The Canongate Burns
Page 89
Tune: The Banks of Spey
First printed in Barke, 1955.
Your friendship much can make me blest,
Oh, why that bliss destroy!
Why urge the only, one request
You know I will deny!
Your thought, if Love must harbour there,
Conceal it in that thought;
Nor cause me from my bosom tear
The very friend I sought.
These lines were written by Burns to Mrs McLehose to be added to some verses she had written. They were included in a letter of 4th January, 1788.
Up and Warn a’ Willie
First printed in Barke, 1955.
Up and warn a’ Willie,
Warn, warn a’;
To hear my cantie Highland sang, joyful, song
Relate the things I saw, Willie. —
5 When we gaed to the braes o’ Mar, went
And to the wapon-shaw, Willie, show of weapons
Wi true design to serve the king
And banish whigs awa, Willie. —
Up and warn a’, Willie,
10 Warn, warn a’;
For Lords and lairds came there bedeen, early
And wow but they were braw, Willie. — handsome
But when the standard was set up
Right fierce the wind did blaw, Willie; blow
15 The royal nit upon the tap nut, top
Down to the ground did fa’, Willie. —
Up and warn a’, Willie,
Warn, warn a’;
Then second-sighted Sandie said
20 We’d do nae gude at a’, Willie. — no good
But when the army join’d at Perth,
The bravest ere ye saw, Willie,
We didna doubt the rogues to rout,
Restore our king and a’, Willie.
25 Up and warn a’ Willie,
Warn, warn a’;
The pipers play’d frae left to right from
O whirry whigs awa, Willie. — harry
But when we march’d to Sherramuir
30 And there the rebels saw, Willie;
Brave Argyll attack’d our right,
Our flank and front and a’ Willie. —
Up and warn a’, Willie,
Warn, warn a’;
35Traitor Huntly soon gave way
Seaforth, St. Clair and a’ Willie. —
But brave Glengarry on our right,
The rebel’s left did claw, Willie,
He there the greatest slaughter made
40 That ever Donald saw, Willie. —
Up and warn a’, Willie,
Warn, warn a’;
And Whittam shat his breeks for fear trousers
And fast did run awa, Willie. —
45 For he ca’d us a Highland mob
And soon he’d slay us a’, Willie;
But we chas’d him back to Stirling brig
Dragoons and foot and a’, Willie. —
Up and warn a’, Willie,
50 Warn, warn a’;
At length we rallied on a hill
And briskly up did draw, Willie. —
But when Argyle did view our line,
And them in order saw, Willie,
55 He streight gaed to Dumblane again straight went
And back his left did draw, Willie. —
Up and warn a’, Willie,
Warn, warn a’,
Then we to Auchterairder march’d
60 To wait a better fa’ Willie. — outcome
Now if ye spier wha wan the day, ask, who won
I’ve tell’d you what I saw, Willie,
We baith did fight and baith did beat both
And baith did rin awa, Willie. — run
65 Up and warn a’, Willie,
Warn, warn a’ Willie,
For second-sighted Sandie said
We’d do nae gude at a’, Willie. — no good
This song is based on a traditional work which records an indecisive battle at Sheriffmuir during the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, in which both sides claimed that the other retreated in panic. In his notes to Scottish songs Burns states he obtained a copy of this song from ‘Tom Niel’ who was well known in Edinburgh. The Neil text is expanded by Burns into a satirical lyric sung as a colloquial reminiscence, mocking the key players in the battle, namely the Earl of Huntly, the Earl of Seaforth, McDonnell of Glengarry and ‘Whittam’ (General Whetham), ‘who shat his breeks’. The song does not have the same effect and success of The Battle Of Sheriffmuir. Surprisingly, the song did not surface as a work of Burns until Barke in 1955. Mackay’s version is missing the two final stanzas, leaving the narrative drama incomplete (pp. 317–18).
The Chevalier’s Lament
Tune: Captain Okean
First printed in Thomson’s Select Collection, 1799.
The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro’ the vale;
The primroses blow in the dews of the morning,
And wild-scatter’d cowslips bedeck the green dale;
5 But what can give pleasure, or what can seem fair,
When the lingering moments are number’d by Care?
No birds sweetly singing, nor flow’rs gaily springing,
Can soothe the sad bosom of joyless Despair. —
The deed that I dared, could it merit their malice,
10 A KING and a FATHER to place on his throne;
His right are these hills, and his right are these valleys,
Where the wild beasts find shelter but I can find none:
But ’tis not my suff’rings, thus wretched, forlorn,
My brave, gallant friends,’ tis your ruin I mourn;
15 Your faith proved so loyal in hot, bloody trial,
Alas, can I make it no sweeter return!
This is in the lamenting voice of Prince Charles Edward Stuart after the Jacobite defeat at Culloden. Thus, through the voice of its defeated leader this song displays the poet’s skill in juxtaposing the simple beauties of nature, with the despair of the Jacobite cause. This is Burns writing what is in effect, a political version of Ye Banks and Braes, where the love is for a country and a people, both forever lost to the Young Pretender. The leading English radical John Thelwall remarked in marginalia on a copy of his friend Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria that this song was by far the best example in the English language of simple language to convey emotion.
