Ah! little kenned thy reverend grannie, That sark she coft for her wee Nannie, Wi' twa pund Scots ('t was a' her riches,) Wad ever graced a dance o' witches!

But here my muse her wing maun cour;
Sic flights are far beyond her power:
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,
(A souple jade she was and strang,)
And how Tam stood, like ane bewitched,
And thought his very een enriched :
E'en Satan glow'red, and fidged fu' fain,
And hotched and blew wi' might and

main;

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

And roars out, "Weel done, Cuttysark!"

And in an instant all was dark :
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied.

As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke,

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:
The carlin claught her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump!

Now, wha this tale o' truth shall read,
Ilk man and mother's son, tak' heed:

Whene'er to drink you are inclined,
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys owre dear,
Remember Tam o' Shanter's mare.

TO JOHN TAYLOR.

66

[Signed Robert Burns, and marked at the foot enigmatically, Ramage's, 3 o'clock," without any date, these verses besought Mr. Taylor's intercession with the farrier of Wan

As open pussie's mortal foes

When, pop! she starts before their nose;
As eager runs the market-crowd,
When "Catch the thief!" resounds

aloud;

So Maggie runs, the witches follow, Wi' mony an' eldritch screech and hollow.

Ah, Tam! ah, Tam! thou'll get thy fairin'!

In hell they'll roast thee like a herrin'!
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin'!
Kate soon will be a wofu' woman!
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane of the brig;
There at them thou thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross.
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail she had to shake!

a time when the blacksmith was apparently too preoccupied to attend to his requirements.]

WITH Pegasus upon a day,

Apollo weary flying,

Through frosty hills the journey lay, On foot the way was plying.

Poor slipshod giddy Pegasus

Was but a sorry walker; To Vulcan then Apollo goes, To get a frosty caulker.

Obliging Vulcan fell to work,

Threw by his coat and bonnet, And did Sol's business in a crack: Sol paid him with a sonnet.

Ye Vulcan's sons of Wanlockhead,
Pity my sad disaster;
My Pegasus is poorly shod-

I'll pay you like my master.

While Summer, with a matron grace, Retreats to Dryburgh's cooling shade, Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace

The progress of the spiky blade :

While Autumn, benefactor kind,

By Tweed erects his agèd head, And sees, with self-approving mind, Each creature on his bounty fed:

While maniac Winter rages o'er

The hills whence classic Yarrow flows, Rousing the turbid torrent's roar,

Or sweeping, wild, a waste of snows:

So long, sweet Poet of the year,

Shall bloom that wreath thou well hast won:

While Scotia, with exulting tear,

Proclaims that Thomson was her son.

A VISION.

[The ruins here celebrated were those of Lincluden Abbey, during the later years of Burns a favourite haunt of his near Dumfries. Situated upon an elevated plateau in the angle formed by the confluence of the Cluden and the Nith, these picturesque débris of a noble building command a superb sweep of landscape. There the Poet often used to wander rapt in meditation, mostly in solitude, but sometimes accompanied by his eldest son and namesake, then a child of seven. The ballad, adapted to the tune of "Cumnock

himself could hardly have desired a more striking specimen of Bathos, or the Art of Sinking, than that which the concluding stanza affords.]

As I stood by yon roofless tower,

Where the wa'-flower scents the dewy

air,

Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower,

And tells the midnight moon her care.

The winds were laid, the air was still,

The stars they shot alang the sky; The fox was howling on the hill, And the distant echoing glens reply.

The stream, adown its hazelly path,

Was rushing by the ruined wa's, Hasting to join the sweeping Nith,

Whase distant roaring swells and fa's.

The cauld blue north was streaming forth
Her lights, wi' hissing eerie din,
Athort the lift they start and shift,

Like fortune's favours, tint as win.

By heedless chance I turned mine eyes, And, by the moonbeam, shook to see A stern and stalwart ghaist arise,

Attired as minstrels wont to be.

Had I a statue been o' stane,

His darin' look had daunted me; And on his bonnet graved was plain, The sacred posie-Libertie !

of chorus, these words:

A lassie all alone was making her moan, Lamenting our lads beyond the sea;

As ever met a Briton's ear!

He sang wi' joy the former day,

He weeping wailed his latter times; But what he said it was nae play,

I winna ventur't in my rhymes.

TO JOHN MAXWELL, OF TERRAUGHTY, ON HIS BIRTH

DAY.

[The Laird of Terraughty, John Maxwell by name, was lineally descended from Lord Herries, who fought for Mary, Queen of Scots, at Langside. At the time when he was poetically apostrophized thus by the Ayrshire Poet, Mr. Maxwell was already so far a Veteran Chief, that he was even then seventy-one years of age. And though he failed to realize the prediction of Burns, that he would have a tack o' seven times seven additional, which would have extended his years to one hundred and twenty, he yet attained the grand old age of ninetyfour.]

HEALTH to the Maxwells' veteran chief! Health, ye unsoured by care or grief: Inspired, I turned Fate's sybil leaf

Fareweel, auld birkie! Lord be near ye, And then the de'il he daurna steer ye : Your friends aye love, your foes aye fear

ye;

For me, shame fa' me, If neist my heart I dinna wear ye, While Burns they ca' me!

LAMENT FOR JAMES, EARL OF

GLENCAIRN.

[The Earl of Glencairn died at Falmouth, on the 30th of January, 1791, in the forty-second year of his age, having just returned from a

voyage to Lisbon, undertaken in the vain hope that it might contribute to the re-estab lishment of his health. Through his factor, Mr. Alexander Dalzell, he had made the Poet's acquaintance, and had at once become his most conspicuous patron, and his most practical benefactor. He carried the Kilmarnock edition to Edinburgh, where he brought it widely to the general knowledge as a literary curiosity. Mainly through his instrumentality, the Caledonian Hunt subscribed so open-handedly to the enlarged Edinburgh edition, that the latter was forthwith swung into popularity. Burns's gratitude was unaffected and enduring. His fourth son, born on the 12th of August, 1794, he had christened, in memory of his noble admirer, James Glencairn, this fourth son dying as recently as 1865, at the age of seventy-one, having, like his elder brother William, risen to be a Lieutenant-Colonel in the East India Company's service. William Hazlitt, it may be worthy of note here, had a very high opinion indeed of the pathetic force of the closing stanza of this Lament.]

THE wind blew hollow frae the hills,

By fits the sun's departing beam Looked on the fading yellow woods That waved o'er Lugar's winding

stream:

Beneath a craigy steep, a bard,

Laden with years and meikle pain, In loud lament bewailed his lord,

Whom death had all untimely ta'en.