Robert Burns: How To Know Him Part 34

In raptures sweet this hour we meet Wi' mutual love, an' a' that; But for how lang the flee may stang, [fly, sting]

Let inclination law that. [regulate]

Their tricks and craft hae put me daft, [crazy]

They've ta'en me in, an' a' that; But clear your decks, an' _Here's the s.e.x!_ I like the jads for a' that. [jades]

For a' that, and a' that, And twice as muckle's a' that, My dearest bluid, to do them guid, They're welcome till't, for a' that. [to it]

Recitativo

So sung the bard--and Nansie's wa's [walls]

Shook with a thunder of applause, Re-echo'd from each mouth; They toom'd their pocks, an' p.a.w.n'd their duds. [emptied, pokes, rags]

They scarcely left to co'er their fads, [cover, tails]

To quench their lowin' drouth. [flaming]

Then owre again the jovial thrang [over, crowd]

The poet did request To lowse his pack, an' wale a sang, [untie, choose]

A ballad o' the best; He rising, rejoicing, Between his twa Deborahs, Looks round him, an' found them Impatient for the chorus.

Air

TUNE: Jolly Mortals, Fill Your Gla.s.ses

See the smoking bowl before us, Mark our jovial ragged ring; Round and round take up the chorus, And in raptures let us sing:

CHORUS

A fig for those by law protected!

Liberty's a glorious feast!

Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest.

What is t.i.tle? what is treasure?

What is reputation's care?

If we lead a life of pleasure, 'Tis no matter how or where!

With the ready trick and fable, Round we wander all the day; And at night, in barn or stable, Hug our doxies on the hay. [mistresses]

Does the train-attended carriage Thro' the country lighter rove?

Does the sober bed of marriage Witness brighter scenes of love?

Life is all a variorum, We regard not how it goes; Let them cant about decorum Who have characters to lose.

Here's to budgets, bags, and wallets!

Here's to all the wandering train!

Here's our ragged brats and callets! [wenches]

One and all cry out _Amen!_

The materials for rebuilding Burns's world are not confined to his explicitly descriptive poems. Much can be gathered from the songs and satires, and there are important contributions in his too scanty essays in narrative. Of these last by far the most valuable is _Tam o'

Shanter_. The poem originated accidentally in the request of a certain Captain Grose for local legends to enrich a descriptive work which he was compiling. In Burns's correspondence will be found a prose account of the tradition on which the poem is founded, and he is supposed to have derived hints for the relations of Tam and his spouse from a couple he knew at Kirkoswald.

It was a happy inspiration that led him to turn the story into verse, for it revealed a capacity which otherwise we could hardly have guessed him to possess. The vigor and rapidity of the action, the vivid sketching of the background, the pregnant characterization, the drollery of the humor give this piece a high place among stories in verse, and lead us to conjecture that, had he followed this vein instead of devoting his later years to the service of Johnson and Thomson, he might have won a place beside the author of the _Canterbury Tales_. He lacked, to be sure, Chaucer's breadth of experience and richness of culture: being far less a man of the world he would never have attained the air of breeding that distinguishes the English poet: but with most of the essential qualities that charm us in Chaucer's stories he was well equipped. He had the observant eye, the power of selection, command of the telling phrase and happy epithet, the sense of the comic and the pathetic. Beyond Chaucer he had pa.s.sion and the power of rendering it, so that he might have reached greater tragic depth, as he surpa.s.sed him in lyric intensity.

As it is, however, Chaucer stands alone as a story-teller, for _Tam o'

Shanter_ is with Burns an isolated achievement. There are three distinct elements in the work--narrative, descriptive, and reflective.

The first can hardly be overpraised. We are made to feel the reluctance of the hero to abandon the genial inn fireside, with its warmth and uncritical companions.h.i.+p, for the bitter ride with a sulky sullen dame at the end of it; the rage of the thunderstorm, as with lowered head and fast-held bonnet the horseman plunges through it; the growing sense of terror as, past scene after scene of ancient horror, he approaches the ill-famed ruin. Then suddenly the mood changes.

Emboldened by his potations, Tam faces the astounding infernal revelry with unabashed curiosity, which rises and rises till, in a pitch of enthusiastic admiration for Cutty-Sark, he loses all discretion and brings the "h.e.l.lish legion" after him pell-mell. We reach the serio-comic catastrophe breathless but exhilarated.

The descriptive background of this galloping adventure is skilfully indicated. Each scene--the ale-house, the storm, the lighted church, the witches' dance--is sketched in a dozen lines, every stroke distinct and telling. Even the three lines indicating what waits the hero at home is an adequate picture. Though incidental, these vignettes add substantially to what the descriptive poems have told us of the environment, real and imaginative, in which the poet had been reared.

The value of the reflective element is more mixed. The most quoted pa.s.sage, that beginning

"But pleasures are like poppies spread,"

can only be regretted. With its literacy similes, its English, its artificial diction, it is a patch of cheap silk upon honest homespun.

But the other pieces of interspersed comment are all admirable. The ironic apostrophes--to Tam for neglecting his wife's warnings; to shrewish wives, consoling them for their husband's deafness to advice; to John Barleycorn, on the transient courage he inspires; to Tam again, when tragedy seems imminent--are all in perfect tone, and do much to add the element of drollery that mixes so delightfully with the weirdness of the scene. And like the other elements in the poem they are commendably short, for Burns nearly always fulfills Bagehot's requirement that poetry should be "memorable and emphatic, intense, and _soon over_."

TAM O' SHANTER

A TALE

Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke.

GARVIN DOUGLAS.

When chapman billies leave the street, [pedlar fellows]

And drouthy neibors neibors meet, [thirsty]

As market-days are wearing late, An' folk begin to tak the gate; [road]

While we sit bousing at the nappy, [ale]

An' getting fou and unco happy, [full, mighty]

We think na on the lang Scots miles, The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, [bogs, gaps]

That lie between us and our hame, Where sits our sulky sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter, [found]

As he frae Ayr ae night did canter-- [one]

(Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpa.s.ses For honest men and bonnie la.s.ses).

O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice!

She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum, [told, good-for-nothing]

A bletherin', bl.u.s.terin', drunken blellum; [chattering, babbler]

That frae November till October, Ae market-day thou was na sober; [One]

That ilka melder wi' the miller [every meal-grinding]

Thou sat as lang as thou had siller; [money]

That every naig was ca'd a shoe on, [nag]

The smith and thee gat roarin' fou on; That at the Lord's house, even on Sunday, Thou drank wi' Kirkton Jean till Monday.

She prophesied that, late or soon, Thou would be found deep drown'd in Doon; Or catch'd wi' warlocks in the mirk [wizards, dark]

By Alloway's auld haunted kirk.

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet [makes, weep]

To think how many counsels sweet, How mony lengthen'd sage advices, The husband frae the wife despises!