MY NANNIE'S AWA

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!OneAe farewell, and then for ever!Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.Who shall say that Fortune grieves himWhile the star of hope she leaves him?Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me,Dark despair around benights me.I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,Naething could resist my Nancy;But to see her was to love her,Love but her, and love for ever.Had we never lov'd sae kindly,Had we never lov'd sae blindly,Never met—or never parted,We had ne'er been broken-hearted.Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!Thine be ilka joy and treasure,everyPeace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure,Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!One

Ae farewell, and then for ever!

Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,

Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him

While the star of hope she leaves him?

Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me,

Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,Naething could resist my Nancy;But to see her was to love her,Love but her, and love for ever.Had we never lov'd sae kindly,Had we never lov'd sae blindly,Never met—or never parted,We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,

Naething could resist my Nancy;

But to see her was to love her,

Love but her, and love for ever.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,

Had we never lov'd sae blindly,

Never met—or never parted,

We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!Thine be ilka joy and treasure,everyPeace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure,Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Fare thee weel, thou first and fairest!

Fare thee weel, thou best and dearest!

Thine be ilka joy and treasure,every

Peace, enjoyment, love, and pleasure,

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;

Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!

Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,

Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays,And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes,hillsidesWhile birds warble welcomes in ilka green shaw;wooded dellBut to me it's delightless—my Nannie's awa.The snawdrap and primrose our woodlands adornAnd violets bathe in the weet o' the morn:wet (dew)They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw,They mind me o' Nannie—and Nannie's awa.Thou laverock, that springs frae the dews o' the lawnlarkThe shepherd to warn o' the grey-breaking dawn,And thou, mellow mavis, that hails the night-fa',thrushGive over for pity—my Nannie's awa.Come, autumn, sae pensive, in yellow and gray,And soothe me wi' tidings o' nature's decay;The dark, dreary winter, and wild-driving snawAlane can delight me—now Nannie's awa.

Now in her green mantle blythe Nature arrays,

And listens the lambkins that bleat o'er the braes,hillsides

While birds warble welcomes in ilka green shaw;wooded dell

But to me it's delightless—my Nannie's awa.

The snawdrap and primrose our woodlands adornAnd violets bathe in the weet o' the morn:wet (dew)They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw,They mind me o' Nannie—and Nannie's awa.

The snawdrap and primrose our woodlands adorn

And violets bathe in the weet o' the morn:wet (dew)

They pain my sad bosom, sae sweetly they blaw,

They mind me o' Nannie—and Nannie's awa.

Thou laverock, that springs frae the dews o' the lawnlarkThe shepherd to warn o' the grey-breaking dawn,And thou, mellow mavis, that hails the night-fa',thrushGive over for pity—my Nannie's awa.

Thou laverock, that springs frae the dews o' the lawnlark

The shepherd to warn o' the grey-breaking dawn,

And thou, mellow mavis, that hails the night-fa',thrush

Give over for pity—my Nannie's awa.

Come, autumn, sae pensive, in yellow and gray,And soothe me wi' tidings o' nature's decay;The dark, dreary winter, and wild-driving snawAlane can delight me—now Nannie's awa.

Come, autumn, sae pensive, in yellow and gray,

And soothe me wi' tidings o' nature's decay;

The dark, dreary winter, and wild-driving snaw

Alane can delight me—now Nannie's awa.

Clarinda, mistress of my soul,The measured time is run!The wretch beneath the dreary poleSo marks his latest sun.To what dark cave of frozen nightShall poor Sylvander hie,Depriv'd of thee, his life and light,The sun of all his joy?We part—but by these precious dropsThat fill thy lovely eyes!No other light shall guide my stepsTill thy bright beams arise.She, the fair sun of all her sex,Has blest my glorious day;And shall a glimmering planet fixMy worship to its ray?

Clarinda, mistress of my soul,The measured time is run!The wretch beneath the dreary poleSo marks his latest sun.

Clarinda, mistress of my soul,

The measured time is run!

The wretch beneath the dreary pole

So marks his latest sun.

To what dark cave of frozen nightShall poor Sylvander hie,Depriv'd of thee, his life and light,The sun of all his joy?

To what dark cave of frozen night

Shall poor Sylvander hie,

Depriv'd of thee, his life and light,

The sun of all his joy?

We part—but by these precious dropsThat fill thy lovely eyes!No other light shall guide my stepsTill thy bright beams arise.

We part—but by these precious drops

That fill thy lovely eyes!

No other light shall guide my steps

Till thy bright beams arise.

She, the fair sun of all her sex,Has blest my glorious day;And shall a glimmering planet fixMy worship to its ray?

She, the fair sun of all her sex,

Has blest my glorious day;

And shall a glimmering planet fix

My worship to its ray?

In the spring of 1788 when Burns married Jean Armour, he took two other steps of the firstimportance for his future career. The Edinburgh period had come and gone, and all that his intercourse with his influential friends had brought him was the four or five hundred pounds of profit from his poems and an opportunity to enter the excise service. With part of the money he relieved his brother Gilbert from pressing obligations at Mossgiel by the loan of one hundred and eighty pounds, and with the rest leased the farm of Ellisland on the bank of the Nith, five or six miles above Dumfries. But before taking up the farm he devoted six weeks or so to tuition in the duties of an exciseman, so that he had this occupation to fall back on in case of another farming failure. During the summer he superintended the building of the farm-house, and in December Jean joined her husband. His satisfaction in his domestic situation is characteristically expressed in a song composed about this time.

