The Canongate Burns (18 page)
Read The Canongate Burns Online
Authors: Robert Burns
SCOTLAND, my auld, respected Mither!
old, mother
Tho' whyles ye moistify your leather,
moisten, vagina
Till whare ye sit on craps o' heather
crops
190
               Ye tine your dam,
lose your water
Freedom and whisky gang thegither,
go together
               Tak aff your dram!
raise up your glass
The extended title which conveys the notion of self-mocking very minor prophetic biblical lamentation and political tract is given, by the parodic use in Milton, an added impulse to see the poem, despite its manifest political content, as laughing and lightweight. Surely the poet, unlike Adam for Eve, is not grieving for a fallen Scotland (
Paradise Lost
, Book IX, ll. 896â901)? The political, economic occasion for the poem was the Wash Act brought in by English pressure in 1784 to prevent what they considered preferential treatment to the Scottish distilling industry. This had not only severe effects on the Scottish whisky industry but was in breach of the terms of the Union and, for Burns, another symptom of the London Parliament's, at best, indifference to Scottish needs. By the time the poem appeared the injustice seemed, as Burns's footnote suggests, to have been corrected: âThis was wrote before the Act anent the Scotch Distilleries of session 1786; for which Scotland and the Author return their most grateful thanks.'
In February, 1789, the matter flared up again. On this occasion Burns chose for the second time to send a pseudonymous letter to the
Edinburgh Evening Courant
on the 9th February. The occasion for his first letter had been his request for compassion for the fallen House of Stuart along with his risky defence of the American Revolution as akin to the British events of 1688. This second letter was signed John Barleycorn and purports, remarkably, to be written on behalf of the Scottish Distillers to William Pitt who, at the time of composition, appears to be about to fall from power due to the Regency Bill as an antidote to the King's madness. The letter is based on the Scottish Distillers' alleged mutual sense of falling with Pitt from power and prosperity to exclusion and poverty. There is also an extraordinary parallel made with King Nebuchadnezzar which is implicitly to be read as Burns's own sense of sharing Pitt's exile. The letter also repeats the poem's allegations of political injustice to Scotland:
But turn your eyes, Sir, to the tragic scenes of our fate. An ancient nation that for many ages had gallantly maintained the unequal struggle for independence with her much more powerful neighbour, at last agrees to a union which should ever after make them one people. In consideration of certain circumstances, it was solemnly covenanted that the Former should
always enjoy a stipulated alleviation of her share of the public burdens, particularly in that branch of the revenue known by the name of the Excise.
This just priviledge has of late given great umbrage to some invidious powerful individuals of the more potent half of the Empire, and they have spared no wicked pains, under insidious pretexts to subvert, what they yet too much dreaded the spirit of their ancient enemies openly to attack.
By this conspiracy we fell; nor did we alone suffer, our Country was deeply wounded. A number of, we will say it, respectable characters largely engaged in trade where we were not only useful but absolutely necessary to our Country in her dearest interest; we, with all that was near and dear to us, were sacrificed without remorse, to the Infernal Deity of Political Expediency (Letter, 311).
Burns's second intrusion into
The Courant
is as seriously meant in national and political terms as his first. The poem, also invoking Pitt, depends on laughter but the comic tone is one that both covertly asserts Burns's satirising superiority to his subject and his ability to give tangible witness to the economic distresses caused by the whisky tax. As well as the machinations of the London Parliament and the betrayals of Scotland therein by her forty-five Commons representatives, he also speculates on the degree to which available Scottish talent could be employed to the Nation's benefit. Not least, running through the poem, are insinuations of ancestral Scottish violence resurrecting itself again to put right political injustice.
The poem begins with the ironic comment that, whilst Irish Lords were allowed to represent Scotland in Parliament, the elder sons of Scottish Peers were not. He then craftily invokes his coarse, arse-in-the-dust muse. As well as the tactical self-denigration of his muse, this allows the poet to distance himself in the wings, putting the muse centre stage. But, at l. 55, this somewhat transparent mask drops and he speaks, again, ironically, self-denigratorily, as himself.
Ll. 13â54 invoke the muse to have the courage to tell the truth about establishment censure by revealing the social dereliction caused by the related excesses of the Excisemen and the Smugglers. He also looks to specifically Ayrshire heroes (See
The Vision
) such as the military Montgomery and the writerly Boswell to save Mother Scotland from dereliction. We get the first suggestion of reactive violence (ll. 59â60), with a vengeful image of choking restriction perpetrated by the poet on his nation's enemies.
