Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
The Canongate Burns (67 page)
First printed in Johnson's S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,
farewell
        Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel even to the Scottish name,
        Sae famed in martial story!
so
5
Now Sark rins o'er the Solway sands,
runs
        And Tweed rins to the ocean,
runs
To mark whare England's province stands,
where
        Such a parcel of rogues in a nation
What force or guile could not subdue,
10
        Thro' many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
        For hireling traitors' wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
        Secure in valour's station;
15
But English gold has been our bane,
        Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
O would, or I had seen the day
        That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay,
old, lain
20
        Wi' BRUCE and loyal WALLACE!
But pith and power, till my last hour,
        I'll mak this declaration;
We're bought and sold for English gold,
        Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
With his customary erudition, Kinsley has detected a group of popular anti-Union songs out of which this pristine national elegiac lyric has been distilled. Most of these are located in James Hogg's,
The Jacobite Relics of Scotland
, 1819, nos. xl-xlii and lxii. The most likely source found in Hogg, no xxxix, is
The Awkward Squad
, an attack on the âThirty-one Rogues', the Scottish Commissioners who allegedly sold the nation out in 1707:
Shame fa' my een,
If e'er I have seen
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
From this memorable phrase, Burns creates a song which combines defiance and despair where his two great national heroes are entombed beyond resurrection. The song, thus, is the antithetical companion piece to Scots
Wha Hae
. Consciously or otherwise on the part of the modern poets, it prefigures poems like Muir's
Scotland's
Winter
and MacDiarmid's
At Dunbar's Grave
which also enact burial rites for the Scottish spirit. The song was published unsigned partly because its political vision is the reverse of the soon to be wholly triumphal forces of pro-Union Scottish Toryism, most manifest in Walter Scott's writings.
â
First printed in Johnson's S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
There lived a carl in Kellyburnbraes,
old man
Hey and the rue grows bonie wi' thyme;
And he had a wife was the plague o' his days,
And the thyme it is wither'd and rue is in prime;
5
And he had a wife was the plague o' his days,
And the thyme it is wither'd and rue is in prime. â
Ae day as the carl gaed up the lang-glen,
one, went, long
Hey and the rue &c.
He met wi' the Devil, says how do you fen?
fend/how are you
10
And the thyme it is wither'd and rue is in prime;
I've got a bad Wife, sir, that's a' my complaint,
Hey and the rue &c.
For, saving your presence, to her ye're a saint,
And the thyme &c.
15
It's neither your stot nor your staig I shall crave,
bullock, colt
Hey and the rue &c.
But gie me your wife, man, for her I must have,
give
And the thyme &c.
O, welcome most kindly! the blythe carl said;
old man
20
Hey and the rue &c
But if ye can match her â ye're waur than ye're ca'd,
worse, called
And the thyme &c.
The Devil has got the auld wife on his back,
old
Hey and the rue &c.
25
And like a poor pedlar he's carried his pack,
And the thyme &c.
He's carried her hame to his ain hallan-door,
home, own, front-
Hey and the rue &c.
Syne bade her gae in for a bitch and a whore,
go
30
And the thyme &c.
Then straight he makes fifty, the pick o' his band,
Hey and the rue &c.
Turn out on her guard in the clap o' a hand,
And the thyme &c.
35
The carlin gaed thro' them like onie wud bear,
went, any mad
Hey and the rue &c.
Whae'er she gat hands on, cam ne'er her nae mair,
got, no more
And the thyme &c.
A reekit, wee devil looks over the wa',
smoking devil, wall
40
Hey and the rue &c.
O help, Master, help!, or she'll ruin us a',
master
And the thyme &c.
The Devil he swore by the edge o' his knife,
Hey and the rue &c.
45
He pitied the man that was ty'd to a wife,
And the thyme &c.
The Devil he swore by the kirk and the bell,
Hey and the rue &c.
He was not in wedlock, thank Heaven, but in Hell,
50
And the thyme &c.
Then Satan has travell'd again wi' his pack,
Hey and the rue &c.
And to her auld husband he's carried her back,
old
And the thyme &c.
55
I hae been a Devil the feck o' my life,
have, most
Hey and the rue &c.
But ne'er was in Hell till I met wi' a wife,
And the thyme it is wither'd, and rue is in prime.
But ne'er was in Hell till I met wi' a wife,
60
And the thyme it is wither'd, and rue is in prime.
This is signed by Burns in the S.M.M. It is partly based on an old English song,
The Farmer's Old Wife
, but the body of the lyric is by Burns. It has all the hallmarks of a traditional male drinking club song combined with the wit of Burns, humorously lamenting the old man's marriage to a wife who is so difficult to live with that even the Devil returns her to him.
First printed in Johnson's S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
[I thers seek they kenna what,
Features, carriage, and a' that,
Gie me loove in her I court;
Loove to loove maks a' the sport.]
Let loove sparkle in her e'e;
love, eye
Let her loe nae man but me;
love, no
That 's the tocher gude I prize,
dowry, good
There the Luver's treasure lies. â
The second stanza is by Burns and was written to accompany an old song he lifted from
The Tea-Table Miscellany
(1726) and printed by Johnson with the poet's additional stanza.
