A Night Out with Burns

by Robert Burns

  An’ bake them up in brunstane pies

  For poor damn’d Drinkers.

  Fortune, if thou’ll but gie me still

  Hale breeks, a scone, an’ Whisky gill,

  An’ rowth o’ rhyme to rave at will,

  Tak a’ the rest,

  An’ deal’t about as thy blind skill

  Directs thee best.

  Sean O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie was rejected by the Abbey Theatre in 1928, mainly on account of W.B. Yeats’s certainty that the play had no real subject. But it has always lived in my mind, as much as anything for its echo of Burns’s song. Harry Heegan is on leave from the Great War and back among his own people. They are celebrating a sporting victory and the cup that came with it, when Harry turns to Barney, his friend from the Front.

  Harry: The song that the little Jock used to sing, Barney, what was it? The little Jock we left shrivellin’ on the wire after the last push?

  Barney: ‘Will Ye No Come Back Again?’

  Harry: No, no, the one we all used to sing with him, ‘The Silver Tassie’. [pointing to cup] There it is, the Silver Tassie, won by the odd goal in five kicked by Harry Heegan.

  After a moment the drink breaks out and they pin their energies to a lust for drams. It is a scene and a half: that song left dangling with the little Jock on the wire, and the silver cup filled with drink as if it were the very medicine for us all.

  Barney [taking a bottle of wine from his pocket]: Empty her of her virtues, eh?

  Harry: Spill it out, Barney, spill it out … [seizing silver cup, and holding it towards Barney] Here, into the cup, be-God. A drink out of the cup, out of the Silver Tassie!

  Barney [who has removed the cap and taken out the cork]: Here she is now … Ready for anything, stripp’d to the skin!

  The Silver Tassie

  Go fetch to me a pint o’ wine,

  And fill it in a silver tassie;

  That I may drink, before I go,

  A service to my bonie lassie:

  The boat rocks at the Pier o’ Leith,

  Fu’ loud the wind blaws frae the Ferry,

  The ship rides by the Berwick-law,

  And I maun leave my bony Mary.

  The trumpets sound, the banners fly,

  The glittering spears are ranked ready,

  The shouts o’ war are heard afar,

  The battle closes deep and bloody.

  It’s not the roar o’ sea or shore,

  Wad make me langer wish to tarry;

  Nor shouts o’ war that’s heard afar—

  It’s leaving thee, my bony Mary!

  One recent April – daffodils waving by the roadside – I took Seamus Heaney and Karl Miller for a drive through the land of Robert Burns. Seamus later called the trip miraculous: the wild Ayrshire rains and the Doon water, with jokes exchanged and histories kindled. Seamus stood apart at one point in the slanted graveyard at Kirk Alloway, consorting with Latin phrases on the headstone to Burns’s father, and I’m sure Karl and I were thinking the same thought, about Seamus’s own father and the image of him inscribed years ago in the poem ‘Digging’. It is a poem that brings Seamus into company with Robert Burns, and such thoughts had made us laugh a minute before when we passed the Tam o’ Shanter Experience.

  ‘Soon,’ said Karl with an evil grin, ‘it’ll be the Seamus Heaney Experience.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Seamus. ‘A few churns and a confessional box.’

  Up on Alloway Brig, where Tam’s grey mare, Meg, loses her tail and gains a legend, we stood and smiled to be at the centre of the imagined life of that great poem. Never for me has the written word and the stony ground existed in such an easy state of brotherhood, and as the rain came on we went off to drink a whisky more flavoured than reality.

  Tam o’ Shanter – A Tale

  Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this buke.

  Gawin Douglas

  When chapman billies leave the street,

  And drouthy neebors, neebors meet,

  As market-days are wearing late,

  An’ folk begin to tak the gate;

  While we sit bousing at the nappy,

  And getting fou and unco happy,

  We think na on the lang Scots miles,

  The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles,

  That lie between us and our hame,

  Whare sits our sulky sullen dame,

  Gathering her brows like gathering storm,

  Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

  This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter,

  As he frae Ayr ae night did canter,

  (Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses,

  For honest men and bonny lasses.)

  O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise,

  As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice!

  She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,

  A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum;

  That frae November till October,

  Ae market-day thou was nae sober;

  That ilka melder, wi’ the miller,

  Thou sat as lang as thou had siller;

  That every naig was ca’d a shoe on,

  The smith and thee gat roaring fou on;

  That at the Lord’s house, even on Sunday,

  Thou drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday.

  She prophesied that late or soon,

  Thou would be found deep drown’d in Doon;

  Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk,

  By Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.

  Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet,

  To think how mony counsels sweet,

  How mony lengthen’d sage advices,

  The husband frae the wife despises!

  But to our tale: Ae market-night,

  Tam had got planted unco right;

  Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely,

  Wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely;

  And at his elbow, Souter Johnny,

  His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;

  Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither;

  They had been fou for weeks thegither.

  The night drave on wi’ sangs and clatter;

  And ay the ale was growing better:

  The landlady and Tam grew gracious,

  Wi’ favours, secret, sweet, and precious:

  The Souter tauld his queerest stories;

  The landlord’s laugh was ready chorus:

  The storm without might rair and rustle,

  Tam did na mind the storm a whistle.

  Care, mad to see a man sae happy,

  E’en drown’d himsel amang the nappy:

  As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure,

  The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure:

  Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious,

  O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious!

