The Canongate Burns
Page 95
Tropes, metaphors and figures pour,
75 Like Hecla streaming thunder: an Icelandic volcano
Glenriddell5, skill’d in rusty coins, antiquarian skills
Blew up each Tory’s dark designs,
And bar’d the treason under. —
In either wing two champions fought;
80 Redoubted STAIG6, who set at nought
The wildest savage Tory:
While WELSH,7 who ne’er yet flinch’d his ground,
High-wav’d his magnum-bonum round
With Cyclopean fury. —
85 Miller8 brought up th’ artillery ranks,
The many-pounders of the banks,
Resistless desolation!
While Maxwelton,9 that baron bold,
’Mid LAWSON’s10 port entrench’d his hold,
90 And threaten’d worse damnation. —
To these what Tory hosts oppos’d,
With these what Tory warriors clos’d,
Surpasses my descriving:
Squadrons, extended long and large,
95 With furious speed rush to the charge,
Like furious devils driving. —
What Verse can sing, what Prose narrate,
The butcher deeds of bloody Fate
Amid this mighty tulzie; conflict
100 Grim Horror girn’d, pale Terror roar’d, scowled
As Murder at his thrapple shor’d; throat, threatened
And Hell mix’d in the brulzie. — brawl
As Highland craigs by thunder cleft, crags
When lightnings fire the stormy lift, sky
105 Hurl down with crashing rattle;
As flames among a hundred woods,
As headlong foam a hundred floods,
Such is the rage of Battle. —
The stubborn Tories dare to die,
110 As soon the rooted oaks would fly
Before th’ approaching fellers:
The Whigs come on like ocean’s roar,
When all his wintry billows pour
Against the Buchan bullers. —11
115 Lo, from the shades of Death’s deep night
Departed Whigs enjoy the fight,
And think on former daring:
The muffled Murtherer of CHARLES12
The Magna Charta flag unfurls,
120 All deadly gules it’s bearing. — blazoned red
Nor wanting ghosts of Tory fame;
Bold SCRIMGEOUR13 follows gallant
GRAHAM,14
Auld Covenanters shiver!
(Forgive, forgive! Much wrong’d Montrose!
125 Now, Death and Hell engulph thy foes,
Thou liv’st on high for ever).
Still o’er the field the combat burns,
The Tories, Whigs, give way by turns,
But Fate the word has spoken:
130 For Woman’s wit, and strength of Man,
Alas! can do but what they can;
The Tory ranks are broken. —
O, that my een were flowing burns! eyes
My voice, a lioness that mourns
135 Her darling cub’s undoing!
That I might greet, that I might cry, weep
While Tories fall, while Tories fly
From furious Whigs pursuing. —
What Whig but melts for good SIR JAMES!15
140 Dear to his Country by the names,
Friend, Patron, Benefactor!
Not Pulteney’s wealth can Pulteney16 save;
And Hopeton falls, the generous, brave;
And STEWART17 bold as Hector!
145 Thou, Pitt,18 shalt rue this overthrow,
And Thurlow19 growl this curse of woe,
And Melville20 melt in wailing:
Now Fox and Sheridan21 rejoice!
And Burke22 shall shout, O Prince, arise!
150 Thy power is all-prevailing!
For your poor friend, the Bard, afar
He hears and sees the distant war,
A cool Spectator purely:
So, when the storm the forest rends,
155 The Robin in the hedge descends,
And, patient, chirps securely. —
Now, for my friends’ and brethren’s sakes,
And for my native LAND o’ CAKES,
I pray with holy fire;
160 Lord, send a rough-shod troop o’ Hell
O’er a’, wad Scotland buy, or sell, would
And grind them in the mire!!!
As is typical of so much of Burns’s dissident political writings, this poem did not surface till 1811 in the pages of The Edinburgh Magazine, although it was missing a few stanzas. Kinsley prints it without stanzas 2–5. In this version stanzas 2–4 are a retrospective of his career as satirist, which mixes anxiety with self-mockery, especially with the results of his assaults of ‘Auld Licht’ Calvinism. Nor does his prospective political satire seem less likely to create problems for him as he surveys a world:
… Where dogs at Court (sad sons o’ bitches!)
