The Canongate Burns. Robert Burns

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СКАЧАТЬ I gied thy cog a wee bit heap gave, feed measure

      Aboon the timmer: above the rim

      I ken’d my Maggie wad na sleep knew, would not

      For that, or Simmer. before summer

      In cart or car thou never reestet; baulked

      80 The steyest brae thou wad hae fac’t it; steepest hill, would have

      Thou never lap, an’ sten’t, an’ breastet, leaped, reared

      Then stood to blaw; puff for air

      But just thy step a wee thing hastet, a little shortened

      Thou snoov’t awa. pushed away

      85 My Pleugh is now thy bairn-time a’, my plough-team is your offspring

      Four gallant brutes as e’er did draw;

      Forbye sax mae I’ve sell’t awa, six more, sold away

      That thou hast nurst: nursed

      They drew me thretteen pund an’ twa, thirteen pound, two

      90 The vera warst.

      Monie a sair daurk we twa hae wrought, many, sore day’s work, two, have

      An’ wi’ the weary warl’ fought! world

      An’ monie an anxious day I thought many

      We 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, СКАЧАТЬ