The Canongate Burns
Page 111
Lines Written on a Window, at the King’s Arms Tavern, Dumfries
First printed in Duncan, Glasgow, 1801.
Ye men of wit and wealth, why all this sneering
’Gainst poor Excisemen? Give the cause a hearing:
What are your landlord’s rent-rolls? taxing ledgers:
What premiers, what? even monarchs’ mighty gaugers:
Nay, what are priests? those seeming godly wisemen:
What are they, pray? but spiritual Excisemen.
Kinsley prints this as part of the Burns canon without commentary. Mackay estimates the date of composition as 1789 when Burns joined the Excise. However, it is unlikely that the poet frequented the King’s Arms Tavern while residing at Ellisland in 1789. They are probably from a later period, possibly 1793 or later when this hotel was the meeting place of the Dumfries cell of the Friends of the People. There are overtones here of the friction between Burns and the Pittite Loyal Natives faction in Dumfries.
You’re Welcome, Willie Stewart
First printed in Lockhart, 1829.
Come, bumpers high, express your joy,
The bowl we maun renew it; must
The tappet-hen gae bring her ben, big pewter jug, here
To welcome Willie Stewart.
Chorus
5 You’re welcome, Willie Stewart,
You’re welcome, Willie Stewart,
There’s ne’er a flower that blooms in May,
That’s half sae welcome’s thou art. so
May foes be strang, and friends be slack,
10 Ilk action, may he rue it; each
May woman on him turn her back,
That wrangs thee, Willie Stewart. wrongs
You’re welcome &c.
William Stewart (1749–1812), the factor of Closeburn estate, was the father of Polly Stewart and son of the inn owner at Closeburn, near Dumfries. Mackay (p. 522) quotes an anecdotal story (from Lockhart’s biography of Burns (1829)), regarding a glass goblet with these lines allegedly inscribed, but he does not record the source. He again appears to have lifted the quotation from Kinsley (Vol. III, p. 1495). It is difficult to believe the entire song could have been written on a goblet.
On Wm. Graham of Mossknowe
First printed in Cunningham, 1834.
‘Stop thief!’ dame Nature call’d to Death,
As Willie drew his latest breath:
How shall I make a fool again —
My choicest model thou hast taen. — taken
William Graham (1756–1832) was laird at Mossknowe, near Annan. The lines are in the Glenriddell manuscripts.
On a Swearing Coxcomb
First printed in Cunningham, 1834.
Here, cursing swearing Burton lies,
A buck, a beau, or Dem my eyes!
Who in his life did little good,
And his last words were, Dem my blood!
The aristocratic target of this satirical epigram has not been identified.
On a Suicide
First printed in 1801 by both Oliver in Edinburgh and Duncan, Glasgow.
Here lies in earth a root of Hell,
Set by the Deil’s ain dibble; own planting stick for holes
This worthless body damn’d himsel,
To save the Lord the trouble.
This was printed on first publication about someone with the initials ‘D.C.’ There is no Burns manuscript, although a transcript exists in the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, Cambridgeshire. Cunningham’s story that it was written about a person named Glendinning and that Burns was seen writing it and pushing the epitaph into the soil by the graveside is surely mere folklore.
Epitaph
On an Innkeeper Nicknamed ‘The Marquis’
First printed in Duncan, Glasgow, 1801.
Here lies a mock Marquis whose titles were shamm’d,
If ever he rise, it will be to be damn’d.
This is written on a Dumfries innkeeper whose public house was demolished in the early nineteenth century, although, according to Cunningham, the place where it stood was known as the Marquess’s Close till the 1830s (Cunningham, Vol. III, p. 310).
Epitaph on John Bushby
Tinwald Downs
First printed in Duncan, Glasgow, 1801.
Here lies John Bushby, honest man!
Cheat him devil — if you can. —
John Bushby was Sheriff Clerk to the county of Dumfriesshire and supported Gordon of Balmaghie in the parliamentary election of 1795. Burns wrote John Bushby’s Lamentation as The Third Heron Ballad. Bushby owned the race course at Tinwald Downs.
On Capt. Lascelles
First printed in Scott Douglas, 1877.
When Lascelles thought fit from this world to depart,
Some friends warmly spoke of embalming his heart;
A bystander whispers — ‘Pray don’t make so much o’t,
The subject is poison, no reptile will touch it.’—
Edward Lascelles (1740–1820), who eventually became an army Colonel, was an English M.P. in 1790. This is included in the Gledriddell manuscript collection.
On John M’murdo
First printed in Cunningham, 1834.
Blest be M’Murdo to his latest day!
No envious cloud o’ercast his evening ray;
No wrinkle furrowed by the hand of care,
Nor ever sorrow add one silver hair!
O, may no son the father’s honor stain,
Nor ever daughter give the mother pain!
