Robert Burns: How To Know Him Part 31

'Twad be owre lang a tale to tell How mony stories past, An' how they crowded to the yill, [ale]

When they were a' dismist; How drink gaed round, in cogs an' caups, [wooden drinking vessels]

Amang the furms and benches; An' cheese an' bread, frae women's laps, Was dealt about in lunches, [full portions]

An' dawds that day. [lumps]

In comes a gawsie, gash guidwife, [jolly, sensible]

An' sits down by the fire, Syne draws her kebbuck an' her knife; [Then, cheese]

The la.s.ses they are shyer.

The auld guidmen, about the grace, Frae side to side they bother, Till some are by his bonnet lays, An' gi'es them't like a tether, [rope]

Fu' lang that day.

Waesucks! for him that gets nae la.s.s, [Alas!]

Or la.s.ses that hae naething!

Sma' need has he to say a grace, Or melvie his braw claithing! [make dusty]

O wives, be mindful, ance yoursel How bonnie lads ye wanted, An' dinna for a kebbuck-heel Let la.s.ses be affronted On sic a day! [such]

Now Clink.u.mbell, wi' rattlin' tow, [Bell-ringer, rope]

Begins to jow an' croon; [swing, toll]

Some swagger hame the best they dow, [can]

Some wait the afternoon.

At slaps the billies halt a blink, [gaps, kids]

Till la.s.ses strip their shoon; Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, [shoes]

They're a' in famous tune For crack that day. [chat]

How mony hearts this day converts O' sinners and o' la.s.ses!

Their hearts o' static, gin night, are gane [before]

As saft as ony flesh is.

There's some are fou o' love divine, There's some are fou o' brandy; An' mony jobs that day begin, May end in houghmagandie [fornication]

Some ither day.

[20] The rationalism of the New Lights.

It must be admitted that, as we pa.s.s from poem to poem, Scottish manners are becoming freer, Scottish drink is more potent, Scottish religion is no longer pure and undefiled. Yet the poet hardly seems to be at a disadvantage. He certainly is no less interesting; he impresses our imaginations and rouses our sympathetic understanding as keenly as ever; there is no abatement of our esthetic relish.

We have seen the Ayrshire peasant alone with his family, at social gatherings, and at church. We have to see him with his cronies and at the tavern. Scotch manners and Scotch religion we know now; it is the turn of Scotch drink. The spirit of that conviviality which was one of Burns's ruling pa.s.sions, and which in his cla.s.s helped to color the grayness of daily hardship, was rendered by him in verse again and again: never more triumphantly than in the greatest of his baccha.n.a.lian songs, _Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut_. Indeed it would be hard to find anywhere in our literature a more revealing utterance of those effects of alcohol that are not discussed in scientific literature--the joyous exhilaration, the conviction of (comparative) sobriety, the temporary intensification of the feeling of good fellowship. The challenge to the moon is unsurpa.s.sable in its unconscious humor. Yet Arnold thought the world of Scotch drink unbeautiful.

WILLIE BREW'D A PECK O' MAUT

O, Willie brew'd a peck o' maut, [malt]

And Rob and Allan cam to see; Three blyther hearts, that lee-lang night, [live-long]

Ye wad na found in Christendie. [would not have, Christendom]

We are na fou', we're nae that fou, [drunk]

But just a drappie in our e'e; [droplet]

The c.o.c.k may craw, the day may daw, [crow, dawn]

And aye we'll taste the barley-bree. [brew]

Here are we met, three merry boys, Three merry boys, I trow, are we; And mony a night we've merry been, And mony mae we hope to be! [more]

It is the moon, I ken her horn, That's blinkin' in the lift sae hie; [shining, sky, high]

She shines sae bright to wyle us hame, [entice]

But, by my sooth! she'll wait a wee.

Wha first shall rise to gang awa, [go]

A cuckold, coward loun is he! [rascal]

Wha first beside his chair shall fa', He is the King amang us three!

