Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
The Canongate Burns (142 page)
Tune: Minnie's ay glowerin o'er me
When Mary cam over the border,
When Mary cam over the border;
As eith 'twas approachin the C [un] t of a hurchin
easy, hedgehog
Her a[rse] was in sic a disorder.
such
Chorus
5
Come cowe me, minnie, come cowe me;
mother
Come cowe me, minnie, come cowe me;
The hair o' my a[rse] is grown into my c[un] t,
And they canna win to, to mowe me.
have sex with
But wanton Wattie cam west on 't
10
But wanton Wattie cam west on 't,
He did it sae tickle, he left nae as meikle
not as much
'S a spider wad bigget a nest on 't.
build
And was nae Watt a Clinker
not
He m[o] w'd frae the Queen to the tinkler,
had sex, gypsy
15
Then sat down, in grief, like the Macedon chief
For want o mae warlds to conquer
more worlds
And O, what a jewel was Mary!
And O, what a jewel was Mary!
Her face it was fine, and her bosom divine,
20
And her c[u]nt it was theekit wi' glory.
thatched
In this example Burns has taken an old chorus and grafted his own bawdy song to fit the tune
Minnie's ay glowerin o'er me
. The song is vernacularly introduced by Burns in a letter to Robert Cleghorn on October 25th, 1793:
A fine chiel, a hand-wail'd friend & crony o' my ain, gat o'er the lugs in loove wi' a braw, bonie, fodgel hizzie frae the English-side, weel-ken'd I' the brugh of Annan by the name o Bonie Mary, & I tauld the tale as follows. N.B. The chorus is old (Letter 592).
Mackay quotes from this same letter (p. 506): âMair for taken of my violent propensity to Baudy', which jumbles together two remarks by Burns into one sentence. De Lancey Ferguson postulates that âWattie' in the song may have been Walter Auld, a saddler in Dumfries, known to Burns, as the letter to Cleghorn records.
Tune: O'er the Muir amang the heather
In Edinburgh town they've made a law,
   In Edinburgh at the Court o' Session,
That standing pricks are fauteors a',
defaulters
   And guilty of a high transgression. â
Chorus
5
Act Sederunt o' the Session,
Decreet o' the Court o' Session,
That standing pricks are fauteors a',
defaulters
And guilty of a high transgression. â
And they've provided dungeons deep,
10
   Ilk lass has ane in her possession;
Untill the wretches wail and weep,
   They there shall lie for their transgression. â
      Act Sederunt o' the Session, &c.
This was sent with the above lyric to Robert Cleghorn on 25th October, 1793. The poet commented wryly:
Well! the Lawis good for Something, since we can make a B[aw]dy song out of it. â (N.B. I never made anything of it in any other way â). There is, there must be, some truth in original sin. My violent propensity to B[aw]dy convinces me of it (Letter 592).
The poet may have been partly motivated to write this lyric to exorcise his own deep embarrassment when he was delivered with a legal writ in
meditatione fugie
by May Cameron in mid-August 1787, regarding a child she was carrying to him. The ChambersâWallace edition mentions this affair, remarking âBurns had to make a personal appearance in Edinburgh on the 15th August, on account of certain legal proceedings against him' (ChambersâWallace, Vol. II, fn., p. 187). It is, of course, unlikely that the poet's paternity problems with May Cameron went as far as the Court of Session, but the Edinburgh legal profession, under the Dundas dynasty, would have been keenly interested in the tittle-tattle regarding the poet's paternity problem.
Tune: The Campbells are Coming
When Princes and Prelates and het-headed zealots
hot-
       All Europe hae set in a lowe,
have, aflame
The poor man lies down, nor envies a crown,
       And comforts himself with a mowe. â
sex/copulate
Chorus
5
And why shouldna poor folk mowe, mowe, mowe,
should not
       And why shouldna poor folk mowe:
The great folk hae siller, and houses and lands,
have money
       Poor bodies hae naething but mowe. â
have nothing
When Brunswick's great Prince
1
cam a cruising to France,
10
     Republican billies to cowe,
Bauld Brunswick's great Prince wad hae shawn better sense,
bold, would have shown
     At hame with his Princess to mowe. â
          And why shouldna &c.
Out over the Rhine proud Prussia wad shine,
would
        To
spend
his best blood did he vow;
15
But Fredric
2
had better ne'er forded the water,
crossed
        But
spent
as he docht in a mowe. â
should
                And why shouldna &c.
By sea by shore! the Emperor
3
swore,
        In Paris he'd kick up a row;
But Paris sae ready just leugh at the laddie
so, laughed
20
        And bade him gae tak him a mowe. â
go
        And why shouldna &c.
Auld Kate
4
laid her claws on poor Stanislaus,
        And Poland has bent like a bow:
May the deil in her ass ram a huge prick o' brass!
Devil, arse
        And damm her to hell with a mowe!
                And why shouldna &c.
