The Canongate Burns. Robert Burns

wad be beat! would

      95 Yet here to crazy Age we’re brought,

      Wi’ something yet.

      An’ think na, my auld trusty Servan’, not, old

      That now perhaps thou’s less deservin,

      An’ thy auld days may end in starvin; old

      100 For my last fow, bushel

      A heapet Stimpart, I’ll reserve ane heaped, 8th of a bushel

      Laid by for you.

      We’ve worn to crazy years thegither; together

      We’ll toyte about wi’ ane anither; totter, one another

      105 Wi’ tentie care I’ll flit thy tether heedful, change

      To some hain’d rig, reserved ground

      Whare ye may nobly rax your leather stretch your body

      Wi’ sma’ fatigue.

      Inevitably, in that now forever lost agrarian world, of all the deep bonds between man and beast, those with horses were the most intimate and profound. Burns’s extraordinary empathy with his horses is everywhere present in his writing and is exemplified by his often naming them as expression of the current state of his own feelings. Thus, for example, the quixotic Rosinante or the disruptively comic, stool-throwing, anti-clerical Jenny Geddes. If Wordsworth needed the rhythmical stimulation of walking to write poetry, Burns discovered more varied, energised rhythms in the saddle. His Excise horse he named Pegasus, that mythical winged icon of poetical creativity. In a sense, however, all his horses had contained these magical energies as can be seen in those astonishing lines (ll. 17–44) of The Epistle to Hugh Parker.

      The horse honoured here is not a flyer of that kind, though her young power had allowed her eventually to outpace the lightweight hunters of the gentry in an actual and, hence, political victory. The poem is a deeply moving, heavily vernacularised, monologue by the old man as he parallels the life of his mare and himself. Not the least of Burns’s intentions in the poem is to document the sheer, brutal harshness of the work conditions man and horse had to overcome in order to survive. McGuirk postulates that in part the poem is drawn from Burns’s memories of his father. The poem was probably written in January 1786.

       The Cotter’s Saturday Night

      Inscribed to R. Aiken, Esq.

      First published in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

       Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,

       Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;

       Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,

       The short and simple annals of the Poor.

      GRAY.

      My lov’d, my honor’d, much respected friend!

      No mercenary Bard his homage pays;

      With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,

      My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:

      5 To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,

      The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene;

      The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,

      What Aiken in a Cottage would have been;

      Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier there I ween! trust

      10 November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh; blows, whistling wind

      The short’ning winter-day is near a close;

      The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh; dirty, from, plough

      The black’ning trains o’ craws to their repose: crows

      The toil-worn COTTER frae his labour goes, from

      15 This night his weekly moil is at an end, toil/drudgery

      Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, a two-mouthed pick

      Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,

      And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend. homeward

      At length his lonely Cot appears in view, cottage

      20 Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

      Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlan, stacher through children, totter

      To meet their Dad, wi’ flichterin noise and glee. fluttering

      His wee bit ingle, blinkan bonilie, fire, burning nicely

      His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty Wifie’s smile, fireside, wife’s

      25 The lisping infant, prattling on his knee,

      Does a’ his weary kiaugh and care beguile, anxiety

      And makes him quite forget his labor and his toil.

      Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, by-and-by, kids, dropping

      At Service out, amang the Farmers roun’; among, round

      30 Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin work, shepherd, attentively run

      A cannie errand to a neebor town: private, neighbour

      Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,

      In youthfu’ bloom, Love sparkling in her e’e, eye

      Comes hame, perhaps, to shew a braw new gown, home, show, fine

      35 Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, sore-, wages

      To help her Parents dear, if they in hardship be.

      With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet,

      And each for other’s weelfare kindly spiers: welfare, inquires

      The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d fleet;

      40 Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears. news

      The Parents partial eye their hopeful years;

      Anticipation forward points the view;

      The Mother, wi’ her needle and her sheers, scissors

      Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new; makes old clothes, almost, well

      45 The Father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.

      Their Master’s and their Mistress’s command

      The youngkers a’ are warned to obey; youngsters all

      And mind their labors wi’ an eydent hand, diligent

      And ne’er, tho’ out o’ sight, to jauk or play: fool around

      50 ‘And O! be sure to fear the LORD always! always

      And mind your duty, duly, morn and night!

      Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray, go

      Implore His counsel and assisting might:

      They never sought in vain that sought the LORD aright.’

      55 But hark! a rap comes gently to the door;

      Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same. who knows

      Tells how a neebor lad came o’er the moor, neighbour

      To do some errands, and convoy her hame. home

      The wily Mother sees the conscious flame

      60 Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush