[To enthusiastic fits of
admiration
for the young and the beautiful,
such as Burns has expressed in this letter, he loved to give way:--we
owe some of his best songs to these sallies.
such as Burns has expressed in this letter, he loved to give way:--we
owe some of his best songs to these sallies.
Robert Burns
Davies, of
Tenby, in Pembrokeshire: she was related to the Riddels of Friar's
Carse, and one of her sisters married Captain Adam Gordon, of the
noble family of Kenmure. She had both taste and skill in verse. ]
It is impossible, Madam, that the generous warmth and angelic purity
of your youthful mind, can have any idea of that moral disease under
which I unhappily must rank us the chief of sinners; I mean a
torpitude of the moral powers, that may be called, a lethargy of
conscience. In vain Remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all
her snakes; beneath the deadly fixed eye and leaden hand of Indolence,
their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering
out the rigours of winter, in the chink of a ruined wall. Nothing
less, Madam, could have made me so long neglect your obliging
commands. Indeed I had one apology--the bagatelle was not worth
presenting. Besides, so strongly am I interested in Miss Davies's fate
and welfare in the serious business of life, amid its chances and
changes, that to make her the subject of a silly ballad is downright
mockery of these ardent feelings; 'tis like an impertinent jest to a
dying friend.
Gracious Heaven! why this disparity between our wishes and our powers?
Why is the most generous wish to make others blest, impotent and
ineffectual--as the idle breeze that crosses the pathless desert! In
my walks of life I have met with a few people to whom how gladly would
I have said--"Go, be happy! I know that your hearts have been wounded
by the scorn of the proud, whom accident has placed above you--or
worse still, in whose hands are, perhaps, placed many of the comforts
of your life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look
justly down on their littleness of soul. Make the worthless tremble
under your indignation, and the foolish sink before your contempt; and
largely impart that happiness to others, which, I am certain, will
give yourselves so much pleasure to bestow. "
Why, dear Madam, must I wake from this delightful revery, and find it
all a dream? Why, amid my generous enthusiasm, must I, find myself
poor and powerless, incapable of wiping one tear from the eye of pity,
or of adding one comfort to the friend I love! --Out upon the world,
say I, that its affairs are administered so ill! They talk of
reform;--good Heaven! what a reform would I make among the sons and
even the daughters of men! --Down, immediately, should go fools from
the high places, where misbegotten chance has perked them up, and
through life should they skulk, ever haunted by their native
insignificance, as the body marches accompanied by its shadow. --As for
a much more formidable class, the knaves, I am at a loss what to do
with them: had I a world, there should not be a knave in it.
But the hand that could give, I would liberally fill: and I would pour
delight on the heart that could kindly forgive, and generously love.
Still the inequalities of life are, among men, comparatively
tolerable--but there is a delicacy, a tenderness, accompanying every
view in which we can place lovely Woman, that are grated and shocked
at the rude, capricious distinctions of fortune. Woman is the
blood-royal of life: let there be slight degrees of precedency among
them--but let them be ALL sacred. --Whether this last sentiment be
right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original component
feature of my mind.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXV.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[Burns, says Cromek, acknowledged that a refined and accomplished
woman was a being all but new to him till he went to Edinburgh, and
received letters from Mrs. Dunlop. ]
_Ellisland, 17th December, 1791. _
Many thanks to you, Madam, for your good news respecting the little
floweret and the mother-plant. I hope my poetic prayers have been
heard, and will be answered up to the warmest sincerity of their
fullest extent; and then Mrs. Henri will find her little darling the
representative of his late parent, in everything but his abridged
existence.
I have just finished the following song, which to a lady the
descendant of Wallace--and many heroes of his true illustrious
line--and herself the mother of several soldiers, needs neither
preface nor apology.
_Scene_--_a field of battle_--_time of the day, evening;
the wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to
join in the following_
SONG OF DEATH.
Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies
Now gay with the bright setting sun;
Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties--
Our race of existence is run!
The circumstance that gave rise to the foregoing verses was, looking
over with a musical friend M'Donald's collection of Highland airs, I
was struck with one, an Isle of Skye tune, entitled "Oran and Aoig,
or, The Song of Death," to the measure of which I have adapted my
stanzas. I have of late composed two or three other little pieces,
which, ere yon full-orbed moon, whose broad impudent face now stares
at old mother earth all night, shall have shrunk into a modest
crescent, just peeping forth at dewy dawn, I shall find an hour to
transcribe for you. _A Dieu je vous commende. _
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[That the poet spoke mildly concerning the rebuke which he received
from the Excise, on what he calls his political delinquencies, his
letter to Erskine of Mar sufficiently proves. ]
_5th January, 1792. _
You see my hurried life, Madam: I can only command starts of time;
however, I am glad of one thing; since I finished the other sheet, the
political blast that threatened my welfare is overblown. I have
corresponded with Commissioner Graham, for the board had made me the
subject of their animadversions; and now I have the pleasure of
informing you, that all is set to rights in that quarter. Now as to
these informers, may the devil be let loose to ---- but, hold! I was
praying most fervently in my last sheet, and I must not so soon fall a
swearing in this.
Alas! how little do the wantonly or idly officious think what mischief
they do by their malicious insinuations, indirect impertinence, or
thoughtless blabbings. What a difference there is in intrinsic worth,
candour, benevolence, generosity, kindness,--in all the charities and
all the virtues, between one class of human beings and another! For
instance, the amiable circle I so lately mixed with in the hospitable
hall of Dunlop, their generous hearts--their uncontaminated dignified
minds--their informed and polished understandings--what a contrast,
when compared--if such comparing were not downright sacrilege--with
the soul of the miscreant who can deliberately plot the destruction of
an honest man that never offended him, and with a grin of satisfaction
see the unfortunate being, his faithful wife, and prattling innocents,
turned over to beggary and ruin!
Your cup, my dear Madam, arrived safe. I had two worthy fellows dining
with me the other day, when I, with great formality, produced my
whigmeeleerie cup, and told them that it had been a family-piece among
the descendants of William Wallace. This roused such an enthusiasm,
that they insisted on bumpering the punch round in it; and by and by,
never did your great ancestor lay a _Suthron_ more completely to rest,
than for a time did your cup my two friends. Apropos, this is the
season of wishing. My God bless you, my dear friend, and bless me, the
humblest and sincerest of your friends, by granting you yet many
returns of the season! May all good things attend you and yours
wherever they are scattered over the earth!
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXVII.
TO MR. WILLIAM SMELLIE,
PRINTER.
[When Burns sends his warmest wishes to Smellie, and prays that
fortune may never place his subsistence at the mercy of a knave, or
set his character on the judgment of a fool, he had his political
enemies probably in his mind. ]
_Dumfries, 22d January, 1792. _
I sit down, my dear Sir, to introduce a young lady to you, and a lady
in the first ranks of fashion too. What a task! to you--who care no
more for the herd of animals called young ladies, than you do for the
herd of animals called young gentlemen. To you--who despise and detest
the groupings and combinations of fashion, as an idiot painter that
seems industrious to place staring fools and unprincipled knaves in
the foreground of his picture, while men of sense and honesty are too
often thrown in the dimmest shades. Mrs. Riddel, who will take this
letter to town with her, and send it to you, is a character that, even
in your own way, as a naturalist and a philosopher, would be an
acquisition to your acquaintance. The lady, too, is a votary to the
muses; and as I think myself somewhat of a judge in my own trade, I
assure you that her verses, always correct, and often elegant, are
much beyond the common run of the _lady-poetesses_ of the day. She is
a great admirer of your book; and, hearing me say that I was
acquainted with you, she begged to be known to you, as she is just
going to pay her first visit to our Caledonian capital. I told her
that her best way was, to desire her near relation, and your intimate
friend, Craigdarroch, to have you at his house while she was there;
and lest you might think of a lively West Indian girl, of eighteen, as
girls of eighteen too often deserve to be thought of, I should take
care to remove that prejudice. To be impartial, however, in
appreciating the lady's merits, she has one unlucky failing: a failing
which you will easily discover, as she seems rather pleased with
indulging in it; and a failing that you will easily pardon, as it is a
sin which very much besets yourself;--where she dislikes, or despises,
she is apt to make no more a secret of it, than where she esteems and
respects.
I will not present you with the unmeaning _compliments of the season_,
but I will send you my warmest wishes and most ardent prayers, that
Fortune may never throw your subsistence to the mercy of a Knave, or
set your character on the judgment of a Fool; but that, upright and
erect, you may walk to an honest grave, where men of letters shall
say, here lies a man who did honour to science, and men of worth shall
say, here lies a man who did honour to human nature.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXVIII.
