Act which diverted tax from tea to windows. Fox, at this time is still for Burns merely a licentious nuisance. After another invocation of Scottish capacity for violence, he ends by requesting the 45 MPs to support their Nation. His actual hopes of their doing so is summed up in a brilliantly ironic last stanza where he envisages these pursy placemen subsisting on the diet and in the rags of Scottish peasantry among the temptations of St James’s in London.
This level of irony is sustained in the quite brilliantly subtle seven-stanza Postscript which Burns adds to the poem. Carol McGuirk suggests that this should be read as the Poet’s first address to Parliament. On the face of it, derived from Enlightenment theories that national character is the product of climate and environment, the poem seems to be a celebration of Scottish machismo and militarism over the cowardice inherent to the wine drinking peasantry of warmer climes. This apparent celebration of Scottish militarism is, however, immediately, devastatingly undercut. Ll. 163–74 are an astonishingly compressed denunciation of the savage, self-destructive consequences to the unaware Highlanders of their post-Culloden integration into British Imperial armies. Equally dark for Scotland is the fact that the feminine part of the nation (ll. 181–3) has degenerated to an incontinent crone. Thus, the ultimate toast (ll. 185–6) is the blackest irony.
N.B. Stanza 15 here is not included in Kinsley. There is also a variation in the last stanza.
1 This was written before the Act anent the Scotch Distilleries of session 1786; for which Scotland and the Author return their most grateful thanks. R.B.
1 George Dempster, mentioned in The Vision.
2 Sir Adam Ferguson.
3 James Graham, Son of the Duke of Montrose.
4 Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville.
5 Thomas Erskine, M.P., brother of Henry Erskine.
6 Frederick Campbell and Ilay Campbell.
7 Sir William Cunninghame of Livingston.
8 Classical rhetorical orators – colloquial for Cicero.
9 Hugh Montgomerie, Earl of Eglinton.
10 Leader of the Whig Opposition.
11 An allusion to William Pitt’s grandfather, Robert.
12 A worthy old Hostess of the Author’s in Mauchline, where he sometimes studies Politics over a glass of guid auld Scotch Drink. R.B.
The Holy Fair
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
A robe of seeming truth and trust
Hid crafty observation;
And secret hung, with poison’d crust,
The dirk of defamation:
A mask that like the gorget show’d,
Dye-varying on the pigeon;
And for a mantle large and broad,
He wrapt him in Religion.
Tom Brown, Hypocrisy A-La-Mode.
Upon a simmer Sunday morn, summer
When Nature’s face is fair,
I walked forth to view the corn,
An’ snuff the callor air: fresh
5 The rising sun, owre GALSTON Muirs, over, moors
Wi’ glorious light was glintan;
The hares were hirplan down the furs, hobbling with uneven speed, furrows
The lav’rocks they were chantan larks
Fu’ sweet that day. full
10 As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad,
To see a scene sae gay, so
Three hizzies, early at the road, young wenches
Cam skelpan up the way. came hurrying
Twa had manteeles o’ dolefu’ black, two, mantles
15 But ane wi’ lyart lining; one, grey
The third, that gaed a wee aback, went, behind
Was in the fashion shining
Fu’ gay that day. full
The twa appear’d like sisters twin, two
20 In feature, form, an’ claes; clothes
Their visage — wither’d, lang an’ thin, long
An’ sour as onie slaes: any sloes
The third cam up, hap-step-an’-lowp, hop-step-and-leap
As light as onie lambie, — any lamb
25 An’ wi’ a curchie low did stoop, curtsey
As soon as e’er she saw me,
Fu’ kind that day.
Wi’ bonnet aff, quoth I, ‘Sweet lass, off
I think ye seem to ken me; know
30 I’m sure I’ve seen that bonie face, pretty
But yet I canna name ye. — ’ cannot
Quo’ she, an’ laughin as she spak, spoke
An’ taks me by the hands,
‘Ye, for my sake, hae gi’en the feck have given, bulk
35 Of a’ the ten commands
A screed some day. rip
‘My name is FUN — your cronie dear, friend
The
