Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
The Canongate Burns (32 page)
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
The poor man weeps â here Gavin sleeps,
      Whom canting wretches blam'd;
But with
such as he
, where'er he be,
      May I be sav'd or damn'd.
For notes on Gavin Hamilton, see
A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton
.
On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
HA! whare ye gaun, ye crowlan ferlie!
where, going, crawling wonder
Your impudence protects you sairly:
very well
I canna say but ye strunt rarely
cannot, strut confidently
               Owre
gauze
and
lace
,
over
5
Tho' faith, I fear ye dine but sparely
eat little
               On sic a place.
such
Ye ugly, creepan, blastet wonner,
blasted wonder
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
saint
How daur ye set your fit upon her â
dare, foot
10
               Sae fine a
Lady
!
so
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
go
               On some poor body.
Swith, in some beggar's haffet squattle:
away!, temples, squat
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
scramble
15
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
other
               In shoals and nations;
Whare
horn
nor
bane
ne'er daur unsettle
where, bone (comb), dare
               Your thick plantations.
Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
hold
20
Below the fatt'rels, snug an' tight,
ribbon-ends
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
no, confound you
               Till ye've got on it,
The vera tapmost, tow'ring height
very topmost
               O'
Miss's
bonnet
.
hat
25
My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
bold
As plump an' grey as onie grozet:
any gooseberry
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
mercury pasted rosin
               Or fell, red smeddum,
deadly powder
I'd gie ye sic a hearty dose o't,
give
30
               Wad dress your droddum!
would, backside
I wad na been surpris'd to spy
would not
You on an auld wife's
flainen toy
;
old flannel cap
Or aiblins some bit duddie boy,
perhaps, small ragged
               On 's
wylecoat
;
flannel vest
35
But Miss's fine
Lunardi
, fye!
balloon-shaped hat
               How daur ye do't?
dare
O
Jenny
, dinna toss your head,
do not
An' set your beauties a' abread!
abroad
Ye little ken what cursèd speed
know
40
               The blastie's makin!
damned thing's
Thae
winks
an'
finger-ends
, I dread,
               Are notice takin!
O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
would, gift give
To
see oursels as ithers see us
!
others
45
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
would from many
               An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
would leave
               An' ev'n Devotion!Â
If perceptible animal motion in
To a Mouse
is reduced to a drift towards cold death, the louse's world is charged with manic upward mobility. Its achieved goal is the very top of the refined Jenny's Lunardi bonnet. These height of fashion bonnets derived from the shape of the Lunardi balloon flown over Edinburgh by Burns's Crochallan Fencible comrade, James âBalloon' Tytler in 1784. The Italian aeronaut Vincenzo Lunardi made several flights in Scotland in the following year. The church service which combines strict social regimentation with, for the prosperous, fashionable display, becomes the occasion for the louse to traverse the class barrier with a vengeance leaving behind its accustomed world of greasy, dirty flannel for that of gauze and lace. Burns's own ambivalent but constant attraction for the world of women of a superior class (cloyingly obvious with Mrs McLehose and frenzied with regard to Maria Riddell) perhaps provides the poem with its dynamism and profound sense of satirical social contrast. Kinsley calls the poem a âminor triumph of whimsy' but David Craig surely comes nearer the truth when he comments:
To a Louse
isn't radical in a usual or obvious sense. The point is that Burns's radicalism pervades his imagination through and through. The least domestic item reminds him of the hunger and shortages of poor folk, the unfeeling above-it-all stance of the well-to-do, the need to expose the shame of finery and what was then called rank. For Burns, the louse is an underdog and all his complicity is with it (ll. 9â16). Already the louse has come to stand for all the dispossessed and propertyless who one day will come and squat in the big houses when the upper class nightmare of a jacquerie comes to pass. The beauty of this poem is that it insinuates its radical challenge to the unequal nature of class society into a perfectly observed comic scene. The social point makes itself. It is the kind of piece we need when answering the usual conservative objection that radical literature tends to blaze and tub-thump (âThe Radical Literary Tradition',
The Red Paper on Scotland
, ed. Gordon Brown (Edinburgh University Publications Board: 1975), pp. 292â3).