I hae a wife o' my ain,I'll partake wi' naebody;I'll tak cuckold frae nane,I'll gie cuckold to naebody.I hae a penny to spend,There—thanks to naebody;I hae naething to lend,I'll borrow frae naebody.I am naebody's lord,I'll be slave to naebody;I hae a guid braid sword,I'll tak dunts frae naebody.blowsI'll be merry and free,I'll be sad for naebody;Naebody cares for me,I care for naebody.

I hae a wife o' my ain,I'll partake wi' naebody;I'll tak cuckold frae nane,I'll gie cuckold to naebody.

I hae a wife o' my ain,

I'll partake wi' naebody;

I'll tak cuckold frae nane,

I'll gie cuckold to naebody.

I hae a penny to spend,There—thanks to naebody;I hae naething to lend,I'll borrow frae naebody.

I hae a penny to spend,

There—thanks to naebody;

I hae naething to lend,

I'll borrow frae naebody.

I am naebody's lord,I'll be slave to naebody;I hae a guid braid sword,I'll tak dunts frae naebody.blows

I am naebody's lord,

I'll be slave to naebody;

I hae a guid braid sword,

I'll tak dunts frae naebody.blows

I'll be merry and free,I'll be sad for naebody;Naebody cares for me,I care for naebody.

I'll be merry and free,

I'll be sad for naebody;

Naebody cares for me,

I care for naebody.

Early in his residence at Ellisland he formed a close relation with a neighboring proprietor, Colonel Robert Riddel. For him he copied into two volumes a large part of what he considered the best of his unpublished verse and prose, thus forming the well-known Glenriddel Manuscript. Had not one already become convinced of the fact from internal evidence, it would be clear enough from this prose volume that Burns's letters were often as much works of art to him as his poems. This is of supreme importance in weighing the epistolary evidence for his character and conduct. Even when his words seem to be the direct outpourings of his feelings—of love, offriendship, of gratitude, of melancholy, of devotion, of scorn—a comparative examination will show that in prose as much as in verse we are dealing with the work of a conscious artist, enamored of telling expression, aware of his reader, and anything but the naif utterer of unsophisticated emotion. To recall this will save us from much perplexity in the interpretation of his words, and will clear up many an apparent contradiction in his evidence about himself.

Burns was never very sanguine about success on the Ellisland farm. By the end of the summer of 1789 he concluded that he could not depend on it, determined to turn it into a dairy farm to be conducted mainly by his wife and sisters, and took up the work in the excise for which he had prepared himself. He had charge of a large district of ten parishes, and had to ride some two hundred miles a week in all weathers. With the work he still did on the farm one can see that he was more than fully employed, and need not wonder that there was little time for poetry. Yet these years at Ellisland were on the whole happy years for himself and his family; he found time for pleasant intercourse with some of his neighbors, for a good deal of letter-writing,for some interest in politics, and for the establishing, with Colonel Riddel, of a small neighborhood library. As an excise officer he seems to have been conscientious and efficient, though at times, in the case of poor offenders, he tempered justice with mercy. Ultimately, despairing of making the farm pay and hoping for promotion in the government service, he gave up his lease, sold his stock, and in the autumn of 1791 moved to Dumfries, where he was given a district which did not involve keeping a horse, and which paid him about seventy pounds a year. Thus ended the last of Burns's disastrous attempts to make a living from the soil.

The house in which the Burnses with their three sons first lived in Dumfries was a three-roomed cottage in the Wee Vennel, now Banks Street. Though his income was small, it must be remembered that the cost of food was low. “Beef was 3d. to 5d. a lb.; mutton, 3d. to 4-1/2d.; chickens, 7d. to 8d. a pair; butter (the lb. of 24 oz.), 7d. to 9d.; salmon, 6d. to 9-1/2d. a lb.; cod, 1d. and even 1/2d. a lb.” Though hardly in easy circumstances then, Burns's situation was suchthat it was possible to avoid his greatest horror, debt.

Meantime, his interest in politics had greatly quickened. He had been from youth a sentimental Jacobite; but this had little effect upon his attitude toward the parties of the day. In Edinburgh he had worn the colors of the party of Fox, presumably out of compliment to his Whig friends, Glencairn and Erskine. During the Ellisland period, however, he had written strongly against the Regency Bill supported by Fox; and in the general election of 1790 he opposed the Duke of Queensberry and the local Whig candidate. But in his early months in Dumfries we find him showing sympathy with the doctrines of the French Revolution, a sympathy which was natural enough in a man of his inborn democratic tendencies. A curious outcome of these was an incident not yet fully cleared up. In February, 1792, Burns, along with some fellow officers, assisted by a body of dragoons, seized an armed smuggling brig which had run aground in the Solway, and on her being sold, he bought for three pounds four of the small guns she carried. These he is said to have presented “to the French Convention,” but theywere seized by the British Government at Dover. As a matter of fact, the Convention was not constituted till September, and the Legislative Assembly which preceded it was not hostile to Britain. Thus, Burns's action, though eccentric and extravagant, was not treasonable in law or in spirit, and does not seem to have entailed on him any unfortunate consequences.

