The Canongate Burns. Robert Burns

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СКАЧАТЬ redemption to this Prince of Wales. The ploughman poet, tellingly, feels he needs to explain this reference to Henry IV to his cultivated audience. The ‘right rev’rend Osnaburg’ is Frederick Augustus (1763–1827) who was ‘elected’ to the bishopric of Asna-burg in Westphalia by his father, George III, in 1764. He added to this clerical distinction by taking up with Letita Derby, the ex-mistress of Rann the highwayman. The ‘Royal TARRY-BREEKS’ (l. 109) is another prodigally gifted son, Prince William (1765–1837), who became William IV in 1830. He had become naughtily, nautically involved with Sarah Martin, daughter of the commissioner of the Portsmouth dockyard. This encounter may have been derived from what Kinsley describes as the ‘ingenious model’ in Robert Sempill’s Ballat Maid Upoun Margaret Fleming, callit the Fleming Bark in Edinburgh, which was modernised in Ramsay’s The Ever Green (1724). Similar metaphors of dropped tackle and predatory boarding parties can also be found in Donne, followed by Pope.

      Burns claims that his knowledge of this particular incident came from a newspaper. It is probable that most of this kind of information so came to him. Unlike Wordsworth, who was wholly averse to what he saw as such vulgar contemporary contaminants, Burns belongs to an earlier satirical tradition. He not only throve on journalistic gossip, but could transmute it, like Byron, into great poetry. He also refers warmly to Hogarth and the whole world of eighteenth-century political caricature had undoubtedly a strong influence on him, perhaps not yet fully appreciated. The King also had five daughters (ll. 118–126) who were, needless to say, not noted for their beauty, unlike their chronic constipation.

1 Sir John Falstaff, Vide Shakespeare. R.B.

2 Alluding to the Newspaper account of a certain royal Sailor’s Amour. R.B.

       The Vision

Duan First1

      First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

      The Sun had clos’d the winter-day,

      The Curlers quat their roaring play, quit

      And hunger’d Maukin taen her way, hare, taken

      To kail-yards green, kitchen-gardens

      5 While faithless snaws ilk step betray snows each

      Whare she has been. where

      The Thresher’s weary flingin-tree, flailing

      The lee-lang day had tired me; live-long

      And when the Day had clos’d his e’e eye

      10 Far i’ the West,

      Ben i’ the Spence, right pensivelie, back, parlour

      I gaed to rest. went

      There, lanely by the ingle-cheek, lonely, fire side

      I sat and ey’d the spewing reek, smoke

      15 That fill’d, wi’ hoast-provoking smeek, cough, smoke

      The auld clay biggin; old, building

      An’ heard the restless rattons squeak rats

      About the riggin. roof

      All in this mottie, misty clime, dusty specks

      20 I backward mus’d on wasted time:

      How I had spent my youthfu’ prime,

      An’ done naething, nothing

      But stringing blethers up in rhyme, nonesense stories

      For fools to sing.

      25 Had I to guid advice but harket, good, listened

      I might, by this, hae led a market, have

      Or strutted in a bank and clarket clarked

      My Cash-Account:

      While here, half-mad, half-fed, half-sarket, half-clothed

      30 Is a’ th’ amount.

      I started, mutt’ring blockhead! coof! fool

      An’ heav’d on high my wauket loof, horny palm/hand

      To swear by a’ yon starry roof,

      Or some rash aith, oath

      35 That I, henceforth, would be rhyme-proof

      Till my last breath —

      When click! the string the snick did draw; door latch

      And jee! the door gaed to the wa’; went, wall

      And by my ingle-lowe I saw, fire-flame

      40 Now bleezan bright,

      A tight, outlandish Hizzie, braw, girl

      Come full in sight.

      Ye need na doubt, I held my whisht; not doubt, said nothing

      The infant aith, half-form’d, was crusht; oath/pledge

      45 I glowr’d as eerie’s I’d been dusht, stared, touched

      In some wild glen;

      When sweet, like modest Worth, she blusht,

      And stepped ben. inside

      Green, slender, leaf-clad Holly-boughs leaf-clothed/covered

      50 Were twisted, gracefu’, round her brows;

      I took her for some SCOTTISH MUSE,

      By that same token;

      And come to stop those reckless vows,

      Would soon been broken.

      55 A ‘hair-brain’d, sentimental trace’

      Was strongly marked in her face;

      A wildly-witty, rustic grace

      Shone full upon her;

      Her eye, ev’n turn’d on empty space,

      60 Beam’d keen with Honor.

      Down flow’d her robe, a tartan sheen, bright

      Till half a leg was scrimply seen; barely

      And such a leg! my bonie JEAN

      Could СКАЧАТЬ