With greater daring and on a broader canvas Burns has dealt with the same subject in _The Jolly Beggars_. For the literary treatment of the theme he had hints from Ramsay, in whose _Merry Beggars_ and _Happy Beggars_ groups of half a dozen male and female characters proclaim their views and join in a chorus in praise of drink. More direct suggestion for the setting of his "cantata" came from a night visit made by the poet and two of his friends to the low alehouse kept by Nancy Gibson ("Poosie Nansie") in Mauchline. The poem was written in 1785, but Burns never published it and seems almost to have forgotten its existence.

It is impossible to exaggerate the unpromising nature of the theme.

The place is a den of corruption, the characters are the dregs of society. A group of tramps and criminals have gathered at the end of their day's wanderings to drink the very rags from their backs and wallow in shameless incontinence. An old soldier and a quondam "daughter of the regiment," a mountebank and his tinker sweetheart, a female pickpocket whose Highland bandit lover has been hanged, a fiddler at fairs who aspires to comfort her but is outdone by a tinker, a lame ballad-singer and his three wives, one of whom consoles the fiddler in the face of her husband--such is the choice company.

The action is mere by-play, drunken love making; the main point is the songs. They are mostly frank autobiography, all pervaded with the gaiety that comes from the conviction that being at the bottom, they need not be anxious about falling. Wine, women, and song are their enthusiasms, and only the song is above the lowest possible level.

Such is the sordid material out of which Burns wrought his greatest imaginative triumph. To take the reader into such a haunt and have him pa.s.s the evening in such company, not with disgust and nausea but with relish and joy, is an achievement that stands beside the creation of the scenes in the Boar's Head Tavern in Eastcheap. It is accomplished by virtue of the intensity of the poet's imaginative sympathy with human nature even in its most degraded forms, and by his power of finding utterance for the moods of the characters he conceives. The dramatic power which we have noted in a certain group of the songs here reaches its height, and in making the reader respond to it he avails himself of all his literary faculties. Pungent phrasing, a sense of the squalid picturesque, a humorous appreciation of human weakness, and a superb command of rollicking rhythms--these elements of his equipment are particularly notable. But the whole thing is fused and unified by a wonderful vitality that makes the reading of it an actual experience. And, though several of the songs are in English, there is no moralizing, no alien note of any kind to jar the perfection of its harmony. Scottish literature had seen nothing like it since Dunbar made the Seven Deadly Sins dance in h.e.l.l.

THE JOLLY BEGGARS

A CANTATA

Recitativo

When lyart leaves bestrow the yird, [withered, earth]

Or, wavering like the baukie bird, [bat]

Bedim cauld Boreas' blast; When hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte, [glancing stroke]

And infant frosts begin to bite, In h.o.a.ry cranreuch drest; [h.o.a.r-frost]

Ae night at e'en a merry core [one, gang]

O' randie, gangrel bodies [rowdy, vagrant]

In Poosie Nansie's held the splore, [carousal]

To drink their orra duddies. [spare rags]

Wi' quaffing and laughing, They ranted an' they sang; Wi' jumping an' thumping The very girdle rang. [cake-pan]

First, niest the fire, in auld red rags, [next]

Ane sat, weel brac'd wi' mealy bags, An' knapsack a' in order; His doxy lay within his arm; [mistress]

Wi' usquebae an blankets warm [whisky]

She blinket on her sodger; [leered]

An' aye he gies the tozie drab [flushed with drink]

The t.i.ther skelpin' kiss, [smacking]

While she held up her greedy gab, [mouth]

Just like an aumous dish; [alms]

Ilk smack still did crack still Just like a cadger's whip; [hawker's]

Then, swaggering an' staggering, He roar'd this ditty up--

Air

TUNE: Soldier's Joy

I am a son of Mars, who have been in many wars, And show my cuts and scars wherever I come: This here was for a wench, and that other in a trench, When welcoming the French at the sound of the drum, Lal de daudle, &c.