The Muse, nae Poet ever fand her, O sweet, to stray an' pensive ponder The warly race may drudge an' drive, Shall let the busy, grumbling hive, Bum owre their treasure. Fareweel, my rhyme-composing' brither! In love fraternal: May Envy wallop in a tether, Black fiend, infernal! While Highlandmen hate tolls an' taxes; Diurnal turns, Count on a friend, in faith an' practice, In ROBERT BURNS. *It is very curious to observe that, in like manner as he marks in the Vision a line quoted from his own epistle "To JS," so here he has placed the words my rhyme composing' between inverted commas. This phrase occurs, without quotational marks, in the last stanza of his lament "On a Scotch Bard gone to the West Indies"-my rhyme-composing billie. That being the later composition of the two, we would rather have expected to see the inverted commas there, if the expression is quoted from himself. But the quotation is probably from Simpson's own Epistle, to which the present is a reply. POSTSCRIPT. [This matchless Postscript, of which Hogg says, "I look on this as superior to the Epistle," lets us know something of the circumstance which gave rise to the correspondence between the poet and Simpson. The satire, called The Twa Herds, or the Holy Tulzie, which met with such a roar of applause from laymen and a certain description of the clergy, had just lately been produced and multiplied in MS. copies. One of these having found its way to the schoolmaster of Ochiltree, he was constrained to address a versified letter to Burns, which, although not preserved, is referred to by the poet in the opening lines of his Epistle. The subject of the Postscript, it will be observed, has a manifest reference to that of the Twa Herds.] My memory's no worth a preen ; I had amaist forgotten clean, Ye bad me write you what they mean By this new-light,* 'Bout which our herds sae aft hae been Maist like to fight. In days when mankind were but callans, They took nae pains their speech to balance, But spak their thoughts in plain, braid lallans, In thae auld times, they thought the Moon, Woor by degrees, till her last roon Gaed past their viewin, An' shortly after she was done They gat a new ane. This past for certain, undisputed; An' ca'd it wrang; An' muckle din their was about it, Baith loud an' lang. * A cant-term for those religious opinions, which Dr. TAYLOR of Norwich has defended so strenuously.--(R. B. 1786.) Some herds, weel learn'd upo' the beuk, Wad threap auld folk the thing misteuk; For 'twas the auld moon turn'd a newk An' out o' sight, An' backlins-comin, to the leuk, She grew mair bright. This was deny'd, it was affirmed; The herds an' hissels were alarm'd; The rev'rend gray-beards rav'd an' storm'd, That beardless laddies Should think they better were inform'd, Than their auld dadies. Frae less to mair it gaed to sticks; Frae words an' aiths to clours an' nicks; An' monie a fallow gat his licks, Wi' hearty crunt; An' some, to learn them for their tricks, This game was play'd in monie lands, An' auld-light caddies bure sic hands, That faith, the youngsters took the sands Wi' nimble shanks, Till Lairds forbad, by strict commands, Sic bluidy pranks. But new-light herds gat sic a cowe, Folk thought them ruin'd stick-an-stowe, Till now amaist on ev'ry knowe Ye'll find ane plac'd; An' some, their New-light fair avow, Just quite barefac'd. Nae doubt the auld-light flocks are bleatan; Their zealous herds are vex'd an' sweatan; Mysel, I've ev'n seen them greetan Wi' girnan spite, To hear the Moon sae sadly lie'd on By word an' write. But shortly they will cowe the louns! An' stay ae month amang the Moons Guid observation they will gie them; An' when the new-light billies see them, Sae, ye observe that a' this clatter I hope we, Bardies, ken some better Than mind sic brulzie. EPISTLE TO J. R******, ENCLOSING SOME POEMS. [John Rankine was, at the date of this noted Epistle, a farmer at Adamhill, in the parish of Craigie, and not far from Lochlea, the former dwelling-place of the poet. He is described as having been a great wag-a prince of boon companions-in good terms with country gentlemen, but not in the best of terms with the stricter order of the clergy. Such a one must, of course, have been a man after Burns' own heart. Gilbert, in his narrative of the early life of his brother, says that "soon after his father's death (Feb., 1784) he was furnished with the subject of his Epistle to John Rankine." If Gilbert is right here, then it follows, that the "bonie hen" referred to, was Elizabeth Paton, who had been a servant in his father's house at Lochlea-the "bonnie Betty" of the Poet's Welcome. There is, therefore, little necessity for the following note in the "Aldine Edition" of Burns:-"Allan Cunningham considers Burns' account of the partridge, and of his being fined for poaching, a figurative allusion to the connection which produced the illegitimate child of his celebrated Address; but it is by no means certain that the conjecture is well founded.” It will now be expected that we say a little regarding the poet's allusions to Rankine's tricks and dreams. We are told that he made a deevil of at least one saunt, by entertaining the godly man over a jug of toddy, which grew always the more potent the more it was diluted with hot water from the kettle on his host's fire; this water, of course, being boiled whisky. The version which Cunningham gives of "Rankine's Dream," as being a rebuke administered to Lord Kames, to correct his absurd custom of calling his friends "d-d brutes," is well known. But another version, or rather a counterpart of that "dream (and the current one of the district), is, that on a certain occasion, Rankine being an invited guest at a dinner-party in the manse, some of the black-coats present were hitting him pretty hard upon some of his foibles, when, after fencing with them for a little, he affected to sink into an interval of taciturnity, which they chuckled over as a triumph. One of the company, after a pause, endeavoured to start the hare again, by enquiring in a sympathising tone, why he looked so serious to-day?—had any calamity befallen him?-and so on. Rankine replied that on the preceding night he had been troubled with a rather serious dream, which kept running in his mind, and damped his spirits. He was urged to tell the dream. "Oh," quoth he, "I dreamed that I was dead." "And went to heaven, of course!" interjected the minister. "Indeed, sir," continued Rankine, "you never guessed better in your life." "And what saw you there, Rankine?' shouted more than one of the company. "Oh," he replied, "I saw the angel Gabriel, and he speired whare I cam frae, and I tellt him frae Ayrshire in Scotland. He then asked what news I brocht frae that part of the world, and I said there was naething worthy o' special notice, except that there had been an unco mortality of late amang the clergy there. The archangel shook his head at that, and, says he, 'I'm sorry indeed, to hear such painful intelligence, for not one of them has made his appearance here."" The effect of such a retort as this may be better conceived than narrated. Rankine, like Bunyan, could command dreams at any time it suited his purpose to go on a pilgrimage to the other world.] O ROUGH, rude, ready-witted R******, Your dreams* an' tricks Will send you, Korah-like, a sinkin, Straught to auld Nick's. * A certain humorous dream of his was then making a noise in the world. --(R. B. 1786.) |