The Canongate Burns. Robert Burns
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wad be beat! would
95 Yet here to crazy Age we’re brought,
Wi’ something yet.
An’ think na, my auld trusty Servan’, not, old
That now perhaps thou’s less deservin,
An’ thy auld days may end in starvin; old
100 For my last fow, bushel
A heapet Stimpart, I’ll reserve ane heaped, 8th of a bushel
Laid by for you.
We’ve worn to crazy years thegither; together
We’ll toyte about wi’ ane anither; totter, one another
105 Wi’ tentie care I’ll flit thy tether heedful, change
To some hain’d rig, reserved ground
Whare ye may nobly rax your leather stretch your body
Wi’ sma’ fatigue.
Inevitably, in that now forever lost agrarian world, of all the deep bonds between man and beast, those with horses were the most intimate and profound. Burns’s extraordinary empathy with his horses is everywhere present in his writing and is exemplified by his often naming them as expression of the current state of his own feelings. Thus, for example, the quixotic Rosinante or the disruptively comic, stool-throwing, anti-clerical Jenny Geddes. If Wordsworth needed the rhythmical stimulation of walking to write poetry, Burns discovered more varied, energised rhythms in the saddle. His Excise horse he named Pegasus, that mythical winged icon of poetical creativity. In a sense, however, all his horses had contained these magical energies as can be seen in those astonishing lines (ll. 17–44) of The Epistle to Hugh Parker.
The horse honoured here is not a flyer of that kind, though her young power had allowed her eventually to outpace the lightweight hunters of the gentry in an actual and, hence, political victory. The poem is a deeply moving, heavily vernacularised, monologue by the old man as he parallels the life of his mare and himself. Not the least of Burns’s intentions in the poem is to document the sheer, brutal harshness of the work conditions man and horse had to overcome in order to survive. McGuirk postulates that in part the poem is drawn from Burns’s memories of his father. The poem was probably written in January 1786.
The Cotter’s Saturday Night
Inscribed to R. Aiken, Esq.
First published in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the Poor.
GRAY.
My lov’d, my honor’d, much respected friend!
No mercenary Bard his homage pays;
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,
My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:
5 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene;
The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,
What Aiken in a Cottage would have been;
Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier there I ween! trust
10 November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh; blows, whistling wind
The short’ning winter-day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; dirty, from, plough
The black’ning trains o’ craws to their repose: crows
The toil-worn COTTER frae his labour goes, from
15 This night his weekly moil is at an end, toil/drudgery
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, a two-mouthed pick
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend. homeward
At length his lonely Cot appears in view, cottage
20 Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;
Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlan, stacher through children, totter
To meet their Dad, wi’ flichterin noise and glee. fluttering
His wee bit ingle, blinkan bonilie, fire, burning nicely
His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty Wifie’s smile, fireside, wife’s
25 The lisping infant, prattling on his knee,
Does a’ his weary kiaugh and care beguile, anxiety
And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil.
Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, by-and-by, kids, dropping
At Service out, amang the Farmers roun’; among, round
30 Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin work, shepherd, attentively run
A cannie errand to a neebor town: private, neighbour
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,
In youthfu’ bloom, Love sparkling in her e’e, eye
Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown, home, show, fine
35 Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, sore-, wages
To help her Parents dear, if they in hardship be.
With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet,
And each for other’s weelfare kindly spiers: welfare, inquires
The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d fleet;
40 Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears. news
The Parents partial eye their hopeful years;
Anticipation forward points the view;
The Mother, wi’ her needle and her sheers, scissors
Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new; makes old clothes, almost, well
45 The Father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.
Their Master’s and their Mistress’s command
The youngkers a’ are warned to obey; youngsters all
And mind their labors wi’ an eydent hand, diligent
And ne’er, tho’ out o’ sight, to jauk or play: fool around
50 ‘And O! be sure to fear the LORD always! always
And mind your duty, duly, morn and night!
Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray, go
Implore His counsel and assisting might:
They never sought in vain that sought the LORD aright.’
55 But hark! a rap comes gently to the door;
Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same. who knows
Tells how a neebor lad came o’er the moor, neighbour
To do some errands, and convoy her hame. home
The wily Mother sees the conscious flame
60 Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush