on bonie DOON!
An’ wha on AIRE your chanters tune! who, Ayr, bagpipes
45 Come, join the melancholious croon
O’ Robin’s reed!
His heart will never get aboon! above/over
His Mailie’s dead!
This was probably written in 1785–6 as a companion piece for publication with the preceding Mailie monologue. Again the tone of the poem is mixed. Burns employs the six-line Standard Habbie used in vernacular eighteenth-century elegy while partly parodying the content of these poems. His most specified source is probably Fergusson’s Elegy on the Death of Mr David Gregory with its repetitive end-line ‘Sin Gregory’s dead’. He is also partly sending up his own emotions. This is emphasised by the recent discovery from a London saleroom catalogue for May 1962 of an hitherto unknown last stanza:
She was nae get o’ runted rams,
Wi’ woo’ like goat’s an’ legs like trams;
She was the flower o’ Fairlee lambs,
A famous breed:
Now Robin, greetin’, chows the hams
O’ Mailie dead.
This peasant practicality would have been too much for his genteel audience. On the other hand, there is real affection for its pedigree beauty. This was the man who was still surrounding himself with pet sheep at Ellisland. Further, as in his mouse poem, the lives of men and beasts are both brutally intruded upon not only by lethal elemental forces but by human-inspired, cruel economic and political forces. The accidentally throttled beast has its more sinister legally garrotted human counterpart:
Wae worth the man wha first did shape
That vile chancie thing – a rape!
It maks guid fellows girn an’ gape,
Wi’ chokin dread …
Epistle to James Smith
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Friendship, mysterious cement of the soul!
Sweet’ner of Life, and solder of Society!
I owe thee much.
– BLAIR
Dear Smith, the sleest, pawkie thief, slyest, cunning
That e’er attempted stealth or rief! robbery/plunder
Ye surely hae some warlock-breef have, wizard-spell
Owre human hearts; over
5 For ne’er a bosom yet was prief proof
Against your arts.
For me, I swear by sun an’ moon,
And ev’ry star that blinks aboon, above
Ye’ve cost me twenty pair o’ shoon, shoes
10 Just gaun to see you; going
And ev’ry ither pair that’s done, other
Mair taen I’m wi’ you. more taken
That auld, capricious carlin, Nature, hag
To mak amends for scrimpit stature, make, stunted
15 She’s turn’d you off, a human-creature
On her first plan;
And in her freaks, on ev’ry feature
She’s wrote the Man.
Just now I’ve taen the fit o’ rhyme, taken
20 My barmie noddle’s working prime, excited head/brain
My fancy yerket up sublime, pulled together
Wi’ hasty summon:
Hae ye a leisure-moment’s time have
To hear what’s comin?
25 Some rhyme a neebor’s name to lash; neighbour
Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu’ cash;
Some rhyme to court the countra clash, country gossip
An’ raise a din;
For me, an aim I never fash; think of
30 I rhyme for fun.
The star that rules my luckless lot,
Has fated me the russet coat, poor man’s coat
An’ damn’d my fortune to the groat; smallest coin
But, in requit, as compensation
35 Has blest me with a random-shot
O’ countra wit. country
This while my notion’s taen a sklent, taken a turn/bend
To try my fate in guid, black prent; good, print
But still the mair I’m that way bent, more
40 Something cries, ‘Hoolie! halt
I red you, honest man, tak tent! warn, heed
Ye’ll shaw your folly: show
‘There’s ither Poets, much your betters, other
Far seen in Greek, deep men o’ letters, well versed
45 Hae thought they had ensur’d their debtors, have
A’ future ages;
Now moths deform, in shapeless tatters,
Their unknown pages.’
Then farewell hopes o’ Laurel-boughs
50 To garland my poetic brows!
Henceforth, I’ll rove where busy ploughs
Are whistling thrang; busily/at work
An’ teach the lanely heights an’ howes lonely hills and dales
My rustic sang. song
55 I’ll wander on, wi’ tentless heed carefree
How never-halting moments