TO MR. W. NICOL.
[This ironical letter was in answer to one from Nicol, containing
counsel and reproof. ]
_20th February, 1792. _
O thou, wisest among the wise, meridian blaze of prudence, full-moon
of discretion, and chief of many counsellors! How infinitely is thy
puddle-headed, rattle-headed, wrong-headed, round-headed slave
indebted to thy supereminent goodness, that from the luminous path of
thy own right-lined rectitude, thou lookest benignly down on an erring
wretch, of whom the zig-zag wanderings defy all the powers of
calculation, from the simple copulation of units, up to the hidden
mysteries of fluxions! May one feeble ray of that light of wisdom
which darts from thy sensorium, straight as the arrow of heaven, and
bright as the meteor of inspiration, may it be my portion, so that I
may be less unworthy of the face and favour of that father of proverbs
and master of maxims, that antipode of folly, and magnet among the
sages, the wise and witty Willie Nicol! Amen! Amen! Yea, so be it!
For me! I am a beast, a reptile, and know nothing! From the cave of my
ignorance, amid the fogs of my dulness, and pestilential fumes of my
political heresies, I look up to thee, as doth a toad through the
iron-barred lucerne of a pestiferous dungeon, to the cloudless glory
of a summer sun! Sorely sighing in bitterness of soul, I say, when
shall my name be the quotation of the wise, and my countenance be the
delight of the godly, like the illustrious lord of Laggan's many
hills? As for him, his works are perfect: never did the pen of calumny
blur the fair page of his reputation, nor the bolt of hatred fly at
his dwelling.
Thou mirror of purity, when shall the elfine lamp of my glimmerous
understanding, purged from sensual appetites and gross desires, shine
like the constellation of thy intellectual powers! --As for thee, thy
thoughts are pure, and thy lips are holy. Never did the unhallowed
breath of the powers of darkness, and the pleasures of darkness,
pollute the sacred flame of thy sky-descended and heaven-bound
desires: never did the vapours of impurity stain the unclouded serene
of thy cerulean imagination. O that like thine were the tenor of my
life, like thine the tenor of my conversation! then should no friend
fear for my strength, no enemy rejoice in my weakness! Then should I
lie down and rise up, and none to make me afraid. --May thy pity and
thy prayer be exercised for, O thou lamp of wisdom and mirror of
morality! thy devoted slave.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXIX.
TO FRANCIS GROSE, ESQ. , F. S. A.
[Captain Grose was introduced to Burns, by his brother Antiquary, of
Friar's Carse: he was collecting materials for his work on the
Antiquities of Scotland. ]
_Dumfries, 1792. _
SIR,
I believe among all our Scots Literati you have not met with Professor
Dugald Stewart, who fills the moral philosophy chair in the University
of Edinburgh. To say that he is a man of the first parts, and what is
more, a man of the first worth, to a gentleman of your general
acquaintance, and who so much enjoys the luxury of unencumbered
freedom and undisturbed privacy, is not perhaps recommendation
enough:--but when I inform you that Mr. Stewart's principal
characteristic is your favourite feature; _that_ sterling independence
of mind, which, though every man's right, so few men have the courage
to claim, and fewer still, the magnanimity to support:--when I tell
you that, unseduced by splendour, and undisgusted by wretchedness, he
appreciates the merits of the various actors in the great drama of
life, merely as they perform their parts--in short, he is a man after
your own heart, and I comply with his earnest request in letting you
know that he wishes above all things to meet with you. His house,
Catrine, is within less than a mile of Sorn Castle, which you proposed
visiting; or if you could transmit him the enclosed, he would with the
greatest pleasure meet you anywhere in the neighbourhood. I write to
Ayrshire to inform Mr. Stewart that I have acquitted myself of my
promise. Should your time and spirits permit your meeting with Mr.
Stewart, 'tis well; if not, I hope you will forgive this liberty, and
I have at least an opportunity of assuring you with what truth and
respect,
I am, Sir,
Your great admirer,
And very humble servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXX.
TO FRANCIS GROSE, ESQ. , F. S. A.
[This letter, interesting to all who desire to see how a poet works
beauty and regularity out of a vulgar tradition, was first printed by
Sir Egerton Brydges, in the "Censura Literaria. "]
_Dumfries, 1792. _
Among the many witch stories I have heard, relating to Alloway kirk, I
distinctly remember only two or three.
Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind, and bitter blasts
of hail; in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take
the air in; a farmer or farmer's servant was plodding and plashing
homeward with his plough-irons on his shoulder, having been getting
some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the kirk
of Alloway, and being rather on the anxious look-out in approaching a
place so well known to be a favourite haunt of the devil and the
devil's friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering
through the horrors of the storm and stormy night, a light, which on
his nearer approach plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted
edifice. Whether he had been fortified from above, on his devout
supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the
immediate presence of Satan; or whether, according to another custom,
he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to
determine; but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay, into, the
very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished.
The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight
business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or caldron,
depending from the roof, over the fire, simmering some heads of
unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, &c. , for the
business of the night. --It was in for a penny in for a pound, with the
honest ploughman: so without ceremony he unhooked the caldron from off
the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it on his
head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the
family, a living evidence of the truth of the story.
Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as
follows:
On a market day in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick, and
consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway kirk-yard, in
order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about two or
three hundred yards farther on than the said gate, had been detained
by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard
hour, between night and morning.
Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet it
is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is running
by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced on his
road. When he had reached the gate of the kirk-yard, he was surprised
and entertained, through the ribs and arches of an old gothic window,
which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches merrily
footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping
them all alive with the power of his bag-pipe. The farmer stopping his
horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many
old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was
dressed tradition does not say; but that the ladies were all in their
smocks: and one of them happening unluckily to have a smock which was
considerably too short to answer all the purpose of that piece of
dress, our farmer was so tickled, that he involuntarily burst out,
with a loud laugh, "Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark! " and
recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of his
speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no
diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream.
Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for
notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against
he reached the middle of the arch of the bridge, and consequently the
middle of the stream, the pursuing, vengeful hags, were so close at
big heels, that one of them actually sprung to seize him; but it was
too late, nothing was on her side of the stream, but the horse's tail,
which immediately gave way at her infernal grip, as if blasted by a
stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond her reach. However, the
unsightly, tailless condition of the vigorous steed was, to the last
hour of the noble creature's life, an awful warning to the Carrick
farmers, not to stay too late in Ayr markets.
The last relation I shall give, though equally true, is not so well
identified as the two former, with regard to the scene; but as the
best authorities give it for Alloway, I shall relate it.
On a summer's evening, about the time that nature puts on her sables
to mourn the expiry of the cheerful day, a shepherd boy, belonging to
a farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of Alloway kirk, had just
folded his charge, and was returning home. As he passed the kirk, in
the adjoining field, he fell in with a crew of men and women, who were
busy pulling stems of the plant Ragwort. He observed that as each
person pulled a Ragwort, he or she got astride of it, and called out,
"Up horsie! " on which the Ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the
air with its rider. The foolish boy likewise pulled his Ragwort, and
cried with the rest, "Up horsie! " and, strange to tell, away he flew
with the company. The first stage at which the cavalcade stopt, was a
merchant's wine-cellar in Bordeaux, where, without saying by your
leave, they quaffed away at the best the cellar could afford, until
the morning, foe to the imps and works of darkness, threatened to
throw light on the matter, and frightened them from their carousals.
The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the
liquor, heedlessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse, he
fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging
to the merchant. Somebody that understood Scotch, asking him what he
was, he said such-a-one's herd in Alloway, and by some means or other
getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous tale.
I am, &c. ,
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXXI.
TO MR. S. CLARKE,
EDINBURGH.
[This introduction of Clarke, the musician, to the M'Murdo's of
Drumlanrig, brought to two of the ladies the choicest honours of the
muse. ]
_July 1, 1792. _
Mr. Burns begs leave to present his most respectful compliments to Mr.
Clarke. --Mr. B. some time ago did himself the honour of writing to Mr.
C. respecting coming out to the country, to give a little musical
instruction in a highly respectable family, where Mr. C. may have his
own terms, and may be as happy as indolence, the devil, and the gout
will permit him. Mr. B. knows well how Mr. C. is engaged with another
family; but cannot Mr. C. find two or three weeks to spare to each of
them? Mr. B. is deeply impressed with, and awfully conscious of, the
high importance of Mr. C. 's time, whether in the winged moments of
symphonious exhibition, at the keys of harmony, while listening
seraphs cease their own less delightful strains; or in the drowsy
arms of slumb'rous repose, in the arms of his dearly beloved
elbowchair, where the frowsy, but potent power of indolence,
circumfuses her vapours round, and sheds her dews on the head of her
darling son. But half a line conveying half a meaning from Mr. C.
would make Mr. B. the happiest of mortals.