This is supposed to have been inscribed on a window at John McMurdo’s house, on the Drumlanrig castle estate of the Duke of Queensberry, McMurdo’s employer. See To John McMurdo, With ‘Pound of Lundiefoot Snuff for additional notes. Mackay gives the above out of chronology of composition, with the earlier work (p. 356).
On Gabriel Richardson
First printed in Cunningham, 1834.
Here brewer Gabriel’s fire’s extinct,
And empty all his barrels:
He’s blest — if as he brew’d he drink —
In upright, virtuous morals.
Gabriel Richardson (1759–1820) was a brewer in Dumfries. Cunningham took the lines from a goblet then in the Richardson family.
On Commissary Goldie’s Brains
First printed in Cunningham, 1834.
Lord, to account who dares Thee call,
Or e’er dispute Thy pleasure?
Else why within so thick a wall
Enclose so poor a treasure?
Colonel Thomas Goldie was commissary to the Dumfries Sheriff court and President of the ultra-loyalist political group the Loyal Natives in Dumfries. Burns satirises him in The Second Heron Ballad as ‘Colonel Tam’.
The Hue and Cry of John Lewars -
First printed in Barke, 1955.
A poor man ruined and undone by Robbery and Murder. Being an aweful WARNING to the young men of this age, how they look well to themselves in this dangerous, terrible WORLD.
A THIEF, AND A MURDERER! stop her who can!
Look well to your lives and your goods!
Good people, ye know not the hazard you run,
’Tis the far-famed and much-noted WOODS. —
5 While I looked at her eye, for the devil is in it,
In a trice she whipt off my poor heart:
Her brow, cheek and lip — in another sad minute,
My peace felt her murderous dart.—
Her features, I’ll tell you them over — but hold!
10 She deals with your wizards and books;
And to peep in her face, if but once you’re so bold,
There’s witchery kills in her looks.—
But softly — I have it — her haunts are well known,
At midnight so slily I’ll watch her;
15 And sleeping, undrest, in the dark, all alone —
Good lord! the dear THIEF HOW I’LL CATCH HER!
The tone of the sub-title points to this being a jovial burlesque on the broken love affair
between Burns’s Excise colleague, John Lewars, and an Agnes Wood, the ‘much-noted WOODS’.
The Keekin’ Glass
First printed in Chambers, 1852.
HOW daur ye ca’ me ‘Howlet-face,’ dare you call
Ye blear-e’ed, wither’d spectre? -eyed
Ye only spied the keekin-glass, looking
An’ there ye saw your picture.
This was supposedly written at Dalswinton when Patrick Miller’s daughter told the poet that a drunken judge visiting her father looked at her in their drawing room and, probably assuming she was a servant, asked, ‘Wha’s yon howlet-faced thing in the corner?’ (See Henley–Henderson, Vol. II, p. 439).
Inscription on a Goblet
First printed in Cunningham, 1834.
THERE’S Death in the cup — sae beware!
Nay, more — there is danger in touching;
But who can avoid the fell snare?
The man and his wine’s so bewitching!
These lines were written on a goblet owned by John Syme according to Cunningham. The text as Kinsley has remarked, is adapted from the Bible, the Second Book of Kings, iv, 40.
On Andrew Turner
First printed in Cunningham, 1834.
In Se’enteen Hunder ’n Forty-Nine
The Deil gat stuff to mak a swine, devil got
An’ coost it in a corner;; cast/threw
But wilily he chang’d his plan,
An’ shap’d it something like a man,
An’ ca’d it Andrew Turner. — called
This was written about an English traveller Burns met in the King’s Arms, Dumfries, who asked if the poet would write something for him. Having found out the traveller’s name and age, the poet is supposed to have recited this extempore. Kinsley appears to have read this too seriously, missing the obvious humour, and calls it a ‘tasteless epigram’ (Vol. III, p. 1496). There is no manuscript.
The Toadeater -1
First printed in Lockhart, 1828.
OF Lordly acquaintance you boast,
And the Dukes that you dined with yestreen,
Yet an insect’s an insect at most,
Tho’ it crawl on the curl of a Queen!
The Toadeater -2
NO more of your titled acquaintances boast,
Nor of the gay groups you have seen;
A crab louse is but a crab louse at last,
Tho’ stack to the c [unt] of a Queen.
Burns is supposed to have written several variations of this epigram, although the variants may be more a symptom of editorial and censorial squeamishness. There is no manuscript by Burns. A transcript by John Syme records ‘Extempore on a young fellow W. I. who had made about £10,000 by a lucky speculation and who vaunted of keeping the highest company, &c. N.B. He was of low extraction’ (See The Burns Chronicle, 1932, pp. 13–14). A crab louse is meant to attach itself to pubic hair.
The Lovely Lass o’ Inverness –
First printed in Johnson, 1796.
THE luvely Lass o’ Inverness,
Nae joy nor pleasure can she see; no
For e’en to morn she cries, Alas!
And ay the saut tear blin’s her e’e: salt, eye
5 Drumossie moor, Drumossie day,
A waefu’ day it was to me; woeful
For there I lost my father dear,
My father dear and brethren three!
