SOURCE: "The Early Period: Burns's Conscious Collecting of Folksongs," in Burns and Tradition, Macmillan Press, 1984, pp. 1–26, 147–50.

[Here, Brown describes Burns as a transitional figure bridging the two spheres of oral and literate composition.]

(That Bards are second-sighted is nae joke,
And ken the lingo of the sp'ritual folk;
Fays, Spunkies, Kelpies, a', they can explain them,
An ev'n the vera deils they brawly ken them.)
'The Brigs of Ayr, a Poem'

Robert Burns is remembered as much for his personality and character as for his poetry and songs. It is rather ironic that as an individual his roots in a peasant class are extolled, even emphasised; however, as a creative artist his debts to written, élite precedents are principally cited. Both are probably somewhat extreme positions: as an individual Burns both represented and transcended his class; as a poet and songwright he followed the example of earlier writers while being simultaneously influenced by the oral literary forms which flourished in the milieu of his birth.

The stress on Burns' literary sources is a natural and explicable one: those who study Burns as literary historians and critics see him and his work through the dimension of time and often in comparison with other written work—the tangible records of the artistic endeavours of the past; and he does seem to have been the culmination of the Scottish literary tradition and to have profited from exposure to English literature. Burns himself praised a number of his predecessors and tried, in as much as was possible, to read the best of past artistry and to keep abreast of current efforts. The primary matrix in which he lived, however, was not completely a literate one: much of the artistic communication he shared with his contemporaries was oral and aural; for the ballads and folksongs he absorbed from multiple hearings¹ and the legends and other narratives which punctuated convivial conversation were a more pervasive and typical—if, unfortunately, ephemeral—part of the everyday world in which he lived than the poetry of Robert Fergusson or Thomas Gray. In a famous biographical letter to Dr Moore written after he had received acclaim as a poet, Burns described the influences he had come under when he was a boy and specifically mentions his mother and an old woman, loosely connected with the family, who provided him with an early stock of songs, tales, legends, beliefs, proverbs, and customs:

In my infant and boyish days too, I owed much to an old Maid of my Mother's, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity and superstition.—She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, inchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery.²

The oral artistic creations, cumulatively built and recreated, passed on from generation to generation, stable in general form but varied in individual performance, were his birthright and a natural and universal part of the general society in which he lived—where traditional custom, belief, and practice dominated and overt creativity and innovation were not sought. This traditionally oriented way of life and the oral artistic communications it supported and sustained played a far more significant role in shaping and determining the directions of Burns' artistry than has been recognised.

Like all writers or creative artists, Burns was not an isolate; and he cannot be realistically divorced from the milieu in which he lived. He was a product of what had gone before and what was and his artistry often lay in uniquely blending, juxtaposing, or representing this. He was a part of a long tradition.³ When T. S. Eliot suggests in 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' that all artists are a part of a tradition and are representatives of it, he is referring essentially to literary and élite aesthetic traditions.⁴ Any artist is, as well, a product of a cultural tradition, and it is Burns' cultural tradition which has been slighted and frequently overlooked in most serious studies of the man and his work.

The rural Ayrshire into which Burns was born might be described as a modified peasant society: it was rurally based and dominated by agriculture; its people were relatively homogeneous and shared a body of knowledge, mostly oral; it was a society in many respects characterised by a preference for the old ways, for what had always been, the 'tried and true'. This society often provided the background and informing principle for Burns' writing; and the oral artistry found in such a society shaped the form, content, style, and process of much of his work. These traditional manifestations of culture—folkways or folklife and oral literature—might be broadly called folklore. And what follows is a documentation and illustration of the multiplicity of ways folklore affected Burns' art, exhibiting his debt to his own folkloric matrix and the traditional and repeated aspects of life, especially the oral artistic communications, which were a part of it.