Septennially a madness touches,
Till all the land’s infected.
Such sentiments would seem extremely ill judged in a poem adressed to his new Excise master. Burns, however, develops in tone, genre and content, strategies for by-passing superior condemnation for his intrusion into matters far above his lowly civil position. He turns the election for the Dumfries Burghs (held every seven years) into a mixture of mock-epic and Hogarth derived cartoon. While the Tories are beaten, Burns’s sympathies are, on the whole, with them. Thus he cannot be seen as attacking the Pitt government. He is also assuring Graham that his position, a robin nestled safe from the storm, is ‘A cool Spectator purely’ (ll. 115–20). This, in fact, is partly true.
The occasion of the poem for Burns was one of happy conve-nience. At an earlier stage in the campaign, Burns had written to Provost Maxwell of Lochmaben that, ‘If at any time you expect a Field-day in your town, a Day when Dukes, Earls and Knights pay their court to Weavers, Taylors and Coblers, I should like to know of it two or three days beforehand – It is not that I care three skips of a cur-dog for Politics, but I should like to see such an exhibition of Human Nature’ (Letter 378). His creative wish was, indeed, granted. The Whig candidate was Captain Miller who was his landlord’s son and the poet was summoned in support of Miller against the Tory candidate, Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall. He described the scene to Mrs Dunlop thus:
I have just got a summons to attend with my men-servants armed as well as we can, on Monday at one o’clock in the morning to escort Captn Miller from Dalswinton in to Dumfries to be a Candidate for our Boroughs which Chuse their Member that day. – The Duke of Queensberry & the Nithsdale Gentlemen who are almost all friends to the Duke’s Candidate, the said Captn, are to raise all Nithsdale on the same errand. – The Duke of Buccleugh’s, Earl of Hopetoun’s people, in short, the Johnstons, Jardines, and all the clans of Annandale are to attend Sir James Johnston who is the other Candidate, on the same account. – This is no exaggeration. – On Thursday last, at chusing the Delegate for the boro’ of Lochmaben, the Duke & Captn Miller’s friends led a strong party, among others, upwards of two hundred Colliers from Sanquar Coal-works & Miners from Wanlock-head; but when they appeared over a hill-top within half a mile of Lochmaben, they found such a superior host of Annandale warriors drawn out to dispute the Day, that without striking a stroke, they turned their backs and fled with all the precipitation the horrors of blood & murther could inspire. – What will be the event, I know not. – I shall go to please my Landlord, & see the Combustion … (Letter 403)
Whether or not the rival groups were on the verge of more traditional forms of violence to settle party disputes is hard to know. Certainly, Burns uses it both to denigrate Queensberry for his cowardice and turn the squalid seeking for votes into a glorious mock-epic battle. While theoretically (see introduction) Burns always held Right Whig reformist, prodemocratic beliefs this is not to say that he saw the Whig (aristocratic) st
ablishment as manifesting these beliefs in practice. He disliked Captain iller. Burns had met Queensberry and been on that occasion well treated by him (Letter 471) and sent him a copy of The Whistle. Queensberry had, however, the reputation of a selfish, even degenerate dilettante and is here so presented. Though Glenriddel, his close political intimate is mentioned, the poem is not sympathetic to the Whig cause nor, indeed, as in ll. 79–84, to the bloody foundling act of that cause. For a man undismayed by forthcoming French executions, these lines have a dark, ironic ring:
The muffled Murtherer of CHARLES
The Magna Charta flag unfurls,
All deadly gules it’s bearing. –
This is followed by a deeply sympathetic celebration of these archetypal Jacobite heroes Dundee and Montrose (ll. 115–20). Returning to the contemporary world, he hyperbolically laments a Tory loss which cannot even be saved by the fact that its candidate’s brother is married into the family of William Pulteney, Earl of Bath (d.1764) who was reputed to be one of the richest men in the Empire.
