Robert Burns | Page 9

strong desire to excel in letter-writing, while it furnished him
with models by some of the first writers in our language."
Interesting as are the details as to the antiquated manuals from which
Burns gathered his general information, it is more important to note the
more personal implications in this account. Respect for learning has
long been wide-spread among the peasantry of Scotland, but it is
evident that William Burnes was intellectually far above the average of
his class. The schoolmaster Murdoch has left a portrait of him in which
he not only extols his virtues as a man but emphasizes his zest for
things of the mind, and states that "he spoke the English language with
more propriety--both with respect to diction and pronunciation--than
any man I ever knew, with no greater advantages." Though tender and
affectionate, he seems to have inspired both wife and children with a
reverence amounting to awe, and he struck strangers as reserved and
austere. He recognized in Robert traces of extraordinary gifts, but he
did not hide from him the fact that his son's temperament gave him
anxiety for his future. Mrs. Burnes was a devoted wife and mother, by
no means her husband's intellectual equal, but vivacious and
quick-tempered, with a memory stored with the song and legend of the
country-side. Other details can be filled in from the poet's own picture
of his father's household as given with little or no idealization in _The
Cotter's Saturday Night_.
THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT
My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend!
No mercenary bard
his homage pays:
With honest pride I scorn each selfish end,
My
dearest meed a friend's esteem and praise:
To you I sing, in simple
Scottish lays,
The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene;
The native
feelings strong, the guileless ways;
What Aiken in a cottage would

have been--
Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween.
November chill blaws load wi' angry sough; [wail] The shortening
winter-day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;

The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose:
The toil-worn Cotter
frae his labour goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end,

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in
ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does
hameward bend.
At length his lonely cot appears in view,
Beneath the shelter of an
aged tree;
Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin', stacher through [stagger]
To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise an' glee. [fluttering] His wee bit
ingle, blinkin bonnilie, [fire] His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's
smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee,
Does a' his weary
kiaugh and care beguile, [worry] An' makes him quite forget his labour
an' his toil.
Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, [Soon] At service out,
amang the farmers roun';
Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie
rin [drive, heedful run] A cannie errand to a neibor town: [quiet] Their
eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,
I n youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e ' e ,
[eye]
Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new g o w n ,
[fine]
Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee,
[hard-won wages]

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.
With joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet,
An' each for other's
weelfare kindly spiers: [asks] The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnoticed
fleet;
Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears; [wonders] The
parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;
Anticipation forward points
the view.
The mother, wi' her needle an' her sheers,
Gars auld claes

look amaist as weel's the new; [Makes old clothes] The father mixes a'
wi' admonition due.
Their master's an' their mistress's command
The younkers a' are warnèd to obey;
[youngsters]
An' mind their labours wi' an eydent hand,
[diligent]
An' ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk or
play: [trifle]

'And O! be sure to fear the Lord