Epitaph on Robert Muir –
First printed in the Aldine edition, 1893.
What Man could esteem, or what woman could love,
Was He who lies under this sod:
If Such Thou refusest admittance above,
Then whom wilt Thou favour, Good God!
This was written for Robert Muir (1758–88) of Loanfoot, near Kilmarnock, who died on 22nd April, 1788. He was a friend of the poet and sold 72 copies of the Kilmarnock edition and 40 of the first Edinburgh edition.
Epistle to Hugh Parker
First printed by Cunningham, 1834.
In this strange land, this uncouth clime,
A land unknown to prose or rhyme;
Where words ne’er crost the Muse’s heckles, crossed, hackles
Nor limpet in poetic shackles; limped
5 A land that prose did never view it,
Except when drunk he stacher’t thro’ it; staggered
Here, ambush’d by the chimla cheek, chimney side
Hid in an atmosphere of reek, smoke
I hear a wheel thrum i’ the neuk, spin, corner
10 I hear it — for in vain I leuk. — look
The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel,
Enhusked by a fog infernal:
Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures,
I sit and count my sins by chapters;
15 For life and spunk like ither Christians, spirit, other
I’m dwindled down to mere existence,
Wi’ nae converse but Gallowa’ bodies, no
, people
Wi’ nae kend face but Jenny Geddes. no known
Jenny, my Pegasean pride!
20 Dowie she saunters down Nithside, sad, wanders
And ay a westlin leuk she throws, westward look
While tears hap o’er her auld brown nose! cover, old
Was it for this wi’ canny care, cautious
Thou bure the Bard through many a shire? bore
25 At howes or hillocks never stumbled, hollows
And late or early never grumbled? —
O, had I power like inclination,
I’d heeze thee up a constellation, lift
To canter with the Sagitarre,
30 Or loup the ecliptic like a bar;
Or turn the Pole like any arrow;
Or, when auld Phoebus bids good-morrow, old
Down the zodiac urge the race,
And cast dirt on his godship’s face;
35 For I could lay my bread and kail bet, broth
He’d ne’er cast saut upo’ thy tail. — salt
Wi’ a’ this care and a’ this grief,
And sma’, sma’ prospect of relief, small
And nought but peat reek i’ my head, smoke
40 How can I write what ye can read? —
Tarbolton, twenty-fourth o’ June,
Ye’ll find me in a better tune;
But till we meet and weet our whistle, wet, mouth
Tak this excuse for nae epistle. no
Robert Burns.
This little-known poem is as bitter an account of his life in a bothy at Ellisland prior to his long delayed farm house being built there as the sense of physical privation in the early stanzas of The Vision. He felt almost completely cut off at Ellisland from compatible company with Jean and the children still in Ayrshire, hence his horse’s tears for a lost western world. Almost all nineteenth-century critics, as we have seen, disguised the true nature of Burns’s rural experience. Anotable, formidable exception is the great American writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, as a devotee of the poet, visited Mossgeil and Dumfries in the early 1850s and was astonished at the claustrophobic, squalid conditions he saw. Having utopianly attempted to be a farmer himself, Hawthorne had found the nature of the work akin to crucifying and could not understand the level of energy Burns required to engage simultaneously as poet and farmer.
The customary combination of horse-riding and creativity runs through the poem with, of course, the ironic joke that his beloved ‘Jenny Geddes’ (named after the stool-hurler of St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh) is no Pegasus. The latter part of the poem changes gear, as so often in the letters, to a fantasy release in the zodiac from an all too tangibly, restricting reality. It was addressed and sent to Hugh Parker, a friend of the poet and brother of Major William Parker, the Kilmarnock banker. Mackay errs in his headnote, stating Hugh Parker was a banker.
The Fête Champetre
Tune: Gilliecrankie
First printed by Cunningham, 1834.
O wha will to Saint Stephen’s House, who, House of Commons
To do our errands there, man;
O wha will to Saint Stephen’s House who
O’ th’ merry lads of Ayr, man?
5 Or will ye send a Man-o’-law,
Or will ye send a Sodger? soldier
Or him wha led o’er Scotland a’ who
The meikle URSA-MAJOR? Great Bear
Come, will ye court a noble Lord,
10 Or buy a score o’ Lairds, man?
For Worth and Honor pawn their word
Their vote shall be Glencaird’s, man?
