The Complete Works. Robert Burns

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      An’ let them wander at their will;

      So may his flock increase, and grow

      To scores o’ lambs, an’ packs of woo’!

      “Tell him he was a master kin’

      An’ ay was gude to me an’ mine;

      An’ now my dying charge I gie him,

      My helpless lambs, I trust them wi’ him.

      “O, bid him save their harmless lives

      Frae dogs, and tods, an’ butchers’ knives!

      But gie them guid cow-milk their fill,

      Till they be fit to fend themsel;

      An’ tent them duly, e’en an’ morn,

      Wi’ teats o’ hay, an’ ripps o’ corn.

      “An’ may they never learn the gaets

      Of ither vile, wanrestfu’ pets!

      To sink thro’ slaps, an’ reave an’ steal

      At stacks o’ pease, or stocks o’ kail.

      So may they, like their great forbears,

      For monie a year come thro’ the sheers;

      So wives will gie them bits o’ bread,

      An’ bairns greet for them when they’re dead.

      “My poor toop-lamb, my son an’ heir,

      O, bid him breed him up wi’ care;

      An’ if he live to be a beast,

      To pit some havins in his breast!

      An’ warn him what I winna name,

      To stay content wi’ yowes at hame

      An’ no to rin an’ wear his cloots,

      Like ither menseless, graceless brutes.

      “An’ niest my yowie, silly thing,

      Gude keep thee frae a tether string!

      O, may thou ne’er forgather up

      Wi’ ony blastit, moorland toop,

      But ay keep mind to moop an’ mell

      Wi’ sheep o’ credit like thysel!

      “And now, my bairns, wi’ my last breath

      I lea’e my blessin wi’ you baith:

      An’ when you think upo’ your mither,

      Mind to be kind to ane anither.

      “Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail

      To tell my master a’ my tale;

      An’ bid him burn this cursed tether,

      An’, for thy pains, thou’se get my blather.”

      This said, poor Mailie turn’d her head,

      And clos’d her een amang the dead.

      III. POOR MAILIE’S ELEGY

      [Burns, when he calls on the bards of Ayr and Doon to join in the lament for Mailie, intimates that he regards himself as a poet. Hogg calls it a very elegant morsel: but says that it resembles too closely “The Ewie and the Crooked Horn,” to be admired as original: the shepherd might have remembered that they both resemble Sempill’s “Life and death of the Piper of Kilbarchan.”]

      IV. FIRST EPISTLE TO DAVIE, A BROTHER POET

      [In the summer of 1781, Burns, while at work in the garden, repeated this Epistle to his brother Gilbert, who was much pleased with the performance, which he considered equal if not superior to some of Allan Ramsay’s Epistles, and said if it were printed he had no doubt that it would be well received by people of taste.]

      –January, [1784.]