The Canongate Burns (42 page)
Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
First printed in
The Caledonian Mercury
, 20th December 1786.
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
good luck to, cheerful
Great Chieftain o' the Puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
above
      Painch, tripe, or thairm:
paunch, guts
5
Weel are ye wordy of a
grace
well
      As lang 's my arm.
long as
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
buttocks
Your
pin
wad help to mend a mill
skewer would
10
      In time o' need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
      Like amber bead.
His knife see Rustic-labour dight,
wipe
An' cut ye up wi' ready slight,
skill
15
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
      Like onie ditch;
any
And then, O what a glorious sight,
      Warm-reekin, rich!
-steaming
Then, horn for horn, they stretch an' strive:
eating with a horn-spoon
20
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
devil take the slowest
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
well-swollen stomachs eventually
      Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
old, goodman, most, burst
     Â
Bethankit
hums.
25
Is there that owre his French
ragout
,
over
Or
olio
that wad staw a sow,
would, fill up/bloat
Or
fricassee
wad mak her spew
would make, throw up
      Wi' perfect sconner,
disgust
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
30
      On sic a dinner?
such
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
over
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
feeble, rush
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
thin leg, good
      His nieve a nit;
fist, nut
35
Thro' bluidy flood or field to dash,
bloody
      O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic,
haggis-fed
,
country man
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
place, firm fist
40
      He'll make it whissle;
whistle/cutting through air
An' legs, an' arms, an' heads will sned
cut off
      Like taps o' thrissle.
tops of thistle
Ye Pow'rs wha mak mankind your care,
who make
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
45
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware,
old, no watery
      That jaups in luggies;
splashes in bowls
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer,
      Gie her a
Haggis
!
give
Â
Subject to endless repetition as
the
indispensable Burns Supper party-piece, this poem has probably been heard far too often for its own good. It is, however, arguably more subtly knowing and
dissident than first appears. The poem as we have it was completed in Edinburgh in December 1786. There is, however, evidence that the last verse was composed first in the house of John Morrison, a Mauchline cabinetmaker, and was used as a free-standing grace. This is the first-recorded version of the last stanza:
Ye Pow'rs wha gie us a' that's gude
Still bless auld Caledonia's brood,
Wi' great John Barleycorn's heart's bluid
              In stoups or luggies;
And on our boards, that King o' food
              A gude Scotch Haggis.
Apeasant dish compounded of meat left-overs, oatmeal, spices, offal, all packed in a sheep's stomach, the haggis is portrayed by Burns as causative of the virility of the Scottish common people. Literally virility as in ll. 7â9 the haggis's vast buttock-like shape culminated in a pronounced phallic-like pin. It did provoke in those who partook of it Breughel-like orgiastic appetites. It also gave stomach for battle with its echo from Fergusson's
The Farmer's Ingle
, ll. 37â45:
On sicken food has mony a doughty deed
  By Caledonia's ancestors been done;
By this did mony wight fu' weirlike bleed
  In brulzies, &c.
An enthusiast, albeit with certain well-defined parameters, for Burns as poet-recorder of Scottish peasant life, this poem caused Kinsley not a little unease: âBut the
Address
is not merely a burlesque poem, or a piece of convivial genre-poetry like its antecedent, Fergusson's
Caller Oysters
. Through it there runs an assertion, more than half-serious, of peasant virtue and strength, expressed in harsh, violent diction and in images of slaughter'. The nearest analogy to what Burns is doing here are ll. 85â102 of
The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer
.
First printed in the Edinburgh edition, 1787.Â
Edina!
Scotia's
darling seat!
      All hail thy palaces and tow'rs,
Where once beneath a Monarch's feet,
      Sat Legislation's sov'reign pow'rs!Â
5
From marking wildly-scatt'red flow'rs,
      As on the banks of
Ayr
I stray'd,
And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours,
      I shelter in thy honor'd shade.
Here Wealth still swells the golden tide,
10
      As busy Trade his labours plies;
There Architecture's noble pride
      Bids elegance and splendour rise;
Here Justice, from her native skies,
      High wields her balance and her rod;
15
There Learning, with his eagle eyes,
      Seeks Science in her coy abode.
Thy Sons,
Edina
, social, kind,
      With open arms the Stranger hail;
Their views enlarg'd, their lib'ral mind,
20
      Above the narrow, rural vale:
Attentive still to Sorrow's wail,
      Or modest Merit's silent claim;
And never may their sources fail!
