by Robert Burns
35 His gawsie tail, wi’ upward curl, fine/full
Hung owre his hurdies wi’ a swirl. over, buttocks
Nae doubt but they were fain o’ ither, no, fond of each other
And unco pack an’ thick thegither; kept secrets/confidential
Wi’ social nose whyles snuff’d an’ snowcket; whiles, sniffed
40 Whyles mice an’ moudiewurks they howcket; whiles, moles, dug for
Whyles scour’d awa’ in lang excursion, whiles, long
An’ worry’d ither in diversion;
Till tir’d at last wi’ monie a farce, many
They sat them down upon their arse,
45 An’ there began a lang digression long
About the lords o’ the creation.
CAESAR
I’ve aften wonder’d, honest Luath, often
What sort o’ life poor dogs like you have;
An’ when the gentry’s life I saw,
50 What way poor bodies liv’d ava. at all
Our Laird gets in his racked rents, extortionate
His coals, his kane, an’ a’ his stents: payments in kind, dues
He rises when he likes himsel;
His flunkies answer at the bell; servants
55 He ca’s his coach; he ca’s his horse; calls
He draws a bonie, silken purse, carries
As lang’s my tail, whare thro’ the steeks, long as, where, stiches
The yellow, letter’d Geordie keeks. guinea (King’s head) peeps
Frae morn to een it’s nought but toiling, from, evening, nothing
60 At baking, roasting, frying, boiling;
An’ tho’ the gentry first are steghan, cramming
Yet ev’n the ha’ folk fill their peghan hall (servants), stomach
Wi’ sauce, ragouts, an sic like trashtrie, such like rubbish
That’s little short o’ downright wastrie: wastage
65 Our Whipper-in, wee, blastit wonner, small, blasted wonder
Poor, worthless elf, it eats a dinner,
Better than onie Tenant-man any
His Honor has in a’ the lan’: all the land
An’ what poor Cot-folk pit their painch in, put, paunch
70 I own it’s past my comprehension.
LUATH
Trowth, Caesar, whyles they’re fash’d eneugh: sometimes, bothered
A Cotter howckan in a sheugh, farm labourer, digging, ditch
Wi’ dirty stanes biggan a dyke, stones, building, stone wall
Bairan a quarry, an’ sic like, clearing, such
75 Himsel, a wife, he thus sustains,
A smytrie o’ wee duddie weans, number, small ragged children
An’ nought but his han’-daurk, to keep hands’ work
Them right an’ tight in thack an’ raep. snug, thatch, rope
An’ when they meet wi’ sair disasters, sore
80 Like loss o’ health or want o’ masters,
Ye maist wad think, a wee touch langer, most would, longer
An’ they maun starve o’ cauld and hunger: should, cold
But how it comes, I never kend yet, knew
They’re maistly wonderfu’ contented; mostly
85 An’ buirdly chiels, an’ clever hizzies, stout lads, girls
Are bred in sic a way as this is. such
CAESAR
But then to see how ye’re neglecket, neglected
How huff’d, an’ cuff’d, an’ disrespecket! scolded, slapped, disrespected
Lord man, our gentry care as little
90 For delvers, ditchers, an’ sic cattle; labourers, diggers, such
They gang as saucy by poor folk, go, smugly
As I wad by a stinkan brock. would, badger
I’ve notic’d, on our Laird’s court-day,2
(An’ monie a time my heart’s been wae), many, sad
95 Poor tenant bodies, scant o’ cash, short of money
How they maun thole a Factor’s snash:3 would suffer, abuse
He’ll stamp an’ threaten, curse an’ swear
He’ll apprehend them, poind their gear; seize & sell their goods
While they maun staun’, wi’ aspect humble, must stand
100 An’ hear it a’, an’ fear an’ tremble! all
I see how folk live that hae riches; have
But surely poor-folk maun be wretches! must
LUATH
They’re nae sae wretched’s ane wad think: not so, as one would
Tho’ constantly on poortith’s brink, poverty’s
105 They’re sae accustom’d wi’ the sight, so
The view o’t gies them little fright. gives
Then chance an’ fortune are sae guided, so
They’re ay in less or mair provided; always, more
An’ tho’ fatigu’d wi’ close employment,
110 A blink o’ rest’s a sweet enjoyment.
The dearest comfort o’ their lives,
Their grushie weans an’ faithfu’ wives; thriving children
The prattling things are just their pride,
That sweetens a’ their fire-side.