Their winding-sheet the bludy clay, bloody
10 Their graves are growing green to see;
And by them lies the dearest lad
That ever blest a woman’s e’e! eye
Now wae to thee, thou cruel lord, woe
A bludy man I trow thou be; bloody, know
15 For monie a heart thou has made sair many, sore
That ne’er did wrang to thine or thee! wrong
Burns never claimed this Jacobite song as his own, although it is signed ‘B’ in the S.M.M. It has been ascribed to him by most editors as a song he improved. It is about the Scottish defeat at Culloden (Drumossie) in 1746.
As I Stood by Yon Roofless Tower
Tune: Cumnock Plains
First printed by Johnson, 1796.
AS I stood by yon roofless tower,
Where the wa’-flow’r scents the dewy air;
Where the houlet mourns in her ivy bower, owl
And tells the midnight moon her care:
Chorus
5 A lassie all alone was making her moan,
Lamenting our lads beyond the sea;
In the bluidy wars they fa’, and our honor’s bloody, fall
gane an’ a’, gone
And broken-hearted we maun die.— must
The winds were laid, the air was still,
10 The stars they shot along the sky;
The tod was howling on the hill, fox
And the distant-echoing glens reply.—
A lassie all alone &c
The burn, adown its hazelly path,
Was rushing by the ruin’d wa’, wall
15 Hasting to join the sweeping Nith
Whase roarings seem’d to rise and fa’.— whose, fall
A lassie all alone &c
The cauld blae North was streaming forth cold bitter
Her lights, wi’ hissing, eerie din; fearful
Athort the lift they start and shift, at the horizon
20 Like Fortune’s favours, tint as win.— lost
A lassie all alone &c
Now, looking over firth and fauld, (sea and land) fold
Her horn the pale-fac’d Cynthia rear’d, the moon
When, lo, in form of Minstrel auld, old
A stern and stalwart ghaist appear’d.— ghost
A lassie all alone &c
25 And frae his harp sic strains did flow, from, such
Might rous’d the slumbering Dead to hear;
But Oh, it was a tale of woe,
As ever met a Briton’s ear. —
A lassie all alone &c
He sang wi’ joy his former day,
30 He weeping wail’d his latter times:
But what he said it was nae play, not
I winna ventur’t in my rhymes.— will not
A lassie all alone &c
This brilliant anti-war song was sent to Thomson in September, 1794 (Letter 637), but was first printed by Johnson in December 1796. It is an original work. It was signed ‘B’ in the S.M.M. The ‘roofless tower’ is Lincluden Abbey.
The ‘lassie’ lamenting the men who fall in ‘bluidy wars’ is not a reference to a Jacobite war, but to the war of Britain against revolutionary France. It could also be resonant of Britain’s role against the American colonies, where ‘our honor’s gane an’ a’ ’ is an appropriate description. As Crawford has commented, the song ‘reveals Liberty as emblematic, the “sacred posy” on the bonnet of the “stern and stalwart ghaist” of a minstrel of the olden time who bewails the political reaction which set in after the end of 1792’ (p. 242). Within a similar eerie atmosphere to the appearance of Bruce in The Ghost of Bruce, the poet, conscious of printing the song in Johnson’s collection, acts as self-censor, at the end of the song, declaring that what the minstrel said could not be printed: ‘I winna ventur’t in my rhymes’. Crawford also agrees with the American editor Gebbie that this was probably a prelude to Ode on General Washington’s Birthday (pp. 242–3), or at the very least, written around the same time. What the penultimate stanza clearly suggests is another song of liberty possibly suppressed by Burns. It would, though, surely be difficult to consider the Washington ‘Ode’ as a song.
The reference to ‘a Briton’s ear’ (l. 28) further emphasises Burns’s dual or concentric Scottish/British identity.
The Wren’s Nest
First printed by Johnson, 1796.
THE Robin cam to the wren’s nest
And keekit in and keekit in, peeped
O weel ’s me on your auld pow, old head
Wad ye be in, wad ye be in. would you
Ye
’se ne’er get leave to lie without,
And I within, and I within,
As lang ’s I hae an auld clout long as, have old cloth
To row you in, to row you in. roll/wrap
Burns is supposed to have recorded this from his wife’s singing and, on revising the lyric, sent it to Johnson. In the absence of a traditional text, it is impossible to know if the work was changed by him.
John Highlandman
First printed by Johnson, 1796.
There’s sax eggs in the pan, gudeman, six, goodman
There’s sax eggs in the pan, gudeman;
There’s ane to you, and twa to me, one, two
And three to our John Highlandman.—
Chorus
5 O an ye were dead, gudeman, if
A green turf on your head, gudeman,
I wad bestow my widowhood would
Upon a rantin Highlandman.— merry
A sheep-head’s in the pot, gudeman,
10 A sheep-head’s in the pot, gudeman;