      And never Envy blot their name!
25
Thy Daughters bright thy walks adorn,
      Gay as the gilded summer sky,
Sweet as the dewy, milk-white thorn,
      Dear as the raptur'd thrill of joy!
Fair Burnet strikes th' adoring eye,
30
      Heav'n's beauties on my fancy shine;
I see the
Sire of Love
on high,
      And own His work indeed divine!
There, watching high the least alarms,
      Thy rough, rude Fortress gleams afar;
35
Like some bold Vet'ran, grey in arms,
      And mark'd with many a seamy scar:
The pond'rous wall and massy bar
      Grim-rising o'er the rugged rock,
Have oft withstood assailing War,
40
      And oft repell'd th' Invader's shock.
With awe-struck thought, and pitying tears,
      I view that noble, stately Dome,
Where
Scotia's
kings of other years,
      Fam'd heroes! had their royal home:
45
Alas, how chang'd the times to come!
      Their royal Name low in the dust!
Their hapless Race wild-wand'ring roam!
      Tho' rigid Law cries out, âtwas just!
Wild-beats my heart, to trace your steps,
50
      Whose ancestors, in days of yore,
Thro' hostile ranks and ruin'd gaps
      Old
Scotia's
bloody lion bore:
Ev'n
I
who sing in rustic lore,
      Haply
my Sires
have left their shed,
55
And fac'd grim Danger's loudest roar,
      Bold-following where your Fathers led!
Edina! Scotia's
darling seat!
      All hail thy palaces and tow'rs,
Where once, beneath a Monarch's feet,
60
      Sat Legislation's sov'reign pow'rs!
From marking wildly-scatt'red flow'rs,
      As on the banks of
Ayr
I stray'd,
And singing, lone, the ling'ring hours,
      I shelter in thy honour'd shade.Â
The artificial English of this poem written not long after Burns's arrival in Edinburgh late in 1786 has achieved a degree of notoriety not least stemming from David Daiches' witty put-down:
The âAddress to Edinburgh' was a âduty' poem, written in December as a more or less official expression of gratitude to the city which had received him so hospitably; it too was published in the
Caledonian Mercury
, so that the Edinburgh public could see he had done his duty by the city. It is a frigid, artificial poem in stilted neoclassic English. Edinburgh is hailed as â
Edina! Scotia's
darling seat!' and the firm of Edinburgh plumbers and sanitary engineers who in a later generation adopted the name âEdina' for their version of a necessary but hardly poetic kind of seat were demonstrating, if somewhat crudely, a real critical insight (p. 215).
Certainly the Thomsonian theme and style of the burgeoning vision of wealth, architecture and culture fails to convince. Nor does the specific praise of Lord Monboddo's daughter, Miss Burnett in l. 29 quite corroborate the epistolary fantasy version of this young lady, who actually bore a close resemblance to her physically unprepossessing father: âthe heavenly Miss Burnett, daughter of Lord Monboddo, at whose house I have had the honour to more than once. â There has not been anything nearly like her, in all the combinations of Beauty, Grace and Goodness the Great Creator has formed, since Milton's Eve on the first day of her existence' (Letter 68). The âSire of Love' (l. 31) is Coelus, begetter of Venus and, indeed, Burns was in thrall to that sky-god during his Edinburgh sojourn with a sexual voracity bordering on erotomania. Recent evidence indicates an involvement with another working-class woman and another illegitimate child as well as with Jenny Clow. Simultaneously he was besieging Mrs McLehose (âClarinda') with a sentimental campaign of pious eroticism and in communication with Margaret (Peggy) Chalmers whom he had notions of marrying and who appears, even more than Maria Riddell, capable of sympathetic comprehension, if not reciprocation, of the Bard's deepest creative urges. The multiple, diverse, divisive nature of Burns's sexual desires at this period must surely also correspond to similar tensions in his social and cultural life. Edinburgh, as Daiches suggests, was hospitable to him, but in divided and temporary ways. The cosseted âStranger' pays his thanks but (ll. 21â4) at the very least, questions the longevity of this charitable celebration. His erstwhile sentimental supporters of genteel Edinburgh, especially Henry Mackenzie, were, of course, to indulge in posthumous, envious character assassination.
The poem's topographical reading of the city is also interesting. Before proceeding to a celebration of the splendours of the New Edinburgh, ll. 3â4 mark the physical disintegration of the Scottish court and parliament. While the Castle is seen (ll. 33â40) as a tangible bastion of self-defending, Scottish independence, the poem is much more concerned with the deserted Holyrood Palace as manifesting the fall of the Stuarts in whom Burns found both the public manifestation of a disintegrated Scotland and private expressions of his own sense of life as displaced, if not exiled, grief. Ll. 53â6 invoke his own family's coming-out in the 1715. Indeed, while it will be subsequently far better expressed, the essence of Burns's Jacobitism is to be found in this poem.
Thus a poem which apparently is a slight act of obeisance to Edinburgh actually obscures darker anxieties about the true state
of the Scottish body politic. Indeed, utterly contradicting Walter Scott, it does not present a paradigm of burgeoning Scottish post-Union evolution but a sense of national loss at the heart of this city as symbol of the national spirit.
There was three kings into the east,
      Three kings both great and high,
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
have
      John Barleycorn should die.
5
They took a plough and plough'd him down,
      Put clods upon his head,
lumps of grassy soil/turf
And they hae sworn a solemn oath
have
      John Barleycorn was dead.
But the cheerful Spring came kindly on,
10
      And show'rs began to fall;
John Barleycorn got up again,
      And sore surpris'd them all.
The sultry suns of Summer came,
      And he grew thick and strong,
15
His head weel arm'd wi' pointed spears,
with
      That no one should him wrong.
The sober Autumn enter'd mild,
      When he grew wan and pale;
His bending joints and drooping head
20
      Show'd he began to fail.
His colour sicken'd more and more,
      He faded into age;
And then his enemies began
      To show their deadly rage.
25
They've taen a weapon long and sharp,
taken
      And cut him by the knee;
Then ty'd him fast upon a cart,
tied
      Like a rogue for forgerie.
They laid him down upon his back,
30
      And cudgell'd him full sore;
smashed
They hung him up before the storm,
      And turn'd him o'er and o'er.
They filled up a darksome pit
      With water to the brim,
35
They heaved in John Barleycorn,
      There let him sink or swim.
They laid him out upon the floor,
      To work him farther woe,
And still, as signs of life appear'd,
40
      They toss'd him to and fro.
They wasted, o'er a scorching flame
      The marrow of his bones;
But a Miller us'd him worst of all,
      For he crush'd him between two stones.
45
And they hae taen his very heart's blood,
have taken
      And drank it round and round;
And still the more and more they drank,
      Their joy did more abound.
John Barleycorn was a hero bold,
50
      Of noble enterprise,
For if you do but taste his blood,
      'Twill make your courage rise.
'Twill make a man forget his woe;
      'Twill heighten all his joy;
55
'Twill make the widow's heart to sing,
      Tho' the tear were in her eye.
Then let us toast John Barleycorn,
      Each man a glass in hand;
And may his great posterity
60
      Ne'er fail in old Scotland.
Composition is generally dated to around 1785, although Kinsley believes it was written earlier. In the
FCB
Burns writes, âJohn Barleycorn. â A Song, to its own Tune. I once heard the old song that goes by this name, sung; and being very fond of it, and remembering only two or three verses of it viz the 1st, 2nd and 3rd, with some scraps which I have interwoven here and there in the following piece', June 1785. Kinsley probably over-stresses the importance of the myth of the Corn Spirit still prevalent in the 18th century as the âkernel' theme of this song, the notion that the âold man of vegitation' is driven out of the corn at threshing time to inhabit the fields, then returns to be the spirit of the next crop (Vol. III, p. 1017). Low is probably right in assuming Burns had read or heard the chapbook song of 1781, the allegory of drink titled
The Whole Trial and Indictment of Sir John
Barleycorn, Knt., A Person of Noble Birth and Extractionâ¦
Being Accused of Several Misdemeanours⦠killing some, wounding
others, and bringing thousands to Beggary
(p. 82). The song celebrates both the positive social influence of whisky as a prompt to friendship and waves the national flag of Scotland in the name of John Barleycorn in the final stanzas. It is a record of events, from seedtime to harvest, on till the brewing and consumption of whisky. For Burns, John Barleycorn is a hero, not a villain.
1
This is partly composed on the plan of an old song known by the same name. R.B.