Ane gies them coin, ane gies them wine, one gives
Anither gies them clatter; another, talk
15 Annbank, wha guess’d the ladies’ taste, who
He gies a Fête Champetre. —
When Love and Beauty heard the news,
The gay green-woods amang, man, among
Where gathering flowers and busking bowers dressing
20 They heard the blackbird’s sang, man; song
A vow they seal’d it with a kiss
Sir Politicks to fetter,
As theirs alone, the Patent-bliss,
To hold a Fête Champetre. —
25 Then mounted Mirth, on gleesome wing,
O’er hill and dale she flew, man;
Ilk wimpling burn, ilk chrystal spring, each winding
Ilk glen and shaw she knew, man: each, wood
She summon’d every SOCIAL SPRITE,
30 That sports by wood or water,
On th’ bonie banks of Ayr to meet,
And keep this Fête Champetre. —
Cauld Boreas, wi’ his boisterous crew, cold, North Wind
Were bound to stakes like kye, man; cattle
35 And Cynthia’s car, o’ silver fu’, full
Clamb up the starry sky, man: climbed
Reflected beams dwell in the streams,
Or down the current shatter;
The western breeze steals through the trees,
40 To view this Fête Champetre. —
How many a robe sae gaily floats! so
What sparkling jewels glance, man!
To HARMONY’s enchanting notes
As moves the mazy dance, man!
45 The echoing wood, the winding flood,
Like Paradise did glitter,
When Angels met, at Adam’s yett, gate
To hold their Fête Champetre. —
When Politics came there, to mix
50 And make his ether-stane, man, amulet
He circl’d round the magic ground,
But entrance found he nane, man: none
He blush’d for shame, he quat his name, quit
Forswore it every letter,
55 Wi’ humble prayer to join and share
This festive Fête Champetre. —
This semi-political song is a mock celebration of a ‘fête’ organised by William Cunninghame, when he came of age, on inheriting the estates of Annbank and Enterkin, near Tarbolton, from his grandfather. It was publicly assumed this event was his prelude to canvassing the wealthy landowners and aristocrats of Ayrshire – who were invited to the dinner and ball – to become a Member of Parliament, which was soon to be dissolved. The song records the way in which ‘wine’ and ‘coin’ were used to buy votes among the almost exclusively aristocratic voters of the period. Appearing to celebrate the event, Burns gives ironic assent to what he is targetting, the sham of aristocratic ‘politics’ and burlesquely describes the hyper-importance of the event as such that not only does Love, Beauty and Mirth appear but even the forces of nature and every ‘social Sprite’ attend.
The allusion to Dr Samuel Johnson as ‘Ursa-Major’ (l. 8) points to James Boswell of Auchinleck, who toured ‘o’er Scotland’ with Johnson. (Crawford, p. 210, comments in a footnote that Boswell’s wife had said ‘she had seen many a bear led by a man, but never … a man led by a bear’ referring to seeing her husband going off with Johnson.) Boswell and Sir John Whitefoord (Glencaird’s man) were seen as the two other contenders for parliament. Cunninghame’s conspicuous, glittering ball came to nothing as he was not chosen as a candidate. The last two stanzas mockingly compare, from Paradise Lost, Politics to Satan attempting to penetrate Eden.
To Alexander Cunningham
Ellisland, July 27th, 1788.
First printed in Chambers, 1851.
My godlike Friend —nay do not stare, no
You think the praise is odd like;
But, ‘God is Love,’ the Saints declare,
Then surely thou art Godlike.
5 And is thy Ardour still the same?
And kindled still at Anna?
Others may boast a partial flame,
But thou art a Volcano. —
Even Wedlock asks not love beyond
10 Death’s tie-dissolving Portal;
But thou, omnipotently fond,
May’st promise Love Immortal. —
Prudence, the Bottle and the Stew<
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Are fam’d for Lovers’ curing:
15 Thy Passion nothing can subdue,
Nor Wisdom, Wine nor Whoring. —
Thy Wounds such healing powers defy;
Such Symptoms dire attend them;
That last great Antihectic try,
20 Marriage, perhaps, may mend them. —
Sweet Anna has an air, a grace,
Divine magnetic touching!
She takes, she charms — but who can trace
The process of BEWITCHING?
Alexander Cunningham (circa 1763–1812) was an Edinburgh lawyer who eventually through marriage owned a share in Robertson’s jewellers in the city. When Burns met him in Edinburgh he was a law student and engaged to Anne Stewart, who jilted him for an Edinburgh surgeon. The poet wrote Anna, Thy Charms for his jilted friend. Cunningham was a close friend to Burns until the bard’s death and became a chief player in promoting the subscription for the Burns family after 1796. There are nineteen extant letters to Cunningham.
Stanza four is dropped in Henley and Henderson, probably because it mentions ‘whoring’. It is also missing in Mackay.
O Mally’s Meek, Mally’s Sweet
Tune: Deil Flee o’er the Water
First printed in S.M.M., 1803.
As I was walking up the street,
A barefit maid I chanc’d to meet, barefoot
But O, the road was very hard
For that fair maiden’s tender feet.
Chorus
5 Mally’s meek, Mally’s sweet,
Mally’s modest and discreet,
Mally’s rare, Mally’s fair,
Mally’s ev’ry way compleat.
It were mair meet, that those fine feet more
10 Were weel lac’d up in silken shoon, well, shoes
An’ ’twere more fit that she should sit