* * * * *
CCXXXII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[To enthusiastic fits of admiration for the young and the beautiful,
such as Burns has expressed in this letter, he loved to give way:--we
owe some of his best songs to these sallies. ]
_Annan Water Foot, 22d August, 1792. _
Do not blame me for it, Madam;--my own conscience, hackneyed and
weather-beaten as it is in watching and reproving my vagaries,
follies, indolence, &c. , has continued to punish me sufficiently.
* * * * *
Do you think it possible, my dear and honoured friend, that I could be
so lost to gratitude for many favours; to esteem for much worth, and
to the honest, kind, pleasurably tie of, now old acquaintance, and I
hope and am sure of progressive, increasing friendship--as for a
single day, not to think of you--to ask the Fates what they are doing
and about to do with my much-loved friend and her wide-scattered
connexions, and to beg of them to be as kind to you and yours as they
possibly can?
Apropos! (though how it is apropos, I have not leisure to explain,) do
you not know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of
yours? --Almost! said I--I am in love, souse! over head and ears, deep
as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean; but the word
Love, owing to the _intermingledoms_ of the good and the bad, the pure
and the impure, in this world, being rather an equivocal term for
expressing one's sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the
sacred purity of my attachment. Know, then, that the heart-struck awe;
the distant humble approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon
and listening to a messenger of heaven, appearing in all the unspotted
purity of his celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior
sons of men, to deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in
joy, and their imaginations soar in transport--such, so delighting and
so pure, were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with
Miss Lesley Baillie, your neighbour, at M----. Mr. B. with his two
daughters, accompanied by Mr. H. of G. passing through Dumfries a few
days ago, on their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me;
on which I took my horse (though God knows I could ill spare the
time), and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and
spent the day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think, when I left them,
and riding home, I composed the following ballad, of which you will
probably think you have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another
groat of postage. You must know that there is an old ballad beginning
with--
"My bonnie Lizzie Baillie
I'll rowe thee in my plaidie, &c. "
So I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy,
"unanointed, unanneal'd;" as Hamlet says. --
O saw ye bonny Lesley
As she gaed o'er the border?
She's gane like Alexander,
To spread her conquests farther.
So much for ballads. I regret that you are gone to the east country,
as I am to be in Ayrshire in about a fortnight. This world of ours,
notwithstanding it has many good things in it, yet it has ever had
this curse, that two or three people, who would be the happier the
oftener they met together, are, almost without exception, always so
placed as never to meet but once or twice a-year, which, considering
the few years of a man's life, is a very great "evil under the sun,"
which I do not recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue
of the miseries of man. I hope and believe that there is a state of
existence beyond the grave, where the worthy of this life will renew
their former intimacies, with this endearing addition, that, "we meet
to part no more! "
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"Tell us, ye dead,
Will none of you in pity disclose the secret,
What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be? "
BLAIR
A thousand times have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of
men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the question.
"O that some courteous ghost would blab it out! " but it cannot be; you
and I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves and for
ourselves. However, I am so convinced that an unshaken faith in the
doctrines of religion is not only necessary, by making us better men,
but also by making us happier men, that I should take every care that
your little godson, and every little creature that shall call me
father, shall be taught them.
So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild place of the
world, in the intervals of my labour of discharging a vessel of rum
from Antigua.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXXIII.
TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
[There is both bitterness and humour in this letter: the poet
discourses on many matters, and woman is among them--but he places the
bottle at his elbow as an antidote against the discourtesy of
scandal. ]
_Dumfries, 10th September, 1792. _
No! I will not attempt an apology. --Amid all my hurry of business,
grinding the faces of the publican and the sinner on the merciless
wheels of the Excise; making ballads, and then drinking, and singing
them! and, over and above all, the correcting the press-work of two
different publications; still, still I might have stolen five minutes
to dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-creatures. I
might have done as I do at present, snatched an hour near "witching
time of night," and scrawled a page or two. I might have congratulated
my friend on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian
archers for the honour they have done me (though, to do myself
justice, I intended to have done both in rhyme, else I had done both
long ere now). Well, then, here's to your good health! for you must
know, I have set a nipperkin of toddy by me, just by way of spell, to
keep away the meikle horned deil, or any of his subaltern imps who may
be on their nightly rounds.
But what shall I write to you? --"The voice said cry," and I said,
"what shall I cry? "--O, thou spirit! whatever thou art, or wherever
thou makest thyself visible! be thou a bogle by the eerie side of an
auld thorn, in the dreary glen through which the herd-callan maun
bicker in his gloamin route frae the faulde! --Be thou a brownie, set,
at dead of night, to thy task by the blazing ingle, or in the solitary
barn, where the repercussions of thy iron flail half affright thyself
as thou performest the work of twenty of the sons of men, ere the
cock-crowing summon thee to thy ample cog of substantial brose--Be
thou a kelpie, haunting the ford or ferry, in the starless night,
mixing thy laughing yell with the howling of the storm and the roaring
of the flood, as thou viewest the perils and miseries of man on the
foundering horse, or in the tumbling boat! --or, lastly, be thou a
ghost, paying thy nocturnal visits to the hoary ruins of decayed
grandeur; or performing thy mystic rites in the shadow of the
time-worn church, while the moon looks, without a cloud, on the silent
ghastly dwellings of the dead around thee! or taking thy stand by the
bedside of the villain, or the murderer, pourtraying on his dreaming
fancy, pictures, dreadful as the horrors of unveiled hell, and
terrible as the wrath of incensed Deity! --Come, thou spirit, but not
in these horrid forms; come with the milder, gentle, easy
inspirations, which thou breathest round the wig of a prating
advocate, or the tete of a tea-sipping gossip, while their tongues run
at the light-horse gallop of clishmaclaver for ever and ever--come
and assist a poor devil who is quite jaded in the attempt to share
half an idea among half a hundred words; to fill up four quarto pages,
while he has not got one single sentence of recollection, information,
or remark worth putting pen to paper for.
I feel, I feel the presence of supernatural assistance! circled in the
embrace of my elbowchair, my breast labours, like the bloated Sybil on
her three-footed stool, and like her, too, labours with
Nonsense. --Nonsense, suspicious name! Tutor, friend, and finger-post
in the mystic mazes of law; the cadaverous paths of physic; and
particularly in the sightless soarings of SCHOOL DIVINITY,
who, leaving Common Sense confounded at his strength of pinion,
Reason, delirious with eyeing his giddy flight; and Truth creeping
back into the bottom of her well, cursing the hour that ever she
offered her scorned alliance to the wizard power of Theologic
Vision--raves abroad on all the winds. "On earth Discord! a gloomy
Heaven above, opening her jealous gates to the nineteenth thousandth
part of the tithe of mankind; and below, an inescapable and inexorable
hell, expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of
mortals! ! ! "--O doctrine! comfortable and healing to the weary,
wounded soul of man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, ye _pauvres
miserables_, to whom day brings no pleasure, and night yields no rest,
be comforted! "'Tis but _one_ to nineteen hundred thousand that your
situation will mend in this world;" so, alas, the experience of the
poor and the needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred
thousand sand to _one_, by the dogmas of * * * * * * * * that you will be
damned eternally in the world to come!
But of all nonsense, religious nonsense is the most nonsensical; so
enough, and more than enough of it. Only, by the by, will you or can
you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has
always a tendency to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are
orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them merciful: but still
your children of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures with a
nostril-snuffing putrescence, and a foot-spurning filth, in short,
with a conceited dignity that your titled * * * * * * * * or any other
of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when
they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical life. I
remember, in my plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible that a
noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave--How
ignorant are plough-boys! --Nay, I have since discovered that a _godly
woman_ may be a *****! --But hold--Here's t'ye again--this rum is
generous Antigua, so a very unfit menstruum for scandal.
Apropos, how do you like, I mean _really_ like, the married life? Ah, my
friend! matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick
youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is
appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of his
institutions. I am a husband of older standing than you, and shall give
you _my_ ideas of the conjugal state, (_en passant_; you know I am no
Latinist, is not _conjugal_ derived from _jugum_, a yoke? ) Well, then,
the scale of good wifeship I divide into ten parts:--good-nature, four;
good sense, two; wit, one; personal charms, viz. a sweet face, eloquent
eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage (I would add a fine waist too, but
that is so soon spoilt you know), all these, one; as for the other
qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as fortune,
connexions, education (I mean education extraordinary) family, blood,
&c. , divide the two remaining degrees among them as you please; only,
remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by
_fractions_, for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale,
entitled to the dignity of an _integer. _
As for the rest of my fancies and reveries--how I lately met with Miss
Lesley Baillie, the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world--how I
accompanied her and her father's family fifteen miles on their
journey, out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works
of God, in such an unequalled display of them--how, in galloping home
at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a
part--
Thou, bonny Lesley, art a queen,
Thy subjects we before thee;
Thou, bonny Lesley, art divine,
The hearts o' men adore thee.