Craig's is both a brilliant insight into this poem and a salutary reminder of the fact that Burns as poet is necessarily preoccupied with varied oblique strategies for his radical politics. As a writer he was a smuggler not an Excise man. It should also remind us not to read âO wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us/
to see oursels as ithers see us
!' as a piece of sententious sentimentality but Burns's two line demolition of Adam Smith's concept of the creation of internalised spectator in his
Theory of Moral Sentiments
as a form of secular conscience adequate to controlling our materialism and social pretentiousness.
An Old Scotch Bard, April 1, 1785
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
WHILE briers an' woodbines budding green,
And Paitricks scraichin loud at e'en,
partridges screeching
An' morning Poossie whiddin seen,
hare scudding
                Inspire my Muse,
5
This freedom, in an
unknown
frien'
friend
                I pray excuse.
On Fasteneen we had a rockin,
Shrove Tuesday, meeting
To ca' the crack and weave our stockin;
call the conversation
And there was muckle fun and jokin,
much
10
                Ye need na doubt;
not
At length we had a hearty yokin,
set-to
                At
sang about
.
There was
ae sang
, amang the rest,
one
Aboon them a' it pleas'd me best,
above
15
That some kind husband had addrest
                To some sweet wife:
It thirl'd the heart-strings thro' the breast,
thrilled
                A' to the life.Â
I've scarce heard ought describ'd sae weel,
anything, so well
20
What gen'rous, manly bosoms feel;
Thought I, âCan this be
Pope
or
Steele
,
                Or
Beattie's
wark?'
work
They tald me 'twas an odd kind chiel
told, chap or person
                About
Muirkirk
.Â
25
It pat me fidgean-fain to hear't,
put, tingling/excited
An' sae about him there I spier't;
so, asked
Then a' that kent him round declar'd,
all, knew
                He had
ingine
;
genius
That nane excell'd it, few cam near't,
none, came
30
                It was sae fine:
so
That set him to a pint of ale,
An' either douce or merry tale,
sober
Or rhymes an' sangs he'd made himsel,
songs
                Or witty catches,
35
'Tween Inverness and Teviotdale,
                He had few matches.
Then up I gat, an' swoor an aith,
got, swore an oath
Tho' I should pawn my pleugh an' graith,
plough and harness
Or die a cadger pownie's death,
hawker pony's
40
                At some dyke-back,
beind a stone wall
A
pint
an'
gill
I'd gie them
baith
,
give, both
                To hear your crack.
conversation
But, first an' foremost, I should tell,
Amaist as soon as I could spell,
almost
45
I to the
crambo-jingle
fell;
rhyming
                Tho' rude an' rough,
Yet crooning to a body's sel,
humming, self
                Does weel eneugh.
well enough
I am nae
Poet
, in a sense;
no
50
But just a
Rhymer
like by chance,
An' hae to Learning nae pretence;
have, no
                Yet, what the matter?
Whene'er my Muse does on me glance,
                I jingle at her.
55
Your Critic-folk may cock their nose,
And say, âHow can you e'er propose,
You wha ken hardly
verse
frae
prose
,
who know, from
                To mak a
sang
?'
make
But by your leaves, my learned foes,
60
                Ye're maybe wrang.
What's a' your jargon o' your Schools,
Your Latin names for horns an' stools?
If honest Nature made you
fools
,
                What sairs your Grammers?
serves
65
Ye'd better taen up
spades
and
shools
,
shovels
                Or
knappin-hammers
.
stone-breaking
A set o' dull, conceited Hashes,
dunderheads/fools
Confuse their brains in
Colledge-classes
!
They
gang
in
Stirks, and
come
out
Asses,
go
70
                Plain truth to speak;
An' syne they think to climb Parnassus
then
                By dint o' Greek!
Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire,
one
That's a' the learning I desire;
75
Then, tho' I drudge thro' dub an' mire
puddle
                At pleugh or cart,
plough
My Muse, tho' hamely in attire,
                May touch the heart.
