes
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
must
15
A
daimen icker
in a
thrave
one ear of corn in 24 sheaves
                  'S a sma' request;
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
remainder
                  An' never miss't!
Thy wee-bit
housie
, too, in ruin!
small, house/nest
20
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin!
walls, winds
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
nothing, build, new one
                  O' foggage green!
thick winter grass
An' bleak
December's win's
ensuin,
winds
                  Baith snell an' keen!
both bitter, biting cold
25
Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary
Winter
comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
cosy
                  Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel
coulter
past
plough blade
30
                  Out thro' thy cell.
That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
small, stubble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
many
Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
                  But house or hald,
without, holding
35
To thole the Winter's
sleety dribble
,
endure, drizzle
                  An'
cranreuch
cauld!
hoar-frost cold
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
not alone
In proving
foresight
may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o'
Mice
an'
Men
40
                  Gang aft agley,
go often wrong
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
leave
                  For promis'd joy!
Still thou art blest, compared wi' me!
The
present
only toucheth thee:
45
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
                  On prospects drear!
An'
forward
, tho' I canna
see
,
cannot
                  I
guess
an'
fear
!
Formally, this is a companion to that other creaturely masterpiece,
To a
Louse
. McGuirk defines them as both belonging to âHoratian satire, linking an
exemplum
of observed experience with a final
sententia
or maxim' (p. 223). In terms of content, however, the two poems, presumably deliberately, could not be more different. The hypothermic mouse, houselessly unprotected, has the ice of winter penetrating its fast fading heart. The hyperactive louse, pulsing with grotesque energy and intentions, foresees a comfortable head-high residence.
This is truly one of the great animal poems of the Sentimental canon fit to stand with Fergusson's great goldfinch and butterfly poems and Smart's cat poem. The destructive ploughman poet's guilt and empathy for the creature are wholly realised as is the sense of the inherent relationship of all created things. It is, seriously,
The
Ancient Mariner
in miniature.
Crawford, in a very fine reading of the poem, rescued it from its daisy-like sentimental reputation particularly by stressing the subtle political analogy in the poem between mice and peasant suffering similar, perhaps fatal, decanting in that age of agrarian revolution. As Crawford remarks:
The mouse becomes more than any animal; she is a symbol of the peasant, or rather of the âpoor peasant' condition. On a careful
reading of the fifth stanza, the lines âTill crash! the cruel coulter past/out thro' thy cell' affect us with all the terror of Blake's âdark Satanic mills'. The coulter is in reality Burns's equivalent of the mills â part of the metaphorical plough of social change that breaks down the houses of both Lowland and Highland cotters. This is not to claim that the poem is allegorical in any crude or literal sense. The mouse does not âstand for' the mother of âThe Cotter's Saturday Night' or the Highland âhizzies' whom Beelzebub thought should be âlessoned' in Drury Lane, but she belongs to the same world as these others and gains an extra dimension from those emotions whose intensity arises from the depth and power of Burns's own contemplation of human wretchedness and exploitation. (pp. 166â7)
It was written in the early winter of 1785.
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
While winds frae aff BEN-LOMOND blaw,
from off, blow (north wind)
And bar the doors wi' drivin' snaw,
snow
              And hing us owre the ingle,
sit around/over, fireplace
I set me down to pass the time,
5
And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme,
two
              In hamely,
westlin
jingle:
western
While frosty winds blaw in the drift,
blow
              Ben to the chimla lug,
right, chimney bottom/fire
I grudge a wee the
Great-folk's
gift,
little
10
               That live sae bien an' snug:
so comfortable
               I tent less, and want less
care for
                               Their roomy fire-side;
                But hanker, and canker,
                              To see their cursed pride.Â
15
It's hardly in a body's pow'r,
To keep, at times, frae being sour,
from
                To see how things are shar'd;
How
best o' chiels
are whyles in want,
people, often
While
Coofs
on countless thousands rant,
fools, make merry/riot
20
                And ken na how to ware't;
know not, spend
But DAVIE, lad, ne'er fash your head,
trouble
                Tho' we hae little gear;
have, wealth
We're fit to win our daily bread,
                As lang's we're hale and fier:
long as, whole, vigorous
25
                âMair spier na, nor fear na,'
1
don't ask more, nor fear
                  Auld age ne'er mind a feg;
old, fig
                The last o't, the warst o't,
worst
                 Is only but to beg.
To lie in kilns and barns at e'en,
30
When banes are craz'd, and bluid is thin,
bones, blood
                Is, doubtless, great distress!
Yet then
content
could make us blest;
Ev'n then, sometimes, we'd snatch a taste
                Of truest happiness.
35
The honest heart that's free frae a'
from all
                Intended fraud or guile,
However Fortune kick the ba',
ball â whatever misfortunes
                Has ay some cause to smile;
always
And mind still, you'll find still,
40
            A comfort this nae sma';
not small
                     Nae mair then, we'll care then,
no more
                Nae
farther
can we
fa
'.
no, fall
What tho', like Commoners of air,
owners of air, not land
We wander out, we know not where,
45
                But either house or hal'?
without house or hall
Yet
Nature's
charms, the hills and woods,
The sweeping vales, and foaming floods,
                Are free alike to all.
In days when Daisies deck the ground,
50
And Blackbirds whistle clear,
With honest joy our hearts will bound,
                To see the
coming
year:
                On braes when we please then,
hillsides
                                We'll sit an'
sowth
a tune;
hum
55
                Syne
rhyme
till 't we'll time till 't,
then
                                An' sing 't when we hae done.
have
It's no in titles nor in rank:
not
It's no in wealth like
Lon'on Bank
,
not, London
                To purchase peace and rest.
