The Complete Works of Robert Burns
Chapter 252 : Another favourite air of mine is, "The muckin' o' Geordie's byre.&

Another favourite air of mine is, "The muckin' o' Geordie's byre."

When sung slow, with expression, I have wished that it had had better poetry; that I have endeavoured to supply as follows:

Adown winding Nith I did wander.[233]

Mr. Clarke begs you to give Miss Phillis a corner in your book, as she is a particular flame of his, and out of compliment to him I have made the song. She is a Miss Phillis M'Murdo, sister to "Bonnie Jean." They are both pupils of his. You shall hear from me, the very first grist I get from my rhyming-mill.

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 232: Song CCII.]

[Footnote 233: Song CCIII.]

CCLXVII.

TO MR. THOMSON.

[Burns was fond of expressive words: "Gloaming, the twilight," says Currie, "is a beautiful poetic word, which ought to be adopted in England." Burns and Scott have made the Scottish language popular over the world.]

_August_, 1793.

That tune, "Cauld kail," is such a favourite of yours, that I once more roved out yesterday for a gloamin-shot at the muses; when the muse that presides o'er the sh.o.r.es of Nith, or rather my old inspiring dearest nymph, Coila, whispered me the following. I have two reasons for thinking that it was my early, sweet simple inspirer that was by my elbow, "smooth gliding without step," and pouring the song on my glowing fancy. In the first place, since I left Coila's native haunts, not a fragment of a poet has arisen to cheer her solitary musings, by catching inspiration from her, so I more than suspect that she has followed me hither, or, at least, makes me occasional visits; secondly, the last stanza of this song I send you, is the very words that Coila taught me many years ago, and which I set to an old Scots reel in Johnson's Museum.

Come, let me take thee to my breast.[234]

If you think the above will suit your idea of your favourite air, I shall be highly pleased. "The last time I came o'er the moor" I cannot meddle with, as to mending it; and the musical world have been so long accustomed to Ramsay's words, that a different song, though positively superior, would not be so well received. I am not fond of choruses to songs, so I have not made one for the foregoing.

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 234: Song CCIV.]

CCLXVIII.

TO MR. THOMSON.

["Cauld kail in Aberdeen, and castocks in Strabogie," are words which have no connexion with the sentiment of the song which Burns wrote for the air.]

_August_, 1793.

SONG.

Now rosy May comes in wi' flowers.[235]

So much for Davie. The chorus, you know, is to the low part of the tune. See Clarke's set of it in the Museum.

N.B. In the Museum they have drawled out the tune to twelve lines of poetry, which is ---- nonsense. Four lines of song, and four of chorus, is the way.[236]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 235: Song CCV.]

[Footnote 236: See Song LXVII.]

CCLXIX.

TO MISS CRAIK.

[Miss Helen Craik of Arbigland, had merit both as a poetess and novelist: her ballads may be compared with those of Hector M'Neil: her novels had a seasoning of satire in them.]

_Dumfries, August_, 1793.

MADAM,

Some rather unlooked-for accidents have prevented my doing myself the honour of a second visit to Arbigland, as I was so hospitably invited, and so positively meant to have done.--However, I still hope to have that pleasure before the busy months of harvest begin.

I enclose you two of my late pieces, as some kind of return for the pleasure I have received in perusing a certain MS. volume of poems in the possession of Captain Riddel. To repay one with an _old song_, is a proverb, whose force, you, Madam, I know, will not allow. What is said of ill.u.s.trious descent is, I believe, equally true of a talent for poetry, none ever despised it who had pretensions to it. The fates and characters of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts when I am disposed to be melancholy. There is not, among all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets.--In the comparative view of wretches, the criterion is not what they are doomed to suffer, but how they are formed to bear. Take a being of our kind, give him a stronger imagination and a more delicate sensibility, which between them will ever engender a more ungovernable set of pa.s.sions than are the usual lot of man; implant in him an irresistible impulse to some idle vagary, such as arranging wild flowers in fantastical nosegays, tracing the gra.s.shopper to his haunt by his chirping song, watching the frisks of the little minnows in the sunny pool, or hunting after the intrigues of b.u.t.terflies--in short, send him adrift after some pursuit which shall eternally mislead him from the paths of lucre, and yet curse him with a keener relish than any man living for the pleasures that lucre can purchase; lastly, fill up the measure of his woes by bestowing on him a spurning sense of his own dignity, and you have created a wight nearly as miserable as a poet. To you, Madam, I need not recount the fairy pleasures the muse bestows to counterbalance this catalogue of evils. Bewitching poetry is like bewitching woman; she has in all ages been accused of misleading mankind from the councils of wisdom and the paths of prudence, involving them in difficulties, baiting them with poverty, branding them with infamy, and plunging them in the whirling vortex of ruin; yet, where is the man but must own that all our happiness on earth is not worthy the name--that even the holy hermit's solitary prospect of paradisiacal bliss is but the glitter of a northern sun rising over a frozen region, compared with the many pleasures, the nameless raptures that we owe to the lovely queen of the heart of man!

R. B.

CCLXX.

TO LADY GLENCAIRN.