The very deil he could na scathe
Whatever wad belang thee!
He'd look into thy bonnie face
And say, "I canna wrang thee. "
--behold all these things are written in the chronicles of my
imaginations, and shall be read by thee, my dear friend, and by thy
beloved spouse, my other dear friend, at a more convenient season.
Now, to thee, and to thy before-designed _bosom_-companion, be given
the precious things brought forth by the sun, and the precious things
brought forth by the moon, and the benignest influences of the stars,
and the living streams which flow from the fountains of life, and by
the tree of life, for ever and ever! Amen!
* * * * *
CCXXXIV.
TO MR. THOMSON.
[George Thomson, of Edinburgh, principal clerk to the trustees for the
encouraging the manufactures of Scotland, projected a work, entitled,
"A select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, for the Voice, to
which are added introductory and concluding Symphonies and
Accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Violin, by Pleyel and Kozeluch,
with select and characteristic Verses, by the most admired Scottish
Poets. " To Burns he applied for help in the verse: he could not find a
truer poet, nor one to whom such a work was more congenial. ]
_Dumfries, 16th Sept. 1792. _
SIR,
I have just this moment got your letter. As the request you make to me
will positively add to my enjoyments in complying with it, I shall
enter into your undertaking with all the small portion of abilities I
have, strained to their utmost exertion by the impulse of enthusiasm.
Only, don't hurry me--"Deil tak the hindmost" is by no means the _cri
de guerre_ of my muse. Will you, as I am inferior to none of you in
enthusiastic attachment to the poetry and music of old Caledonia, and,
since you request it, have cheerfully promised my mite of
assistance--will you let me have a list of your airs with the first
line of the printed verses you intend for them, that I may have an
opportunity of suggesting any alteration that may occur to me? You
know 'tis in the way of my trade; still leaving you, gentlemen, the
undoubted right of publishers to approve or reject, at your pleasure,
for your own publication. Apropos, if you are for English verses,
there is, on my part, an end of the matter. Whether in the simplicity
of the Ballad, or the pathos of the song, I can only hope to please
myself in being allowed at least a sprinkling of our native tongue.
English verses, particularly the works of Scotsmen, that have merit,
are certainly very eligible. "Tweedside'" "Ah! the poor shepherd's
mournful fate! " "Ah! Chloris, could I now but sit," &c. , you cannot
mend;[199] but such insipid stuff as "To Fanny fair could I impart,"
&c. , usually set to "The Mill, Mill, O! " is a disgrace to the
collections in which it has already appeared, and would doubly
disgrace a collection that will have the very superior merit of yours.
But more of this in the further prosecution of the business, if I am
called on for my strictures and amendments--I say amendments, for I
will not alter except where I myself, at least, think that I amend.
As to any remuneration, you may think my songs either above or below
price; for they should absolutely be the one or the other. In the
honest enthusiasm with which I embark in your undertaking, to talk of
money, wages, fee, hire, &c. , would be downright prostitution of soul!
a proof of each of the song that I compose or amend, I shall receive
as a favour. In the rustic phrase of the season, "Gude speed the
wark! "
I am, Sir,
Your very humble servant,
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 199: "Tweedside" is by Crawfurd; "Ah, the poor shepherd," &c. ,
by Hamilton, of Bangour; "Ah! Chloris," &c. , by Sir Charles
Sedley--Burns has attributed it to Sir Peter Halket, of Pitferran. ]
* * * * *
CCXXXV.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[One of the daughters of Mrs. Dunlop was married to M. Henri, a French
gentleman, who died in 1790, at Loudon Castle, in Ayrshire. The widow
went with her orphan son to France, and lived for awhile amid the
dangers of the revolution. ]
_Dumfries, 24th September, 1792. _
I have this moment, my dear Madam, yours of the twenty-third. All your
other kind reproaches, your news, &c. , are out of my head when I read
and think on Mrs. H----'s situation. Good God! a heart-wounded helpless
young woman--in a strange, foreign land, and that land convulsed with
every horror that can harrow the human feelings--sick--looking, longing
for a comforter, but finding none--a mother's feelings, too:--but it is
too much: he who wounded (he only can) may He heal!
* * * * *
I wish the farmer great joy of his new acquisition to his family.
* * * * * I cannot say that I give him joy of his life as a farmer. 'Tis,
as a farmer paying a dear, unconscionable rent, a _cursed life_! As to a
laird farming his own property; sowing his own corn in hope; and reaping
it, in spite of brittle weather, in gladness; knowing that none can say
unto him, 'what dost thou? '--fattening his herds; shearing his flocks;
rejoicing at Christmas; and begetting sons and daughters, until he be
the venerated, gray-haired leader of a little tribe--'tis a heavenly
life! but devil take the life of reaping the fruits that another must
eat.
Well, your kind wishes will be gratified, as to seeing me when I make
my Ayrshire visit. I cannot leave Mrs. B----, until her nine months'
race is run, which may perhaps be in three or four weeks. She, too,
seems determined to make me the patriarchal leader of a band. However,
if Heaven will be so obliging as to let me have them in the proportion
of three boys to one girl, I shall be so much the more pleased. I
hope, if I am spared with them, to show a set of boys that will do
honour to my cares and name; but I am not equal to the task of rearing
girls. Besides, I am too poor; a girl should always have a fortune.
Apropos, your little godson is thriving charmingly, but is a very
devil. He, though two years younger, has completely mastered his
brother. Robert is indeed the mildest, gentlest creature I ever saw.
He has a most surprising memory, and is quite the pride of his
schoolmaster.
You know how readily we get into prattle upon a subject dear to our
heart: you can excuse it. God bless you and yours!
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXXVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[This letter has no date: it is supposed to have been written on the
death of her daughter, Mrs. Henri, whose orphan son, deprived of the
protection of all his relations, was preserved by the affectionate
kindness of Mademoiselle Susette, one of the family domestics, and
after the Revolution obtained the estate of his blood and name. ]
I had been from home, and did not receive your letter until my return
the other day. What shall I say to comfort you, my much-valued,
much-afflicted friend! I can but grieve with you; consolation I have
none to offer, except that which religion holds out to the children of
affliction--_children of affliction! _--how just the expression! and
like every other family they have matters among them which they hear,
see, and feel in a serious, all-important manner, of which the world
has not, nor cares to have, any idea. The world looks indifferently
on, makes the passing remark, and proceeds to the next novel
occurrence.
Alas, Madam! who would wish for many years? What is it but to drag
existence until our joys gradually expire, and leave us in a night of
misery: like the gloom which blots out the stars one by one, from the
face of night, and leaves us, without a ray of comfort, in the howling
waste!
I am interrupted, and must leave off. You shall soon hear from me
again.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXXVII.
TO MR. THOMSON.
[Thomson had delivered judgment on some old Scottish songs, but the
poet murmured against George's decree. ]
MY DEAR SIR,
Let me tell you, that you are too fastidious in your ideas of songs
and ballads. I own that your criticisms are just; the songs you
specify in your list have, all but one, the faults you remark in them;
but who shall mend the matter? Who shall rise up and say, "Go to! I
will make a better? " For instance, on reading over "The Lea-rig," I
immediately set about trying my hand on it, and, after all, I could
make nothing more of it than the following, which, Heaven knows, is
poor enough.
When o'er the hill the eastern star, &c. [200]
Your observation as to the aptitude of Dr. Percy's ballad to the air,
"Nannie, O! " is just. It is, besides, perhaps, the most beautiful
ballad in the English language.
Tenby, in Pembrokeshire: she was related to the Riddels of Friar's
Carse, and one of her sisters married Captain Adam Gordon, of the
noble family of Kenmure. She had both taste and skill in verse. ]
It is impossible, Madam, that the generous warmth and angelic purity
of your youthful mind, can have any idea of that moral disease under
which I unhappily must rank us the chief of sinners; I mean a
torpitude of the moral powers, that may be called, a lethargy of
conscience. In vain Remorse rears her horrent crest, and rouses all
her snakes; beneath the deadly fixed eye and leaden hand of Indolence,
their wildest ire is charmed into the torpor of the bat, slumbering
out the rigours of winter, in the chink of a ruined wall. Nothing
less, Madam, could have made me so long neglect your obliging
commands. Indeed I had one apology--the bagatelle was not worth
presenting. Besides, so strongly am I interested in Miss Davies's fate
and welfare in the serious business of life, amid its chances and
changes, that to make her the subject of a silly ballad is downright
mockery of these ardent feelings; 'tis like an impertinent jest to a
dying friend.