Burns then analyses the impact on Westminster. First of Pitt and his fellow Tories Thurlow and Melville. Edward, Baron Thurlow (1731–1806) had been compelled to retire as Lord Chancellor by the North–Fox coalition but had been brought back by Pitt. His was a terrifying presence, able to instil apprehension and fear into characters as disparate as Dr Johnson and Horne Tooke. Melville, of course, is Henry Dundas (1742–1811), whom Pitt was to appoint Home Secretary in 1791 and who was to cast such a terrible shadow over the last years of Burns’s life. Fox’s Whig friends were the two extraordinary Irishmen Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) and Edmund Burke (1729–97), who held such rhetorical sway over the house; Burns, of course, being deeply ironic in that these reformist Whigs were up to their ears in royal intrigue to gain governmental power by way of the Prince of Wales during the King’s madness. As so often with Burns, the sting comes in the tail of the poem. It is really an enraged cry of a plague on both Tory and Whig party politics carried out against Scottish national interests.
1 The Duke of Queensberry, William Douglas.
2 Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall and Earl of Hopetoun.
3 The Duke’s Factor and Cousin. R.B. [John McMurdo & Jane Blair].
4 Alexander Ferguson.
5 Robert Riddell Esq. of Glenriddell. R.B.
6 Provost of Dumfries and Director of the Bank of Scotland. R.B. [David Staig].
7 Sheriff substitute. R.B. [John Welsh, Sheriff of Dumfriesshire].
8 Patrick Miller Esq. Of Dalswinton, the Candidate’s father. R.B. [The poet’s landlord at Ellisland].
9 Sir Robert Lowrie. R.B. [of Maxwelton, the Dumfriesshire M.P.].
10 A famous wine merchant. R.B. [John Lawson].
11 A rocky inlet on the coast near Peterhead notorious for crashing waves.
12 Charles I was executed by a man in a mask. R.B.
13 Viscount Dundee. R.B.
14 Montrose. R.B. [John Graham, Marquis of Montrose].
15 Sir James Johnstone.
16 William Johnstone married into the wealth of the Pulteney family from Bath.
17 William Stuart of Hill-side. R.B.
18 William Pitt, Prime Minister.
19 Edward, Baron Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor.
20 Henry Dundas, Lord Melville and Secretary of State for Scotland.
21 Charles James Fox, Opposition leader and the radical Whig M.P. and playwright, Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
22 Edmund Burke, political theorist and subsequently turncoat Whig M.P., who joined the Tories.
Yestreen I Had a Pint o’ Wine
Tune: Banks of Banna First printed in Oliver, Glasgow, 1801.
Yestreen I had a pint o’ wine, last night
A place where body saw na; nobody saw
Yestreen lay on this breast o’ mine
The gowden locks of Anna. — golden
5 The hungry Jew in wilderness
Rejoicing o’er his manna
Was naething to my hiney bliss nothing, honey
Upon the lips of Anna. —
Ye monarchs take the East and West,
10 Frae Indus to Savannah! from
Gie me within my straining grasp give
The melting form of Anna. —
There I’ll despise Imperial charms,
An Empress or Sultana,
15 While dying raptures in her arms
I give and take wi’ Anna!!!
Awa, thou flaunting god o’ day; away
Awa, thou pale Diana;
Ilk star gae hide thy twinkling ray! each, go
20 When I’m to meet my Anna. —
Come, in thy raven plumage, Night
Sun, moon, and stars, withdrawn a’; all
And bring an Angel-pen to write
My transports wi’ my Anna. —
25 [The Kirk an’ State may join, and tell
To do sic things I maunna; such, must not
The Kirk an’ State may gae to Hell, go
And I’ll gae to my Anna. go
She is the sunshine o’ my e’e, eye
30 To live but her I canna: without, cannot
Had I on earth but wishes three,
The first should be my Anna.]
The subject here is the poet’s affair with Anne Park, a relation of William Hyslop, Globe Tavern, Dumfries. It is believed to have occurred during a period when Jean Burns visited relatives in Ayrshire. The result was a daughter born to Anne at Leith, Edinburgh, on 31st March, 1791, and eventually reared by Mrs Burns in Dumfries. Anne Park went on to marry in Edinburgh but vanishes from the Burns story after this incident. The final dissident stanza, written as a postscript, is not included by Kinsley.
A Fragment –
On Glenriddell’s Fox Breaking his Chain
Ellisland, 1791
First printed by H.A. Bright in 1874.
