The Canongate Burns
Page 94
Or what the drumlie Dutch were doin; muddled
That vile doup-skelper, Emperor Joseph,1 bum-smacker
If Venus yet had got his nose off; given him v.d.
Or how the collieshangie works dogfight
10 Atween the Russians and the Turks;
Or if the Swede, before he halt,2
Would play anither Charles the twalt:3 another, twelfth
If Denmark, any body spak o’t; spoke of it
Or Poland, wha had now the tack o’t; who, lease of it
15 How cut-throat Prussian blades were hingin;
How libbet Italy was singin; castrated
If Spaniard, Portuguese, or Swiss,
Were sayin or takin aught amiss:
Or how our merry lads at hame, home
20 In Britain’s court kept up the game:
How royal George, the Lord leuk o’er him! look
Was managing St. Stephen’s quorum; parliament
If sleekit Chatham Will was livin,4 sly
Or glaikit Charlie got his nieve in;5 silly, fist
25 How Daddie Burke the plea was cookin,6
If Warren Hastings’ neck was yeukin;7 itching
How cesses, stents, and fees were rax’d, rates, taxes, raised
Or if bare arses yet were tax’d;
The news o’ princes, dukes, and earls,
30 Pimps, sharpers, bawds, and opera-girls;
If that daft buckie, Geordie Wales,8
Was threshin still at hizzies’ tails, hussies’
Or if he was grown oughtlins douser, any more sedate
And no a perfect kintra cooser, country stallion
35 A’ this and mair I never heard of; more
And but for you I might despair’d of.
So gratefu’, back your news I send you,
And pray a’ guid things may attend you!
Ellisland, Monday Morning
By virtue of Professor Werkmeister’s scholarship, this poem gives us entry not only into some of Burns’s particular difficulties with Peter Stuart, but with the often ugly publishing world where creative writers interacted with the press. In 1838 an article in The Gentleman’s Magazine attacked Peter Stuart for ‘riding in his carriage’ while ‘Coleridge, who had made his fortune, was starving in Mr Gillman’s garret’. Werkmeister goes on, ‘Daniel undertook to defend his brother against attempting the charge of a similar ex-ploitation of Burns’. Daniel wrote:
My elder brother Peter, who started… The Star [in 1788] had written to Burns, offering him terms for communications to the paper, a small salary, quite as large as his Excise-office emoluments. I forget particulars, but I remember my brother shewing Burns’s letters, and boasting of the correpondence with so great a genius. Burns refused an engagement. And if, as I believe, the ‘Poem Written to a Gentleman who Had Sent Him a Newspaper, And Offered to Continue it Free of Expense’ was written in reply to my brother, it was a sneering unhandsome return, though Dr Currie says fifty-two guineas per annum for a communication once a week was an offer ‘for which the pride of genius disdained to accept’. We hear much of purse-proud insolence… In 1795, my brother Peter purchased the copyright of the Oracle newspaper… Then it was my brother again offered Burns an engagement, as appears by the account of Burns’s Life, which was again declined… (Quoted in Werkmeister’s Robert Burns and the London Newspapers, pp. 483–4, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 65, 1961).
Given the irretrievably missing correspondence from Burns to Peter Stuart, we will never know the full truth about Daniel Stuart’s claims. Given, however, the dangerously mendacious manner in which Peter Stuart distorted Ode on the Departed Regency-Bill and the way he publicly revealed Burns as the author of all of the pseudonymous verses he sent to Stuart (See Ode, Sacred To The Memory of Mrs. Oswald Of Auchencruive), one cannot count on either of the brothers’ veracity.
The appearance of the popular newspaper and the accelerated hourly communication of events horrified Wordsworth as much as it energised Burns. This poem’s newspaper flow of highly salacious European and British political gossip regarding ‘sexually’ degenerate power politics runs for a full stopless, breathless thirty-eight lines of wonderfully reductive Scottish vernacular speech. This type of concentrated narrative also features in A New Song, A Wet Day at Walmer Castle. It is possible that ‘DaddieBurke’ (l. 25) is a misprint for ‘Paddy Burke’. The latter nickname is used by Burns in The Dagger.