The poem is, thus, both an analysis of post-Union Scottish
distress and a thesis about Scottish resurrection based on the available Scottish greatness. In a letter he wrote to Bruce Campbell on November 13th, 1788 he included the poem which he hoped would be passed to James Boswell, thus procuring him an introduction to the great writer:
There are few pleasures my late will-o'-wisp character has given me, equal to that of having seen many of the extraordinary men, the heroes of Wit and Literature in my Country; and as I had the honour of drawing my first breath in almost the same Parish with Mr Boswell, my pride Plumes itself on the connection. To crouch in the train of meer, stupid Wealth & Greatness, except where the commercial interests of worldly Prudence find their account in it, I hold to be Prostitution in any one that is not born a Slave; but to have been acquainted with a man such as Mr Boswell, I would hand down to my Posterity, as one of the honours of their Ancestor (Letter 284).
Boswell received and endorsed the letter (13th Nov 1788, âMr Robert Burns the Poet expressing very high sentiments of me') but made no attempts to meet Burns. Burns's need for redemptive Scottish Heroes, ancestral and contemporary, certainly chose the wrong man in that sycophantic, anglophile prose genius. Also this poem's programme puts together a misalliance of talents who Burns then thought were the rhetorical equals of Demosthenes and Tully, whose eloquence would cause the triumph of Scotland at Saint Stephens, the then site of Parliament. Ll. 73â81 list the candidates allegedly worthy of this task.
That this é lite legal, political corps would co-operate to save Scotland was to prove for Burns the wildest of hopes. By 1795, as his brilliant poem
The Dean of Faculty
reveals, Scotland was tearing itself apart with the brilliant radical Henry Erskine outvoted and ejected from office by Robert Dundas. Henry Dundas, as Pitt's ferociously repressive Home Secretary, was running a fatwah against his radical countrymen.
From ll. 85â100 we have images of Scottish outrage spilling into weapons bearing anarchy with echoes of recent Jacobite incursion. Pitt, auld Boconnocks, is praised for his new methods of taxation. âCommutation' (l. 121) refers to his 1784 Commutation 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. 163â74 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. 181â3) has degenerated to an incontinent crone. Thus, the ultimate toast (ll. 185â6) 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 â 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.
First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
A robe of seeming truth and trust
      Â
Hid crafty observation;
And secret hung, with poison'd crust,
      Â
The dirk of defamation:
A mask that like the gorget show'd,
      Â
Dye-varying on the pigeon;
And for a mantle large and broad,
      Â
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.
fullÂ
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 â 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, â
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, âSweet 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. â '
cannot
Quo' she, an' laughin as she spak,
spoke
       An' taks me by the hands,
âYe, for my sake, hae gi'en the feck
have given, bulk
35
        Of a' the
ten commands
                A screed some day.
rip
âMy name is FUN â your cronie dear,
friend
       The nearest friend ye hae;
have
An' this is SUPERSTITION here,
40
       An' that's HYPOCRISY.
I'm gaun to Mauchline
Holy Fair
,
going
       To spend an hour in daffin:
larking/playing
Gin ye'll go there, yon runkl'd pair,
if, wrinkled
       We will get famous laughin
45
       At them this day.'
Quoth I, âWi' a' my heart, I'll do't;
       I'll get my Sunday's sark on,
shirt
An' meet you on the holy spot;
       Faith, we'se hae fine remarkin!'
we'll have
50
Then I gaed hame at crowdie-time,
went, breakfast/gruel
       An' soon I made me ready;
For roads were clad, frae side to side,
filled
       Wi' monie a wearie body,
many
               In droves that day.
55
Here farmers gash, in ridin graith,
smart, gear
       Gaed hoddan by their cotters;
went jogging, farm workers
There swankies young, in braw braid-claith,
strapping fellows, fine broadcloth
       Are springan owre the gutters.
jumping over
The lasses, skelpan barefit, thrang,
hastening barefoot, crowded
60
       In silks an' scarlets glitter;
Wi'
sweet-milk cheese
, in monie a whang,
many, large slice
       An' farls, bak'd wi' butter,
cakes
               Fu' crump that day.
hard or crisp
When by the
plate
we set our nose,
collection plate
65
       Weel heapè d up wi' ha'pence,
A greedy glowr
Black-bonnet
throws,
stare, Church elder
       An' we maun draw our tippence.
must give
Then in we go to see the show:
       On ev'ry side they're gath'ran;
70
Some carryin dails, some chairs an' stools,
bench planks
       An' some are busy bleth'ran
talking gossip
               Right loud that day.
Here, stands a shed to fend the show'rs,
ward off
       An' screen our countra Gentry;
country
75
There
Racer Jess
, an' twa-three whores,
two or three
       Are blinkan at the entry.
Here sits a raw o' tittlan jads,
giggling girls
       Wi' heavin breasts an' bare neck;
An' there a batch o'
Wabster lads
,
group of weavers
80
        Blackguardin frae Kilmarnock,
mischief making from
               For fun this day.