In the course of that year symptoms of the infection of part of the British public with revolutionary principles began to be evident, and the government was showing signs of alarm. The Whig opposition was clamoring for internal reform, and Burns sided more and more definitely with it, and was rash enough to subscribe for a Reform paper calledThe Gazetteer, an action which would have put him under suspicion from his superiors, had it become known. Some notice of his Liberal tendencies did reach his official superiors, and an inquiry was made into his political principles which caused him no small alarm. In a letter to Mr. Graham of Fintry, through whom he had obtained his position, he disclaimed all revolutionary beliefs and all political activity. No action was taken against him, nor was his failure to obtain promotion to an Examinership due to anything but the slow progress involved in promotion by seniority. Hereafter, he exercised considerable caution in the expression of his political sympathies, though he allowed himself to associate with men of revolutionary opinions. The feeling that he was not free to utter what he believed on public affairs was naturally chafing to a man of his independent nature.

Burns's chief enjoyment in these days was the work he was doing for Scottish song. While in Edinburgh he had made the acquaintance of an engraver, James Johnson, who had undertaken the publication of theScots Musical Museum, a collection of songs and music. Burns agreed to help him by the collection and refurbishing of the words of old songs, and when these were impossible, by providing new words for the melodies. The work finally extended to six volumes; and before it was finished a more ambitious undertaking, managed by a Mr. George Thomson, was set on foot. Burns was invited to cooperate in this also, and entered into it with such enthusiasm that he was Thomson's main support. In both of these publications the poet worked purely with patriotic motives and for the love of song, and had no pecuniary interest in either. Once Thomson sent him a present of five pounds and endangered their relations thereby; later, when Burns was in his last illness, he asked and received from Thomson an advance of the same amount. Apart from these sums Burns never made or sought to make a penny from his writings after the publication of the first Edinburgh edition. Twice he declined journalistic work for a London paper. Poetry was the great consolation of his life, and even in his severest financial straits he refused to consider the possibility of writing for money, regarding it as a kind of prostitution.

By the autumn of 1795 signs began to appear that the poet's constitution was breaking down. The death of his daughter Elizabeth and a severe attack of rheumatism plunged him into deep melancholy and checked for a time his song-writing; and though for a time he recovered, his disease returned early in the next year. It seems clear, too, that though the change from Ellisland to Dumfries relieved him of much of the severer physical exertion, other factors more than counterbalanced this relief. Burns had never been a slave to drink for its own sake; it had always been the accompaniment—in those days an almostinevitable accompaniment—of sociability. Some of his wealthier friends in the vicinity were in this respect rather excessive in their hospitality; in Dumfries the taverns were always at hand; and as Burns came to realize the comparative failure of his career as a man, he found whisky more and more a means of escape for depression. Even if we distrust the local gossip that made much of the dissipations of his later years, it appears from the evidence of his physician that alcohol had much to do with the rheumatic and digestive troubles that finally broke him down. In July, 1796, he was sent, as a last resort, to Brow-on-Solway to try sea-bathing and country life; but he returned little improved, and well-nigh convinced that his illness was mortal. His mental condition is shown by the fact that pressure from a solicitor for the payment of a tailor's debt of some seven pounds, incurred for his volunteer's uniform, threw him into a panic lest he should be imprisoned, and his last letters are pitiful requests for financial help, and two notes to his father-in-law urging him to send her mother to Jean, as she was about to give birth to another child. In such harassing conditions he sank into delirium, and died on July 21, 1796.The child, who died in infancy, was born on the day his father was buried.

With Burns's death a reaction in popular opinion set in. He was given a military funeral; and a subscription which finally amounted to one thousand two hundred pounds was raised for his family. The official biography, by Doctor Currie of Liverpool, doubled this sum, so that Jean was enabled to bring up the children respectably, and end her days in comfort. Scotland, having done little for Burns in his life, was stricken with remorse when he died, and has sought ever since to atone for her neglect by an idolatry of the poet and by a more than charitable view of the man.

Three forms of speech were current in Scotland in the time of Burns, and, in different proportions, are current to-day: in the Highlands, north and west of a slanting line running from the Firth of Clyde to Aberdeenshire, Gaelic; in the Lowlands, south and east of the same line, Lowland Scots; over the whole country, among the more educated classes, English. Gaelic is a Celtic language, belonging to an entirely different linguistic group from English, and having close affinities to Irish and Welsh. This tongue Burns did not know. Lowland Scots is a dialect of English, descended from the Northumbrian dialect of Anglo-Saxon. It has had a history of considerable interest. Down to the time of Chaucer, whose influence had much to do with making the Midland dialect the literary standard for the Southern kingdom, it is difficult to distinguish the written language of Edinburghfrom that of York, both being developments of Northumbrian. But as English writers tended more and more to conform to the standard of London, Northern Middle English gradually ceased to be written; while in Scotland, separated and usually hostile as it was politically, the Northern speech continued to develop along its own lines, until in the beginning of the sixteenth century it attained a form more remote from standard English and harder for the modern reader than it had been a century before. The close connection between Scotland and France, continuing down to the time of Queen Mary, led to the introduction of many French words which never found a place in English; the proximity of the Highlands made Gaelic borrowings easy; and the Scandinavian settlements on both coasts contributed additional elements to the vocabulary. Further, in its comparative isolation, Scots developed or retained peculiarities in grammar and pronunciation unknown or lost in the South. Thus by 1550, the form of English spoken in Scotland was in a fair way to become an independent language.