115 An’ whyles twalpennie worth o’ nappy sometimes, ale
Can mak the bodies unco happy: folk, very
They lay aside their private cares,
To mind the Kirk an’ State affairs;
They’ll talk o’ patronage an’ priests,
120 Wi’ kindling fury i’ their breasts,
Or tell what new taxation’s comin,
An’ ferlie at the folk in LON’ON. wonder
As bleak-fac’d Hallowmass returns, festival of All-Saints
They get the jovial, rantan Kirns, harvest homes
125 When rural life, of ev’ry station,
Unite in common recreation;
Love blinks, Wit slaps, an’ social Mirth
Forgets there’s Care upo’ the earth.
That merry day the year begins,
130 They bar the door on frosty win’s; winds
The nappy reeks wi’ mantling ream, ale, foaming froth
An’ sheds a heart-inspiring steam;
The luntan pipe, an’ sneeshin mill, smoking, snuff box
Are handed round wi’ right guid will; good
135 The cantie, auld folks, crackan crouse, jolly old, chatting, cheerful
The young anes rantan thro’ the house — one, running
My heart has been sae fain to see them, so content
That I for joy hae barket wi’ them. have barked
Still it’s owre true that ye hae said over, have
140 Sic game is now owre aften play’d; such a, over often
There’s monie a creditable stock many
O’ decent, honest, fawsont folk, respectable
Are riven out baith root an’ branch, thrown out by force, both
Some rascal’s pridefu’ greed to quench,
145 Wha thinks to knit himsel the faster who
In favor wi’ some gentle Master,
Wha, aiblins thrang a parliamentin’, who, maybe crowd
For Britain’s guid his saul indentin’ — good, soul engaged
CAESAR
Haith, lad, ye little ken about it: an exclamation, know
150 For Britain’s guid! guid faith! I doubt it. good
Say rather, gaun as PREMIERS lead him: go
An’ saying aye or no ’s they bid him:
At Operas an’ Plays parading,
Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading:
155 Or maybe, in a frolic daft,
To HAGUE or CALAIS takes a waft,
To mak a tour an’ tak a whirl,
To learn bon ton, an’ see the worl’. Fr. good breeding
There, at VIENNA or VERSAILLES,
160 He rives his father’s auld entails; splits, old
Or by MADRID he taks the rout, road
To thrum guittarres an’ fecht wi’ nowt; strum, guitars, fight with cattle
Or down Italian Vista startles, courses
Whore-hunting amang groves o’ myrtles: among
165 Then bowses drumlie German-water, drinks muddy
To mak himsel look fair an’ fatter,
An’ clear the consequential sorrows,
Love-gifts of Carnival Signioras.
for britain’s guid! for her destruction!
170 Wi’ dissipation, feud an’ faction!
LUATH
Hech man! dear sirs! is that the gate way
They waste sae monie a braw estate! so many
Are we sae foughten an’ harass’d so troubled
For gear ta gang that gate at last! wealth to go
175 O would they stay aback frae courts, away from
An’ please themsels wi’ countra sports, country
It wad for ev’ry ane be better, would, every one
The Laird, the Tenant, an’ the Cotter!
For thae frank, rantan, ramblan billies, those, lads
180 Fient haet o’ them’s ill-hearted fellows; few of them are
Except for breakin o’ their timmer, timber
Or speakin lightly o’ their Limmer, mistress
Or shootin of a hare or moor-cock,
The ne’era-bit they’re ill to poor folk.