First printed in Johnson's S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthrall
       For the lands of Virginia-ginia O;
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more,
       And alas! I am weary, weary O!
              Torn from &c.
5
All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost,
       Like the lands of Virginia-ginia O;
There streams for ever flow, and the flowers for ever blow,
       And alas! I am weary, weary, O!
              There streams &c.
The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear,
10
       In the lands of Virginia-ginia O;
And I think on friends most dear with the bitter, bitter tear,
       And Alas! I am weary, weary O!
              And I think &c.
No less an authority than Maya Angelou has discovered in Burns, most specifically in this song, an empathy with the enslaved, brutalised
quality of Black experience. Kinsley, however, would have absolutely no truck with such a relationship. Here is his dismissive treatment of the song:
Burns's part in this song is uncertain. It is ascribed to him only on the evidence of the Hastie MS. There is nothing in the argument that it represents 29 [
The Ruined Farmer
] (ChambersâWallace, IV, 355). It is related in form and theme, with some verbal correspondences, to the broadside
The
Trapann'd Maid (Roxburghe Ballads,
ed. Ebsworth, vii 513). (Vol. III, p. 1405.)
Kinsley's peremptory rebutal of the Chambers-Wallace claim that the refrain from Burns's early song The Ruined Farmer, âIt's O fickle fortune O' has no resonance with âAnd alas! I am weary, weary O!' is, at least, debatable. What is certain is that Kinsley had neither knowledge nor sympathy for the radical social context out of which this song emerged. Anti-slavery was the integrative factor in all the varied British radical and reform groupings in the latter eighteenth century. It was particularly strong in Scotland which had over sixty anti-slave societies. Further, the successful legal appeal by Joseph Knight, which particularly interested Dr Johnston, to repeal his slave status created a connection with the white Scottish colliers whose actual status was little better than that of plantation slaves. This enlightened Scottish impulse, of which Burns is the creative voice, to see history as an evolving process of the mass of humanity freeing itself from bondage is most cogently and powerfully dicovered in the writings of that great, now sadly submerged, figure of the Scottish radical Enlightenment, Glasgow University's Professor John Millar. Thus Millar on American slavery:
It affords a curious spectacle to observe that the same people who talk in a high strain of political liberty, and who consider the privilege of imposing their own taxes as one of the unalienable rights of mankind, should make no scruple of reducing a great proportion of their fellow creatures into circumstances by which they are not only deprived of property, but of almost every species of right. Fortune perhaps never produced a situation more calculated to produce a liberal hypothesis, or to show how little the conduct of men is at the bottom directed by philosophical principles. (William C. Lehmann,
John Millar
of Glasgow, 1735â1801
, C.U.P., 1960, p. 321).
or
Orananaoig â A Gaelic Air.
First printed in Johnson's S.M.M., Vol. 4, 13th August 1792.
Scene â A Field of Battle â Time of the day, evening â The wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to join in this song.
Farewell, thou fair day; thou green earth; and ye skies,
        Now gay with the broad setting sun!
Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties!
        Our race of existence is run.
5
Thou grim king of terrors, thou life's gloomy foe,
        Go frighten the coward and slave!
Go teach them to tremble, fell tyrant! but know,
        No terrors hast thou to the Brave.Â
Thou strik'st the dull peasant, he sinks in the dark,
10
        Nor saves e'en the wreck of a name:
Thou strik'st the young hero, a glorious mark!
        He falls in the blaze of his fame.
In the field of proud honour, our swords in our hands,
        Our King and our Country to save,
15
While victory shines on Life's last ebbing sands,
        O, who would not die with the Brave?
As we saw in the Introduction, this poem was seized on by Robert Nares, the governmental reviewer of
The British Criti
c, as evidence that Burns, particularly with l. 14's apparent patriotism, had seen the gross error of his political ways. This poem was allegedly the antidote to the seditious
Scots Wha Hae
with its connection of the fourteenth-century Scottish Wars of Independence with the ongoing French Revolution. Nares further claimed that:
In 1795 when we were first threatened with invasion, he appeared in the ranks of the Dumfries Volunteers and contributed to rouse the martial genius of his countrymen, by the following animated and almost sublime war-song.
Unfortunately for this conservative argument the song was written as early as May 1791, a few years before Britain went to war with France and at a time when many people in Britain still supported the French experiment. Explaining the song to Mrs Dunlop he wrote:
I have just finished the following Song, which to a lady the descendant of Wallace, & many heroes of his truly Illustrious line: & herself the mother of several Soldiers, needs neither preface nor apology.⦠The circumstance that gave rise to these verses was â looking over with a musical friend, McDonald's collection of Highland airs, I was struck with one, an Isle of Skye tune, entitled âOran an Aoig âor âThe Song of Death', to the measure of which I have adapted my stanzas' (Letter 453).
This song is an elemental, post-Ossianic in mood, account of death in battle for both rich and poor. The peasant who dies, even his name is forgotten, but he who dies in battle, is through history, remembered as a hero. Sung from the lips of the dead and wounded soldiers of the victorious army, the âking of terrors' (l. 5) and âfell tyrant' (l. 7) not feared by the âBrave' is Death itself.
