The Canongate Burns (90 page)
Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
First printed in Stewart, 1801.
Thou's welcome, Wean! Mishanter fa' me,
child, mishap, befall
If thoughts o' thee, or yet thy Mamie,
mother
Shall ever daunton me or awe me,
subdue
        My sweet, wee lady;
small
5
Or if I blush when thou shalt ca' me
call
        Tyta, or Daddie. â
pet-name for father
Â
Tho' now they ca' me Fornicator,
call
An' tease my name in kintra clatter,
country gossip
The mair they talk, I'm kend the better;
more, known
10
        E'en let them clash!
tattle
An auld wife's tongue's a feckless matter
old, feeble
        To gie ane fash. â
give one annoyance
Welcome! My bonie, sweet, wee Dochter!
daughter
Tho' ye come here a wee unsought for;
a trifle
15
And tho' your comin I hae fought for,
have
        Baith Kirk and Queir;
both Church and Court
Yet by my faith, ye're no unwrought for,
        That I shall swear!
Wee image o' my bonie Betty,
20
As fatherly I kiss and daut thee,
pet
As dear and near my heart I set thee,
        Wi' as gude will,
good
As a' the Priests had seen me get thee
        That's out o' Hell. â
25
Sweet fruit o' monie a merry dint,
occasion
My funny toil is no a' tint;
not all lost
Tho' thou cam to the warld asklent,
askew
        Which fools may scoff at,
In my last plack thy part's be in't,
coin
30
        The better half o't.
Tho' I should be the waur bestead,
worse provided
Thou's be as braw and bienly clad,
finely, comfortably
And thy young years as nicely bred
        Wi' education,
35
As onie brat o' Wedlock's bed
any
        In a' thy station.
Gude grant that thou may ay inherit
Thy Mither's looks an' gracefu' merit;
mother's
An' thy poor, worthless Daddie's spirit,
40
        Without his failins!
'Twill please me mair to see thee heir it
more
        Than stocket mailins!
stocked farms
For if thou be, what I wad hae thee,
would have
An' tak the counsel I shall gie thee,
give
45
I'll never rue my trouble wi' thee,
        The cost nor shame o't,
But be a loving Father to thee,
        And brag the name o't.
Throughout his life Burn's attitude to his illegitimate off-spring was the reverse of the sadistic stringency with which the âAuld Lichts' sought to discipline his fornication. The child in this poem is his first illegitimate child, a daughter born to Elizabeth (Betsy) Paton who was a servant at Lochlea during his father's terminal illness. Burns's mother wanted her son to marry Betsy but his brother Gilbert and his sisters thought her unsuitable: âvery plain looking ⦠the faults of her character would soon have disgusted (Burns). She was rude and uncultivated to a great degree, a strong masculine understanding, with a thorough (tho' unwomanly) contempt for every sort of refinement' (Kinsley, Vol. III, p. 1068). The warmth of the poem combined with the social defiance that his illegitimate daughter should not be made to feel an inferior outcast is, happily, corroborated by the remarkable course of the child's life as reported by McGuirk:
The baby Elizabeth â first grandchild of the poet's mother â was reared by her grandmother at Mossgiel farm (Betsey Paton returning home to Lairgieside), though the poet offered to take the child when he settled down with Jean Armour in 1788. In 1786, Burns paid the elder Elizabeth
£
20 for the child's support out of the profits of the Kilmarnock edition (though at this time Betsey was not raising her). Ten years later â by then married to a farm servant â Elizabeth Paton did reclaim their daughter
when the poet died. Young Elizabeth received
£
200 of the profits from Currie's posthumous edition of her father's
Works
on her twenty-first birthday in 1806. She married John Bishop, land steward of the Baillie of Polkemmet; tradition reports that she died giving birth to her seventh child on 8 December 1816. Among her descendants is Viscount Weir of Cathcart, whose estate is near Mauchline (p. 211).
of Kilmarnock, August 1785
First printed in Stewart, 1801.
O Gowdie, terror o' the Whigs,
Dread o' black coats and reverend wigs!
Sour Bigotry on her last legs
                Girns and looks back,
snarls
Wishing the ten Egyptian plagues
                May seize you quick. â
Poor gapin, glowrin Superstition!
wide-mouthed, staring
Wae's me, she's in a sad condition:
woe is
Fye! bring Black Jock
1
her state-physician,
quick
                To see her water:
Alas! there's ground for great suspicion
                She'll ne'er get better. âÂ
Enthusiasm's past redemption,
Gane in a gallopin consumption:
gone
Not a' her quacks wi' a' their gumption
doctors, intelligence
                Can ever mend her;
Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption,
gives
                She'll soon surrender. â
Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple
long
For every hole to get a stapple;
stopper
But now, she fetches at the thrapple,
gurgles, windpipe
                And fights for breath;
Haste, gie her name up in the Chapel,
2
give
                Near unto death. âÂ
'Tis you an' Taylor
3
are the chief
To blame for a' this black mischief;
But could the Lord's ain folk gat leave,
if, own, got
                A toom tar-barrel
empty
An' twa red peats wad bring relief,
two, would
                And end the quarrel. âÂ
For me, my skill's but very sma',
An' skill in Prose I've nane ava';
none at all
But quietlenswise, between us twa,
in confidence, two
                Weel may ye speed;
well, fare
And, tho' they sud you sair misca',
should, sore mis-name
                Ne'er fash your head. â
bother
E'en swinge the dogs; and thresh them sicker!