Gracious Heaven! why this disparity between our wishes and our powers?
Why is the most generous wish to make others blest, impotent and
ineffectual--as the idle breeze that crosses the pathless desert! In
my walks of life I have met with a few people to whom how gladly would
I have said--"Go, be happy! I know that your hearts have been wounded
by the scorn of the proud, whom accident has placed above you--or
worse still, in whose hands are, perhaps, placed many of the comforts
of your life. But there! ascend that rock, Independence, and look
justly down on their littleness of soul. Make the worthless tremble
under your indignation, and the foolish sink before your contempt; and
largely impart that happiness to others, which, I am certain, will
give yourselves so much pleasure to bestow. "
Why, dear Madam, must I wake from this delightful revery, and find it
all a dream? Why, amid my generous enthusiasm, must I, find myself
poor and powerless, incapable of wiping one tear from the eye of pity,
or of adding one comfort to the friend I love! --Out upon the world,
say I, that its affairs are administered so ill! They talk of
reform;--good Heaven! what a reform would I make among the sons and
even the daughters of men! --Down, immediately, should go fools from
the high places, where misbegotten chance has perked them up, and
through life should they skulk, ever haunted by their native
insignificance, as the body marches accompanied by its shadow. --As for
a much more formidable class, the knaves, I am at a loss what to do
with them: had I a world, there should not be a knave in it.
But the hand that could give, I would liberally fill: and I would pour
delight on the heart that could kindly forgive, and generously love.
Still the inequalities of life are, among men, comparatively
tolerable--but there is a delicacy, a tenderness, accompanying every
view in which we can place lovely Woman, that are grated and shocked
at the rude, capricious distinctions of fortune. Woman is the
blood-royal of life: let there be slight degrees of precedency among
them--but let them be ALL sacred. --Whether this last sentiment be
right or wrong, I am not accountable; it is an original component
feature of my mind.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXV.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[Burns, says Cromek, acknowledged that a refined and accomplished
woman was a being all but new to him till he went to Edinburgh, and
received letters from Mrs. Dunlop. ]
_Ellisland, 17th December, 1791. _
Many thanks to you, Madam, for your good news respecting the little
floweret and the mother-plant. I hope my poetic prayers have been
heard, and will be answered up to the warmest sincerity of their
fullest extent; and then Mrs. Henri will find her little darling the
representative of his late parent, in everything but his abridged
existence.
I have just finished the following song, which to a lady the
descendant of Wallace--and many heroes of his true illustrious
line--and herself the mother of several soldiers, needs neither
preface nor apology.
_Scene_--_a field of battle_--_time of the day, evening;
the wounded and dying of the victorious army are supposed to
join in the following_
SONG OF DEATH.
Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies
Now gay with the bright setting sun;
Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties--
Our race of existence is run!
The circumstance that gave rise to the foregoing verses was, looking
over with a musical friend M'Donald's collection of Highland airs, I
was struck with one, an Isle of Skye tune, entitled "Oran and Aoig,
or, The Song of Death," to the measure of which I have adapted my
stanzas. I have of late composed two or three other little pieces,
which, ere yon full-orbed moon, whose broad impudent face now stares
at old mother earth all night, shall have shrunk into a modest
crescent, just peeping forth at dewy dawn, I shall find an hour to
transcribe for you. _A Dieu je vous commende. _
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[That the poet spoke mildly concerning the rebuke which he received
from the Excise, on what he calls his political delinquencies, his
letter to Erskine of Mar sufficiently proves. ]
_5th January, 1792. _
You see my hurried life, Madam: I can only command starts of time;
however, I am glad of one thing; since I finished the other sheet, the
political blast that threatened my welfare is overblown. I have
corresponded with Commissioner Graham, for the board had made me the
subject of their animadversions; and now I have the pleasure of
informing you, that all is set to rights in that quarter. Now as to
these informers, may the devil be let loose to ---- but, hold! I was
praying most fervently in my last sheet, and I must not so soon fall a
swearing in this.
Alas! how little do the wantonly or idly officious think what mischief
they do by their malicious insinuations, indirect impertinence, or
thoughtless blabbings. What a difference there is in intrinsic worth,
candour, benevolence, generosity, kindness,--in all the charities and
all the virtues, between one class of human beings and another! For
instance, the amiable circle I so lately mixed with in the hospitable
hall of Dunlop, their generous hearts--their uncontaminated dignified
minds--their informed and polished understandings--what a contrast,
when compared--if such comparing were not downright sacrilege--with
the soul of the miscreant who can deliberately plot the destruction of
an honest man that never offended him, and with a grin of satisfaction
see the unfortunate being, his faithful wife, and prattling innocents,
turned over to beggary and ruin!
Your cup, my dear Madam, arrived safe. I had two worthy fellows dining
with me the other day, when I, with great formality, produced my
whigmeeleerie cup, and told them that it had been a family-piece among
the descendants of William Wallace. This roused such an enthusiasm,
that they insisted on bumpering the punch round in it; and by and by,
never did your great ancestor lay a _Suthron_ more completely to rest,
than for a time did your cup my two friends. Apropos, this is the
season of wishing. My God bless you, my dear friend, and bless me, the
humblest and sincerest of your friends, by granting you yet many
returns of the season! May all good things attend you and yours
wherever they are scattered over the earth!
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXVII.
TO MR. WILLIAM SMELLIE,
PRINTER.
[When Burns sends his warmest wishes to Smellie, and prays that
fortune may never place his subsistence at the mercy of a knave, or
set his character on the judgment of a fool, he had his political
enemies probably in his mind. ]
_Dumfries, 22d January, 1792. _
I sit down, my dear Sir, to introduce a young lady to you, and a lady
in the first ranks of fashion too. What a task! to you--who care no
more for the herd of animals called young ladies, than you do for the
herd of animals called young gentlemen. To you--who despise and detest
the groupings and combinations of fashion, as an idiot painter that
seems industrious to place staring fools and unprincipled knaves in
the foreground of his picture, while men of sense and honesty are too
often thrown in the dimmest shades. Mrs. Riddel, who will take this
letter to town with her, and send it to you, is a character that, even
in your own way, as a naturalist and a philosopher, would be an
acquisition to your acquaintance. The lady, too, is a votary to the
muses; and as I think myself somewhat of a judge in my own trade, I
assure you that her verses, always correct, and often elegant, are
much beyond the common run of the _lady-poetesses_ of the day. She is
a great admirer of your book; and, hearing me say that I was
acquainted with you, she begged to be known to you, as she is just
going to pay her first visit to our Caledonian capital. I told her
that her best way was, to desire her near relation, and your intimate
friend, Craigdarroch, to have you at his house while she was there;
and lest you might think of a lively West Indian girl, of eighteen, as
girls of eighteen too often deserve to be thought of, I should take
care to remove that prejudice. To be impartial, however, in
appreciating the lady's merits, she has one unlucky failing: a failing
which you will easily discover, as she seems rather pleased with
indulging in it; and a failing that you will easily pardon, as it is a
sin which very much besets yourself;--where she dislikes, or despises,
she is apt to make no more a secret of it, than where she esteems and
respects.
I will not present you with the unmeaning _compliments of the season_,
but I will send you my warmest wishes and most ardent prayers, that
Fortune may never throw your subsistence to the mercy of a Knave, or
set your character on the judgment of a Fool; but that, upright and
erect, you may walk to an honest grave, where men of letters shall
say, here lies a man who did honour to science, and men of worth shall
say, here lies a man who did honour to human nature.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXVIII.
TO MR. W. NICOL.
[This ironical letter was in answer to one from Nicol, containing
counsel and reproof. ]
_20th February, 1792. _
O thou, wisest among the wise, meridian blaze of prudence, full-moon
of discretion, and chief of many counsellors! How infinitely is thy
puddle-headed, rattle-headed, wrong-headed, round-headed slave
indebted to thy supereminent goodness, that from the luminous path of
thy own right-lined rectitude, thou lookest benignly down on an erring
wretch, of whom the zig-zag wanderings defy all the powers of
calculation, from the simple copulation of units, up to the hidden
mysteries of fluxions! May one feeble ray of that light of wisdom
which darts from thy sensorium, straight as the arrow of heaven, and
bright as the meteor of inspiration, may it be my portion, so that I
may be less unworthy of the face and favour of that father of proverbs
and master of maxims, that antipode of folly, and magnet among the
sages, the wise and witty Willie Nicol! Amen! Amen! Yea, so be it!
