The Canongate Burns

by Robert Burns

  Deluded Swain, the Pleasure

  Mackay (p. 614) includes this song without comment as a work of Burns, although neither Kinsley (1969) nor Low (1993) accept it. It has the ring of Powers Celestial, once attributed to Burns but found to have been copied by him from The Edinburgh Magazine. Burns did not mention this song as his when he sent it to George Thomson in September 1793, merely remarking that it was old. There is no reason that Burns might have hidden his authorship of this noncontroversial work. For these reasons it is rejected.

  Lassie, Lie Near Me

  Tune: Laddie Lie Near Me.

  First printed in the S.M.M., Vol. 3, 2nd February, 1790.

  Lang hae we parted been, long have

  Lassie, my dearie;

  Now we are met again —

  Lassie, lie near me!

  Chorus

  5 Near me, near me,

  Lassie, lie near me!

  Lang hae I lain my lane — long have, alone

  Lassie, lie near me!

  A’ that I hae endur’d, have

  10 Lassie, my dearie,

  Here in thy arms is cur’d —

  Lassie, lie near me!

  Near me, near me, &c.

  Burns did not sign this work as his own on publication. It appears to be based on a bawdy song preserved in Ritson’s North Country Chorister. Burns sent it to Johnson who liberally changed it from Laddie Lie Near Me to Lassie Lie Near Me, transferring the lyric to the male partner. It is uncertain how much of the song is by Burns, if any of it. Kinsley could not be certain of the poet’s influence on the song but included it in the canon as K290 (see Vol. III, p. 1331). In 1793 Burns told Thomson he could not write lyrics to the tune Laddie Lie Near Me because ‘I do not know the air, and untill I am compleat master of a tune … I never can compose for it’ (Letter 586). If this is correct, the above is not his.

  Lines Written in Gavin Hamilton’s Privy

  First printed in Mackay, 1993.

  That man hath perfect blessedness,

  Who comes here once a day

  And does it neither thick nor thin,

  But in a middling way.

  These lines were added to the canon by Mackay (p. 620) after the Dumfries antiquarian James William collated material in 1993 from the manuscripts of Thomas B. Grierson of Thornhill. The ‘evidence’ is that these lines were written in a letter by Burns although the letter has never been preserved. Grierson was assured that the lines were genuine, since ‘I had this from Mr. Alexander Hewison’. Such hearsay evidence is not enough.

  Delia: An Ode

  This is included by Mackay, although doubted, but not rejected, by Kinsley (see notes to K624), even though Scott Douglas cites evidence from William Clark, 1831, who records that it is not from Burns, but a translation of a Latin song. A letter, supposedly by Burns (Letter 343), written from Ellisland to the London Star, allegedly included the song, but the letter itself may be the fiction of Allan Cunningham to justify his inclusion of the song, given that De Lancey Ferguson marks the letter as highly questionable. There is no manuscript of the supposed Burns letter and the original copies of the London paper are not extant. There is nothing contextual to suggest Burns in the lyric, so although the language and style might be his, it seems unlikely. It is rejected. We have been unable to trace the original Latin song.

  The Selkirk Grace

  This is rejected because evidence suggests it existed as a Galloway Covenantor Grace long before Burns. Kinsley and Mackay’s inclusion of this grace is surprising. Hearsay evidence that Burns recited an English version of the Grace during his Galloway tour in the summer of 1793 is no evidence for composition. There is no manuscript, even of an Anglicised translation. If Burns did recite it, it does not make it his. This rather docile, uncontroversial grace has managed to reserve itself a ritualistic recital in the Burns cult at annual Suppers worldwide.

  Look Up and See

  This lengthy work in Standard habbie format was attributed to Burns without comment in Barke’s 1955 edition. While it may accord well with the poet’s Biblical knowledge, there are several uses of language which suggest it is a work of the late 19th century. Indeed, it first appeared in The Agnostic Journal on 8th April, 1904 under the pen-name Saladin, known to have been employed by William Stewart Ross. The manuscript was apparently found among the Mavisgrove papers unearthed by J.D. Law in 1903. Owing to the popularity of Barke’s edition there are probably still many Burnsians who believe this work to be genuine, even though the Kinsley and Mackay editions do not print it, nor do they fully explain why they rejected it. Mackay’s useful reference update of Reid’s Concordance (from the 1890s) Burns: A-Z, The Complete Wordfinder, in Appendix B, does provide proper explanation of its rejection.

  Broom Besoms

  Two versions of this are rejected by Kinsley (K626A–B) but reconstituted to the canon by Mackay (p. 610). They do exist in manuscript but read more like bawdy material merely collected by Burns.

  On the Duchess of Gordon’s Reel Dancing

  In all her scholarly unravelling of Burns’s complex relations with the London press, none approaches in humour Professor Lucyle Werkmeister’s account of the comedy of errors which surrounds the appearance of two sets of verses on The Duchess of Gordon in Peter Stuart’s Star. The paper was funded by the Portland Whigs and was supportive of the Prince of Wales. An attempt at winning the Duchess over to its side having failed, she became the object of satirical attack. The paper travestied her in a parodic version of Burns’s vernacular style and, indeed, named Burns as the poet responsible. Werkmeister suggests that one of Stuart’s Scottish staff, Andrew MacDonald, may have been responsible. While Kinsley and MacKay discard the poem, though the latter does not make this formally clear, it reveals the lack of authentic empathy for Burns’s poetry among nineteenth-century editors that he could have been held responsible for this. If, of course, these editors had had access to the original Star piece, they could hardly have missed the parody:

  The DUCHESS of GORDON

  ‘What mightly matters rise from trivial things!’

  The chalky hue of the Drawing-room is ascribed to the Duchess of GORDON’s influence!

  We mean not to insinuate that her dress was a make-up (i.e. a madeover); but that true it is, she figured at a ball in one very similar the other year at Edinburgh. Mr. BURNS, the ploughing poet, who owes much of his good fortune to her Grace’s critical discernment and generous patronage, made this elegant stanza on that occasion:

  She was the mucklest of them aw;

  Like SAUL she stood the Tribes aboon;

  Her gown was whiter than the snaw,

  Her face was redder than the moon.

  This piece on the 24th March, 1789 was followed by three even worse stanzas on the 27th March:

  She kiltit up her kirtle weel,

  To show her bonny cutes sae sma’

  And walloped about the reel

  The lightest louper of them a’.

  While some like slav’ring doited flots,

  Stowt’ring owt thro’ the midden dub,

  Fanket their heels among their coats,

  And gart the floor their backsides rub.

  GORDON the great, the gay, the gallant,

  Skipt like a mawk’n o’er a dike.

  De’il tak me, since I was a calant,

  Gif e’er my een beheld the like!

  R. BURNS.

  This was followed on 4th April by the printing of a piece claiming that the poems had been given by Burns to a peripatetic physician, Dr Theodore Theobald Theophilus Tripe in Mauchline. Had Burns had access to The Star he would have seen the joke. Unfortunately he read the first poem in the pages of The Gazetteer, whose editor, in the licentious manner of the age, had copied the poem believing it to actually be the work of Burns. Even more oddly, Burns was simultaneously writing to The Star, offering them his Ode to the Departed Regency Bill, which (see notes) they politically adulterated. See Burns Letters 320, 321, 322 and 323 dealing with this. T
he whole story is in Lucyle Werkmeister, ‘Robert Burns and the London Newspapers: With Special reference to the Spurious Star (1789)’, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Vol. 65, October, 1961, No. 8, pp. 483–504.

  Cauld Frosty Morning

  Twas past ane o’clock in a cauld frosty morning,

  When cankert November blaws over the plain,

  I heard the kirk-bell repeat the loud warning,

  As, restless, I sought for sweet slumber in vain:

  5 Then up I arose, the silver moon shining bright;

  Mountains and valleys appearing all hoary white;

  Forth I would go, amid the pale, silent night,

  And visit the Fair One, the cause of my pain.—

  Sae gently I staw to my lovely Maid’s chamber,

  10 And rapp’d at her window, low down on my knee;

  Begging that she would awauk from sweet slumber,

  Awauk from sweet slumber and pity me:

  For, that a stranger to a’ pleasure, peace and rest,

  Love into madness had fired my tortur’d breast;

  15 And that I should be of a’ men the maist unblest,

  Unless she would pity my sad miserie!

  My True-love arose and whispered to me,

  (The moon looked in, and envy’d my Love’s charms;)

  ‘An innocent Maiden, ah, would you undo me!’

  20 I made no reply, but leapt into her arms:

  Bright Phebus peep’d over the hills and found me there;

  As he has done, now, seven lang years and mair:

  A faithfuller, constanter, kinder, more loving Pair,

  His sweet-chearing beam nor enlightens nor warms.

  This song is accepted to the canon by Kinsley (K295) and Mackay (p. 386). It may be possible that Burns improved a few words here and there, but the body of the song is so mediocre, with several very bad lines, that it does not read or sing as a work that has been through the hands of a genuine poet. Strangely, Kinsley remarks, ‘I am reluctant to take the draft in the Law MS as evidence of authorship. It is a piece of doggerel, below the level of Burns’s worst’ (Vol. III, p. 1332). He then justifies leaving the song in the canon by assuming Burns possibly tried to insert a few Scottish words into the original song, Cibber’s ’Twas Past Twelve o’Clock on a Fine Summer Morning. It is probably a song Burns transcribed for publication. After the first four lines the song is so bad that the poet’s authorship must be seriously questioned. Mackay’s notion, ‘That Burns had a hand in this, there can be no doubt’ is, to say the least, highly questionable.

  Galloway Tam

  First printed in S.M.M., 1796.

  O Galloway Tam came here to woo,

  I’d rather we’d gin him the brawnit cow; given

  For our lass Bess may curse and ban

  The wanton wit o Galloway Tam.

  O Galloway Tam came here to shear,

  I’d rather we’d gin him the gude gray mare;

  He kist the gudewife and strack the gudeman,

  And that ’s the tricks o’ Galloway Tam.

  This was unsigned in the S.M.M. A longer version is given by Cromek in his Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song in 1810, suggesting that the work copied by Burns from oral tradition was probably not changed by him.

