Context: "To a Louse" is a winning and merry piece of social criticism. It opens with the poet speaking in mock indignation to a louse crawling on the fine bonnet of a lady who sits in church unconscious of the intruder. First Burns comments on its impudence, then demands in exaggerated anger how dare it crawl upon "sae fine a lady," bidding it go find its meal on "some poor body." Following stanzas develop this contrast between a beggar's squalor, with lice in "thick plantations," and "Miss's" gauze and lace. "How daur ye do't?" asks the poet, still in amusement. Then, as the bonnet's wearer shakes her head, he changes to addressing her, her homely name of Jenny abruptly identifying her as a simple village girl aping the fashionable world and mocked by the louse. Thinking of the foolish girl, the poet begins the final stanza with lines that have grown proverbial: