The Canongate Burns (85 page)
Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
First printed in
The Morning Chronicle
, 5th December, 1795.Â
John Anderson my Joe, John,
        I wonder what you mean,
Approving of the Bills, John
        The Bills you ne'er had seen!
5
'Twas surely very foolish, John,
        And how could you do so?
Pray haud your tongue and say nae mair,
hold, no more
        John Anderson my Joe!Â
The story of the Phaeton, John,
high carriage
10
        Was but an auld wife's saw,
old, tale
And like another Phaeton, John,
        You'll surely have a fa':
fall
This talking will undo you, John,
        And lack of truth much mo' â
more
15
You've neither brains nor gift o' Gab;
conversation
        John Anderson my Joe!Â
Hogg,
The Lost Poems
, pp. 189â90, attributed this poem to Burns. Burns had already adapted the traditional
John Anderson
,
My Jo
in a sexually expurgated, personal version. It is characteristic of him to use a traditional song for political purposes. John Anderson is the Scottish John Bull (see New Song or
A Wet Day at Walmer Castle
). Simplistic and sycophantic, he toes the Tory line by paying excessive war taxes and basking in a national glory not his own. The use of âphaeton' is double-edged, being in Burns's usage, both mythological and contemporary. Ll. 9â12 allude to the fable of the son of Helios (the sun god), who rode his chariot too close to the earth, causing Zeus to strike him with a thunderbolt to prevent his incendiary danger to the planet. The contemporary meaning for
âphaeton', for Burns, as in his
To the Hon. Mr. Wm. R. Maule of
Panmure on his High Phaeton,
is this sort of carriage as a sign of social vanity and fiscal iniquity.
By 1795, the vinegar on the sponge for heart-broken radicals was their inability to carry the common people with them in their programme of anti-establishment reform. Hazlitt bitterly summed it up thus.
There is something in the human mind, which requires an object for it to repose on; and driven from all other sources of pride and pleasure, it falls in love with misery and grows enamoured of oppression. It gazes after the liberty, the happiness, the comfort, the knowledge, which have been torn from it by the unfeeling gripe of wealth and power, as the poor debtor gazes with envy and wonder at the Lord Mayor's show. Thus is the world by degrees reduced to a spital or lazar house, where the people waste away with want and disease, and are thankful if they are only suffered to crawl forgotten to their graves. (
âThe
Times Newspaper
. On the Connexion between Toad-Eaters and Tyrants',
The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt,
Vol. 4, Political Essays, ed. by Duncan Wu, Pickering & Chatto, 1998, p. 139).
Tune: I Am a Man Unmarried
First published in 1803 in S.M.M.
O once I lov'd a bonie lass,
   An' aye I love her still,
An' whilst that virtue warms my breast
   I'll love my handsome Nell.Â
5
As bonie lasses I hae seen,
have
   And mony full as braw
many, attractive
But for a modest gracefu' mien
   The like I never saw.
A bonny lass I will confess,
10
   Is pleasant to the e'e,
eye
But without some better qualities
   She's no a lass for me.
not
But Nelly's looks are blythe and sweet,
   And, what is best of a',
15
Her reputation is compleat,
   And fair without a flaw;
She dresses ay sae clean and neat,
always, so
   Both decent and genteel;
And then there's something in her gait
20
   Gars onie dress look weel.
makes, any, well
A gaudy dress and gentle air
   May slightly touch the heart,
But it's innocence and modesty
   That polishes the dart.
25
'Tis this in Nelly pleases me,
   'Tis this enchants my soul;
For absolutely in my breast
   She reigns without controul.Â
The poet's autobiographical letter to Dr Moore, August 1787, tells us this song was written sometime in 1774 (Letter 125). It was, in the poet's own words, an early attempt at the âsin of Rhyme'. The heroine is generally believed to be Helen (Nelly) Kirkpatrick, who worked in the harvest field alongside the young Burns. In the poet's
First Commonplace Book,
this song is refered to as, â⦠the first of my performances, and done at an early period of life, when my heart glowed with honest warm simplicity; unacquainted, and uncorrupted with the ways of a wicked world. The performance is, indeed, very puerile and silly; but I am always pleased with it, as it recalls to my mind those happy days when my heart was yet honest and my tongue was sincere'.
or
A Penitential Thought in the Hour of Remorse â Intended for a Tragedy
First printed in
The Scots Magazine,
November, 1803.
All devil as I am, a damned wretch,
A harden'd, stubborn, unrepenting villain,
Still my heart melts at human wretchedness;
And with sincere tho' unavailing, sighs
5
I view the helpless children of Distress.
With tears indignant I behold th' Oppressor,
Rejoicing in the honest man's destruction,
Whose unsubmitting heart was all his crime.Â
Even you, ye hapless crew, I pity you;
10
Ye, whom the Seeming good think sin to pity;
Ye poor, despis'd, abandon'd vagabonds,
Whom Vice, as usual, has turn'd o'er to Ruin.
O, but for kind, tho' ill-requited friends,
I had been driven forth like you forlorn,
15
The most detested, worthless wretch among you!
O injur'd God! Thy goodness has endow'd me
With talents passing most of my compeers,
Which I in just proportion have abus'd;
As far surpassing other common villains
20
As Thou in natural parts has given me more.Â
The poet records that this fragment was written when in his late teens (circa 1777â8) and formed part of a larger tragedy he had
sketched out, but did not complete. This is one of his earliest statements of his perhaps most compulsive theme of social expulsion and abandonment which was the common fate of mice and men in the 1790s.
Tune: John Anderson My Jo, John
This first appears in Cromek's
Reliques,
1808.
One night as I did wander,
  When corn begins to shoot,
I sat me down to ponder
  Upon an auld tree root:
old
Auld Aire ran by before me,
the river Ayr
  And bicker'd to the seas;
A cushat crouded o'er me,
pigeon
  That echoed thro' the braes.Â
This has all the hallmarks of a stanza written to set the scene for a much longer song. It may have formed part of a longer poem, possibly the lost satirical work
The Poet's Rambles by The Banks of
Ayr,
which may have fallen victim to Currie's destruction, particularly if the poem denigrated aristocratic families around Ayr.
First printed by Cromek, 1808.
Tune: The Butcher Boy
On Cessnock banks a lassie dwells;
      Could I describe her shape and mien;
Our lasses a' she far excels,
all
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
two, eyesÂ
5
She's sweeter than the morning dawn
      When rising Phoebus first is seen,
the sun
And dew-drops twinkle o'er the lawn;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
She's stately, like yon youthful ash
10
      That grows the cowslip braes between
hill ridges & slopes
And drinks the stream with vigour fresh;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
two, eyes
She's spotless, like the flow'ring thorn
      With flow'rs so white and leaves so green
15
When purest in the dewy morn;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
two, eyes
Her looks are like the vernal May
      When ev'ning Phoebus shines serene,
While birds rejoice on ev'ry spray;
20
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
Her hair is like the curling mist
      That climbs the mountain sides at e'en,
When flow'r-reviving rains are past;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
25
Her forehead's like the show'ry bow
      When gleaming sun-beams intervene
And gild the distant mountain's brow;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
Her cheeks are like yon crimson gem
30
      The pride of all the flowery scene,
Just opening on its thorny stem;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
Her teeth are like the nightly snow
      When pale the morning rises keen
35
While hid the murmuring streamlets flow;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
Her lips are like yon cherries ripe
      Which sunny walls from Boreas screen;
They tempt the taste and charm the sight;
40
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
Her breath is like the fragrant breeze
      That gently stirs the blossom'd bean,
When Phoebus sinks behind the seas;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
45
Her voice is like the ev'ning thrush
      That sings on Cessnock banks unseen,
While his mate sits nestling in the bush;
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een.
But it's not her air, her form, her face,
50
      Though matching beauty's fabled Queen;
'Tis the mind that shines in ev'ry grace;
      An' chiefly in her rogueish een.
An additional stanza in Henley and Henderson (1896) is not normally printed in modern editions. It conveys a more authentic tone than the stanza on the simile of âher teeth'. Given the natural flow of the song from simile to simile, it is improbable that Burns penned two stanzas on the one topic. Kinsley questions whether stanza 9 is by Burns or the âimportation from some artless popular song' (Vol. III, p. 1012).
[Her teeth are like a flock of sheep
      With fleeces newly washen clean,
That slowly mount the rising steep â
      An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een!]
The song was originally collected by Cromek from âthe oral communication of a lady residing in Glasgow', believed to be Alison Begbie, who was once a servant girl to a country house, near Cessnock, close to Lochlie farm. That of course, is not a proper source to give the song's provenace. In 1839 the Pickering edition printed a version of this song supposed to be from âthe poet's own Manuscript' not seen by subsequent editors. Unlike
The Tree of
Liberty
, seen in manuscript by Dr Robert Chambers, this apolitical song has never been questioned.
First printed in Cromek, 1808.
Tune: I Dream'd I Lay
Tho' fickle Fortune has deceived me,
       She promis'd fair, and perform'd but ill;
Of mistress, friends, and wealth bereav'd me,
       Yet I bear a heart shall support me still. â
I'll act with prudence as far as I'm able,
       But if success I must never find,
Then come Misfortune, I bid thee welcome,
       I'll meet thee with an undaunted mind. â
This work is described in the
First Commonplace
Book
as written âextempore under the pressure of a heavy train of Misfortunes, which indeed, threatened to undo me altogether ⦠at the close of that dreadful period'.
First printed in Cromek, 1808.
O Raging Fortune's withering blast
       Has laid my leaf full low! O
O raging Fortune's withering blast
       Has laid my leaf full low! O
5
My stem was fair my bud was green
       My blossom sweet did blow; O
The dew fell fresh, the sun rose mild,
       And made my branches grow; O
But luckless Fortune's northern storms
10
       Laid a' my blossoms low, O
But luckless Fortune's northern storms
       Laid a' my blossoms low, O.Â
This dates from the period of the poet's perhaps psychosomatic illness, during the winter of 1781â2. The simile of Fortune as the raging winds of winter is simple and effective.