For me! I am a beast, a reptile, and know nothing! From the cave of my
ignorance, amid the fogs of my dulness, and pestilential fumes of my
political heresies, I look up to thee, as doth a toad through the
iron-barred lucerne of a pestiferous dungeon, to the cloudless glory
of a summer sun! Sorely sighing in bitterness of soul, I say, when
shall my name be the quotation of the wise, and my countenance be the
delight of the godly, like the illustrious lord of Laggan's many
hills? As for him, his works are perfect: never did the pen of calumny
blur the fair page of his reputation, nor the bolt of hatred fly at
his dwelling.
Thou mirror of purity, when shall the elfine lamp of my glimmerous
understanding, purged from sensual appetites and gross desires, shine
like the constellation of thy intellectual powers! --As for thee, thy
thoughts are pure, and thy lips are holy. Never did the unhallowed
breath of the powers of darkness, and the pleasures of darkness,
pollute the sacred flame of thy sky-descended and heaven-bound
desires: never did the vapours of impurity stain the unclouded serene
of thy cerulean imagination. O that like thine were the tenor of my
life, like thine the tenor of my conversation! then should no friend
fear for my strength, no enemy rejoice in my weakness! Then should I
lie down and rise up, and none to make me afraid. --May thy pity and
thy prayer be exercised for, O thou lamp of wisdom and mirror of
morality! thy devoted slave.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXIX.
TO FRANCIS GROSE, ESQ. , F. S. A.
[Captain Grose was introduced to Burns, by his brother Antiquary, of
Friar's Carse: he was collecting materials for his work on the
Antiquities of Scotland. ]
_Dumfries, 1792. _
SIR,
I believe among all our Scots Literati you have not met with Professor
Dugald Stewart, who fills the moral philosophy chair in the University
of Edinburgh. To say that he is a man of the first parts, and what is
more, a man of the first worth, to a gentleman of your general
acquaintance, and who so much enjoys the luxury of unencumbered
freedom and undisturbed privacy, is not perhaps recommendation
enough:--but when I inform you that Mr. Stewart's principal
characteristic is your favourite feature; _that_ sterling independence
of mind, which, though every man's right, so few men have the courage
to claim, and fewer still, the magnanimity to support:--when I tell
you that, unseduced by splendour, and undisgusted by wretchedness, he
appreciates the merits of the various actors in the great drama of
life, merely as they perform their parts--in short, he is a man after
your own heart, and I comply with his earnest request in letting you
know that he wishes above all things to meet with you. His house,
Catrine, is within less than a mile of Sorn Castle, which you proposed
visiting; or if you could transmit him the enclosed, he would with the
greatest pleasure meet you anywhere in the neighbourhood. I write to
Ayrshire to inform Mr. Stewart that I have acquitted myself of my
promise. Should your time and spirits permit your meeting with Mr.
Stewart, 'tis well; if not, I hope you will forgive this liberty, and
I have at least an opportunity of assuring you with what truth and
respect,
I am, Sir,
Your great admirer,
And very humble servant,
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXX.
TO FRANCIS GROSE, ESQ. , F. S. A.
[This letter, interesting to all who desire to see how a poet works
beauty and regularity out of a vulgar tradition, was first printed by
Sir Egerton Brydges, in the "Censura Literaria. "]
_Dumfries, 1792. _
Among the many witch stories I have heard, relating to Alloway kirk, I
distinctly remember only two or three.
Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind, and bitter blasts
of hail; in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take
the air in; a farmer or farmer's servant was plodding and plashing
homeward with his plough-irons on his shoulder, having been getting
some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the kirk
of Alloway, and being rather on the anxious look-out in approaching a
place so well known to be a favourite haunt of the devil and the
devil's friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering
through the horrors of the storm and stormy night, a light, which on
his nearer approach plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted
edifice. Whether he had been fortified from above, on his devout
supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the
immediate presence of Satan; or whether, according to another custom,
he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to
determine; but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay, into, the
very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished.
The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight
business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or caldron,
depending from the roof, over the fire, simmering some heads of
unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, &c. , for the
business of the night. --It was in for a penny in for a pound, with the
honest ploughman: so without ceremony he unhooked the caldron from off
the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it on his
head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the
family, a living evidence of the truth of the story.
Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as
follows:
On a market day in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick, and
consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway kirk-yard, in
order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about two or
three hundred yards farther on than the said gate, had been detained
by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was the wizard
hour, between night and morning.
Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet it
is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is running
by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced on his
road. When he had reached the gate of the kirk-yard, he was surprised
and entertained, through the ribs and arches of an old gothic window,
which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches merrily
footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was keeping
them all alive with the power of his bag-pipe. The farmer stopping his
horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the faces of many
old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the gentleman was
dressed tradition does not say; but that the ladies were all in their
smocks: and one of them happening unluckily to have a smock which was
considerably too short to answer all the purpose of that piece of
dress, our farmer was so tickled, that he involuntarily burst out,
with a loud laugh, "Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark! " and
recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of his
speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no
diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream.
Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for
notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against
he reached the middle of the arch of the bridge, and consequently the
middle of the stream, the pursuing, vengeful hags, were so close at
big heels, that one of them actually sprung to seize him; but it was
too late, nothing was on her side of the stream, but the horse's tail,
which immediately gave way at her infernal grip, as if blasted by a
stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond her reach. However, the
unsightly, tailless condition of the vigorous steed was, to the last
hour of the noble creature's life, an awful warning to the Carrick
farmers, not to stay too late in Ayr markets.
The last relation I shall give, though equally true, is not so well
identified as the two former, with regard to the scene; but as the
best authorities give it for Alloway, I shall relate it.
On a summer's evening, about the time that nature puts on her sables
to mourn the expiry of the cheerful day, a shepherd boy, belonging to
a farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of Alloway kirk, had just
folded his charge, and was returning home. As he passed the kirk, in
the adjoining field, he fell in with a crew of men and women, who were
busy pulling stems of the plant Ragwort. He observed that as each
person pulled a Ragwort, he or she got astride of it, and called out,
"Up horsie! " on which the Ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the
air with its rider. The foolish boy likewise pulled his Ragwort, and
cried with the rest, "Up horsie! " and, strange to tell, away he flew
with the company. The first stage at which the cavalcade stopt, was a
merchant's wine-cellar in Bordeaux, where, without saying by your
leave, they quaffed away at the best the cellar could afford, until
the morning, foe to the imps and works of darkness, threatened to
throw light on the matter, and frightened them from their carousals.
The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the
liquor, heedlessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse, he
fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging
to the merchant. Somebody that understood Scotch, asking him what he
was, he said such-a-one's herd in Alloway, and by some means or other
getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous tale.
I am, &c. ,
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXXI.
TO MR. S. CLARKE,
EDINBURGH.
[This introduction of Clarke, the musician, to the M'Murdo's of
Drumlanrig, brought to two of the ladies the choicest honours of the
muse. ]
_July 1, 1792. _
Mr. Burns begs leave to present his most respectful compliments to Mr.
Clarke. --Mr. B. some time ago did himself the honour of writing to Mr.
C. respecting coming out to the country, to give a little musical
instruction in a highly respectable family, where Mr. C. may have his
own terms, and may be as happy as indolence, the devil, and the gout
will permit him. Mr. B. knows well how Mr. C. is engaged with another
family; but cannot Mr. C. find two or three weeks to spare to each of
them? Mr. B. is deeply impressed with, and awfully conscious of, the
high importance of Mr. C. 's time, whether in the winged moments of
symphonious exhibition, at the keys of harmony, while listening
seraphs cease their own less delightful strains; or in the drowsy
arms of slumb'rous repose, in the arms of his dearly beloved
elbowchair, where the frowsy, but potent power of indolence,
circumfuses her vapours round, and sheds her dews on the head of her
darling son. But half a line conveying half a meaning from Mr. C.
would make Mr. B. the happiest of mortals.
* * * * *
CCXXXII.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[To enthusiastic fits of admiration for the young and the beautiful,
such as Burns has expressed in this letter, he loved to give way:--we
owe some of his best songs to these sallies. ]
_Annan Water Foot, 22d August, 1792. _
Do not blame me for it, Madam;--my own conscience, hackneyed and
weather-beaten as it is in watching and reproving my vagaries,
follies, indolence, &c. , has continued to punish me sufficiently.
