ON A GALLOWAY LAIRD. [The only clue to the identity of the unhappy wight thus scarified by the epigrammatist is an entry in the Glenriddel Manuscript, which speaks of him as "John M-r-ne, Laird of Laggan."] THE TRUE LOYAL NATIVES. [These lines were written by Burns as a backhander, in retaliation for some calumnious rhymes directed against himself by a club calling themselves the Loyal Natives of Dumfries. Having these scurrilous rhymes handed to him one evening at a merry drinking WHEN M-r-ne, deceased, to the bout, the madcap Poet turned them over and at ON TAM THE CHAPMAN. [William Cobbett first published this epigram, having himself known, when its theme had become an old man, the bagman upon whom it was written. This was one Thomas Kennedy, who, in his younger days, while acting as a traveller for a large mercantile firm in Scotland, had made the Poet's acquaintance, and had thus obtained an odd little passport to posterity.] As Tam the Chapman on a day Wi' Death forgathered by the way, ON BURNS'S HORSE BEING IM- [Arriving at Carlisle, on horseback, Burns is said to have turned his steed out to grass for a brief interval, during which it strayed on to a meadow belonging to the Corporation and got impounded. Although the animal was immediately given up to him on his reclaiming it, the Poet thus, by way of avenging himself for its temporary seizure, retaliated upon the Chief Magistrate of the city, whose tenure of the Weel pleased, he greets a wight sae Mayoralty was to expire on the very morrow of famous, And Death was nae less pleased wi' Thomas, Wha cheerfully lays down the pack, ters. the incident.] WAS e'er puir poet sae befitted? The maister drunk,-the horse com mitted: Puir harmless beast! tak' thee nae care, Thou 'It be a horse when he 's nae mair (mayor). A FAREWELL. ON ANDREW TURNER. [An obscure Englishman who was enjoying a [This was addressed by th Poet, in the August of 1786, to his fast friend, John Ken-night wi' Burns over the whisky toddy, begged nedy, immediately after the publication of the first Kilmarnock Edition of Burns, and imme diately prior to, what then seemed imminent, his departure across the Atlantic. "On Wednesday, the 16th," he wrote, "I hope to have it in my power to call on you and take a kind, very probably a last adieu, before I go to Jamaica." A fews days later, however, the West Indies were forgotten, and the Poet's thoughts turned eagerly towards Edinburgh.] a rhyme from him as a memento, whereupon the IN se'enteen hunder an' forty-nine And cuist it in a corner; FAREWEEL, dear friend! may Guid- And shaped it something like a man, Luck hit you, And 'mang her favourites admit you! If e'er Detraction shore to smit you, And ony de'il that thinks to get you, And ca'd it Andrew Turner. [A flashy young Englishman, of the name of Burton-who flourished evidently before the dictum of Bob Acres had come true, which TO THE LANDLADY OF THE declares that "damns have had their day" THE TOAST. TO A PAINTER JACOB'S DREAM. [Jessie Lewars was a lassie of eighteen at the WHOM HE FOUND PAINTING A PICTURE OF time when, with the tender care of a daughter, she waited upon the dying Poet, assisted his afflicted wife in her household cares, and tended their brood of young children, during Burns's last illness. The following half-dozen lines were scratched with his diamond upon the glass tumbler just taken from her hand, and in which, to cool his parched lips, she had brought him a draught of wine and water.] FILL me with the rosy wine; ON JESSY LEWARS' SICKNESS. It is not purity and worth, [There is no means now of discovering who it was Burns fleered at in this caustic bit of rhymed personality. The scansion of the first line shows distinctly that Nasmyth's name could not possibly have been implied by the hiatus, as some have imagined. Besides which, writing about that artist to the engraver Beugo, in the September of 1788, the Poet says, "If you see Mr. Nasmyth, remember me to him most respectfully, as he both loves and deserves respect."] DEAR - I'll gi'e ye some advice, You'll tak' it no uncivil: To paint an angel's kittle wark, Wi' Auld Nick there's less danger; You'll easy draw a weel-kent face, But no sae weel a stranger. ON THE RECOVERY OF JESSY LEWARS. [These last four trifles Burns jotted down, each as a genuine impromptu, and all within a very brief interval indeed, before his dissolution. Their seemingly impassioned tone, as addressed to a young girl, towards whom his feelings were those rather of an elder brother than a lover, and his intercourse with whom never for a moment was suggestive of even a breath of suspicion, goes far to lift into a mere evidence of gallantry a fervour in many of his more glowing songs, which, superficially regarded, must have appeared to breathe only a spirit of libertinism.] BUT rarely seen since Nature's birth, The natives of the sky; Yet still one seraph's left on earth, For Jessy did not die. HOWLET-FACE. [A comical-looking Lord Justiciary, whose name, fortunately for him, has not transpired, had been dining one day, during circuit, so the story runs, at Mr. Miller's, in Dalswinton. To Mr Douglas, in his edition of Burns for 1876, we are indebted for this grotesque anecdote. Entering the drawing-room at twilight after due attention had been paid to the circulation of the decanters, my Lord's attention, we are told, was caught by the reflection of his own visage in a mirror, as he approached a window seat in which Miss Miller was quietly knitting. Rubbing his eyes, quoth the Judge, "What na howlet-faced thing's yon 'the corner?" Hearing of this soon afterwards from the Millers, Burns avenged the fair lady by writing the subjoined.] How daur ye ca' me howlet-faced, Ye ugly, glow'ring spectre? My face was but the keekin'-glassAnd there ye saw your picture! |