This process, however, was rudely halted by the Reformation. The triumph of this movementin England and its comparative failure in France threw Scotland, when it became Protestant, into close relations with England, while the “auld Alliance” with France practically ended when Mary of Scots returned to her native country. Leaders like John Knox, during the early struggles of the Reformation, spent much time in England; and when they came home their speech showed the effect of their intercourse with their southern brethren of the reformed faith. The language of Knox, as recorded in his sermons and hisHistory, is indeed far from Elizabethan English, but it is notably less “broad” than the Scots of Douglas and Lindesay. Scotland had no vernacular translation of the Bible; and this important fact, along with the English associations of many of the Protestant ministers, finally made the speech of the Scottish pulpit, and later of Scottish religion in general, if not English, at least as purely English as could be achieved.

The process thus begun was carried farther in the next generation when, in 1603, James VI of Scotland became King of England, and the Court removed to London. England at that time was, of course, much more advanced in culture than its poorer neighbor to the north, and the courtierswho accompanied James to London found themselves marked by their speech as provincial, and set themselves to get rid of their Scotticisms with an eagerness in proportion to their social aspirations. Scottish men of letters now came into more intimate relation with English literature, and finding that writing in English opened to them a much larger reading public, they naturally adopted the southern speech in their books. Thus men like Alexander, Earl of Stirling, and William Drummond of Hawthornden belong both in language and literary tradition to the English Elizabethans.

Religion, society, and literature having all thrown their influence against the native speech of Scotland, it followed that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the progressive disuse of that speech among the upper classes of the country, until by the time of Burns, Scots was habitually spoken only by the peasantry and the humbler people in the towns. The distinctions between social classes in the matter of dialect were, of course, not absolute. Occasional members even of the aristocracy prided themselves on their command of the vernacular; and among the country folk there were few who could notmake a brave attempt at English when they spoke with the laird or the minister. With Burns himself, Lowland Scots was his customary speech at home, about the farm, in the tavern and the Freemasons' lodge; but, as we have seen, his letters, being written mainly to educated people, are almost all pure English, as was his conversation with these people when he met them.

The linguistic situation that has been sketched finds interesting illustration in the language of Burns's poems. The distinction which is usually made, that he wrote poetry in Scots and verse in English, has some basis, but is inaccurately expressed and needs qualification. The fundamental fact is that for him Scots was the natural language of the emotions, English of the intellect. The Scots poems are in general better, not chiefly because they are in Scots but because they are concerned with matters of natural feeling; the English poems are in general poetically poorer, not because they are in English but because they are so frequently the outcome of moods not dominated by spontaneous emotion, but intellectual, conscious, or theatrical. He wrote English sometimes as he wore his Sunday blacks, with dignity but not with ease; sometimes as he worethe buff and blue, with buckskins and top-boots, which he donned in Edinburgh—“like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the laird.” In both cases he was capable of vigorous, common-sense expression; in neither was he likely to exhibit the imagination, the tenderness, or the humor which characterized the plowman clad in home-spun.

The Cotter's Saturday Nightis an interesting illustration of these distinctions. The opening stanza is a dedicatory address on English models to a lawyer friend and patron; it is pure English in language, stiff and imitatively “literary” in style. The stanzas which follow describing the homecoming of the cotter, the family circle, the supper, and the daughter's suitor, are in broad Scots, the language harmonizing perfectly with the theme, and they form poetically the sound core of the poem. In the description of family worship, Burns did what his father would do in conducting that worship, adopted English as more reverent and respectful, but inevitably as more restrained emotionally; and in the moralizing passage which follows, as in the apostrophes to Scotia and to the Almighty at the close, he naturally sticks to English, and in spite of a genuineenough exaltation of spirit achieves a result rather rhetorical than poetical.

Contrast again songs likeCorn RigsorWhistle and I'll Come To Thee, My Lad, with most of the songs to Clarinda. The former, in Scots, are genial, whole-hearted, full of the power of kindling imaginative sympathy, thoroughly contagious in their lusty emotion or sly humor. The latter, in English, are stiff, coldly contrived, consciously elegant or marked by the sentimental factitiousness of the affair that occasioned them. But their inferiority is due less to the difference in language than to the difference in the mood. When, especially at a distance, his relation to Clarinda really touched his imagination, we have the genuinely poeticalMy Nannie's AwaandAe Fond Kiss. The latter poem can be, with few changes, turned into English without loss of quality; and its most famous lines have almost no dialect:

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,Had we never lov'd sae blindly,Never met—or never parted,We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,

Had we never lov'd sae blindly,

Never met—or never parted,

We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Finally, there are the English poems to Highland Mary. For some reason not yet fully understood, the affair with Mary Campbell was treated by him in a spirit of reverence little felt in his other love poetry, and this spirit was naturally expressed by him in English. But in the almost English

“Ye banks and braes and streams aroundThe Castle of Montgomery,”

“Ye banks and braes and streams around

The Castle of Montgomery,”

and in the pure EnglishTo Mary in Heaven, he is not at all hampered by the use of the Southern speech, Scots would not have heightened the poetry here, and for Burns Scots would have been less appropriate, less natural even, for the expression of an almost sacred theme.

The case, then, seems to stand thus. Burns commanded two languages, which he employed instinctively for different kinds of subject and mood. The subjects and moods which evoked vernacular utterance were those that with all writers are more apt to yield poetry, and in consequence most of his best poetry is in Scots. But when a theme naturally evoking English was imaginatively felt by him, the use of English did not prevent his writing poetically. And there were themes which he could handle equally wellin either speech—as we see, for example, in the songs inThe Jolly Beggars.

