The Canongate Burns. Robert Burns

taste the barrel.

      Alake! that e’er my Muse has reason,

      80 To wyte her countrymen wi’ treason! blame/charge

      But mony daily weet their weason many, wet their throat

      Wi’ liquors nice,

      An’ hardly, in a winter season,

      E’er spier her price. ask

      85 Wae worth that Brandy, burnin trash! woe to

      Fell source o’ monie a pain an’ brash! sickness

      Twins mony a poor, doylt, drucken hash, (deprives many,

      O’ half his days; weary drunken fellow)

      An’ sends, beside, auld Scotland’s cash old

      To her warst faes. worst foes

      Ye Scots, wha wish auld Scotland well, who, old

      Ye chief, to you my tale I tell,

      Poor, plackless devils like mysel, penniless

      It sets you ill,

      95 Wi’ bitter, dearthfu’ wines to mell, meddle

      Or foreign gill.

      May Gravels round his blather wrench, stones, bladder

      An’ Gouts torment him, inch by inch,

      Wha twists his gruntle wi’ a glunch who, mouth, grumble

      100 O’ sour disdain,

      Out owre a glass o’ Whisky-punch over

      Wi’ honest men!

      O Whisky! soul o’ plays an’ pranks!

      Accept a Bardie’s gratefu’ thanks!

      105 When wanting thee, what tuneless cranks

      Are my poor Verses!

      Thou comes — they rattle i’ their ranks

      At ither’s arses!

      Thee, Ferintosh! O sadly lost!

      110 Scotland lament frae coast to coast! from

      Now colic-grips, an’ barkin hoast coughing hoarse

      May kill us a’;

      For loyal Forbes’ Chartered boast

      Is taen awa! taken away

      115 Thae curst horse-leeches o’ th’ Excise, those

      Wha mak the Whisky stills their prize! who make

      Haud up thy han’, Deil! ance, twice, thrice! hold, hand, once

      There, seize the blinkers! rascals/spies

      An’ bake them up in brunstane pies brimstone

      120 For poor damn’d Drinkers.

      Fortune! if thou’ll but gie me still give

      Hale breeks, a scone, an’ Whisky gill, whole breeches

      An’ rowth o’ rhyme to rave at will, abundance/store

      Tak a’ the rest,

      125 An’ deal’t about as thy blind skill

      Directs thee best.

      Though not quite in the manner of his contemporary, William Blake, Burns found The Bible a constant source of inspiration and allusion. This vernacularisation of Proverbs with which he introduces the poem is characteristic of his delight in the often excessively erotic, violent and, in this case, alcoholic tales he found in The Old Testament. Such use of The Bible was not the least of his anti-clerical weapons. Nor was it the least of his offences against Hugh Blair and the pietistic critical sensibilities of genteel Edinburgh.

      A copy of Scotch Drink was sent to Robert Muir in March, 1786, having been apparently written sometime in the preceding winter. This celebratory ‘hymn’ to the virtues of the national drink again owes its genesis and tone to the bibulous gaiety which pulses through Robert Fergusson’s poetry. In particular it is related to Fergusson’s Caller Water and A Drink Eclogue with its disputation between Brandy and Whisky. As in Fergusson’s poems, whisky is ever the vital, democratising, somewhat chauvinistic heart’s blood of the nation, energising and socialising everybody with whom it comes into contact. The sad exception is the impotent, cuckolded husband of ll. 67–72.

      In ll. 102–8 Burns also associates whisky with the power to energise his own poetic creativity so that the quality of his verses catches up with those of his poetic competitors. We cannot know to what degree alcohol was a creative stimulant for Burns, though certainly some of his most extraordinary letters are self-confessedly written with well-plied glass in hand. See, for example, Letter 506 to Alexander Cunningham.

      The reference in l. 109 to Ferintosh as Kinsley tells us, is that this Cromarty Firth whisky had been exempted from duty after 1695 in reparation for damage to the estates of Forbes of Culloden, the owner of the distillery, by the Jacobites in 1689. Forbes’ loss of this privilege in 1785 drove the price of whisky up.

      The penultimate stanza’s consignment of the Excise to the fires of hell for their still-breaking activities must have caused Burns subsequent guilty grief. The Excise was the most hated and efficient arm of a state that had nothing to do with welfare and everything to do with intrusive, punitive taxation. Had he known it, Burns would have wholeheartedly agreed with Blake that ‘Lawful Bread, Bought with Lawful Money, & a Lawful Heaven, seen thro’ a Lawful Telescope, by means of a Lawful Window Light! The Holy Ghost, & whatever cannot be Taxed, is Unlawful & Witchcraft’.

       The Author’s Earnest Cry and Prayer

To The Scotch Representatives In The House of Commons1

      First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

       Dearest of distillation! last and best — — How art thou lost! —

      Parody on Milton.

      Ye Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires,

      Wha represent our BRUGHS an’ SHIRES, who, burghs

      An’ doucely manage our affairs prudently

      In Parliament,

      5 To you a simple Bardie’s pray’rs

      Are humbly sent.

      Alas! my roupet Muse is haerse! husky, hoarse

      Your Honors’ hearts wi’ grief ’twad pierce, it would

      To see her sittan on her arse

      10 Low i’ the dust,

      And scriechan out prosaic verse, screeching

      An’ like to brust! burst

      Tell them wha hae the chief direction, who have

      Scotland an’ me’s in great affliction,

      15 E’er sin’ they laid that curst restriction ever since

      On AQUAVITAE whisky/water-of-life

      An’ rouse them up to strong conviction,

      An’ move their pity.

      Stand forth, an’ tell yon PREMIER YOUTH

      20 The honest, open, naked truth:

      Tell him o’ mine an’ Scotland’s drouth, thirst

      His servants humble:

      The muckle devil blaw you south,