  But pleasures are like poppies spread,

  You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;

  Or like the snow falls in the river,

  A moment white—then melts for ever;

  Or like the borealis race,

  That flit ere you can point their place;

  Or like the rainbow’s lovely form

  Evanishing amid the storm.—

  Nae man can tether time or tide;

  The hour approaches Tam maun ride;

  That hour, o’ night’s black arch the key-stane,

  That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;

  And sic a night he taks the road in,

  As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in.

  The wind blew as ’twad blawn its last;

  The rattling showers rose on the blast;

  The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d;

  Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow’d:

  That night, a child might understand,

  The Deil had business on his hand.

  Weel mounted on his gray mare, Meg,

  A better never lifted leg,

  Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire, />
  Despising wind, and rain, and fire;

  Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet;

  Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots sonnet;

  Whiles glowring round wi’ prudent cares,

  Lest bogles catch him unawares:

  Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,

  Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry.—

  By this time he was cross the ford,

  Whare, in the snaw, the chapman smoor’d;

  And past the birks and meikle stane,

  Where drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane;

  And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn,

  Where hunters fand the murder’d bairn;

  And near the thorn, aboon the well,

  Where Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel.—

  Before him Doon pours all his floods;

  The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods;

  The lightnings flash from pole to pole;

  Near and more near the thunders roll:

  When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,

  Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;

  Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing;

  And loud resounded mirth and dancing.—

  Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!

  What dangers thou canst make us scorn!

  Wi’ tippeny, we fear nae evil;

  Wi’ usquabae, we’ll face the devil!—

  The swats sae ream’d in Tammie’s noddle,

  Fair play, he car’d na deils a boddle.

  But Maggie stood right sair astonish’d,

  Till, by the heel and hand admonish’d,

  She ventured forward on the light;

  And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight!

  Warlocks and witches in a dance;

  Nae cotillion brent new frae France,

  But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels,

  Put life and mettle in their heels.

  A winnock-bunker in the east,

  There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast;

  A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large,

  To gie them music was his charge:

  He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl,

  Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl.—

  Coffins stood round, like open presses,

  That shaw’d the dead in their last dresses;

  And by some devilish cantraip slight

  Each in its cauld hand held a light.—

  By which heroic Tam was able

  To note upon the haly table,

  A murderer’s banes, in gibbet airns;

  Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen’d bairns;

  A thief, new-cutted frae a rape,

  Wi’ his last gasp his gab did gape;

  Five tomahawks, wi’ blude red-rusted;

  Five scymitars, wi’ murder crusted;

  A garter, which a babe had strangled;

  A knife, a father’s throat had mangled,

  Whom his ain son o’ life bereft,

  The grey hairs yet stack to the heft;

  Three Lawyers’ tongues, turn’d inside out,

  Wi’ lies seam’d like a beggar’s clout;

  Three Priests’ hearts, rotten, black as muck,

  Lay stinking, vile, in every neuk.—

  As Tammie glowr’d, amaz’d, and curious,

  The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:

  The piper loud and louder blew;

  The dancers quick and quicker flew;

  The reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit,

  Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,

  And coost her duddies to the wark,

  And linket at it in her sark!

  Now Tam, O Tam! had thae been queans,

  A’ plump and strapping in their teens,

  Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flannen,

  Been snaw-white seventeen hunder linnen!

  Thir breeks o’ mine, my only pair,

  That ance were plush, o’ gude blue hair,

  I wad hae gi’en them off my hurdies,

  For ae blink o’ the bonie burdies!

  But wither’d beldams, auld and droll,

  Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal,

  Lowping and flinging on a crummock.

  I wonder didna turn thy stomach.

  But Tam kend what was what fu’ brawlie,

  There was ae winsome wench and wawlie,

  That night enlisted in the core,

  (Lang after kend on Carrick shore;

  For mony a beast to dead she shot,

  And perish’d mony a bony boat,

  And shook baith meikle corn and bear,

  And kept the country-side in fear:)

  Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn,

  That while a lassie she had worn,

  In longitude tho’ sorely scanty,

  It was her best, and she was vauntie.—

  Ah! little kend thy reverend grannie,

  That sark she coft for her wee Nannie,

  Wi’ twa pund Scots, (’twas a’ her riches),

  Wad ever grac’d a dance of witches!

  But here my Muse her wing maun cour;

  Sic flights are far beyond her pow’r;

  To sing how Nannie lap and flang,

  (A souple jade she was, and strang),

  And how Tam stood, like ane bewitch’d,

  And thought his very een enrich’d;

  Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain,

  And hotch’d and blew wi’ might and main:

  Till first ae caper, syne anither,

  Tam tint his reason a’ thegither,

  And roars out, ‘Weel done, Cutty-sark!’

  And in an instant all was dark:

  And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,

  When out the hellish legion sallied.

  As bees bizz out wi’ angry fyke,

  When plundering herds assail their byke;

  As open pussie’s mortal foes,

  When, pop! she starts before their nose;

  As eager runs the market-crowd,

  When ‘Catch the thief!’ resounds aloud;

  So Maggie runs, the witches follow,

  Wi’ mony an eldritch skreech and hollow.

  Ah, Tam! Ah, Tam! thou’ll get thy fairin!

  In hell, they’ll roast thee like a herrin!

  In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin!

  Kate soon will be a woefu’ woman!

  Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,

  And win the key-stane

  1

  of the brig;

  There at them thou thy tail may toss,

  A running stream they dare na cross.

  But ere the key-stane she could make,

  The fient a tail she had to shake!

  For Nannie, far before the rest,

  Hard upon noble Maggie prest,

  And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle;

  But little wist she Maggie’s mettle—

  Ae spring brought off her master hale,