* * * * *
Do you think it possible, my dear and honoured friend, that I could be
so lost to gratitude for many favours; to esteem for much worth, and
to the honest, kind, pleasurably tie of, now old acquaintance, and I
hope and am sure of progressive, increasing friendship--as for a
single day, not to think of you--to ask the Fates what they are doing
and about to do with my much-loved friend and her wide-scattered
connexions, and to beg of them to be as kind to you and yours as they
possibly can?
Apropos! (though how it is apropos, I have not leisure to explain,) do
you not know that I am almost in love with an acquaintance of
yours? --Almost! said I--I am in love, souse! over head and ears, deep
as the most unfathomable abyss of the boundless ocean; but the word
Love, owing to the _intermingledoms_ of the good and the bad, the pure
and the impure, in this world, being rather an equivocal term for
expressing one's sentiments and sensations, I must do justice to the
sacred purity of my attachment. Know, then, that the heart-struck awe;
the distant humble approach; the delight we should have in gazing upon
and listening to a messenger of heaven, appearing in all the unspotted
purity of his celestial home, among the coarse, polluted, far inferior
sons of men, to deliver to them tidings that make their hearts swim in
joy, and their imaginations soar in transport--such, so delighting and
so pure, were the emotions of my soul on meeting the other day with
Miss Lesley Baillie, your neighbour, at M----. Mr. B. with his two
daughters, accompanied by Mr. H. of G. passing through Dumfries a few
days ago, on their way to England, did me the honour of calling on me;
on which I took my horse (though God knows I could ill spare the
time), and accompanied them fourteen or fifteen miles, and dined and
spent the day with them. 'Twas about nine, I think, when I left them,
and riding home, I composed the following ballad, of which you will
probably think you have a dear bargain, as it will cost you another
groat of postage. You must know that there is an old ballad beginning
with--
"My bonnie Lizzie Baillie
I'll rowe thee in my plaidie, &c. "
So I parodied it as follows, which is literally the first copy,
"unanointed, unanneal'd;" as Hamlet says. --
O saw ye bonny Lesley
As she gaed o'er the border?
She's gane like Alexander,
To spread her conquests farther.
So much for ballads. I regret that you are gone to the east country,
as I am to be in Ayrshire in about a fortnight. This world of ours,
notwithstanding it has many good things in it, yet it has ever had
this curse, that two or three people, who would be the happier the
oftener they met together, are, almost without exception, always so
placed as never to meet but once or twice a-year, which, considering
the few years of a man's life, is a very great "evil under the sun,"
which I do not recollect that Solomon has mentioned in his catalogue
of the miseries of man. I hope and believe that there is a state of
existence beyond the grave, where the worthy of this life will renew
their former intimacies, with this endearing addition, that, "we meet
to part no more! "
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"Tell us, ye dead,
Will none of you in pity disclose the secret,
What 'tis you are, and we must shortly be? "
BLAIR
A thousand times have I made this apostrophe to the departed sons of
men, but not one of them has ever thought fit to answer the question.
"O that some courteous ghost would blab it out! " but it cannot be; you
and I, my friend, must make the experiment by ourselves and for
ourselves. However, I am so convinced that an unshaken faith in the
doctrines of religion is not only necessary, by making us better men,
but also by making us happier men, that I should take every care that
your little godson, and every little creature that shall call me
father, shall be taught them.
So ends this heterogeneous letter, written at this wild place of the
world, in the intervals of my labour of discharging a vessel of rum
from Antigua.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXXIII.
TO MR. CUNNINGHAM.
[There is both bitterness and humour in this letter: the poet
discourses on many matters, and woman is among them--but he places the
bottle at his elbow as an antidote against the discourtesy of
scandal. ]
_Dumfries, 10th September, 1792. _
No! I will not attempt an apology. --Amid all my hurry of business,
grinding the faces of the publican and the sinner on the merciless
wheels of the Excise; making ballads, and then drinking, and singing
them! and, over and above all, the correcting the press-work of two
different publications; still, still I might have stolen five minutes
to dedicate to one of the first of my friends and fellow-creatures. I
might have done as I do at present, snatched an hour near "witching
time of night," and scrawled a page or two. I might have congratulated
my friend on his marriage; or I might have thanked the Caledonian
archers for the honour they have done me (though, to do myself
justice, I intended to have done both in rhyme, else I had done both
long ere now). Well, then, here's to your good health! for you must
know, I have set a nipperkin of toddy by me, just by way of spell, to
keep away the meikle horned deil, or any of his subaltern imps who may
be on their nightly rounds.
But what shall I write to you? --"The voice said cry," and I said,
"what shall I cry? "--O, thou spirit! whatever thou art, or wherever
thou makest thyself visible! be thou a bogle by the eerie side of an
auld thorn, in the dreary glen through which the herd-callan maun
bicker in his gloamin route frae the faulde! --Be thou a brownie, set,
at dead of night, to thy task by the blazing ingle, or in the solitary
barn, where the repercussions of thy iron flail half affright thyself
as thou performest the work of twenty of the sons of men, ere the
cock-crowing summon thee to thy ample cog of substantial brose--Be
thou a kelpie, haunting the ford or ferry, in the starless night,
mixing thy laughing yell with the howling of the storm and the roaring
of the flood, as thou viewest the perils and miseries of man on the
foundering horse, or in the tumbling boat! --or, lastly, be thou a
ghost, paying thy nocturnal visits to the hoary ruins of decayed
grandeur; or performing thy mystic rites in the shadow of the
time-worn church, while the moon looks, without a cloud, on the silent
ghastly dwellings of the dead around thee! or taking thy stand by the
bedside of the villain, or the murderer, pourtraying on his dreaming
fancy, pictures, dreadful as the horrors of unveiled hell, and
terrible as the wrath of incensed Deity! --Come, thou spirit, but not
in these horrid forms; come with the milder, gentle, easy
inspirations, which thou breathest round the wig of a prating
advocate, or the tete of a tea-sipping gossip, while their tongues run
at the light-horse gallop of clishmaclaver for ever and ever--come
and assist a poor devil who is quite jaded in the attempt to share
half an idea among half a hundred words; to fill up four quarto pages,
while he has not got one single sentence of recollection, information,
or remark worth putting pen to paper for.
I feel, I feel the presence of supernatural assistance! circled in the
embrace of my elbowchair, my breast labours, like the bloated Sybil on
her three-footed stool, and like her, too, labours with
Nonsense. --Nonsense, suspicious name! Tutor, friend, and finger-post
in the mystic mazes of law; the cadaverous paths of physic; and
particularly in the sightless soarings of SCHOOL DIVINITY,
who, leaving Common Sense confounded at his strength of pinion,
Reason, delirious with eyeing his giddy flight; and Truth creeping
back into the bottom of her well, cursing the hour that ever she
offered her scorned alliance to the wizard power of Theologic
Vision--raves abroad on all the winds. "On earth Discord! a gloomy
Heaven above, opening her jealous gates to the nineteenth thousandth
part of the tithe of mankind; and below, an inescapable and inexorable
hell, expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of
mortals! ! ! "--O doctrine! comfortable and healing to the weary,
wounded soul of man! Ye sons and daughters of affliction, ye _pauvres
miserables_, to whom day brings no pleasure, and night yields no rest,
be comforted! "'Tis but _one_ to nineteen hundred thousand that your
situation will mend in this world;" so, alas, the experience of the
poor and the needy too often affirms; and 'tis nineteen hundred
thousand sand to _one_, by the dogmas of * * * * * * * * that you will be
damned eternally in the world to come!
But of all nonsense, religious nonsense is the most nonsensical; so
enough, and more than enough of it. Only, by the by, will you or can
you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a sectarian turn of mind has
always a tendency to narrow and illiberalize the heart? They are
orderly; they may be just; nay, I have known them merciful: but still
your children of sanctity move among their fellow-creatures with a
nostril-snuffing putrescence, and a foot-spurning filth, in short,
with a conceited dignity that your titled * * * * * * * * or any other
of your Scottish lordlings of seven centuries standing, display when
they accidentally mix among the many-aproned sons of mechanical life. I
remember, in my plough-boy days, I could not conceive it possible that a
noble lord could be a fool, or a godly man could be a knave--How
ignorant are plough-boys! --Nay, I have since discovered that a _godly
woman_ may be a *****! --But hold--Here's t'ye again--this rum is
generous Antigua, so a very unfit menstruum for scandal.