THOU, Liberty, thou art my theme;
Not such as idle Poets dream,
Who trick thee up a Heathen goddess
That a fantastic cap and rod has:
5 Such stale conceits are poor and silly;
I paint thee out, a Highland filly,
A sturdy, stubborn, handsome dapple,
As sleek’s a mouse, as round’s an apple,
That, when thou pleasest can do wonders;
10 But when thy luckless rider blunders,
Or if thy fancy should demur there,
Wilt break thy neck ere thou go further. —
These things premis’d, I sing a fox,
Was caught among his native rocks,
15 And to a dirty kennel chained,
How he his liberty regained. —
Glenriddell, a Whig without a stain,
A Whig in principle and grain,
Couldst thou enslave a free-born creature,
20 A native denizen of Nature?
How couldst thou with a heart so good,
(A better ne’er was sluic’d with blood)
Nail a poor devil to a tree,
That ne’er did harm to thine or thee?
25 The staunchest Whig Glenriddell was,
Quite frantic in his Country’s cause;
And oft was Reynard’s prison passing, the fox
And with his brother Whigs canvassing
The Rights of Men, the Powers of Women,
30 With all the dignity of Freemen. —
Sir Reynard daily heard debates
Of Princes’, Kings’, and Nations’ fates;
With many rueful, bloody stories
Of tyrants, Jacobites, and Tories:
35 From liberty how angels fell,
That now are galley-slaves in Hell;
How Nimrod first the trade began1
Of binding Slavery’s chains on man;
How fell Semiramis — God damn her! —2
40 Did first, with sacrilegious hammer,
(All ills till then were trivial matters)
For Man dethron’d forge hen-peck fetter
s;
How Xerxes, that abandoned Tory,3
Thought cutting throats was reaping glory,
45 Untill the stubborn Whigs of Sparta
Taught him great Nature’s Magna Charta;
How mighty Rome her fiat hurl’d
Resistless o’er a bowing world,
And kinder than they did desire,
50 Polish’d mankind with sword and fire:
With much too tedious to relate
Of Ancient and of Modern date,
But ending still how Billy Pitt,
(Unlucky boy!) with wicked wit
55 Has gagg’d old Britain, drain’d her coffer,
As butchers bind and bleed a heifer. —
Thus wily Reynard by degrees
In kennel listening at his ease,
Suck’d in a mighty stock of knowledge,
60 As much as some folks at a college. —
Knew Britain’s rights and constitution,
Her aggrandisement, diminution,
How Fortune wrought us good from evil;
Let no man, then, despise the Devil,
65 As who should say, I ne’er can need him,
Since we to scoundrels owe our Freedom. —
A manuscript copy of this was sold in May 1862 in London at the Puttock and Simpson auction of almost 200 pages of Burns’s holograph (Autograph Poems of Robert Burns, a sales catalogue printed by E. C. Bigmore, p. 18. Mitchell Library collection). It did not appear in public until the book by H. Bright, based on the Gledriddell manuscripts, was printed in 1874.
It is an important poem because it reveals further the friendship between Burns and one of the age’s leading radical Whig polemicists, Robert Riddell. Recent research has revealed that in The Glasgow Journal during 1790 and 1791 a feud erupted between Riddell and Edmund Burke. Riddell, employing the pen-name Cato, locked horns with Burke on the constitutional issue. In one essay, quoted in The Glasgow Advertiser by Burke, it is clear the Tory minister was struggling for credibility against an opponent he praised as a learned expert on the constitution. One essay of January 1791, in The Glasgow Advertiser, titled ‘To The Citizens of Glasgow’, blasts Pitt’s government for practising ‘tyranny, by the grossest abuse of power and the most shocking perversion of law … [of] the most intolerable kind, under the guise of a free government’. Riddell’s forceful remarks in defence of Hastings who was persecuted by Burke, help to explain the description, ‘The staunchest Whig Glenriddel was, /Quite frantic in his country’s cause’. Henry Mackenzie and others who tarred Burns as a drunkard in his Dumfries years remarked that this was due to the company Burns kept, implying that Riddell was one of the degenerate influences over Burns (See Introduction). The denial of Riddell as a major Whig polemicist in the Burns story is merely another part of the suppression of the counter-radical culture of the period.