And thro' the wins, and by the cairn,
Whare hunters fand the murder'd bairn ;
And near the thorn, aboon the well,
Whare Mungo's mither hang'd hersel.-
Before him Doon pours all her floods;
The doubling storm roars thro' the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole;
Near and more near the thunders roll;
When glimmering thro' the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem'd in a bleeze ;

Thro' ilka bore the beams were glancing;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing.-

Maggie stood right sair astonish'd,
Till, by the heel and hand admonish'd,
She ventured forward on the light;
And, vow! Tam saw an unco sight!
Warlocks and witches in a dance.
A winnock-bunker in the east,

There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large;
To gie them music was his charge;
He screw'd the pipes, and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.-
Coffins stood round like open presses,
That shaw'd the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantrip slight,
Each in its cauld hand held a light,-
By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,
A murderer's banes in gibbet airns ;
Twa span-lang, wee, unchristen'd bairns;
A garter, which a babe had strangled;
A knife, a father's throat had mangled,
Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu',
Which e'en to name wad be unlawfu'.
As Tammie glowr'd, amaz'd, and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious;
The piper loud and louder blew ;
The dancers quick and quicker flew;

They reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,

And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linket at it in her sark!

There was ae winsome wench and walie,
That night inlisted in the core,
(Lang after kenn'd on Carrick shore !)
Her cutty sark, o' Paisley-harn,
That while a lassie she had worn,
In longitude tho' sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie.-
Ah! little kenn'd thy rev'rend grannie,
That sark she coft for her wee Nannie
Wi' twa pund Scotch ('twas a' her riches),
Wad ever grac'd a dance o' witches!

But here my muse her wing maun cour;
Sic flights are far beyond her pow'r;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was and strang)

Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a'thegither,

And roars out, 'Weel done, Cutty-sark!'
And in an instant all was dark;

And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied.
So Maggie runs, the witches follow,
Wi' monie an eldritch skreech and hollow.

Ah, Tam! ah, Tam! thou'll get thy fairin !
In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin!
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane o' the brig:
There at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they darena cross.
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake!
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,

And flew at Tam wi' furious ettle;
But little wist she Maggie's mettle,
Ae spring brought aff her master hale,-
But left behind her ain grey tail! 12

Posterity might have cared to recollect only the enchantment of the singing. It might not have troubled to recall the sins, joys, and woes of the singer. He himself has rendered it impossible to forget; he would have it to be impossible; for he himself could not, would not, forget. A mutineer, a fighter, in poetry as in life, he is always challenging criticism of his feelings and his acts. His aberrations are never removed more than one thrill, one heart-beat, from his ethereal inspirations. He insists on exposing his passions, his penitences, and his relapses, as if his inner being were a skeleton clock. The pathos of his vow to cherish and shield 'my sweet wee lady', his illegitimate child, as ever 'dear and near my heart', 13 is spoilt by reminiscences of the merry amour which has brought the hapless mother to disgrace. While he is withering with the pitiless satire of the Holy Fair, the Ordination, and Holy Willie's Prayer, the 'eldritch squeel and gestures', the merciless orthodoxy, and secret vices, of ruling clergy and elders, he scarcely dissembles the extent to which he is avenging himself for his own welldeserved tribulation on the stool of shame. He broke women's hearts and honour as lightly as if he were an instrument of blind chance. Knowing that duty to weans and wife is 'the true pathos and sublime of human life', he regularly repented in dust and ashes, in the intervals between his outbursts, as contritely as King David. He invited the whole world to listen to the tale of his delinquencies and their sad consequences, with no more active sense of responsibility than if he had been a harp touched into music, whether gay or mournful, by emotional gusts with which he had no personal concern. On occasions when indulgence of a passion compromised, or wrecked, another's good name, or peace of mind, he would act as if what had been a crime, a cruelty, in an ordinary man, became in an inspired minstrel just a licensed, even useful and inevitable, professional experience. The relation between himself and his transgressions was much the same for him as between noble operatic music and an imbecile libretto.

For his own sake, as well as in compassion for hearts which came in his way, not to speak of morals, one wishes he had been gifted with self-restraint; that his emotions had been less ardent, or he had been exposed to fewer temptations. I am afraid the gain to virtue would have been a loss to literature. Taken as he is, composite of earth very earthy, and spirit often almost heavenly, he fills a space which would be blank indeed without him as he was. Not that he produced nothing but a casket of jewels, like Gray, or a mine of perfect crystals, like Pope. He was apt to forget when to leave off. At his best he would be beguiled from ideas into rhetoric. Indignation would degenerate into scurrility. He could mistake coarseness for manly humour, rudeness for independence, and indecency for wit. Even he could be dull, and sometimes at once dull and angry. But when the poet awoke in him, it was a poet with wings; it might have been the discoverer of the art of verse; the first poet that ever sang. The shadow of earlier poetic fancies-even of his own-never frighted him off a beautiful thought or image with the bugbear of plagiarism. He takes for his uses big words and little, Latin and Saxon, just as they suit, with no theory but the duty of charm. Fancies shot from his pen as free, fast, and piercing as pebbles of the brook from the shepherd boy's sling. He was incapable of using a natural image falsely. He could do anything with verse, beg a guinea, turn a greasy haggis into a being honest, sonsie, of moral beauty, glorious to sight and taste, glad to be immolated for the nourishment of auld Scotland's champions. The marvel, besides, of the quick changes! Tears and sighs, even tempests, will have been brooding about his lyre. Then, in a moment, the clouds disperse; there are sunshine, gaiety, innocent affectionateness. With the absolute nature in every phase! Never in Great Britain, since Robin Herrick, had a poet arisen with so much of a lark's, a nightingale's, necessity of singing in him as in Robert Burns ! Never in that quality has he had a successor to match him!

The Poetical Works of Robert Burns (Aldine Edition of the British Poets). William Pickering.

(Also, The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns (Kilmarnock Popular Edition), ed. by W. Scott Douglas. Kilmarnock: J. M'Kie, 1871.)

1 Bonnie Lesley.

3 Farewell to Nancy, st. 2.

5 The Chevalier's Lament, v. 12.

2 I love my Jean.

4 The Banks of Doon.

• Lament of Mary Queen of Scots, on the Approach of Spring, stanzas

3 and 7.

' A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, Esq.

• To a Mouse; on turning her up in her Nest, stanzas 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7,

vol. i.

• To a Mountain Daisy; on turning one down with the Plough, stanzas 1, 2, 3, and 5.