O for a spunk o' ALLAN'S glee,
spark
80
Or FERGUSSON'S, the bauld an' slee,
sly
Or bright LAPRAIK'S, my friend to be,
                If I can hit it!
That would be
lear
eneugh for me,
learning enough
                If I could get it.
85
Now, sir, if ye hae friends enow,
have, enough
Tho'
real friends
I b'lieve are few;
Yet, if your catalogue be fow,
full
                I'se no insist;
But, gif ye want ae friend that's true,
if, one
90
                I'm on your list.
I winna blaw about
mysel
,
will not boast
As ill I like my fauts to tell;
faults
But friends, an' folks that wish me well,
                They sometimes roose me;
praise
95
Tho', I maun own, as monie still
shall, many
                As far abuse me.
There's ae
wee faut
they whyles lay to me,
one small fault, whiles
I like the lasses â Gude forgie me!
God forgive
For monie a Plack they wheedle frae me
many a coin, get from
100
                At dance or fair:
Maybe some
ither thing
they gie me,
other, give
                They weel can spare.
well
But MAUCHLINE Race or MAUCHLINE Fair,
I should be proud to meet you there;
105
We'se gie ae night's discharge to
care
,
we will give one
               If we forgather;
get together
And hae a swap o'
rhymin-ware
,
have
               Wi' ane anither.
one another
Â
The
four-gill chap
, we'se gar him clatter,
four-gill cup, we will make
110
An' kirs'n him wi' reekin water;
christen
Syne we'll sit down an' tak our whitter,
then, draught
               To chear our heart;
An' faith, we'se be
acquainted
better
               Before we part.
115
Awa ye selfish, warly race,
worldly
Wha think that havins, sense, an' grace,
who, manners
Ev'n love an' friendship should give place
               To
catch-the-plack
!
hunt for coin/money
I dinna like to see your face,
do not
120
               Nor hear your crack.
conversation
But ye whom social pleasure charms,
Whose hearts the
tide of kindness
warms,
Who hold your
being
on the terms,
               âEach aid the others,'
125
Come to my bowl, come to my arms,
               My friends, my brothers!
But to conclude my lang epistle,
As my auld pen's worn to the grissle,
old, stump of a quill
Twa lines frae you wad gar me fissle,
two, from, would make me tingle
130
               Who am, most fervent,
While I can either sing, or whissle,
whistle
               Your friend and servant.Â
The recipient of this epistle was John Lapraik (1727â1807) who was postmaster at Muirkirk when he received it after a life of fiscal
mischance which had involved him in the Ayrshire Bank failure of 1773, so losing his farm at Dalfarn, and concluded with his imprisonment for debt in Ayr in 1785. Diverting himself with poetry in prison and observing Burns's success, he published
Poems on
Several Occasions
(1788). Inevitably sympathetic to a man whose fiscal record only slightly exceeded the misfortunes of his own family, Burns may have over-responded to the alleged Lapraik song,
When I Upon Thy Bosom Lean
, he heard sung at a rural gathering. It has been strongly suggested by J.L. Hempstead (
BC
, February, 1994, pp. 94â101) that this song, initially published in
The Weekly Magazine
, was plagiarised. Burns revised the song for inclusion in the S.M.M. and in his interleaved copy remarked that Lapraik was âa worthy, facetious old fellow' who âoften told me that he composed (the song) one day when his wife had been fretting o'er their misfortunes'.
Certainly the associations in this epistle of the âfacetious' Lapraik as
creatively
comparable to Pope, Steele, Beattie, Ramsay and Fergusson are hyperbolic in the extreme. Perhaps unconsciously Burns is projecting his own influences onto the older man. It also adds irony, of course, the proto-Wordsworthian pastoral poet Burns here celebrates in the stanza beginning âGie me ae spark o' Nature's fire' does so in a line which McGuirk (p. 205) notes, contains deliberate associations with these two earlier well-known rural non-sophisticates, Sterne and Pope. Certainly it allows Burns to make merry with rule-constipated academic poets and, another old-enemy, those rigidly and successfully, quite unlike himself and Lapraik, making money. The celebration of social pleasures also involves, as so often the case, in ll. 97â101 witty sexual innuendo.