1 Emperor Joseph II, died 20th February, 1790.
2 Gustavus III, 1746–92.
3 Charles XII, 1697–1718.
4 William Pitt, Earl of Chatham.
5 Charles James Fox, Whig leader.
6 Edmund Burke.
7 Warren Hastings, whose trial for Impeachment ran from 1788–95.
8 The Prince of Wales, whose reputation as a womaniser was public knowledge.
Elegy on Willie Nicol’s Mare
Tune: Chevy Chase
First printed in Cromek, 1808.
Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
As ever trod on airn; iron
But now she’s floating down the Nith,
And past the Mouth o’ Cairn.
5 Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
An’ rode thro’ thick an’ thin;
But now she’s floating down the Nith,
And wanting even the skin.
Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
10 And ance she bore a priest; once
But now she’s floating down the Nith,
For Solway fish a feast.
Peg Nicholson was a good bay mare,
An’ the priest he rode her sair; sore
15 And much oppress’d and bruis’d she was —
As priest-rid cattle are.
William Nicol’s mare was taken in by Burns at Ellisland to be restored to health. Having tried treating the animal and obtaining professional advice from a farrier, the beast died. Despite the tone of the poem, the animal-loving Burns was predictably hurt to lose Nicol’s horse. His letter to Nicol on 9th February, 1790 catches precisely this mixture of irritation and distress:
That damned mare of yours is dead. I would freely have given her price to have saved her: she has vexed me beyond description…. I took every care of her in my power … I drew her in the plough, one of three, for a poor week. I refused fifty-five shilling for her. I fed her up and had her in fine order for Dumfries fair; when four or five days before the fair, she was seized with an unaccountable disorder in the sinews … in short the whole vertebrae of the spine seemed to be diseased and unhinged … every thing was done for her that could be done … (Letter 390).
Burns described the Elegy to Nicol’s mare as ‘barbarous stanzas’. The name Peg Nicholson is one given to the mare by Burns after Margaret Nicholson who attacked and tried to stab George III in August 1786. (He had previously named his own horse Jenny Geddes after a woman who had thrown a stool at a leading Edinburgh cleric.) The ‘Mouth o’ Cairn’ (l. 4) is a tributary of the river Nith.
My Wife’s a Wanton Wee Thing
First printed in Currie, 1800.
Mv wife’s a wanton, wee thing,
My wife’s a wanton, wee thing,
My wife’s a wanton, wee thing,
She winna be guided by me. will not
5 She play’d the loon or she was married, fool, before
She play’d the loon or she was married,
She play’d the loon or she was married,
She’ll do it again or she die.
She sell’d her coat and she drank it,
10 She sell’d her coat and she drank it,
She row’d hersell in a blanket, rolled
She winna be guided for me.
She mind’t na when I forbade her, not
She mind’t na when I forbade her,
15 I took a rung and I claw’d her, cudgel, beat
And a braw gude bairn was she. fine good child
This is a traditional song reworked by Bu
rns. He sent it to George Thomson in 1792 but he did not include it in his printed collection until 1818; even then Thomson printed a version where he had the audacity to correct the lyric.
Scots Prologue,
For Mrs. Sutherland’s Benefit-Night,
Spoken at the Theatre, Dumfries, March 3rd, 1790
First printed in Oliver, Edinburgh; and in Stewart, Glasgow, 1800.
WHAT needs this din about the town o’ Lon’on,
How this new Play an’ that new Sang is comin? song
Why is outlandish stuff sae meikle courted? so much
Does Nonsense mend like Brandy — when imported —
5 Is there nae Poet, burning keen for Fame, no
Will bauldly try to gie us Plays at hame? boldly, give
For Comedy abroad he need na toil: not
A Knave and Fool are plants of ev’ry soil:
Nor need he hunt as far as Rome or Greece,
10 To gather matter for a serious piece;
There’s themes enow in Caledonian story enough
Wad shew the Tragic Muse in a’ her glory.