60
It's no in makin muckle,
mair
:
making much, more
It's no in books, it's no in Lear,
wisdom
                To make us truly blest:
If happiness hae not her seat
has
                An' centre in the breast,
65
We may be wise, or
rich
, or
great
,
                But never can be
blest
:
                Nae treasures nor pleasures
no
                                Could make us happy lang;
long
                The
heart
ay 's the part ay
always is
70
                                That makes us right or wrang.
wrong
Think ye, that sic as
you
and
I
,
such
Wha drudge and drive thro' wet and dry,
who
                Wi' never ceasing toil;
Think ye, are we less blest than they,
75
Wha scarcely tent us in their way,
who, notice
                As hardly worth their while?
Alas! how oft, in haughty mood,
                GOD's creatures they oppress!
Or else, neglecting a' that's guid,
good
80
                They riot in excess!
                Baith careless and fearless
both
                                Of either Heaven or Hell;
                Esteeming and deeming
                                It a' an idle tale!
85
Then let us chearfu' acquiesce,
Nor make our scanty Pleasures less
                By pining at our state:
And, even should Misfortunes come,
I here wha sit hae met wi' some,
who, have
90
                An 's thankfu' for them yet,
They gie the wit of
Age to Youth
;
give
                They let us ken oursel;
know ourselves
They make us see the naked truth,
                The
real
guid and ill:
good
95
                Tho' losses and crosses
                                Be lessons right severe,
                There's
Wit
there, ye'll get there,
                                Ye'll find nae other where.
no
But tent me, DAVIE,
Ace o' Hearts
!
take heed
100
(To say aught less wad wrang the
cartes
, And flatt'ry I detest)
anything, would wrong, cards
This life has joys for you and I;
And joys that riches ne'er could buy,
                And joys the very best.
105
There's a' the
Pleasures o' the Heart
,
                The
Lover
an' the
Frien
';
friend
Ye hae your MEG, your dearest part,
have
                And I my darling JEAN!
                It warms me, it charms me
110
                                To mention but her
name
:
                It heats me, it beets me,
enraptures
                                And sets me a' on flame!
O all ye
Pow'rs
who rule above!
O THOU whose very self art
love
!
115
                THOU know'st my words sincere!
The
life blood
streaming thro' my heart,
Or my more dear
Immortal part
,
                Is not more fondly dear!
When heart-corroding care and grief
120
                Deprive my soul of rest,
Her dear idea brings relief
                And solace to my breast.
                Thou BEING, All-seeing,
                                O hear my fervent pray'r!
125
                Still take her, and make her
                                THY most peculiar care!
All hail! ye tender feelings dear!
The smile of love, the friendly tear,
                The sympathetic glow!
130
Long since, this world's thorny ways
Had number'd out my weary days,
                Had it not been for you!
Fate still has blest me with a friend
                In every care and ill;
135
And oft a more
endearing
band,
                A tye more tender still. tie
                It lightens, it brightens
                The tenebrific scene,
darkening/depressive
                To meet with, and greet with
140
                                My DAVIE or my JEAN!
O, how that
Name
inspires my style!
The words come skelpin' rank an' file,
rattling/running
                Amaist before I ken!
almost, know
The ready measure rins as fine,
runs
145
As
Phoebus
and the famous
Nine
                Were glowran owre my pen.
looking over
My spavet
Pegasus
will limp,
lame, leg joint problems
                Till ance he's fairly het;
once, hot
And then he'll hilch, an' stilt, an' jimp,
hobble, limp, jump
150
                And rin an unco fit;
run, rapid pace
                But least then, the beast then
                                Should rue this hasty ride,
                I'll light now, and dight now
wipe clean
                                His sweaty, wizen'd hide.
withered
Â
David Sillar (1760â1830) was one of several recipients of Burns's Ayrshire epistolary poetry whom the Bard certainly overestimated poetically if not personally. Sillar had a mixed career as failed teacher then grocer but eventually inherited the family farm, Spittleside, Tarbolton and died a rich Irvine magistrate. This is the very reverse of the life of shared deprivation outlined for him and Burns himself in this poem. A good fiddler and composer (he composed the music to Burns's
The Rosebud
), he published his less than mediocre
Poems
at Kilmarnock in 1789. His proximity to Burns can be gauged by ll. 114â 17 where, as in Sterne, rugged, biological reality constantly pene-trates the surface of fine feeling. The poem is a technically formidable example of Burns's employment of Alexander Montgomerie's
The
Cherry and the Slae
measure which James VI defined as one example of âcuttit and broken verse, quhairof new formes daylie inuentit' (
Poems
, STS, l. 82). Burns is, however, hardly ever given to technique for its own sake. As Daiches has remarked (p. 163), the poem is remarkable for its ability to mould the process of thought to such complex form. However, the nature of this thought itself is more questionable. The exposed multiple, tangible distresses of penury are expressed with extraordinary power throughout the poem as is the sense of chronic injustice between rich and poor. The compensations of poverty are less credible. Edwin Muir was particularly unhappy with âThe heart ay's the part ay, /That makes us right or wrang.' Nor do the notions of compensatory and sexual harmony ring wholly true. Daiches in discussing stanza three, with its extraordinary initial delineation of the life of the beggars, defends the poem against such a sense of disparity between the desperate life it presents and the possible compensation for such a life thus:
