The Canongate Burns. Robert Burns

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СКАЧАТЬ Act which diverted tax from tea to windows. Fox, at this time is still for Burns merely a licentious nuisance. After another invocation of Scottish capacity for violence, he ends by requesting the 45 MPs to support their Nation. His actual hopes of their doing so is summed up in a brilliantly ironic last stanza where he envisages these pursy placemen subsisting on the diet and in the rags of Scottish peasantry among the temptations of St James’s in London.

      This level of irony is sustained in the quite brilliantly subtle seven-stanza Postscript which Burns adds to the poem. Carol McGuirk suggests that this should be read as the Poet’s first address to Parliament. On the face of it, derived from Enlightenment theories that national character is the product of climate and environment, the poem seems to be a celebration of Scottish machismo and militarism over the cowardice inherent to the wine drinking peasantry of warmer climes. This apparent celebration of Scottish militarism is, however, immediately, devastatingly undercut. Ll. 163–74 are an astonishingly compressed denunciation of the savage, self-destructive consequences to the unaware Highlanders of their post-Culloden integration into British Imperial armies. Equally dark for Scotland is the fact that the feminine part of the nation (ll. 181–3) has degenerated to an incontinent crone. Thus, the ultimate toast (ll. 185–6) is the blackest irony.

      N.B. Stanza 15 here is not included in Kinsley. There is also a variation in the last stanza.

1 This was written before the Act anent the Scotch Distilleries of session 1786; for which Scotland and the Author return their most grateful thanks. R.B.

1 George Dempster, mentioned in The Vision.

2 Sir Adam Ferguson.

3 James Graham, Son of the Duke of Montrose.

4 Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville.

5 Thomas Erskine, M.P., brother of Henry Erskine.

6 Frederick Campbell and Ilay Campbell.

7 Sir William Cunninghame of Livingston.

8 Classical rhetorical orators – colloquial for Cicero.

9 Hugh Montgomerie, Earl of Eglinton.

10 Leader of the Whig Opposition.

11 An allusion to William Pitt’s grandfather, Robert.

12 A worthy old Hostess of the Author’s in Mauchline, where he sometimes studies Politics over a glass of guid auld Scotch Drink. R.B.

       The Holy Fair

      First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

       A robe of seeming truth and trust

       Hid crafty observation;

       And secret hung, with poison’d crust,

       The dirk of defamation:

       A mask that like the gorget show’d,

       Dye-varying on the pigeon;

       And for a mantle large and broad,

       He wrapt him in Religion.

      Tom Brown, Hypocrisy A-La-Mode.

      Upon a simmer Sunday morn, summer

      When Nature’s face is fair,

      I walked forth to view the corn,

      An’ snuff the callor air: fresh

      5 The rising sun, owre GALSTON Muirs, over, moors

      Wi’ glorious light was glintan;

      The hares were hirplan down the furs, hobbling with uneven speed, furrows

      The lav’rocks they were chantan larks

      Fu’ sweet that day. full

      10 As lightsomely I glowr’d abroad,

      To see a scene sae gay, so

      Three hizzies, early at the road, young wenches

      Cam skelpan up the way. came hurrying

      Twa had manteeles o’ dolefu’ black, two, mantles

      15 But ane wi’ lyart lining; one, grey

      The third, that gaed a wee aback, went, behind

      Was in the fashion shining

      Fu’ gay that day. full

      The twa appear’d like sisters twin, two

      20 In feature, form, an’ claes; clothes

      Their visage — wither’d, lang an’ thin, long

      An’ sour as onie slaes: any sloes

      The third cam up, hap-step-an’-lowp, hop-step-and-leap

      As light as onie lambie, — any lamb

      25 An’ wi’ a curchie low did stoop, curtsey

      As soon as e’er she saw me,

      Fu’ kind that day.

      Wi’ bonnet aff, quoth I, ‘Sweet lass, off

      I think ye seem to ken me; know

      30 I’m sure I’ve seen that bonie face, pretty

      But yet I canna name ye. — ’ cannot

      Quo’ she, an’ laughin as she spak, spoke

      An’ taks me by the hands,

      ‘Ye, for my sake, hae gi’en the feck have given, bulk

      35 Of a’ the ten commands

      A screed some day. rip

      ‘My name is FUN — your cronie dear, friend

      The СКАЧАТЬ