Apropos, how do you like, I mean _really_ like, the married life? Ah, my
friend! matrimony is quite a different thing from what your love-sick
youths and sighing girls take it to be! But marriage, we are told, is
appointed by God, and I shall never quarrel with any of his
institutions. I am a husband of older standing than you, and shall give
you _my_ ideas of the conjugal state, (_en passant_; you know I am no
Latinist, is not _conjugal_ derived from _jugum_, a yoke? ) Well, then,
the scale of good wifeship I divide into ten parts:--good-nature, four;
good sense, two; wit, one; personal charms, viz. a sweet face, eloquent
eyes, fine limbs, graceful carriage (I would add a fine waist too, but
that is so soon spoilt you know), all these, one; as for the other
qualities belonging to, or attending on, a wife, such as fortune,
connexions, education (I mean education extraordinary) family, blood,
&c. , divide the two remaining degrees among them as you please; only,
remember that all these minor properties must be expressed by
_fractions_, for there is not any one of them, in the aforesaid scale,
entitled to the dignity of an _integer. _
As for the rest of my fancies and reveries--how I lately met with Miss
Lesley Baillie, the most beautiful, elegant woman in the world--how I
accompanied her and her father's family fifteen miles on their
journey, out of pure devotion, to admire the loveliness of the works
of God, in such an unequalled display of them--how, in galloping home
at night, I made a ballad on her, of which these two stanzas make a
part--
Thou, bonny Lesley, art a queen,
Thy subjects we before thee;
Thou, bonny Lesley, art divine,
The hearts o' men adore thee.
The very deil he could na scathe
Whatever wad belang thee!
He'd look into thy bonnie face
And say, "I canna wrang thee. "
--behold all these things are written in the chronicles of my
imaginations, and shall be read by thee, my dear friend, and by thy
beloved spouse, my other dear friend, at a more convenient season.
Now, to thee, and to thy before-designed _bosom_-companion, be given
the precious things brought forth by the sun, and the precious things
brought forth by the moon, and the benignest influences of the stars,
and the living streams which flow from the fountains of life, and by
the tree of life, for ever and ever! Amen!
* * * * *
CCXXXIV.
TO MR. THOMSON.
[George Thomson, of Edinburgh, principal clerk to the trustees for the
encouraging the manufactures of Scotland, projected a work, entitled,
"A select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, for the Voice, to
which are added introductory and concluding Symphonies and
Accompaniments for the Pianoforte and Violin, by Pleyel and Kozeluch,
with select and characteristic Verses, by the most admired Scottish
Poets. " To Burns he applied for help in the verse: he could not find a
truer poet, nor one to whom such a work was more congenial. ]
_Dumfries, 16th Sept. 1792. _
SIR,
I have just this moment got your letter. As the request you make to me
will positively add to my enjoyments in complying with it, I shall
enter into your undertaking with all the small portion of abilities I
have, strained to their utmost exertion by the impulse of enthusiasm.
Only, don't hurry me--"Deil tak the hindmost" is by no means the _cri
de guerre_ of my muse. Will you, as I am inferior to none of you in
enthusiastic attachment to the poetry and music of old Caledonia, and,
since you request it, have cheerfully promised my mite of
assistance--will you let me have a list of your airs with the first
line of the printed verses you intend for them, that I may have an
opportunity of suggesting any alteration that may occur to me? You
know 'tis in the way of my trade; still leaving you, gentlemen, the
undoubted right of publishers to approve or reject, at your pleasure,
for your own publication. Apropos, if you are for English verses,
there is, on my part, an end of the matter. Whether in the simplicity
of the Ballad, or the pathos of the song, I can only hope to please
myself in being allowed at least a sprinkling of our native tongue.
English verses, particularly the works of Scotsmen, that have merit,
are certainly very eligible. "Tweedside'" "Ah! the poor shepherd's
mournful fate! " "Ah! Chloris, could I now but sit," &c. , you cannot
mend;[199] but such insipid stuff as "To Fanny fair could I impart,"
&c. , usually set to "The Mill, Mill, O! " is a disgrace to the
collections in which it has already appeared, and would doubly
disgrace a collection that will have the very superior merit of yours.
But more of this in the further prosecution of the business, if I am
called on for my strictures and amendments--I say amendments, for I
will not alter except where I myself, at least, think that I amend.
As to any remuneration, you may think my songs either above or below
price; for they should absolutely be the one or the other. In the
honest enthusiasm with which I embark in your undertaking, to talk of
money, wages, fee, hire, &c. , would be downright prostitution of soul!
a proof of each of the song that I compose or amend, I shall receive
as a favour. In the rustic phrase of the season, "Gude speed the
wark! "
I am, Sir,
Your very humble servant,
R. B.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 199: "Tweedside" is by Crawfurd; "Ah, the poor shepherd," &c. ,
by Hamilton, of Bangour; "Ah! Chloris," &c. , by Sir Charles
Sedley--Burns has attributed it to Sir Peter Halket, of Pitferran. ]
* * * * *
CCXXXV.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[One of the daughters of Mrs. Dunlop was married to M. Henri, a French
gentleman, who died in 1790, at Loudon Castle, in Ayrshire. The widow
went with her orphan son to France, and lived for awhile amid the
dangers of the revolution. ]
_Dumfries, 24th September, 1792. _
I have this moment, my dear Madam, yours of the twenty-third. All your
other kind reproaches, your news, &c. , are out of my head when I read
and think on Mrs. H----'s situation. Good God! a heart-wounded helpless
young woman--in a strange, foreign land, and that land convulsed with
every horror that can harrow the human feelings--sick--looking, longing
for a comforter, but finding none--a mother's feelings, too:--but it is
too much: he who wounded (he only can) may He heal!
* * * * *
I wish the farmer great joy of his new acquisition to his family.
* * * * * I cannot say that I give him joy of his life as a farmer. 'Tis,
as a farmer paying a dear, unconscionable rent, a _cursed life_! As to a
laird farming his own property; sowing his own corn in hope; and reaping
it, in spite of brittle weather, in gladness; knowing that none can say
unto him, 'what dost thou? '--fattening his herds; shearing his flocks;
rejoicing at Christmas; and begetting sons and daughters, until he be
the venerated, gray-haired leader of a little tribe--'tis a heavenly
life! but devil take the life of reaping the fruits that another must
eat.
Well, your kind wishes will be gratified, as to seeing me when I make
my Ayrshire visit. I cannot leave Mrs. B----, until her nine months'
race is run, which may perhaps be in three or four weeks. She, too,
seems determined to make me the patriarchal leader of a band. However,
if Heaven will be so obliging as to let me have them in the proportion
of three boys to one girl, I shall be so much the more pleased. I
hope, if I am spared with them, to show a set of boys that will do
honour to my cares and name; but I am not equal to the task of rearing
girls. Besides, I am too poor; a girl should always have a fortune.
Apropos, your little godson is thriving charmingly, but is a very
devil. He, though two years younger, has completely mastered his
brother. Robert is indeed the mildest, gentlest creature I ever saw.
He has a most surprising memory, and is quite the pride of his
schoolmaster.
You know how readily we get into prattle upon a subject dear to our
heart: you can excuse it. God bless you and yours!
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXXVI.
TO MRS. DUNLOP.
[This letter has no date: it is supposed to have been written on the
death of her daughter, Mrs. Henri, whose orphan son, deprived of the
protection of all his relations, was preserved by the affectionate
kindness of Mademoiselle Susette, one of the family domestics, and
after the Revolution obtained the estate of his blood and name. ]
I had been from home, and did not receive your letter until my return
the other day. What shall I say to comfort you, my much-valued,
much-afflicted friend! I can but grieve with you; consolation I have
none to offer, except that which religion holds out to the children of
affliction--_children of affliction! _--how just the expression! and
like every other family they have matters among them which they hear,
see, and feel in a serious, all-important manner, of which the world
has not, nor cares to have, any idea. The world looks indifferently
on, makes the passing remark, and proceeds to the next novel
occurrence.
Alas, Madam! who would wish for many years? What is it but to drag
existence until our joys gradually expire, and leave us in a night of
misery: like the gloom which blots out the stars one by one, from the
face of night, and leaves us, without a ray of comfort, in the howling
waste!
I am interrupted, and must leave off. You shall soon hear from me
again.
R. B.
* * * * *
CCXXXVII.
TO MR. THOMSON.
[Thomson had delivered judgment on some old Scottish songs, but the
poet murmured against George's decree. ]
MY DEAR SIR,
Let me tell you, that you are too fastidious in your ideas of songs
and ballads. I own that your criticisms are just; the songs you
specify in your list have, all but one, the faults you remark in them;
but who shall mend the matter? Who shall rise up and say, "Go to! I
will make a better? " For instance, on reading over "The Lea-rig," I
immediately set about trying my hand on it, and, after all, I could
make nothing more of it than the following, which, Heaven knows, is
poor enough.
When o'er the hill the eastern star, &c. [200]
Your observation as to the aptitude of Dr. Percy's ballad to the air,
"Nannie, O! " is just. It is, besides, perhaps, the most beautiful
ballad in the English language.
