The Canongate Burns (72 page)

The subject of this Ode, Mrs Oswald, was a Mary Ramsay who married Richard Oswald of London. He purchased Auchencruive estate, Ayrshire, in 1764, but died in 1784. The widow moved back to London thereafter. She died 6th December, 1788 and was brought to Ayrshire for burial. Burns explained the background in detail to Dr Moore:

That an aristocrat could still be more important as a corpse than a living human being, thrown into the teeth of winter, is the spark that kindled Burns's poetic indignation.

Although first published under the name Tim Nettle in a London newspaper, this work was included in the 1793 Edinburgh edition. On both occasions, Mrs Oswald's identity was dashed out, to preserve anonymity. Burns's letter to Stuart, editor of the London Star, introduced the poem. Burns begins by pretending he does not know who the author of the poem is:

Due to the chicanery of Peter Stuart, a personal letter Burns sent him was, unknown to Burns, published beneath the Ode. This act of betrayal, according to Lucylle Werkmeister, might have had appalling consequences for Burns:

It is surprising, therefore, that the poet's Excise employers did not caution or discipline Burns at this juncture for his insurrectionary social satire, although it is likely they would have been notified of his publication.

It is not the least of Burns's many formal jokes that he borrows the nomenclature and structure of this poem from Collins's
Ode to
Mercy
. Kinsley, always ready to agree with nineteenth century denial of the poet's radical values, describes this as a ‘savage satire in the quite unsuitable Pindaric form' (Vol. III, p. 1292). On the contrary, the Pindaric form succeeds, moving crisply from the delivery of the deceased to the Devil (the hangman of Creation), to the atmospheric cadence of the
Strophe
, examining the subject for any trace of humanity, to the awakening of her dead husband, also in hell, in the
Antistrophe
. In the final
Epode
, Burns reveals the art of his dark painting, ‘… down the wretched vital part is driven', meaning the loss of her soul (the vital part) in life and its transport to Hell. It is excessive wealth and her oppressive nature that has, in life, destroyed the woman's soul and condemned her to her fate. The line ‘Plunderer of Armies!' refers to Mrs Oswald's husband whose ‘war-profiteering' had earned their fortune.

This was written to commemorate the day of public thanksgiving declared when King George III recovered from his bout of insanity. Burns describes his feelings on this occasion to Mrs Dunlop: ‘As I am not devoutly attached to a certain Monarch, I cannot say that my heart run any risk of bursting … God forgive me for speaking evil of dignities! But I must say that I look on the whole business as a solemn farce of pageant mummery. The following are a few Stanzas of new Psalmody for that ‘Joyful Solemnity' which I sent to a London Newspaper' (Letter 335). The poem appeared in the London Star (not the
Edinburgh Star
, as Mackay suggests (p. 354), since no such paper existed) with the indication that it was written at Kilmarnock on the 25th April. It was signed under the pen name Duncan M'Leerie. The note with the song suggested it had been sung ‘devoutly' in a chapel in Kilmarnock on the 23rd past. Burns openly acknowledged to Mrs Dunlop in the same letter that Stuart, the publisher of the London Star was ‘an old acquaintance of mine, and as I am a little tinctured with Buff & Blue myself, I now and then help him to a Stanza' (Letter 335). This is another example of how Burns protected his Excise career by employing a pen name and printing the song as though it was written other than in Dumfries. This was a procedure he was forced to extend in the darker political years ahead.

The ‘Young Man' (l. 15) refers to William Pitt; while ‘chief' (l. 17) alludes to Lord Thurlow (See footnote 1,
Ode to the Departed
Regency Bill
). Rev. McGill (l. 36) is Rev. Dr McGill (1732–1807) of Ayrshire who was persecuted for his liberal views on religious doctrine, published in his text
A Practical Essay on the Death of
Jesus Christ
(1786)
and The Benefits of the Revolution
(1789) in
which he defended his views against the illiberal attack by Dr Peebles, Kirk minister at Newton-upon-Ayr (See Vol. III, Kinsley, pp. 1306–7). Burns boasted to Mrs Dunlop that he would hunt down the persecutors of Dr McGill like wild prey (Letter 148). See also notes to
The Kirk's Alarm
.

The song is written in the style of the Presbyterian metrical psalms, paraphrasing in the first line from
Psalms
, CXLIV, line 9, ‘I will sing a new song unto thee, O God'. Kinsley lists several biblical allusions from, inter alia,
Deuteronomy
and
Judges
. They are employed to mock the farcical new ‘Jerusalem' of Pitt. Although printed during the poet's lifetime pseudonymously, this work did not feature in the canon until Hately Waddell's edition (1867), almost a century after its first appearance.

The Kirk's Alarm first appears as an anonymous song under the title
The Ayrshire Garland, an Excellent New Song; Tune – The Vicar and
Moses
. The first version contained only thirteen stanzas, compared to the complete song's twenty. The song is a stalwart defence of the Rev. Dr William McGill (1732–1807) against his persecution by the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr (See our notes for
A New Psalm for the
Chapel of Kilmarnock
). This is made vividly clear by Burns as early as November 1787: ‘… if the prosecution which I hear the Erebean Fanatics are projecting against my learned and truly worthy friend, Dr McGill, goes on, I shall keep no measure with the savages, but fly at them with the faulcons of Ridicule, or run them down with the bloodhounds of Satire, as lawful game, wherever I start them' (Letter 124). On the opponents of McGill, listed in the poem, Burns goes on, in July 1789, just after completing the ballad: ‘Several of these reverend lads, his opponents, have come thro' my hands before, but I have some thoughts of serving them up again in a different dish…. I have just sketched the following ballad… I am thinking to throw off two or three dozen copies at a Press in Dumfries, & send them as from Edinburgh to some Ayrshire folks on both sides of the question' (Letter 352). Mrs Dunlop advised him not to do this but he disregarded her. The original broadside was probably paid for and circulated by Burns himself.

The work also appears in
Songs and Poems
by Alexander Tait (Paisley, 1790, pp. 170–3), under the bizzare and malicious pen-name ‘Composed by Plotcock, the Foul Thief's Exciseman'. Tait's version matches the broadside text. He published the Burns poem as an occasional piece to set up his own reply,
The Answer to Plotcock
, an inferior work satirising Burns's work. He does not give away the poet's identity, although he knew Burns was the author. Sandy Tait was the author of three unpleasantly frivolous poems on Burns and his family,
Burns in His Infancy, Burns in Lochly and Burns's Hen
Clockin in Mauchline
. The poem itself did not appear as a work by Burns until Stewart's edition, 1801.

Kinsley rightly remarks that the poetic form is common to drinking songs (the tune picked by Burns is that of a drinking song) and political squibs before Burns. Henderson and Henley point out that the immediate model may have been a pro-Pitt attack on Charles James Fox printed in
The Glasgow Mercury
, 23rd–30th December 1788 (See Kinsley, Vol. III, p. 1308). This is formally similar to
The Kirk's Alarm
:

Kinsley, who lifts his quote from H–H, misquotes the text of the newspaper poem, with ‘argumentation' instead of ‘argumentum'. Burns made several copies of the song; adding and modifying several verses; hence there are several variant readings. This is a rogues' gallery of ecclesiastics previously satirised by Burns, the ‘auld lichts' whose interpretation of the 1688 revolutionary celebrations in 1788 differed markedly from the liberal McGill. The late eighteenth century did not differentiate theology and politics as we do.