Yet the language had an importance in itself. Though its vocabulary is limited in matters of science, philosophy, religion, and the like, Lowland Scots is very rich in homely terms and in humorous and tender expressions. For love, or for celebrating the effects of whisky, English is immeasurably inferior. The free use of the diminutive termination inieory—a termination capable of expressing endearment, familiarity, ridicule, and contempt as well as mere smallness—not only has considerable effect in emotional shading, but contributes to the liquidness of the verse by lessening the number of consonantal endings that make English seem harsh and abrupt to many foreign ears. Moreover, the very indeterminateness of the dialect, the possibility of using varying degrees of “broadness,” increased the facility of rhyming, and added notably to the ease and spontaneity of composition. Thus in Scots Burns was not only more at home, but had a medium in some respects more plastic than English.

Language, however, was not the only element in his inheritance which helped to determine thenature and quality of Burns's production. He was extremely sensitive to suggestion from his predecessors, and frankly avowed his obligations to them, so that to estimate his originality it is necessary to know something of the men at whose flame he kindled.

As the Northern dialect of English was, before the Reformation, in a fair way to become an independent national speech, so literature north of the Tweed had promise of a development, not indeed independent, but distinct. Of the writers of the Middle Scots period, Henryson and Dunbar, Douglas and Lindesay, Burns, it is true, knew little; and the tradition that they founded underwent in the latter part of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries an experience in many respects parallel to that which has been described in the matter of language. The effect of the Reformation upon all forms of artistic creation will be discussed when we come to speak particularly of the history of Scottish song; for the moment it is sufficient to say that the absorption in theological controversy was unfavorable to the continuation of a poetical development. Under James VI, however, there were a few writers who maintained the tradition, notablyAlexander Montgomery, Alexander Scott, and the Sempills. To the first of these is to be credited the invention of the stanza called, from the poems in which Montgomery used it, the stanza ofThe Banks of Heliconor ofThe Cherry and the Slae. It was imitated by some of Montgomery's contemporaries, revived by Allan Ramsay, and thus came to Burns down a line purely Scottish, as it never seems to have been used in any other tongue. He first employed it in theEpistle to Davie, and it was made by him the medium of some of his most characteristic ideas.

It's no in titles nor in rank:It's no in wealth like Lon'on Bank,To purchase peace and rest.It's no in makin muckle, mair,much, moreIt's no in books, it's no in lear,learningTo make us truly blest:If happiness hae not her seatAn' centre in the breast,We may be wise, or rich, or great,But never can be blest!Nae treasures nor pleasuresCould make us happy lang;Theheart aye'sthe part ayeThat makes us right or wrang.

It's no in titles nor in rank:

It's no in wealth like Lon'on Bank,

To purchase peace and rest.

It's no in makin muckle, mair,much, more

It's no in books, it's no in lear,learning

To make us truly blest:

If happiness hae not her seat

An' centre in the breast,

We may be wise, or rich, or great,

But never can be blest!

Nae treasures nor pleasures

Could make us happy lang;

Theheart aye'sthe part aye

That makes us right or wrang.

The Piper of Kilbarchan, by Sir Robert Sempill of Beltrees (1595?-1661?), set a model forthe humorous elegy on the living which reached Burns through Ramsay and Fergusson, and was followed by him in those on Poor Mailie and Tam Samson. The stanza in which it is written is far older than Sempill, having been traced as far back as the troubadours in the twelfth century, and being found frequently in both English and French through the Middle Ages; but from the time of Sempill on, it was cultivated with peculiar intensity in Scotland, and is the medium of so many of Burns's best-known pieces that it is often called Burns's stanza.

Lament in rhyme, lament in prose,Wi' saut tears tricklin' down your nose;Our Bardie's fate is at a close,Past a' remead;The last, sad cape-stane o' his woe's—Poor Mailie's dead!

Lament in rhyme, lament in prose,

Wi' saut tears tricklin' down your nose;

Our Bardie's fate is at a close,

Past a' remead;

The last, sad cape-stane o' his woe's—

Poor Mailie's dead!

The seventeenth century was a barren one for Scottish literature. The attraction of the larger English public and the disuse of the vernacular among the upper classes already discussed, drew to the South or to the Southern speech whatever literary talent appeared in the North, and it seemed for a time that, except for the obscure stream of folk poetry, Scottish vernacular literature was at an end. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, interest began to revive. In 1706-9-11 James Watson published the three volumes of hisChoice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, and in the third decade began to appear Allan Ramsay'sTea Table Miscellany(1724-40). These collections rescued from oblivion a large quantity of vernacular verse, some of it drawn from manuscripts of pre-Reformation poetry, some of it contemporary, some of it anonymous and of uncertain date, having come down orally or in chap-books and broadsides. The welcome given to these volumes was an early instance of that renewed interest in older and more primitive literature that was manifested still more strikingly when Percy published hisReliques of Ancient English Poetryin 1765. Its influence on the production of vernacular literature was evident at once in the original work of Ramsay himself; and the movement which culminated in Burns, though having its roots far back in the work of Henryson and Dunbar, was in effect a Scottish renascence, in which the chief agents before Burns were Hamilton of Gilbertfield, Ramsay himself, Robert Fergusson, andsong-writers like Mrs. Cockburn and Lady Anne Lindsay.

Of this fact Burns was perfectly aware, and he was not only candid but generous in his acknowledgment of his debt to his immediate predecessors.

My senses wad be in a creel,head would be turnedShould I but dare a hope to speel,climbWi' Allan, or wi' Gilbertfield,The braes o' fame;hillsOr Fergusson, the writer-chiel,lawyer-fellowA deathless name.

