Robert Burns: How To Know Him Part 36

For Nannie, far before the rest, Hard upon n.o.ble Maggie prest, And flew at Tam wi' furious ettle; [endeavor]

But little wist she Maggie's mettle!

Ae spring brought off her master hale, [whole]

But left behind her ain gray tail: The carlin caught her by the rump, [clutched]

And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read, Ilk man and mother's son, take heed; Whene'er to drink you are inclin'd, Or cutty-sarks rin in your mind, Think! ye may buy the joys o'er dear; Remember Tam o' Shanter's mare.

[21] Woven in a reed of 1,700 divisions.

[22] Lit., a present from a fair; deserts and something more.

Description in Burns is not confined to man and society: he has much to say of nature, animate and inanimate.

Though within a few miles of the ocean, the scenery among which the poet grew up was inland scenery. He lived more than once by the sea for short periods, yet it appears but little in his verse, and then usually as the great severing element.

And seas between us braid hae roar'd Sin auld lang syne

is the characteristic line. Scottish poetry had no tradition of the sea. To England the sea had been the great boundary and defense against the continental powers, and her naval achievements had long produced a patriotic sentiment with regard to it which is reflected in her literature. But Scotland's frontier had been the line of the Cheviots and the Tweed, and save for a brief s.p.a.ce under James IV she had never been a sea-power. Thus the cruelty and danger of the sea are almost the only phases prominent in her poetry, and Burns here once more follows tradition.

Again, the scenery of Ayrshire was Lowland scenery, with pastoral hills and valleys. On his Highland tours Burns saw and admired mountains, but they too appear little in his verse. Though not an unimportant figure in the development of natural description in literature, he had not reached the modern deliberateness in the seeking out of nature's beauties for worship or imitation, so that the phases of natural beauty which we find in his poetry are merely those which had unconsciously become fixed in a memory naturally retentive of visual images.

Not only do his natural descriptions deal with the aspects familiar to him in his ordinary surroundings, but they are for the most part treated in relation to life. The thunderstorm in _Tam o' Shanter_ is a characteristic example. It is detailed and vivid and is for the moment the center of interest; but it is introduced solely on Tam's account.

Oftener the wilder moods of the weather are used as settings for lyric emotion. In _Winter, a Dirge_, the harmony of the poet's spirit with the tempest is the whole theme, and in _My Nannie's Awa_ the same idea is treated with more mature art:

Come autumn sae pensive, in yellow and gray, And soothe me wi' tidings o' nature's decay; The dark, dreary winter, and wild-driving snaw Alane can delight me--now Nannie's awa.

Many poems are introduced with a note of the season, even when it has no marked relation to the tone of the poem. _The Cotter's Sat.u.r.day Night_ opens with

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;

_The Jolly Beggars_ with

When lyart leaves bestrew the yird;

_The Epistle to Davie_ with

While winds frae off Ben-Lomond blaw, An' bar the doors wi' drivin' snaw,

though in this last case it is skilfully used to introduce the theme.

These introductions are probably less imitations of the traditional opening landscape which had been a convention since the early Middle Ages, than the natural result of a plowman's daily consciousness of the weather.

For whether related organically to his subject or not, Burns's descriptions of external nature are to a high degree marked by actual experience and observation. Even remembering Thomson in the previous generation and Cowper and Crabbe in his own, we may safely say that English poetry had hardly seen such realism. Its quality will be conceived from a few pa.s.sages. Take the well-known description of the flood from _The Brigs of Ayr_.

When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains, [all-day]

Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains; When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil, Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source, Arous'd by bl.u.s.t'ring winds an' spotting thowes, [thaws]

In mony a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes; [melted snow rolls]

While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate, [flood]

Sweeps dams, an' mills, an' brigs, a' to the gate; [way (to the sea)]

And from Glenbuck, down to the Ralton-key, Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd, tumbling sea; Then down ye'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise! [devil if]

And dash the gumlie jaup up to the pouring skies! [muddy splashes]

Any reader familiar with Gavin Douglas's description of a Scottish winter in his Prologue to the twelfth book of the _aeneid_ will be struck by the resemblance to this pa.s.sage both in subject and manner.

It is doubtful whether Burns knew more of Douglas than the motto to _Tam o' Shanter_, but from the days of the turbulent bishop in the early sixteenth century down to Burns's own time Scottish poetry had never lost touch with nature, and had rendered it with peculiar faithfulness. It is interesting to note that while _The Brigs of Ayr_ is Burns's most successful attempt at the heroic couplet, and though it contains verses that must have encouraged his ambition to be a Scottish Pope, yet it is sprinkled with touches of natural observation quite remote from the manner of that master. Compare, on the one hand, such couplets as these:

Will your poor narrow foot-path of a street, Where twa wheel-barrows tremble when they meet,--

and

And tho' wi' crazy eild I'm sair forfairn [old age, sorely worn-out]

I'll be a brig when ye're a shapeless cairn! [heap of stones]

and

Forms like some bedlam statuary's dream, The craz'd creations of misguided whim;

and

As for your priesthood, I shall say but little, Corbies and clergy are a shot right kittle; [Ravens, sort, ticklish]

couplets of which Pope need hardly have been ashamed, with such touches of nature as these:

Except perhaps the robin's whistling glee, Proud o' the height o some bit half-lang tree:

and

The silent moon shone high o'er tow'r and tree: The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam, Crept, gently crusting, owre the glittering stream.

These examples of his power of exact, vigorous, or delicate rendering of familiar sights and sounds may be supplemented with a few from other poems.

O sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods, [intervales]

When lintwhites chant amang the buds, [linnets]

And jinkin' hares, in amorous whids, [dodging, gambols]

Their loves enjoy, While thro' the braes the cushat croods [coos]

Wi' wailfu' cry!

Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me When winds rave thro' the naked tree; Or frost on hills of Ochiltree Are h.o.a.ry gray; Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, Dark'ning the day!

_Epistle to William Simpson._

Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, As thro' the glen it wimpled; Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays; Whyles in a wiel it dimpled; Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle; Whyles cookit underneath the braes, Below the spreading hazel, Unseen that night.

_Halloween._

Closely interwoven with Burns's feelings for natural beauty is his sympathy with animals. The frequency of pa.s.sages of pathos on the sufferings of beasts and birds may be in part due to the influence of Sterne, but in the main its origin is not literary but is an expression of a tender heart and a lifelong friendly intercourse. In this relation Burns most often allows his sentiment to come to the edge of sentimentality, yet in fairness it must be said that he seldom crosses the line. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he had no need to force the note; it was his instinct both as a farmer and as a lover of animals to think, when he heard the storm rise, how it would affect the lower creation.

List'ning the doors and winnocks rattle, [windows]

I thought me on the ourie cattle, [shivering]

Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle [onset]

O' winter war, And thro' the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle [-sinking, scramble]

Beneath a scar.