  As I Cam Down by Yon Castle Wa’

  First printed in S.M.M., 1796.

  As I cam down by yon castle wa’

  And in by yon garden green,

  O there I spied a bony bony lass,

  But the flower-borders were us between.

  5 A bony bony lass she was,

  As ever mine eyes did see;

  O five hundred pound would I give,

  For to have such a pretty bride as thee.

  To have such a pretty bride as me,

  10 Young man ye are sairly mista’en

  Tho ye were king of fair Scotland,

  I wad disdain to be your queen.

  Talk not so high, bony lass,

  O talk not so very, very high;

  15 The man at the fair that wad sell,

  He maun learn at the man that wad buy. must

  I trust to climb a far higher tree,

  And herry a far richer nest;

  Tak this advice o me, bony lass,

  20 Humility wad set thee best.

  This work was unsigned in the S.M.M. Kinsley and Mackay both accept it to the canon although aware that it was probably transcribed by Burns from a traditional Ayrshire folk-song. He probably did no more than send it to Johnson.

  Meg o’ the Mill

  First printed in Johnson’s S.M.M., 1803.

  O ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten?

  An’ ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten?

  A braw new naig wi’ the tail o’ a rottan, horse, rat

  And that’s what Meg o’ the Mill has gotten.

  5 O ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill lo’es dearly,

  An’ ken ye what Meg o’ the Mill lo’es dearly;

  A dram o’ gude strunt in a morning early, spirits

  And that’s what Meg o’ the Mill loe’s dearly!

  O ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was married,

  10 An’ ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was married;

  The Priest he was oxter’d, the Clark he was carried, manhandled

  And that’s how Meg o’ the Mill was married!

  O ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was bedded,

  An’ ken ye how Meg o’ the Mill was bedded;

  15 The groom gat sae fu’ he fell awald beside it,

  And that’s how Meg o’ the Mill was bedded.

  This version again appears to be no more than the traditional song transcribed by Burns. For comparison, see the accepted version of the same name. Kinsley and Mackay print two versions of this song, both remarking that this is a doubtful lyric.

  On Burns’s Horse Being Impounded

  Was e’er puir poet sae befitted,

  The maister drunk – the horse commited?

  Puir harmless beast! tak thee nae care,

  Thou’lt be a horse when he’s nae mair.

  This appears in The Complete Works of Burns (p. 105) by William Gunnyon, published by W.P. Nimmo, Edinburgh, 1865. It is supposed to relate to an incident that occurred in Carlisle when the poet grazed his horse on corporation land and, when he returned, he found the horse had been impounded. It is probably spurious.

  To the Memory of the Unfortunate Miss Burns, 1791

  LIKE to a fading flower in May,

  Which Gardner cannot save

  So Beauty must, sometime, decay

  And drop into the grave.

  Fair Burns, for long the talk and toast

  Of many a gaudy Beau,

  That Beauty has forever lost

  That made each bosom glow.

  Think, fellow sisters, on her fate!

  Think, think how short her days!

  Oh! think, and e’er it be too late,

  Turn from your evil ways.

  Beneath this cold, green sod lies dead

  That once bewitching dame

  That fired Edina’s lustful sons,

  And quench’d their glowing flame.

  There is a very specific context for this poem. Miss Burns was an Edinburgh prostitute brought to legal book. Burns did write to his politically sympathetic Edinburgh bookseller, Peter Hill, about her on 2nd February, 1790. One can hardly imagine that such an anaemic, sentimental poem came from the same pen on the same subject. The edition closes, then, with Burns in a characteristic, outraged cry against hypocrisy in Scottish society. One can hardly think of a more apt conclusion than this:

  What are you doing, and how are you doing? Have you lately seen any of my few friends? What is become of the Borough Reform, or how is the fate of my poor Namesake, Madamois-selle [sic] Burns, decided? Which of their grave Lordships can lay his hand on his heart and say that he has not taken the advantage of such frailty; nay, if we may judge by near six thousand years experience, can the World d
o without such frailty? O Man! but for thee & thy selfish appetites & dishonest artifices, that beauteous form, & that once innocent & still ingenuous mind might have shone conspicuous & lovely in the faithful wife and the affectionate mother; and shall the unfortunate sacrifice to thy pleasures have no claim on thy humanity! As for those flinty-bosomed, puritannic Prosecutors of Female Frailty & Persecutors of Female Charms – I am quite sober – I am dispassionate – to shew you that I am so I shall mend my Pen ere I proceed – It is written, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord they God in vain,” so I shall neither say, G— curse them! nor G— blast them! nor G— damn them! but may Woman curse them! May Woman blast them! May Woman damn them! May her lovely hand inexorably shut the Portal of Rapture to their most earnest Prayers & fondest essays for entrance! And when many years, and much port and great business have delivered them over to Vulture Gouts and Aspen Palsies, then may the dear, bewitching Charmer in derision throw open the blissful Gate to tantalize their impotent desires which like ghosts haunt their bosoms when all their powers to give or receive enjoyment, are for ever asleep in the sepulchre of their fathers!!!