My senses wad be in a creel,head would be turned

Should I but dare a hope to speel,climb

Wi' Allan, or wi' Gilbertfield,

The braes o' fame;hills

Or Fergusson, the writer-chiel,lawyer-fellow

A deathless name.

He knew Ramsay's collection and had a perhaps exaggerated admiration forThe Gentle Shepherd. This poem, published in 1728, not only holds a unique position in the history of the pastoral drama, but is important in the present connection as being to Burns the most signal evidence of the possibility of a dignified literature in the modern vernacular. Hamilton and Ramsay had exchanged rhyming epistles in the six-line stanza, and in these Burns found the model for his own epistles. Hamilton'sLast Dying Words of Bonny Heck—a favorite grey-hound—had been imitated by Ramsay inLucky Spence's Last Adviceand theLast Speech of aWretched Miser, and the form had become a Scottish convention before Burns produced hisDeath and Dying Words of Poor Mailie. As important as any of these was the example set by Ramsay and bettered by Burns of refurbishing old indecent or fragmentary songs. Robert Fergusson (1750-1774) was regarded by Burns still more highly than Ramsay, and his influence was even more potent. In his autobiographical letter to Doctor Moore he tells that about 1782 he had all but given up rhyming: “but meeting with Fergusson'sScotch Poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding, rustic lyre with emulating vigour.” In the preface to the Kilmarnock edition he is still more explicit as to his attitude.

“To the poems of a Ramsay, or the glorious dawnings of the poor, unfortunate Fergusson, he, with equal unaffected sincerity, declares, that, even in the highest pulse of vanity, he has not the most distant pretensions. These two justly admired Scotch Poets he has often had in his eye in the following pieces; but rather with a view to kindle at their flame, than for servile imitation.”

To be more specific, Burns found the modelfor hisCotter's Saturday Nightin Fergusson'sFarmer's Ingle, forThe Holy Fairin hisLeith Races, forScotch Drinkin hisCaller Water, forThe Twa DogsandThe Brigs of Ayrin hisPlanestanes and Causey, andKirkyard Eclogues. In later years Burns grew somewhat more critical of Ramsay, especially as a reviser of old songs; but for Fergusson he retained to the end a sympathetic admiration. When he went to Edinburgh, one of his first places of pilgrimage was the grave of him whom he apostrophized thus,

O thou, my elder brother in misfortune,By far my elder brother in the muse!

O thou, my elder brother in misfortune,

By far my elder brother in the muse!

And he later obtained from the managers of the Canongate Kirk permission to erect a stone over the tomb.

The fact, then, that Burns owed much to the tradition of vernacular poetry in Scotland and especially to his immediate predecessors is no new discovery, however recent critics may have plumed themselves upon it. Burns knew it well, and was ever ready to acknowledge it. What is more important than the mere fact of his inheritance is the use he made of it. In taking fromhis elders the fruits of their experience in poetical conception and metrical arrangement, he but did what artists have always done; in outdistancing these elders and in almost every case surpassing their achievement on the lines they had laid down, he did what only the greater artists succeed in doing. It is not in mere inventiveness and novelty but in first-hand energy of conception, in mastering for himself the old thought and the old form and uttering them with his personal stamp, in making them carry over to the reader with a new force or vividness or beauty, that the poet's originality consists. In these respects Burns's originality is no whit lessened by an explicit recognition of his indebtedness to the stock from which he grew.

His relation to the purely English literature which he read is different and produced very different results. Shakespeare he reverenced, and that he knew him well is shown by the frequency of Shakespearean turns of phrase in his letters, as well as by direct quotation. But of influence upon his poetry there is little trace. He had a profound admiration for the indomitable will of Milton's Satan, and he makes it clear that this admiration affected his conduct. The most frequent praise of English writers in his letters is, however, given to the eighteenth-century authors—to Pope, Thomson, Shenstone, Gray, Young, Blair, Beattie, and Goldsmith in verse, to Sterne, Smollett, and Henry Mackenzie in prose. Echoes of these poets are common in his work, and the most frigid of his English verses show their influence most clearly. To the sentimental tendency in the thought of the eighteenth century he was highly responsive, and the expression of it inThe Man of Feelingappealed to him especially. In a mood which recurred painfully often he was apt to pride himself on his “sensibility”: the letters to Clarinda are full of it. The less fortunate effects of it are seen both in his conduct and in his poems in a fondness for nursing his emotions and extracting pleasure from his supposed miseries; the more fortunate aspects are reflected in the tender humanity of poems like thoseTo a Mouse,On Seeing a Wounded Hare, andTo a Daisy—perhaps even in theAddress to the Deil. He had naturally a warm heart and strong impulses; it is only when an element of consciousness or mawkishness appears that his “sensibility” is to be ascribed to the fashionable philosophyof the day and the influence of his English models.

For better or worse, then, Burns belongs to the literary history of Britain as a legitimate descendant of easily traced ancestors. Like other great writers he made original contributions from his individual temperament and from his particular environment and experience. But these do not obliterate the marks of his descent, nor are they so numerous or powerful as to give support to the old myth of the “rustic phenomenon,” the isolated poetical miracle appearing in defiance of the ordinary laws of literary dependence and tradition.

If this is true of his models it is no less true of his methods. Though simplicity and spontaneity are among the most obvious of the qualities of his work, it is not to be supposed that such effects were obtained by a birdlike improvisation. “All my poetry,” he said, “is the effect of easy composition but laborious correction,” and the careful critic will perceive ample evidence in support of the statement. We shall see in the next chapter with what pains he fitted words to melody in his songs; an examination of the variantreadings which make the establishment of his text peculiarly difficult shows abundant traces of deliberation and the labor of the file. In the following song, the first four lines of which are old, it is interesting to note that, though he preserves admirably the tone of the fragment which gave him the impulse and the idea, the twelve lines which he added are in the effects produced by manipulation of the consonants and vowels and in the use of internal rhyme a triumph of conscious artistic skill. The interest in technique which this implies is exhibited farther in many passages of his letters, especially those to George Thomson.

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine,An' fill it in a silver tassie;gobletThat I may drink, before I go,A service to my bonnie lassie.The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith,Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry,fromThe ship rides by the Berwick-law,And I maun leave my bonnie Mary.mustThe trumpets sound, the banners fly,The glittering spears are rankèd ready;The shouts o' war are heard afar,The battle closes thick and bloody;But it's no the roar o' sea or shoreWad mak me langer wish to tarry;Nor shout o' war that's heard afar,It's leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine,

An' fill it in a silver tassie;goblet

That I may drink, before I go,

A service to my bonnie lassie.

The boat rocks at the pier o' Leith,

Fu' loud the wind blaws frae the ferry,from

The ship rides by the Berwick-law,

And I maun leave my bonnie Mary.must

The trumpets sound, the banners fly,The glittering spears are rankèd ready;The shouts o' war are heard afar,The battle closes thick and bloody;But it's no the roar o' sea or shoreWad mak me langer wish to tarry;Nor shout o' war that's heard afar,It's leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.

The trumpets sound, the banners fly,

The glittering spears are rankèd ready;

The shouts o' war are heard afar,

The battle closes thick and bloody;

But it's no the roar o' sea or shore

Wad mak me langer wish to tarry;

Nor shout o' war that's heard afar,

It's leaving thee, my bonnie Mary.

With song-writing Burns began his poetical career, with song-writing he closed it; and, brilliant as was his achievement in other fields, it is as a song-writer that he ranks highest among his peers, it is through his songs that he has rooted himself most deeply in the hearts of his countrymen.

The most notable and significant fact in connection with his making of songs is their relation to the melodies to which they are sung. In the vast majority of cases these are old Scottish tunes, which were known to Burns before he wrote his songs, and were singing in his ear during the process of composition. The poet was no technical musician. Murdoch, his first teacher, says that Robert and Gilbert Burns “were left far behind by all the rest of the school” when he tried to teach them a little church music, “Robert's ear, in particular, was remarkably dull, andhis voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to distinguish one tune from another.” Either Murdoch exaggerated, or the poet's ear developed later (Murdoch is speaking of him between the ages of six and nine); for he learned to fiddle a little, once at least attempted to compose an air, could read music fairly easily, and could write down a melody from memory. His correspondence with Johnson and Thomson shows that he knew a vast number of old tunes and was very sensitive to their individual quality and suggestion.[1]Such a sentence as the following fromone of his Commonplace Books shows how important his responsiveness to music was for his poetical composition.

“These old Scottish airs are so nobly sentimental that when one would compose to them, tosouththe tune, as our Scottish phrase is, over and over, is the readiest way to catch the inspiration and raise the Bard into that glorious enthusiasm so strongly characteristic of our old Scotch Poetry.”

[1]The question of the nature and extent of Burns's musical abilities may be summed up in the words of the latest and most thorough student of his melodies:—“His knowledge of music was in fact elemental; his taste lay entirely in melody, without ever reaching an appreciation of contra-puntal or harmonious music. Nor, although in his youth he had learned the grammar of music and become acquainted with clefs, keys, and notes at the rehearsals of church music, which were in his day a practical part of the education of the Scottish peasantry, did he ever arrive at composition, except in the case of one melody which he composed for a song of his own at the age of about twenty-three, and this melody displeased him so much that he destroyed it and never attempted another. In the same way, although he practised the violin, he did not attain to excellence in execution, his playing being confined to strathspeys and other slow airs of the pathetic kind. On the other hand, his perception and his love of music are undeniable. For example, he possessed copies of the principal collections of Scottish vocal and instrumental music of the eighteenth century, and repeatedly refers to them in the Museum and in his letters. His copy of theCaledonian Pocket Companion(the largest collection of Scottish music), which copy still exists with pencil notes in his handwriting, proves that he was familiar with the whole contents. At intervals in his writings he names at least a dozen different collections to which he refers and from which he quotes with personal knowledge. Also he knew several hundred different airs, not vaguely and in a misty way, but accurately as regards tune, time, and rhythm, so that he could distinguish one from another, and describe minute variations in the several copies of any tune which passed through his hands.... Many of the airs he studied and selected for his verses were either pure instrumental tunes, never before set to words, or the airs (from dance books) of lost songs, with the first lines as titles.”—(James C. Dick,The Songs of Robert Burns, 1903, Preface, pp. viii, ix.)

Again, once when Thomson had sent him a tune to be fitted with words, he replied:

“Laddie lie near memustlie by mefor some time. I do not know the air; and until I am complete master of a tune in my own singing (such as it is), I never can compose for it. My way is: I consider the poetic sentiment correspondent to my idea of the musical expression; then choose my theme; begin one stanza; when that is composed, which is generally the most difficult partof the business, I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for subjects in nature around me that are in unison and harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. When I feel my muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and then commit my effusion to paper; swinging at intervals on the hindlegs of my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures as my pen goes on. Seriously, this at home is almost invariably my way.” [September, 1793.]