185 But will ye tell me, master Caesar,
Sure great folk’s life’s a life o’ pleasure?
Nae cauld nor hunger e’er can steer them, no cold, touch
The vera thought o’t need na fear them. very, not
CAESAR
Lord, man, were ye but whyles whare I am, whiles where
190 The Gentles, ye wad ne’er envy them! would
It’s true, they need na starve or sweat, not
Thro’ Winter’s cauld, or Simmer’s heat; cold, summer’s
They’ve nae sair-wark to craze their banes, no sore work, bones
An’ fill auld-age wi’ grips an’ granes: old-age, gripes & groans
195 But human bodies are sic fools, such
For a’ their Colledges an’ Schools,
That when nae real ills perplex them, no
They mak enow themsels to vex them;
An’ ay the less they hae to sturt them, always, have, fret
200 In like proportion, less will hurt them.
A countra fellow at the pleugh, country, plough
His acre’s till’d, he’s right eneugh; well enough
A countra girl at her wheel, country
Her dizzen’s done, she’s unco weel; dozens (yarn), very well
205 But Gentlemen, an’ Ladies warst,
Wi’ ev’n down want o’ wark they’re curst: work
They loiter, lounging, lank an’ lazy;
Tho’ deil-haet ails them, yet uneasy: nothing
Their days insipid, dull an’ tasteless;
210 Their nights unquiet, lang an’ restless. long
An’ ev’n their sports, their balls an’ races,
Their galloping thro’ public places,
There’s sic parade, sic pomp an’ art, such
The joy can scarcely reach the heart.
215 The Men cast out in party-matches, compete
Then sowther a’ in deep debauches; patch up
Ae night they’re mad wi’ drink an’ whoring, one
Niest day their life is past enduring. next
The Ladies arm-in-arm in clusters,
220 As great an’ gracious a’ as sisters; all
But hear their absent thoughts o’ ither,
They’re a’ run deils an’ jads thegither. downright, together
Whyles, owre the wee bit cup an’ platie, whiles, over, plate
They sip the scandal-potion pretty;
225 Or lee-lang nights, wi’ crabbet leuks live-long, bad tempered looks
Pore owre the devil’s pictur’d beuks; over, books (playing cards)
Stake on a chance a farmer’s stackyard,
An’ cheat like onie unhang’d blackguard. any, villain
There’s some exceptions, man an’ woman;
230 But this is Gentry’s life in common.
By this, the sun was out o’ sight,
An’ darker gloamin brought the night; fading twilight
The bum-clock humm’d wi’ lazy drone; beetle
The kye stood rowtin i’ the loan; cattle, lowing, field
235 When up they gat, an’ shook their lugs, got, ears
Rejoic’d they were na men, but dogs; not
An’ each took aff his several way, went his different
Resolv’d to meet some ither day. other
Burns lived with animals, wild and domestic, in conditions of intimacy which few of us in this twenty-first century can easily appreciate. This poem, as much of his poetry, is filled with an empathetic, hence, detailed knowledge of them. The collie and the Newfoundland are sportively present to us. Throughout his writing there are also frequent, often obliquely political analogies, made between the lots of animals and men.
The genesis of this poem was his own collie, Luath, who, his brother tells us, was ‘killed by some wanton cruelty of some person the night before my father’s death’. This extraordinary witty, seminal poem is the result of his original intention to write, for the sinisterly murdered Luath, Stanzas to the Memory of a Quad- ruped Friend (Currie, Vol. 3, p. 386).
His wholly deliberate choice of opening The Kilmarnock edition with this particular poem is mockingly ironic. In that volume, he had no sooner come on stage with his highly successful self- promoting prose remarks about his poetic ploughman’s pastoral naïvety, than he immediately delivers a poetic performance of not only formidable linguistic and double-voiced dramatic subtlety but one which is eruditely allusive to earlier Scottish and English poetry. Indeed, it would be, as in ll. 26–28, an extremely odd ploughman who would not only name his dog from a character in Macpherson’s Ossian but also allude to that simmering controversy. Also both the octosyllabic verse and the dialogue form are derived from his beloved predecessor, Robert Fergusson’s The Mutual Complaint of Plainstanes and Causey, in their Mother Tongue.
