Because (ye need na tak it ill) I thought them something like yoursel. I'm baith dead-sweer, an' wretched ill o't; 6 May ne'er Misfortune's gowling bark, 'Howl thro' the dwelling o' the CLERK! 'May ne'er his gen'rous, honest heart, 'For that same gen'rous spirit smart! May K*******s *far-honor'd name 6 6 Lang beet his hymeneal flame, • Till H*******’ *'s, at least a diz'n, 'Are frae their nuptial labors risen: 'Five bonie Lasses round their table, ' And sev'n braw fellows, stout an' able, To serve their King an' Country weel, 6 By word, or pen, or pointed steel! 6 May Health and Peace, with mutual rays, 'Shine on the ev'ning o' his days; 'Till his wee, curlie John's ier-oe, 'When ebbing life nae mair shall flow, 'The last, sad, mournful rites bestow!' I will not wind a lang conclusion, But whilst your wishes and endeavours, But if, which Pow'rs above prevent, * Kennedy was the surname of Hamilton's wife's family. While hopes, and joys, and pleasures fly him, Then, Sir, your hand-my FRIEND and BROTHER. TO A LOUSE, ON SEEING ONE ON A LADY'S BONNET AT CHURCH. [In preceding pages we have seen how much Burns could make of very humble subjects, such as the Dogs, the Pet-Yowe, the Mouse, and the Auld Mare: here we have him descending for a theme, still lower in the scale of animal life. Lowly, even repulsive as the subject is, however, he has done it ample justice, and makes it point a moral if it does not adorn his page. Only himself and Peter Pindar ever had the hardihood to introduce genteel readers to such a crawlin "blastet wonner, Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner," adopting it as a vehicle for humorous sarcasm. Motherwell justly remarks, in reference to the closing verse, that "if poetical merit were to be determined by frequency of quotation, it would stand very high in the scale." It is pointed out in the "Burnsiana" (1866), that, in an edition of Burns, illustrated by Gilbert, of which the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott is editor, the title of this poem is squeamishly veiled with a printer's dash, thus,—" To a -."] HA! whare ye gaun, ye crowlan ferlie! I canna say but ye strunt rarely, Owre gauze and lace; Tho' faith, I fear ye dine but sparely, On sic a place. Ye ugly, creepan, blastet wonner, Sae fine a Lady! Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner, On some poor body. Swith, in some beggar's haffet squattle; In shoals and nations; Whare horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle, Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight, Till ye've got on it, The very tapmost, towrin height O' Miss's bonnet. My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out, Or fell, red smeddum, I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't, Wad dress your droddum! I wad na been surpriz❜d to spy On's wylecoat; you O Jenny dinna toss your head, do't? The blastie's makin! Are notice takin! O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us It wad frae monie a blunder free us An' foolish notion: What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us, And ev'n Devotion! *Lunardi."-A peculiarly shaped bonnet, worn by ladies of fashion, was so named in honour of Vincent Lunardi, who, in 1784, introduced the spectacle of balloon ascents into Britain. In 1785, he displayed his aerial feats in several parts of Scotland. EPISTLE TO J. L*****K, AN OLD SCOTCH BARD. April 1st, 1785. [This "old Scotch bard," as Burns fondly styled him, was born in 1727; so he must have been 58 years old when the poet thus addressed him. Encouraged by the success of Burns' appeal to the public in print, and still more emboldened by the flattering compliments in the present poem, bestowed on his "ae sang therein referred to, Lapraik published from the same press, a volume of verses in 1788, as likewise did Davie Sillar, a year thereafter. Burns had hailed the latter as "brother-poet" and "Ace o' Hearts," and now he pronounces the former to be not only "a bard but "King o' Hearts." Both of them we believe to have been good fellows in their way, else Burns could not have taken them to his bosom as he did, and we know that if our bard was tolerant of any failings his friends might possess, he was still more tolerant of the quality of their verses. An able reviewer of the poems of Sillar (Contemporaries of Burns, p. 44), admits that the Pegasus ridden by honest Davie, is sorely "bedevil'd wi' the spavie," and of Lapraik's book he says, that "with the exception of the song so much commended by Burns, few of the pieces display any approach to poetic merit." This Song, beginning-" When I upon thy bosom lean," was sent by Burns to Johnson's Museum in 1789, and on comparing the copy there with that in Lapraik's volume, the reader will be at no loss to discover how much that song (as now found in collections) is indebted to Burns, who has redeemed the tameness of Lapraik's copy by several exquisite touches. But our readers will scarcely be prepared now to learn that the song which "thirl'd the heart-strings through the breast" of Burns, when he heard it sung at a rockin in his own house on Fasten's e'en, 1785, was not by Lapraik after all! An admirable contributor to Hogg's Instructor, in an article on Burns (November 9th, 1850, p. 189), states that "the song of Lapraik, praised by Burns, beginning-When I upon thy bosom lean,' is actually taken, and certainly not improved, from an elegant copy of verses which we have seen in an old Magazine, of a date prior to the composition of the song ascribed to Lapraik." If this be so, then "the Bard of Muirkirk" must have been an old cardsharper to play off his odd-trick on Burns in this manner. "The bauld Lapraik" indeed!—the very Knave of Spades, instead the "King o' Hearts"!] WHILE briers an' woodbines budding green, Inspire my Muse, On Fasteneen we had a rockin, At length we had a hearty yokin, At sang about. There was ae sang, amang the rest, Aboon them a' it pleas'd me best, That some kind husband had addrest, To some sweet wife: It thirl'd the heart-strings thro' the breast, A' to the life. I've scarce heard ought describ'd sae weel, They tald me 'twas an odd kind chiel It pat me fidgean-fain to hear't, He had ingine, That nane excell'd it, few cam near❜t, It was sae fine. That set him to a pint of ale, An' either douse or merry tale, Or rhymes an' sangs he'd made himsel, Or witty catches, "Tween Inverness and Tiviotdale, He had few matches. Then up I gat, an' swoor an aith, At some dyke-back, A pint an' gill I'd gie them baith, To hear your crack. But first an' foremost, I should tell, Amaist as soon as I could spell, I to the crambo-jingle fell, Tho' rude an' rough, Yet crooning to a body's sel, Does weel eneugh. |