in Muir’s account. First, the power of folklore is present in the poem though not, say, as we find its direct intrusion as in the great Scottish Ballad tradition, so beloved by Muir, but in Burns’s ambivalent treatment of it. As he wrote to Dr Moore:
I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of Philosophy to shake of these idle terrors (Letter 125).
What we see in this particular poem from ll. 5–84 is no simple send-up of foolishly atavistic folk-superstition. Not only is Burns intent on anthropologically recording, as in Halloween, the customs and beliefs of his rural community but, as in Tam o’Shanter, conveying the still ‘eerie’ potency of that world. (See Edward J. Cowan, ‘Burns and Superstition’, Love and Liberty, pp. 229–37.) He is also, as usual, making salacious jokes inspired by the bottomless well of sexual metaphor supplied to him by folk-tradition. Hugh Blair wanted ll. 61–6 deleted as ‘indecent’ because they depend on the identification of lume/loom with the penis. (See BC, 1932, p. 95.)
Muir, however, is absolutely wrong in thinking that it is the diminished power of Calvinism on the Scottish psyche that leads to the poem’s, to him, lightweight tone. This is a particularly weird error in Muir, who more than any other figure in a profoundly anti-Calvinist, Scottish Renaissance group believed that Knox (of whom he actually wrote a biography) had not lost his sadistic, disintegrating grip on the Scottish soul. Further, that Scottish reintegration meant a return to catholic, European humanism.
Burns is certainly partly laughing at the Devil in the poem’s opening sequences (ll. 1–24) by the reductive ridicule of reducing the devil’s energies to being devoted to the poet’s petty transgressions. The Devil, however, is not for his own sake being laughed out of court. Burns’s poetic wit is in direct proportion to his most potent enemies. The enemy here is not the devil but those who seek demonically to control mankind in his name. For their power structure to remain intact the Devil could not be allowed to become a laughing matter. This is why, even more than the more personally abusive clerical satires, this poem caused such an outcry. As Carol McGuirk finely writes:
A ringing blow in Burns’s quarrel with the Auld Licht, this satire caused a major local scandal. Several of the anonymous contributors to Animadversions, James Maxwell’s compilation of evangelical attacks on Burns (Paisley, 1788), saw this poem as final proof of Burns’s evil values. Alexander (‘Saunders’) Tait of Tarbolton, a mantua-maker and tailor who considered himself Burns’s equal as a satirist, also seized upon this as Burns’s most shocking poem, publishing his attack in 1790.
Burns intended it to shock, and so structures the poem round what any Auld Licht partisan would see as a heretical statement of Arminianism: the deil’s long-ago invasion of Eden only ‘almost’ ‘ruined all’ for Adam and Eve (l. 96): the stain of sin is not ineradicable and even Satan (if he wished) could ‘tak a thought’ and mend=change and receive forgiveness. Burns’s ‘deil’ is neither the sadistic demon of Auld Licht sermons nor the tragic hero Milton’s Satan considered himself to be. A rather forlorn and unsuccessful mischief-maker, his smudged (‘smoutie’) face ashy from brimstone and his plots against humanity invariably thwarted, the deil is addressed more or less as just another ‘poor, damned body’. The poet is dramatising his rejection of predestination. The Arminians had challenged Calvinist ‘election’ (salvation through grace alone, not human effort) but Burns focuses on its corollary—repudiation, a doctrine that insisted that the reprobated are eternally cast away from grace, whatever their benighted individual efforts to be (and do) good. Burns, by contrast, announces that he considers himself salvageable (ll. 119–20) –andif ‘a certain Bardie’ can besaved, then there must be hope for a mere devil. The poet is paying a backhanded compliment to his own sinfulness as he mocks the Auld Licht. No one – not even the deil – is all bad and forever incapable of change, the poem argues with a cheerful perversity that enraged the Auld Licht. A more orthodox point is also made: hope of heaven is more likely to convert sinners than fear of damnation. (pp. 233–4)
The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie,
The Author’s Only Pet Yowe: An Unco Mournfu’ Tale
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
As MAILIE, an’ her lambs thegither, together
Was ae day nibblin on the tether, one day, chewing
Upon her cloot she coost a hitch, hoof, looped
An’ owre she warsl’d in the ditch: over, floundered
5 There, groanin, dying, she did ly,
When Hughoc he cam doytan by. walking/staggering
Wi’ glowrin een, an’ lifted han’s staring eyes
Poor Hughoc like a statue stan’s;
He saw her days were near hand ended,
10 But, wae’s my heart! he could na mend it! woe, not
He gaped wide, but naething spak. nothing spoke
At length poor Mailie silence brak: — broke
‘O thou, whase lamentable face whose
Appears to mourn my woefu’ case!
15 My dying words attentive hear,
An’ bear them to my Master dear.
‘Tell him, if e’er again he keep
As muckle gear as buy a sheep, much money
O, bid him never tie them mair, more
20 Wi’ wicked strings o’ hemp or hair!
But ca’ them out to park or hill, call/drive
An’ let them wander at their will:
So may his flock increase, an’ grow
To scores o’ lambs, an’ packs o’ woo’!
25 ‘Tell him, he was a Master kin’, kind
An’ ay was guid to me an’ mine; good
An’ now my dying charge I gie him, give
My helpless lambs, I trust them wi’ him. with
‘O, bid him save their harmless lives,
30 Frae dogs, an’ tods, an’ butchers’ knives! from, foxes
But gie them guid cow-milk their fill, give, good
Till they be fit to fend themsel; themselves
An’ tent them duely, e’en an’ morn, tend
Wi’ taets o’ hay an’ ripps o’ corn. small amounts, handfuls
35 ‘An’ may they never learn the gaets, ways
Of ither vile, wanrestfu’ Pets — other, restless
To slink thro’ slaps, an’ reave an’ steal, gaps in