His wife, who had a good voice and a wide knowledge of folk-song, seems often to have been of assistance, and a further interesting detail is given by Sir James Stuart-Menteath from the evidence of a Mrs. Christina Flint.

“When Burns dwelt at Ellisland, he was accustomed, after composing any of his beautiful songs, to pay Kirsty a visit, that he might hear them sung by her. He often stopped her in the course of the singing when he found any word harsh and grating to his ear, and substituted onemore melodious and pleasing. From Kirsty's extensive acquaintance with the old Scottish airs, she was frequently able to suggest to the poet music more suitable to the song she was singing than that to which he had set it.”

Kirsty and Jean were not his only aids in the criticism of the musical quality of his songs. From the time of the Edinburgh visit, at least, he was in the habit of seizing the opportunity afforded by the possession of a harpsichord or a good voice by the daughters of his friends, and in several cases he rewarded his accompanist by making her the heroine of the song. Without drawing on the evidence of parallel phenomena in other ages and literatures, we can be sure enough that this persistent consciousness of the airs to which his songs were to be sung, and this critical observation of their fitness, had much to do with the extraordinary melodiousness of so many of them.

We have seen that Burns received an important impulse to productiveness through his cooperation in the compiling of two national song collections. James Johnson, the editor of the first of these, was an all but illiterate engraver,ill-equipped for such an undertaking; and as the work grew in scale until it reached six volumes, Burns became virtually the editor—even writing the prefaces to several of the volumes. George Thomson, the editor of the other,A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, was a government clerk, an amateur in music, of indifferent taste and with a preference for English to the vernacular. In his collection the airs were harmonized by Pleyel, Kozeluch, Haydn, and Beethoven; and he had the impudence to meddle with the contributions both of Burns and of the eminent composers who arranged the melodies. Nothing is more striking than the patience and modesty of Burns in tolerating the criticism and alterations of Thomson. The main purpose in bothThe Scots Musical Museumand theSelect Collectionwas the preservation of the national melodies, but when the editors came to seek words to go with them they found themselves confronted with a difficult problem. To understand its nature, it will be necessary to extend our historical survey.

In addition to the effects of the Reformation in Scotland already indicated, there was another even more serious for arts and letters. The reaction against Catholicism in Scotland was peculiarly violent, and the form of Protestantism which replaced it was extremely puritanical. In the matter of intellectual education, it is true, Knox's ideas and institutions were enlightened, and have borne important fruit in making prevail in his country an uncommonly high level of general education and a reverence for learning. But on the artistic side the reformed ministers were the enemies not only of everything that suggested the ornateness of the old religion, but of beauty in every form. Under their influence, an influence extraordinarily pervasive and despotic, art and song were suppressed, and Scotland was left a very mirthless country, absorbed in theological and political discussion, and having little outlet for the instinct of sport except heresy-hunting.

Such at least seemed to be the case on the surface. But human nature is not to be totally changed even by such a force as the Reformation. Especially among the peasantry occasions recurred—weddings, funerals, harvest-homes, New-Year's Eves, and the like—when, the minister being at a safe distance and whisky having relaxed the awe of the kirk session, the “wee sinfu'fiddle” was produced, and song and the dance broke forth. It was under such clandestine conditions that the traditional songs of Scotland had been handed down for some generations before Burns's day, and the conditions had gravely affected their character. The melodies could not be stained, but the words had degenerated until they had lost most of whatever imaginative quality they had possessed, and had acquired instead only grossness.

Such words, it was clear, Johnson could not use in hisMuseum, and the discovery of Burns was to him the most extraordinary good fortune. For Burns not only knew, as we have seen, the old songs—words and airs—by the score, but was able to purify, complete, or replace the words according to the degree of their corruption. Various poets have caught up scraps of folk-song and woven them into their verse; but nowhere else has a poet of the people appeared with such a rare combination of original genius and sympathetic feeling for the tone and accent of the popular muse, as enabled Burns to recreate Scottish song. If patriotic Scots wish to justify the achievement of Burns on moral grounds, it is here that their argument lies: for whatever of coarseness and license there may have been in his life and writings, it is surely more than counter-balanced by the restoration to his people of the possibility of national music and clean mirth.

One can not classify the songs of Burns into two clearly separated groups, original and remodeled, for no hard lines can be drawn. Since he practically always began with the tune, he frequently used the title or the first line of the old song. He might do this, yet completely change the idea; or he might retain the idea but use none of the old words. In other cases the first stanza or the chorus is retained; in still others the new song is sprinkled with here a phrase and there an epithet recalling the derelict that gave rise to it. Some are made up of stanzas from several different predecessors, others are almost centos of stock phrases.

The contribution thus made to Johnson's collection, of songs rescued or remade or wholly original, amounted to some one hundred eighty-four; to Thomson's about sixty-four. Some examples will make clear the nature of his services.

Auld Lang Syne, perhaps the most wide-spread of all songs among the English-speaking peoples,is in its oldest extant form attributed on uncertain grounds to Francis Sempill of Beltrees or Sir Robert Aytoun.[2]That still older forms had existed appears from its title in the broadside in which it is preserved:

“An excellent and proper new ballad, entitled Old Long Syne. Newly corrected and amended, with a large and new edition [sic] of several excellent love lines.”

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