Is there no daring Bard will rise and tell
How glorious Wallace stood, how hapless fell?
15 Where are the Muses fled, that could produce
A drama worthy o’ the name of Bruce?
How on this spot he first unsheath’d the sword
’Gainst mighty England and her guilty Lord,
And after mony a bloody, deathless doing,
20 Wrench’d his dear country from the jaws of Ruin!
O! for a Shakespeare or an Otway scene
To paint the lovely hapless Scottish Queen!
Vain ev’n th’ omnipotence of Female charms,
’Gainst headlong, ruthless, mad Rebellion’s arms.
25 She fell — but fell with spirit truly Roman,
To glut that direst foe, a vengeful woman;
A woman — tho’ the phrase may seem uncivil,
As able — and as wicked — as the Devil!
One Douglas lives in Home’s immortal page,
30 But Douglasses were heroes every age:
And tho’ your fathers, prodigal of life,
A Douglas followed to the martial strife,
Perhaps, if bowls row right, and Right succeeds,
Ye yet may follow where a Douglas leads!
35 As ye hae generous done, if a’ the land
Would take the Muses’ servants by the hand,
Not only hear — but patronise — defend them,
And where ye justly can commend — commend them;
And aiblins, when they winna stand the test, maybe, will not
40 Wink hard and say, ‘The folks hae done their best’. have
Would a’ the land do this, then I’ll be caition, surety
Ye’ll soon hae Poets o’ the Scottish nation, have
Will gar Fame blaw until her trumpet crack, make, blow
And warsle Time, an’ lay him on his back. thump
45 For us and for our Stage, should onie spier, any ask
‘Whase aught thae chiels maks a’ this bustle here?’ whose, they fellows
My best leg foremost, I’ll set up my brow,
We have the honor to belong to you!
We’re your ain bairns, e’en guide us as ye like, own children
50 But like guid mithers, shore before ye strike; mothers, warn
And gratefu’ still, I trust, ye’ll ever find us:
For gen’rous patronage, and meikle kindness, much
We’ve got frae a’ professions, sorts an’ ranks: from
God help us — we’re but poor — ye’se get but thanks! you’ll
This work appears first in 1800 in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, by two different printers. Burns presented a copy to the Dumfries Provost, David Staig, prior to the evening it was to be recited at the theatre, in a letter of 1st March, 1790, to ask his advice on its degree of political controversy:
… there is a dark stroke of Politics in the belly of the Piece, and like a faithful loyal Subject, I lay it before you, as the chief Magistrate of the country … that if the said Poem be found to contain any Treason, or words of treasonable construction, or any Fama clamosa or Scandulum magnatum, against our Sovereign lord the King, or any of his liege Subjects, the said Prologue may not see the light (Letter 394).
In commenting on this letter to Staig, Kinsley remarks that ‘the anxiety over a merely patriotic poem was obviously Sutherland’s, as Burns’s tone suggests’ (Vol. 3, p. 1341). Burns’s tone suggests no such thing. The hyperbolically ironic terminology of the letter is a joke pointed at the ambigious, contemporary definition of treason. Kinsley rightly detects that ll. 29–34 are the ‘dark stroke of Politics’ but he seems not to understand that the second Douglas, after Home’s theatrical one, is ‘Citizen Douglas’, that is to say Lord Daer, who was the potential leader of a Scottish republican movement (See Extempore Verses on Dining with Lord Daer). Thus, Burns, albeit with a degree of subtle disguise which has lasted over two hundred years, was having declaimed in 1790 from the Dumfries stage a wholly treasonable political proposal. Were Douglas in the audience during the performance this poem would have had an even more powerful political resonance, particularly to those attuned to its contemporary, subtle nuances.
