A Night Out with Burns Read Online Free PDF Page A

that he only stuck to the farm because of Robert Burns. “My habits are bad in the field,” he wrote, “but never mind, there’s something to see in the battle for stuff over here, with the thought of the poet’s hand there beside you.”’ Tam then goes to the Ayrshire madhouse at Glengall and sings ‘The Belles of Mauchline’ to his sick wife, and he kisses her.

    The Belles of Mauchline
    In Mauchline there dwells six proper young Belles,
    The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a’,
    Their carriage and dress a stranger would guess,
    In Lon’on or Paris they’d gotten it a’:
    Miss Miller is fine, Miss Murkland’s divine,
    Miss Smith she has wit and Miss Betty is braw;
    There’s beauty and fortune to get wi’ Miss Morton,
    But A RMOUR’S the jewel for me o’ them a’.—

    B urns had intended to emigrate with Mary Campbell to Jamaica, but she died in Greenock before they could leave. Each of Burns’s lasses has a skirl of the country dance-hall about her and a scent of the Ayrshire fields, but not Mary. We imagine her spirit mingled with high foreign hopes and sea salt, caught up in the Atlantic roar.

    Will Ye Go to the Indies, My Mary?
    Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary,
    And leave auld Scotia’s shore;
    Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary,
    Across th’ Atlantic roar.

    O sweet grows the lime and the orange
    And the apple on the pine;
    But a’ the charms o’ the Indies
    Can never equal thine.

    I hae sworn by the Heavens to my Mary,
    I hae sworn by the Heavens to be true;
    And sae may the Heavens forget me,
    When I forget my vow!

    O plight me your faith, my Mary,
    And plight me your lily-white hand;
    O plight me your faith, my Mary,
    Before I leave Scotia’s strand.

    We hae plighted our truth, my Mary,
    In mutual affection to join:
    And curst be the cause that shall part us,
    The hour, and the moment o’ time!!!

    A love poem is a sudden encounter with one’s own capacity for wonder; it is a settlement of joy amid the complications of affection. ‘A lyric poem,’ writes James Fenton, ‘expresses an intense feeling of the moment. It is all about the subjective, all about the here and now. It is not – alas, for the loved one – a contract, or a prenuptial agreement.’

    Of A’ the Airts
    Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw,
    I dearly like the West;
    For there the bony Lassie lives,
    The Lassie I lo’e best:
    There’s wild-woods grow, and rivers row,
    And mony a hill between;
    But day and night my fancy’s flight
    Is ever wi’ my Jean.—

    I see her in the dewy flowers,
    I see her sweet and fair;
    I hear her in the tunefu’ birds,
    I hear her charm the air:
    There’s not a bony flower, that springs
    By fountain, shaw, or green;
    There’s not a bony bird that sings
    But minds me o’ my Jean.—

    I once sang this song in a gymnasium filled to the summit of the wall bars with tittering Ayrshire schoolchildren. It was St Luke’s Primary School in the spring of 1978, and Mrs Ferguson, the headmistress, had decided there was only one boy for the job. I can still see my blushing face beside the old piano, and Fergie’s vaguely nationalistic smile as she thumped the keys and nodded me in with a skoosh of pride. It wasn’t entirely easy – aged ten – to conjure up my troubles with the saucy lasses, but from the corner of my eye I saw the girls coming into the gym ready for Jacqueline Thompson’s ballet class, due to begin as soon as the Burns was over. The lasses were all hair-buns and slipperettes, and I know my voice lifted and reached out to meet the loveliness of their wicked faces.

    My Love She’s but a Lassie Yet
    My love she’s but a lassie yet,
    My love she’s but a lassie yet;
    We’ll let her stand a year or twa,
    She’ll no be half sae saucy yet.—

    I rue the day I sought her O,
    I rue the