The Canongate Burns. Robert Burns

eyes

      Poor Hughoc like a statue stan’s;

      He saw her days were near hand ended,

      10 But, wae’s my heart! he could na mend it! woe, not

      He gaped wide, but naething spak. nothing spoke

      At length poor Mailie silence brak: — broke

      ‘O thou, whase lamentable face whose

      Appears to mourn my woefu’ case!

      15 My dying words attentive hear,

      An’ bear them to my Master dear.

      ‘Tell him, if e’er again he keep

      As muckle gear as buy a sheep, much money

      O, bid him never tie them mair, more

      20 Wi’ wicked strings o’ hemp or hair!

      But ca’ them out to park or hill, call/drive

      An’ let them wander at their will:

      So may his flock increase, an’ grow

      To scores o’ lambs, an’ packs o’ woo’!

      25 ‘Tell him, he was a Master kin’, kind

      An’ ay was guid to me an’ mine; good

      An’ now my dying charge I gie him, give

      My helpless lambs, I trust them wi’ him. with

      ‘O, bid him save their harmless lives,

      30 Frae dogs, an’ tods, an’ butchers’ knives! from, foxes

      But gie them guid cow-milk their fill, give, good

      Till they be fit to fend themsel; themselves

      An’ tent them duely, e’en an’ morn, tend

      Wi’ taets o’ hay an’ ripps o’ corn. small amounts, handfuls

      35 ‘An’ may they never learn the gaets, ways

      Of ither vile, wanrestfu’ Pets — other, restless

      To slink thro’ slaps, an’ reave an’ steal, gaps in dykes

      At stacks o’ pease, or stocks o’ kail. plants

      So may they, like their great forbears,

      40 For monie a year come thro’ the sheers: many

      So wives will gie them bits o’ bread, give

      An’ bairns greet for them when they’re dead. children cry

      ‘My poor toop-lamb, my son an’ heir, tup/male

      O, bid him breed him up wi’ care! with

      45 An’ if he live to be a beast,

      To pit some havins in his breast! conduct

      An’ warn him, what I winna name, would not

      To stay content wi’ yowes at hame; ewes

      An’ no to rin an’ wear his cloots, run, hooves

      50 Like other menseless, graceless brutes. unmannerly

      ‘An’ niest, my yowie, silly thing; next, ewekin/female baby

      Gude keep thee frae a tether string! from

      O, may thou ne’er forgather up, make friends

      Wi’ onie blastet, moorland toop; any, blasted/damned

      55 But ay keep mind to moop an’ mell, always, nibble & mix

      Wi’ sheep o’ credit like thysel!

      ‘And now, my bairns, wi’ my last breath,

      I lea’e my blessin wi’ you baith: leave, with, both

      An’ when you think upo’ your Mither, mother

      60 Mind to be kind to ane anither. one another

      ‘Now, honest Hughoc, dinna fail, do not

      To tell my Master a’ my tale;

      An’ bid him burn this cursed tether,

      An’ for thy pains thou’se get my blather.’ thou will, bladder

      65 This said, poor Mailie turn’d her head,

      An’ clos’d her een amang the dead! eyes, among

      This poem fuses an actual experience at Lochlea, subsequently recorded by Gilbert Burns, with Burns’s awareness of the tradition of comic animal monologue as integral to the eighteenth-century Scottish vernacular revival. As Burns noted, Hughoc was an actual neighbouring herdsman though, in reality, the sheep was freed from the strangling tether and survived. Its ‘poetic’ death is necessary to the comic pathos of the poem. The literary tradition of burlesquing animal poetry commenced with William Hamilton of Gilbertfield (c. 1665–1751) whose rhetorical greyhound’s death-speech parodies Blind Harry’s Wallace. Burns would also be aware of the so-influential Robert Fergusson’s very funny parody of Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling (1771) with his Milton-burlesquing The Sow of Feeling (1773). As we saw in the Introduction, Mackenzie never forgave Fergusson’s lachrymose porcine parody. The tone of Burns’s poem is more subtle since the mother’s dying warnings to her children, particularly against keeping the wrong sexual company, are a mixture of his satirising snobbery and prudery with genuine sympathy towards a mother’s natural, protective love. Burns, indeed (see Address to a Young Friend), often displayed a genuine paternal care, which revealed a desire to preserve his varied dependants from the dangers inherent in his own licentious excesses.

       Poor Mailie’s Elegy

      First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

      Lament in rhyme, lament in prose,

      Wi’ saut tears tricklin down your nose; salt

      Our Bardie’s fate is at a close,

      Past a’ remead! remedy

      5 The last, sad cape-stane of his woes; coping stone (final weight)

      Poor Mailie’s dead!

      It’s no the loss of warl’s gear, worldly goods

      That could sae bitter draw the tear, so

      Or mak our Bardie, dowie, wear drooping/gloomy

      10 The mourning weed:

      He’s lost a friend an’ neebor dear neighbour

      In Mailie dead.

      Thro’ a’ the toun she trotted by him; town

      A lang half-mile she could descry him; long

      15 Wi’ kindly bleat, when she did spy him,

      She ran wi’ speed:

      A friend mair faithfu’ ne’er cam nigh him, more, came near

      Than Mailie dead.

      I wat she was a sheep o’ sense, wot

      20 An’ could behave hersel wi’ mense: tact/grace

      I’ll say’t, she never brak a fence, broke

      Thro’ thievish greed.

      Our Bardie, lanely, keeps the spence parlour

      Sin’ Mailie’s dead.

      25 Or, if he wanders up the howe, glen

      Her livin image in her yowe ewe

      Comes bleatin till him, owre the knowe, over the