boddle. A Scotch coin, issued under Charles II., value 2d.; sometimes called a 'turner.'

III-124. winnock-bunker = window-seat.

of the church).

touzie tyke = shaggy cur.

in the east (end skirl scream.

dirl tremble. It has long been a seriously debatable question whether it is possible to extract music from Scotch bag-pipes. The great authority of Burns cannot be quoted on the affirmative, for you will notice he does not say that auld Nick succeeded in giving the company music, but merely that it was his charge [duty] to give them music. All that the poet's utmost patriotism can assert is that the bag-pipes did' scream.' A later and scarcely less eminent authority (Mr. Gilbert), in his pathetic ballad Ellen McJones Aberdeen, comes out less dubitatively in favor of the bag-pipes:

'Let's show,' said McClan, 'to this Sassenach loon
That the bag-pipes can play him a regular tune.'
'Let's see,' said McClan, as he thoughtfully sat,
'In my Cottage is easy,—I'll practise at that.'

He blew at his 'Cottage,' and blew with a will,
For a year, seven months and a fortnight, until
(You'll hardly believe it) McClan, I declare,
Elicited something resembling an air.

It was wild, it was fitful; as wild as the breeze-
It wandered about into several keys;
It was jerky, spasmodic, and harsh I'm aware,
But still it distinctly suggested an air.

'Hech gather, hech gather, hech gather around;
And fill a' ye lugs wi' the exquisite sound.
An air fra' the bag-pipes! Beat that if you can;
Hurrah for Clonglocketty Angus McClan!'

Instead of

=

125-142. These are the weakest lines in the poem. entering into The Horrible and carrying us with him, the author stands outside and laughs at it. We feel all the time that there was really nothing for Tam to be frightened at. cantrip magic. unchristen'd bairns. The belief that unchristened babies went to hell was very common during the Dark Ages, and was the origin of the custom of baptizing them within three days of birth. The only evidence we have that Shakespeare was born on the 23d of April is the entry in the register of Trinity Church, Stratford, that he was baptized on the 26th. gab mouth. This word is related to the

=

woodie; from rig (ridge), the back + widdie (withy) = the rope

that goes over a horse's back to support the shafts; hence, 'twisted,' spean = cause to vomit.

'mis-shapen.'

staff with crooked head.

=

crummock = a

coft

bought.

was restless.

syne

=

after that; not

Old Long

tint (preterite of 'tine')

lost.

179-192. hotched common except in the expression Auld Lang-Syne

Ago.

=

193-205. Notice how admirably the similes are adapted to the subject; homely and lively.

206-229. key-stane. It is a well-known fact that witches, or any evil spirits, have no power to follow a poor wight any farther than the middle of the next running stream. It may be proper, likewise, to mention to the benighted traveller that when he falls in with bogles, whatever danger there may be in his going forward, there is much more hazard in turning back.'- Burns. ettle = intention.

This poem carries the reader along with a rush, by means of a kind of Homeric liveliness and directness. With an exception already noted, there is hardly a dull line to be found; the incidents are duly subordinated to the main action, and the interest is not allowed to flag a moment before the end. Burns' acquaintance with Greek literature was probably nil, yet in design and execution his poem is thoroughly Greek - that is, in accordance with the best models. A quotation from Matthew Arnold will make this clear: 'The radical difference between the poetic theory of the Greeks and our own is this: That with them the poetical character of the action in itself, and the conduct of it, was the first consideration; with us, attention is fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts and images which occur in the treatment of an action. They regarded the whole we regard the parts.'

TO A MOUSE.

Burns' father died in 1784. Upon Robert and Gilbert Burns fell the responsibility of supporting the widowed mother and her younger children. The young men made a brave effort. They leased a small farm (Mossgiel) near Lochlea, and toiled early and late; in two seasons — thanks to bad seed, poor soil and a late harvest they lost nearly everything they had. This overset all my wisdom,' Burns wrote despairingly; in this little poem he has expressed this same thought with a mournful pathos drawn from his own sad experiences.

a small spade for cleaning See note on Tam O'Shanter, 83. daimen

hurry.

icker

ear (of corn).

thrave =

twenty-four

sheaves, set up in the field.