Daer, one of the leading figures in the Scottish Friends of the People movement, from Jacobite stock, is also in a lineage of Burns’s favourite Scottish heroes and heroines, Wallace, Bruce and Mary Queen of Scots. The lines on Bruce (ll. 150–20) are a kind of prelude to the darker Bruce poems of 1793 retrieved from The Edinburgh Gazetteer. Some editors modify ll. 16–18 which tellingly emphasise that it was in Dumfries (‘this spot’) that Bruce killed his main rival for the Scottish throne and thus began his crusade to free Scotland from English domination. (See the hitherto unpublished letter on this subject printed as an appendix to The Ghost of Bruce and Scots Wha Hae.)
Election Ballad
or Epistle to Robert Graham of Fintry on
the Election for the Dumfries Burghs, 1790
A fragment of this first appears in The Edinburgh Magazine, May 1811.
FINTRY, my stay in worldly strife,
Friend o’ my Muse, Friend o’ my Life,
Are ye as idle ’s I am?
Come then! wi’ uncouth kintra fleg country fling/kick
5 O’er Pegasus I’ll fling my leg,
And ye shall see me try him. —
But where shall I gae rin or ride, go, run
That I may splatter nane beside, none
I wad na be uncivil: would not
10 In mankind’s various paths and ways
There’s ay some doytin body strays, stupid person
And I ride like the devil. —
Thus I break aff wi’ a’ my birr, off, force
An’ down yon dark, deep alley spur,
15 Where Theologies dander: stroll
Alas! curst wi’ eternal fogs,
And damn’d in everlasting bogs,
As sure’s the Creed I’ll blunder!
I’ll stain a band, or jaup a gown, splash, clerical dress
20 Or rin my reckless, guilty crown run
Against the haly door! holy
Sair do I rue my luckless fate, sore
When, as the Muse an’ Deil wad hae’t would have it
I rade that road before. — rode
25 Suppose I take a spurt and mix
Amang the wilds o’ Politics
Electors and elected —
Where dogs at Court (sad sons o’ bitches!)
Septennially a madness touches,
30 Till all the land’s infected. —
All hail, Drumlanrig’s haughty Grace,1
Discarded remnant of a race
Once godlike — great in story!
Thy fathers’ virtues all contrasted,
35 The very name of Douglas blasted,
Thine that inverted glory!
Hate, envy, o
ft the Douglas bore
But thou hast superadded more,
And sunk them in contempt;
40 Follies and crimes have stain’d the name;
But, Queensberry, thine the virgin claim,
From aught that’s good exempt. —
I’ll sing the zeal Drumlanrig bears,
Wha left the all-important cares
45 Of fiddlers, whores, and hunters;
And, bent on buying Borough-towns,
Came shaking hands wi’ wabster-loons, weavers
And kissing barefit bunters. — barefoot harlots
Combustion thro’ our Boroughs rode,
50 Whistling his roaring pack abroad
Of mad, unmuzzled lions;
As Queensberry BUFF AND BLUE unfurl’d, whig colours
And Westerha’ and Hopeton hurl’d2
To every Whig defiance. —
55 But cautious Queensberry left the war,
Th’ unmanner’d dust might soil his star,
Besides, he hated Bleeding:
But left behind him heroes bright,
Heroes in Cesarean fight
60 Or Ciceronian pleading. —
O, for a throat like huge Monsmeg, a cannon at Edinburgh
To muster o’er each ardent Whig,
Beneath Drumlanrig’s banner!
Heroes and heroines commix,
65 All in the field of Politics
To win immortal honor. —
McMurdo3 and his lovely Spouse
(Th’ enamour’d laurels kiss her brows)
Led on the Loves and Graces:
70 She won each gaping Burgess’ heart,
While he, sub rosa, play’d his part in secret
Among their wives and lasses.
Craigdarroch4 led a light-arm’d Core,