While the poem formally and linguistically is not indebted to English poetry, the content certainly is. As William Empson (Some Versions of Pastoral, 1935) and Raymond Williams (The City and Country, 1975) have revealed, English poetry from the sixteenth century had been preoccupied with the nature and representation of country life as a reflection of the quarrel between largely conservative poets and their aristocratic patrons due to the disruptive evolution in the life of the common people caused by the accelerating participation by the aristocratic master class in agrarian capitalism. The greatest statement of this theme, as we shall see Burns demonstrably knew in his own A Winter’s Night, is Shakespeare’s King Lear. The consistently cogent McGuirk in discussing this poem locates its tap-roots in Augustan convention, especially Pope’s Moral Epistles. Burns also had, of course, the endorsement of his views from contemporary sources such as Goldsmith, particularly The Deserted Village. Although they diverged totally about the role of the monarchy, Burns and Goldsmith were also part of that rising late eighteenth-century tide of patriotic feeling about the ‘Frenchified’ degeneration of the British aristocracy as increasingly they squandered their ill-gotten agrarian rents in European fleshpots. (See Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism, London, 1987.) Hence that quite wonderfully sophisticated section, comparable to anything in Augustan satire, from ll. 149–170 where Caesar describes into what The Grand Tour has degenerated. This brilliantly echoes Fergusson’s pronouncedly anti-aristocratic lines from Hame Content:
Some daft chiel reads, and takes advice
The chaise is yokit in a trice;
Awa drives he like huntit deil,
And scarce tholes time to cool his wheel,
Till he’s Lord ken how far awa,
At Italy, or Well o’ Spaw,
Or to Montpelier’s safer air;
For far off fowls hae feathers fair.
There rest him weel; for eith can we
Spare mony glakit gouks like he;
They’ll tell whare Tibur’s water’s rise;
What sea receives the drumly prize,
That never wi’ their feet hae mett
The marches o’ their ain estate.
Stimulated by Fergusson, then, this dramatic dialogue, domesti- cates in the Scottish vernacular this great English poetic quarrel with a rapacious land-owning class. What further intensified this in Burns is that from childhood he had been exposed to both brutal- ising toil and chronic economic anxiety. Ll. 95–100 do, in fact, seem to refer to actual events on the family farm at Lochlea of which he wrote: ‘my indignation yet boils at the recollection of the scoundrel tyrant’s insolent threatening epistles which he used to set us all in tears’ (Letter 137). As Burns’s subsequent poetry reveals, this early trauma about debt, bankruptcy and possible homelessness was to be a subject of inflammatory repetition. Also, as much of his later poetry, the poem is filled with telling detail about the harsh, exposed, exhausting nature of farm work in the late eighteenth century as opposed to the pampered sloth of the aristocracy. Indeed, as in ll. 89–90, such brutal work leads to a Swiftian vision of the bestialisation of the common people: ‘Lord man, our gentry care as little/For delvers, ditchers and sic cattle’.
Burns’s strategy in the poem of course is to create through the dogs a kind of comic brio, which, at a primary level, disguises the poem’s incisive documentation and its anti-establishment values. Further, he does not do the ideologically obvious thing by creating an oppositional dialogue between the people’s collie and the master’s newly fashionable Newfoundland. Caesar is not so much a traitor to his class as a natural democrat who will put his nose anywhere as a possible prelude to even more intimate entangle- ments. It is he who really spills the beans about the condition of the working people and the lifestyle of their masters. In Luath’s speeches, especially ll. 103–38, we find the roots of Burns’s vision of the nobility of the common people which is to recur throughout his poetry though, at times, especially in ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’, somewhat questionably.