Night, 72.

=

lave. See note on Cotter's Saturday

foggage aftermath.

piercing; cognate with the German schnell quick. 25-48. But without (the original meaning).

holding.

thole endure, suffer.

snell

TO A MOUNTAIN DAISY.

This is another poem written in those depressing days at Mossgiel and coming straight from Burns' heart.

37-54. card; a synecdoche for 'compass.' Pope has the same figure with nearly the same application :

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but Passion is the gale.

Essay on Man, ii. 107-108.

'This passage,' Warton tells us, 'is exactly copied from Fontenelle.' Thus do the poets live off each other! Or shall we rather say, with more conventional dignity: Thus do the poets hand down from age to age the intellectual treasures of their stock in trade?

When Burns was living, he asked of the world bread and they gave him a stone. When he was dead and wanted nothing, they builded him a tawdry monument; nay, worse, two tawdry monuments, one on the banks of Doon, near Alloway Kirk, the other at Dumfries. To injury they added insult by inscribing on the latter a long eulogium in doubtful Latin. Better had they have cut thereon

Such is the fate of simple Bard,

On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd!

BANNOCKBURN.

Burns' expressed sympathy with the French Revolution came near costing him his place in the Excise; he was instructed by his superior officer (one

Corbet) that his 'business was to act, not to think. This would have been an exceedingly easy instruction for Corbet himself to follow, but Burns was not a Corbet. The poet's pent-up feeling found relief in Bannockburn, of which he writes that the 'recollection of that glorious struggle for freedom, associated with the glowing ideas of some struggles of the same nature, not quite so ancient, roused my rhyming mania.'1 In the same letter he writes of the air Hey tuttie tatie: .. well I know that it has often filled my eyes with tears. There is a tradition, which I have met with in many places of Scotland, that it was Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my solitary wanderings, warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and independence which I threw into a kind of Scottish ode, fitted to the air, that one might suppose to be the gallant Royal Scot's address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning. So may God ever defend the cause of truth and liberty as he did that day! Amen.'

The battle of Bannockburn was fought on the 24th of June, 1314, and resulted in the total defeat of the English under Edward II.

FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT.

This triumphant lyric of Democracy was written on New Year's Day, 1795. Some two years earlier the Marseillaise had spread like wild-fire through France; but the Marseillaise is a local song:

Français, pour nous, ah! quel outrage!

For A' That is a song for all men of all nations; it breathes 'the prophetic soul of the wide world, dreaming on things to come.'

1-8. gowd gold. Compare:

9-40.

Worth makes the man and want of it the fellow,
The rest is all but leather or prunella.

Pope, Essay on Man, iv. 203-204.

hodden-grey : = coarse woollen cloth.

ceited fellow.

coof

lout.

birkie = conA prince can make a belted knight. Compare The Deserted Village, 53-54, and The Cotter's

THE REVIVAL OF ROMANTICISM.

THE great writers of the eighteenth century, with Pope at their head, had a deep distrust for all forms of politics and literature characterized by Visionariness, Enthusiasm, Mysticism, and Fantasticism. With a shudder at the remembrance of a Rump Parliament and a Cowley, they turned to Reality and moralized their song. Who shall blame them ?— - But given the human mind, constituted as it is, the reaction against their habit of thought was sure to come. However excellent the quality of the bread, men will not live on bread alone. The craving after the Supernatural, the longing to escape from the bonds of Sense, the desire to identify the life of Man with the life of Nature, the fond looking-back to the mythical ideals of the Past, all this is in the heart of man and must, from time to time, find expression. From such subjects the classical poets of the eighteenth century resolutely averted their faces; hence, in due time, there arose to treat these subjects, a new school of poets: their morningstar glimmered in Collins, and their sun rose in full splendor in Coleridge. Byron, Keats, Shelley, Scott, and Wordsworth, dissimilar as they appear at first sight, will all be found, on closer study, to belong to this, the Romantic School.