flog, sorely
The mair they squeel ay chap the thicker;
more, strike
And still âmang hands a hearty bicker
drinking vessel
                O' something stout;
It gars an Owther's pulse beat quicker,
makes, author's
                An' helps his wit. â
There's naething like the honest nappy;
nothing, beer
Whare'll ye e'er see men sae happy,
where will, so
Or women sonsie, saft and sappy,
pleasant, soft, succulent
                âTween morn and morn,
As them wha like to taste the drappie
who, drop/alcohol
                In glass or horn. â
I've seen me daez't upon a time,
dazed
I scarce could wink or see a styme;
an outline
Just ae hauf-mutchkin does me prime,
one half-pint
                (Ought less, is little)
Then back I rattle on the rhyme,
                As gleg's a whittle. â
keen as a knife
Â
Even among the levels of virtuosity prevailing in the less specialised Enlightenment, John Goldie (1717â1809), author of
The Gospel
Recovered,
is an extraordinary figure. Kinsley describes him:
A Scottish example of the Augustan virtuoso and âprojector', he became a cabinet-maker and later a wine merchant in Kilmarnock, speculating in coal-mining and canals; he was an amateur mathematician, astronomer, and theologian; and one of Burns's guarantors for the Kilmarnock edition. His
Essays on Various
Important Subjects Moral and Divine,
Goudie's âBible', appeared in 1780 (Second edition 1785) (Vol. III, p. 1086).
Along with Dr Richard Taylor (see
To William Simpson, Ochiltree
) Burns considered he had created the theological break with Calvinism's concept of eternal sin and damnation necessary for the creation of a liberal, humane, social and political life.
The whigs of l.1 are not, of course, the eighteenth-century English constitutional reformers but the traditional seventeenth-century Scottish covenanting group located in the South-West. Burns makes wicked fun of them as terminally ill, especially with the terrible Black Jock Russel as prophetic urine tester of his fallen host. As always in these clerical satires, the poem is saturated with violence. The Auld Lichts would impose fiery torture (ll. 28â30) and Burns encourages the New Lichts to strike back. Ironically, ll. 37â40 echo the brutal landlords' violence of ll. 31â43 in âThe Address of Beelzebub'. The poem ends in anticipation of a bibulous world freed from savage religious represssion. It was completed in August 1785.
Sept. 13, 1785
First published by Cromek, 1808.
Guid speed an' furder to you Johny,
good, progress/luck
Guid health, hale han's, an' weather bony;
good, whole hands, handsome
Now when ye're nickan down fu' cany
cutting, full well
               The staff o' bread,
5
May ye ne'er want a stoup o' bran'y
cup, brandy
               To clear your head.Â
May Boreas never thresh your rigs,
the North wind
Nor kick your rickles aff their legs,
corn rigs, off
Sendin' the stuff o'er muirs an'
haggs moors, bogs
10
               Like drivin wrack;
storm-blown seaweed
But may the tapmast grain that wags
topmast, blows
               Come to the sack.
cloth sack/bag
I'm bizzie too, an' skelpin at it,
busy, striking
But bitter, daudin showers hae wat it,
pelting, have wet
15
Sae my auld stumpie-pen I gat it
so, old, short-, got
               Wi' muckle wark,
much work
An' took my jocteleg an' whatt it
knife, whittled
               Like onie clark.
any, clerk
It's now twa month that I'm your debtor,
two
20
For your braw, nameless, dateless letter,
fine
Abusin me for harsh ill nature
               On holy men,
While deil a hair yoursel ye're better,
devil, yourself
               But mair profane.
more
25
But let the kirk-folk ring their bells,
Let's sing about our noble sel's;
selves
We'll cry nae jads frae heathen hills
no, goddesses, from
               To help, or roose us,
rouse
But browster wives an' whisky stills,
brewer
30
              Â
They
are the Muses.
Your friendship sir, I winna quat it,
will not quit
An' if ye mak' objections at it,
make
Then hand in nieve some day we'll knot it,
fist, shake hands
               An' witness take,
35
An' when wi' Usquabae we've wat it
whisky, wet
               It winna break.
will not
But if the beast and branks be spar'd
bridles
Till kye be gaun without the herd,
cattle, going
And a' the vittel in the yard,
victual/corn
40
               An' theeckit right,
thatched
I mean your ingle-side to guard
fire-
               Ae winter night.
one
Then Muse-inspirin' aqua-vitae
water of life
Shall mak us baith sae blythe an' witty,
both so
45
Till ye forget ye're auld an' gutty,
old, fat
               And be as canty
jolly
As ye were nine year less than thretty,
thirty
               Sweet ane an' twenty!
one
But stooks are cowpet wi' the blast,
corn bundles, knocked over
50
And now the sinn keeks in the west,
sun, peeps, west
Then I maun rin amang the rest
must run among
               An' quat my chanter;
quit, writing poetry
Sae I subscribe mysel in haste,
so
               Yours, RAB THE RANTER.Â
While this is a certainly briefer, perhaps slighter poem than the two epistles to Lapraik which Burns chose to publish, it is a fine poem in itself. Dealing with his second Mauchline harvest, the poem, as always, is careful to detail farm life, not least its difficulties. There is also, characteristically, a joking allusion to what was certainly a shared antipathy to Auld Licht churchmen (ll. 21â4) and a notion common to Burns (ll. 27â30) that his energising muse is local not foreign. The poem ends abruptly as the poet runs in the gathering dark to help save the wind-blown stooks. Kinsley notes the source of this, one of many, pseudonyms as derived from Frances Sempill's popular
Maggie Lauder,
ll. 13â16 (Ritson, ii.p. 325):
For I'm a piper to my trade,
       My name is Rob the Ranter,
The lasses loup as they were daft,
       When I blaw up my chanter.
The double-edged appeal of this image to Burns need not be elucidated.