25
But truce with commotions and new-fangled notions,
        A bumper I trust you'll allow:
Here's George our gude king and Charlotte his queen,
good
        And lang may they tak a gude mowe. â
long, good
                And why shouldna &c.Â
This song was finished and sent to Robert Cleghorn on 12th December, 1792 (Letter 527), on the day the Convention of the Friends of the People met in Edinburgh. As a bawdy-political song with a panoramic picture of events across Europe at the end of 1792, when European royal families, afraid for their own power base and position in the after-shock of the French Revolution, engulfed their respective countries in war against France. The Duke of Brunswick, who promised to starve France into defeat and march victorious into Paris, was the brother-in-law of King George III. Leading the Prussian and Austrian army in late 1792, before Britain went to war with France, he was beaten by the revolutionary army at Valmy. The second partition of Poland (l. 22) is also referred to in the recently discovered song
A Wet Day at Walmer Castle
. A cocktail of revolutionary politics and sexual levelling, the audience for this type of lyric was more the poet's fellow Crochallan cronies than a general public.
A copy was printed by Clement Shorter in March 1916 in a clandestine pamphlet titled âA Suppressed Ballad'. Shorter did not wish women or children to read the song and restricted the print run to only 25 copies. His treatment of it as a taboo subject is a classic example of the sexual and erotic censorship of Burns.
No apology is needed at this time of day for printing for private circulation this unpublishable set of verses by Robert Burns. The twenty-five copies to which this issue is restricted will not fall into the hands of young people or be circulated among the pruriently minded. They will go to collectors who already have on their shelves much more lurid literature than poor Burns's wildest amatory effortsâ¦. If, however, I had had a son I would long since have burnt books of this character rather than they should have fallen prematurely into his hands â¦
And thus we leave Burns's Tippling Ballad for the consideration of twenty-five of the elect, although it has rightly been suppressed in all âcomplete' editions of the poet's works. Two verses are given in the Chambers-Wallace edition and three verses in the Scott-Douglas edition, while Cunningham, Pickering, and [Hogg and] Motherwell give one verse apiece. (Clement Shorter,
A Suppressed Ballad by Robert Burns
, Glasgow, March 1st 1916, Mitchell Library pamphlet).
The text in the
Merry Muses
contains two extra verses from the accepted version. Editors agree that the additional verses were added by another hand.
1
The Duke of Brunswick was brother in law to George III and led the Austrian and Prussian army against the French in 1792, publicly declaring he would march victorious into Paris and break the revolutionaries by starving them. He was defeated by General Dumouriez.
2
Frederick William II (1744â97).
3
Leopold II (1747â92).
4
Empress Catherine of Russia (1729â96).
Tune: The Campbells are comin'
While Prose-work and rhymes
       Are hunted for crimes,
And things are â the devil knows how;
       Aware o my rhymes,
5
       In these kittle times,
ticklish
The subject I chuse is a mowe.
copulation
Some cry, Constitution!
       Some cry, Revolution!
And Politicks kick up a rowe;
10
       But Prince and Republic,
       Agree on the Subject,
No treason is in a good mowe.
Th' Episcopal lawn,
       And Presbyter band,
15
Hae lang been to ither a cowe;
long, terror
       But still the proud Prelate,
       And Presbyter zealot
Agree in an orthodox mowe.
Poor Justice,' tis hinted â
20
        Ill natur'dly squinted,
The Process â but mum â we'll allow
       Poor Justice has ever
       For Cunt had a favour,
While Justice could tak a gude mowe.
good
25
Now fill to the brim â
       To her, and to him,
Wha willing do what they dow;
who, can
       And ne'er a poor wench
       Want a friend at a pinch,
30
Whase failing is only a mowe.
whose
Like its sister piece
Why Should Na Poor Folk Mowe
, this bawdy song is a burlesque effort to belittle, mock and laugh away the magnitude of political events occurring in Britain during 1792 when the Sedition Laws were imposed, as hinted in ll. 1â6.
Tune: Come Rede Me, Dame
âCome rede me, dame, come tell me, dame,
      âMy dame come tell me truly,
âWhat length o' graith, when weel ca'd hame,
tool, hammered home
      âWill sair a woman duly?'
serve
5
The carlin clew her wanton tail,
wench, clutched, vulva
      Her wanton tail sae ready â
so
I learn'd a sang in Annandale,
song
      Nine inch will please a lady. â
But for a koontrie cunt like mine,
country
10
      In sooth, we're nae sae gentle;
truth, not so
We'll tak tway thumb-bread to the nine,
two thumb-breadth
      And that's a sonsy pintle:
plump penis
O Leeze me on my Charlie lad,
blessings on
      I'll ne'er forget my Charlie!
15
Tway roarin handfu's and a daud,
testicles, penis
      He nidge't it in fu' rarely. â
pressed forcibly
But weary fa' the laithron doup
lazy buttocks
      And may it ne'er be thrivin!
It's no the length that makes me loup,
jump
20
      But it's the double drivin. â
Come nidge me, Tam, come nudge me, Tam,
bang
      Come nidge me o'er the nyvel!
navel
Come lowse and lug your battering ram,
release, throw
      And thrash him at my gyvel.
vagina
The title of this and the first few lines are traditional. Letter 304 has only lines 5â7, the remainder is cut away, probably censored. Burns may have heard a bawdy song somewhere in Annandale (as suggested at l. 7) and composed this from it. The bawdy effect is enhanced by his use of the feminine voice, here employed to maximum raunchiness to express the woman's desire for sexual satisfaction from either Charlie or Tam, two extremely well-endowed men, who can ânidge', ânudge', âlowse', âlug' and âthrash' a nine-inch penis in her vagina.