Here some are thinkan on their sins,
       An' some upo' their claes;
clothes
Ane curses feet that fyl'd his shins,
one, soiled, shoes/feet
85
        Anither sighs an' prays:
another
On this hand sits a Chosen swatch,
sample
       Wi' screw'd-up, grace-proud faces;
On that, a set o' chaps, at watch,
       Thrang winkan on the lasses
busy
90
               To
chairs
that day.
 O happy is that man an' blest!
       Nae wonder that it pride him!
no
Whase ain dear lass, that he likes best,
whose own
       Comes clinkan down beside him!
sitting quickly
95
Wi' arm repos'd on the
chair back
,
       He sweetly does compose him;
Which, by degrees, slips round her
neck
,
       An's loof upon her
bosom
,
hand
             Unkend that day.
unnoticed
Â
Â
100
Now a' the congregation o'er
       Is silent expectation;
For Moodie speels the holy door,
reaches
       Wi' tidings o' damnation:
Should
Hornie
, as in ancient days,
the Devil
105
        'Mang sons o' God present him;
The vera sight o' Moodie's face,
very
      To's ain
het hame
had sent him
to his own hot home
             Wi' fright that day.Â
 Hear how he clears the points o' Faith
110
        Wi' rattlin and thumpin!
Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath,
       He's stampan, an' he's jumpan!
stomping
His lengthen'd chin, his turn'd-up snout,
       His eldritch squeel an' gestures,
unearthly squeal
115
O how they fire the heart devout,
       Like cantharidian plaisters
blister-producing plasters
             On sic a day!
such
But hark! the
tent
has chang'd its voice;
       There's peace an' rest nae langer;
no longer
120
For a' the
real judges
rise,
       They canna sit for anger:
cannot
Smith
opens out his cauld harangues,
cold
       On
practice
and on
morals
;
An' aff the godly pour in thrangs,
off, groups
125
       To gie the jars an' barrels
give
             A lift that day.
to drink
What signifies his barren shine,
       Of
moral pow'rs
an'
reason
;
His English style, an' gesture fine
130
       Are a' clean out o' season.
Like SOCRATES or ANTONINE,
       Or some auld pagan heathen,
old
The moral man
he does define,
       But ne'er a word o'
faith
in
135
             That's right that day.
In guid time comes an antidote
good
       Against sic poison'd nostrum;
such, preaching
For Peebles, frae the water-fit,
from, mouth of the river
       Ascends the
holy rostrum
:
140
See, up he's got the Word o' God,
       An' meek an' mim has view'd it,
While COMMON-SENSE has taen the road,
       An' aff, an' up the
Cowgate
1
              Fast, fast that day.
145
Wee Miller niest, the Guard relieves,
next
       An' Orthodoxy raibles,
recites by rote
Tho' in his heart he weel believes,
well
       An' thinks it auld wives' fables:
old
But faith! the birkie wants a
Manse
:
fellow
150
      So, cannilie he hums them;
carefully he humbugs
Altho' his
carnal
Wit an' Sense
       Like hafflins-wise o'ercomes him
almost half-wise
          At times that day.
Now butt an' ben the Change-house fills,
every corner of the Ale House
155
       Wi'
yill-caup
Commentators:
ale cup
Here's crying out for bakes an' gills,
biscuits
       An' there the pint-stowp clatters;
pint-jug slams
While thick an' thrang, an' loud an' lang,
crowded, long
       Wi'
Logic
an' wi'
Scripture
,
160
They raise a din, that, in the end
noise
       Is like to breed a rupture
              O' wrath that day.
Leeze me on Drink! it gies us mair
my blessings, gives, more
       Than either School or Colledge;
165
It kindles Wit, it waukens Lear,
wakens learning
       It pangs us fou o' Knowledge:
crams, full
Be't
whisky-gill
or
penny wheep
,
small beer costing a penny
       Or onie stronger potion,
any
It never fails, on drinkin deep,
170
       To kittle up our
notion
,
enliven spirits
              By night or day.
The lads an' lasses, blythely bent
       To mind baith
saul
an'
body
,
both soul
Sit round the table, weel content,
well
175
       An' steer about the
Toddy
:
stir
On this ane's dress, an' that ane's leuk,
one's, look
       They're makin observations;
While some are cozie i' the neuk,
cosy, corner
       An' formin
assignations
180
              To meet some day.
But now the Lord's ain trumpet touts,
own, sounds
       Till a' the hills are rairan,
roaring back the echo
And echoes back return the shouts;
       Black Russell is na spairan:
not sparing
185
His piercin words, like Highlan' swords,
       Divide the joints an' marrow;
His talk o' Hell, whare devils dwell,
where
       Our vera âSauls does harrow'
2
very souls
              Wi' fright that day.Â
