Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
The Canongate Burns (95 page)
Tune: Etterick Banks. First printed by Currie, 1800.
'Twas ev'n, the dewy fields were green,
      On ev'ry blade the pearls hang,
The Zephyr wanton'd round the bean,
      And bore its fragrant sweets alang;
along
5
In ev'ry glen the Mavis sang,
thrush
      All Nature list'ning seem'd the while;
Except where greenwood Echoes rang
      Amang the braes o' Ballochmyle.
hill slopes
With careless step I onward stray'd,
10
      My heart rejoic'd in Nature's joy,
When, musing in a lonely glade,
      A Maiden fair I chanc'd to spy:
Her look was like the Morning's eye,
      Her air like Nature's vernal smile,
15
The lilies' hue and roses' dye
      Bespoke the Lass o Ballochmyle.
Fair is the morn in flow'ry May,
      And sweet an ev'n in Autumn mild;
evening
When roving through the garden gay,
20
      Or wand'ring in the lonely wild;
But Woman, Nature's darling child,
      There all her charms she does compile,
And all her other works are foil'd
      By the bony Lass o' Ballochmyle.
25
O if she were a country Maid,
      And I the happy country Swain!
Though shelter'd in the lowest shed
      That ever rose on Scotia's plain:
Through weary Winter's wind and rain,
30
      With joy, with rapture I would toil,
And nightly to my bosom strain
      The bony Lass o' Ballochmyle.
Then Pride might climb the slipp'ry steep
      Where fame and honours lofty shine:
35
And Thirst of gold might tempt the deep
      Or downward seek the Indian mine:
Give me the Cot below the pine,
      To tend the flocks or till the soil,
And ev'ry day have joys divine
40
      With the bony Lass o' Ballochmyle.Â
While this is, rightly, a much loved, much sung Burns song, the circumstances both surrounding its genesis and fate provide a kind of preliminary caricature of Burns's relationships with upper class women which, in the course of his life, evolve from this near farce to, with Maria Riddell, incipient tragedy. When actually briefly glimpsed on the autumnally wooded banks of Ayr, Miss Willhemina Alexander (1753â1843), sister of the new laird of Ballochmyle, Claud Alexander, was in her thirties, well beyond the usual marriageable age, and advancing towards permanent spinsterhood. Burns rushed home to write the song and on 18th November, 1786 wrote Miss Alexander an accompanying letter. The whole letter should be read as Burns at his excessively sentimental worst when, with the licence and identity of âthe poetic Reveur', he lays down his ill-disguised erotic credentials as âhyperman' of feeling:
⦠the favorite haunts of my Muse, the banks of Ayr⦠The sun was flaming o'er the distant western hills; not a breath stirred the crimson opening blossom, or the verdant spreading leaf. â' Twas a golden moment for a Poetic heart. â I listened the feathered warblers, pouring their harmony on every hand, with a congenial, kindred regard; & frequently turned out of my path, lest I should disturb their little songs, or frighten them to another station. â âSurely,' said I to myself, âhe must be a wretch indeed, who, regardless of your harmonious endeavours to please him, can eye your elusive flights, to discover your secret recesses, and rob you of all the property Nature gives you â your dearest comforts, your helpless little Nestlings' â Even the hoary Hawthorn twig that shot across the way, what heart at such a time, but must have been interested in its welfare, and wished it to be preserved from the rudely browsing cattle, or the withering eastern Blast? â Such was the scene, & such the hour, when in a corner of my prospect, I spied one of the fairest pieces of Nature's workmanship that has ever crowned a Poetic landscape; those visionary Bards excepted, who hold commerce with aerial beings (Letter 56).
Unsurprisingly shaken not stirred by this missive, Miss Alexander allegedly enquired into the nature of her admirer. Again unsurprisingly, reports of his character were such that she decided not to reply. Symptomatic of the nineteenth-century Burns cult, she died in 1843, aged ninety, with song and letter as her most treasured possession. The smart of rejection stayed with Burns to the degree that years later he recorded:
Well, Mr Burns, and
did
the lady give you the desired permission? No! She was too fine a Lady
to notice
so plain a compliment. As to her great brothers, whom I have since met in life on more equal terms of respectability â why should I quarrel their want of attention to me? When Fate swore their purses should be full, Nature was equally positive that their heads should be empty. âMen of their fashion were surely incapable of being impolite?' Ye canna mak a silk-purse o' a sow's lug (Letter 217).
Ll. 15â16, read, in some texts, âPerfection whisper'd, passing byâ/ “Behold the lass o' Ballochmyle!”' The improvement by Burns is adopted above.
First published by Stewart, 1802.
AULD com'rade dear and brither sinner,
old, brother
How 's a' the folk about Glenconner;
all
How do ye this blae eastlin win',
biting, wind
That's like to blaw a body blin':
blow, blind
5
For me my faculties are frozen,
My dearest member nearly dozen'd:
penis, torpid
I've sent you here by Johnie Simson,
1
Twa sage Philosophers to glimpse on!
two
Smith,
wi' his sympathetic feeling,
10
An'
Reid
, to common sense appealing.
Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
An' meikle Greek an' Latin mangled,
much
Till, wi' their Logic-jargon tir'd,
And in the depth of science mir'd,
15
To common sense they now appeal,
What wives and wabsters see an' feel;
weaversÂ
But, hark ye, friend, I charge you strictly,
Peruse them, an' return them quickly;
For now I'm grown sae cursed douse,
so, serious
20
I pray and ponder
butt
the house,
within the
My shins, my lane, I there sit roastin,
alone
Perusing
Bunyan, Brown,
and
Boston;
Till by an' by, if I haud on,
hold/wait
I'll grunt a real Gospel groan:
25
Already I begin to try it,
To cast my een up like a Pyet,
eyes, magpie
When by the gun she tumbles o'er,
Flutt'ring an' gasping in her gore:
Sae shortly you shall see me bright,
so
30
A burning an' a shining light.Â
My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen,
2
good, old
The ace an' wale of honest men;
pick
When bending down wi' auld grey hairs,
old
Beneath the load of years and cares,
35
May He who made him still support him,
An' views beyond the grave comfort him.
His worthy fam'ly far and near,
God bless them a' wi' grace and gear.
wealth
My auld school-fellow, Preacher Willie,
3
old
40
The manly tar, my mason billie,
comrade
An' Auchenbay,
4
I wish him joy;
If he's a parent, lass or boy,
May he be dad, and Meg
5
the mither,
mother
Jus
t
five and forty years thegither!
together
45
An' no forgetting wabster Charlie,
6
weaver
I'm tauld he offers very fairly,
told
An' Lord, remember singing Sannock
7
Wi' hale-breeks, saxpence, an' a bannock;
whole breeches, sixpence
And next, my auld acquaintance, Nancy,
8
50
Since she is fitted to her fancy;
An' her kind stars hae airted till her,
have, given her
A guid chiel wi' a pickle siller:
good man, some money
My kindest, best respects I sen' it,
To cousin Kate an' sister Janet,
55
Tell them frae me, wi' chiels be cautious;
from, men
For, faith they'll aiblins fin' them fashious:
maybe, trouble
To grant a heart is fairly civil,
But to grant a maidenhead's the devil!
An' lastly, Jamie, for yoursel,
60
May guardian angels tak a spell,
An' steer you seven miles south o' Hell;
But first, before you see Heaven's glory,
May ye get mony a merry story,
many
Mony a laugh and mony a drink,
65
And ay eneugh o' needfu' clink.
enough, coins
Now fare ye weel, an' joy be wi' you,
well
For my sake this I beg it o' you,
Assist poor Simson a' ye can,
Ye'll fin' him just an honest man:
find
70
Sae I conclude and quat my chanter,
so, end, song
Yours, saint or sinner,
RAB THE RANTER.
This casual, colloquial rhyming epistle was written in 1786 to James Tennant (1755â1835) of Glenconner who was a miller in Ochiltree. It was his father, John, who advised Burns to take the Ellisland lease. Burns seems to have borne no grudge over this as the poem intimately recalls seemingly the whole Tennant clan. What is of most interest is the opposition Burns builds in the text between Smith and Reid's Enlightenment philosophical texts which he is sending to Tennant and the earlier religous tracts which, left with at home, he is endangering his soul by compulsively reading (ll. 19â30). Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress
was widely disseminated among the Scottish peasantry (David Craig,
Scottish Literature and
the Scottish People
1680â1830, p. 66). John Brown (1722â87) was author of
The Self-Interpreting Bible.
Thomas Boston (1676â1732) was the author of
The Four-fold State of Man.
If proof be further needed, this poems confirms Burns's easy grasp of theological and philosophical issues. Ll. 55â8 reveal Burns in his occasional mood of Polonian prudence.Â
Presented to the Author by a Lady
 First printed circa 1824.
Thou flattering mark of friendship kind
Still may thy pages call to mind
      The dear, the beauteous donor:
Tho' sweetly female every part
5
Yet such a head, and more the heart,
      Does both the sexes honor.
She showed her taste refined and just
      When she selected thee,
Yet deviating own I must,
10
      For so approving me.
But kind still, I mind still,
                  The giver in the gift;
      I'll bless her and wiss her
wish
                  A Friend aboon the Lift.
above, heavens
These lines were written by Burns in a letter to Robert Aitken, in April 1786 (Letter 24). The poet merely refers to the âflattering' he obtained from âMrs C -'s notice'. The identity of Mrs C â who gave Burns a copy of Hannah More's poetry is still unknown. The original text in the book is missing. It would appear from the language of Burns, the lady was aristocratic. Previous editors speculatively list various names as possible candidates.
Jeremiah, chap. 15, verse 10
 First printed by James Hogg, 1835.
Ah, woe is me, my Mother dear!
      A man of strife ye've born me:
For sair contention I maun bear,
sore, must
      hey hate, revile, and scorn me. âÂ
5
I ne'er could lend on bill or band,
bond
      That five per cent might blest me;
And borrowing, on the tither hand,
      The deil a ane wad trust me. â
devil, no one would
Yet I, a coin-denied wight,
10
      By Fortune quite discarded,
Ye see how I am day and night,
      By lad and lass blackguarded. â
miscalled
This is a versification of Biblical prose and clearly alludes to the troubles suffered in 1786 by the poet while the wrangle ensued over his relationship with Jean Armour.