This debt to his milieu and its artistry was largely unconscious and intuitive prior to 1786.⁵ Edinburgh marked a transition to a far more aware and conscious artistry, to be discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, which was both antiquarian and national in inspiration. The poetry prior to Edinburgh deals primarily with folklife,⁶ with description of the rural existence, resulting sometimes in frankly occasional pieces; and Burns makes his larger comments about life against this backdrop, which was his milieu and naturally became an important part of his creative view. While Hugh MacDiarmid faults Burns for this localism,⁷ it was undoubtedly essential for the establishment of his poetic voice and rarely kept Burns from suggesting a more universally applicable principle or sentiment as well. The events of 1786—the publication of the Kilmarnock edition and the visit to Edinburgh—precipated a shift away from this local poetry which drew its inspiration from the region of the poet's birth.

Burns was not an oddity in writing poems and songs.⁸ He knew other local poets who shared his predilection for rhyme and exchanged verse letters with several—notably John Lapraik. The existence and prestige of poets, representing relatively defined locales, sometimes mere rhymers or village versifiers, may have its roots in the Celtic past where poet or bard stood in close relationship to priest or chieftain, being responsible for memory of the past as well as celebration of the present. Such a tradition surely continues in the often puerile laureate effusions composed to mark the special events of the present. But long ago the poet held a central position close to the seat of power and celebrated high points of the life and yearly round of activity; he spoke for as well as against the status quo, was often under protection of chieftain or priest's office, and used well-established traditional forms and structures as vessels for a contemporary message. Burns too took the forms and structures of the past and developed them by using the present: sometimes his pieces were frankly occasional and descriptive; in others his satire and social criticism worked effectively as in the days of the Celtic bards. But unlike the Celtic bard, Burns had no chieftain to protect him to sanction or approve his words.

Like the Celtic bard, Burns wrote for a local audience, which shared his interest in the geographic area and in current events and issues. That audience was known to him; it included his friends and his neighbours; and as often as not he read or recited his productions aloud to them⁹ or circulated them in handwritten manuscripts. The audience he addressed—their politics, ethos—no doubt affected what lines he added or cut, amply illustrated in his lengthy correspondence with Mrs Dunlop and the manuscript versions he frequently sent her. Such flexibility reflects an attitude more akin to oral communication than to the impersonality of the written literary world where the reading public is only generally known and where the literary text is fixed and unchanging. Burns' audience always retained a specific quality for him even when he was no longer a local, but more nearly a national, poet. The principal edition of his work, the 1786 Kilmarnock edition, was essentially aimed at a relatively local audience, though, to be sure, his Preface looked beyond it. This concern with audience is characteristic of oral communication; it reflects a need for immediate response, for give and take. Burns' poetry and songs, like the traditional folksongs and narratives, were passed on in a small, local, mostly homogeneous group.

If his audience was local and shared his world, that world found its way into his creative work as an essential ingredient in facilitating communication. He began with the common world, the familiar which he knew and to which he—as are all outstanding writers—was extraodinarily sensitive. He was not merely a describer, an ethnographer; he selected and focused on aspects of the shared world as a base from which to draw broader conclusions and generalisations about the human condition. And in transferring reality to creative work, whether destined for oral or written transmission, his own unique personality and background—albeit shaped by the common tradition—contributed to an equally individual perception of the world. Nonetheless his depiction of the world held in common with his audience lay within the recognisable parameters of general experience and formed the essential understood background which often effectively drew the readers or hearers of his work into the poem or song and provided them with a basis for the response all artistic endeavours strive for if they are indeed an effective means of communication. Burns wrote about what he knew using familiar forms and familiar language as well as familiar content. From a specific account of aspects of religious controversy rampant in Burns' day in 'The Ordination'¹⁰ and in 'The Kirk of Scotland's Garland—a new Song' (no. 264) to a depiction of a gathering of three friends, including himself, in 'Willie brew'd a peck o' maut' (no. 268), Burns drew on his own environment for surface content. The obvious and identifiable are especially blatant in his frankly occasional and extemporary poems and songs, which, like 'At Roslin Inn' (no. 158), remark on the obvious and record an impression; they remain not as a great testimony to his poetic power, but as testimony to his spur-of-the-moment poetic ability.

The celebration of the immediate, often a shared experience, links Burns with both the earlier bardic and the later poet laureate traditions. Many of his occasional poems are said to have been off-the-cuff extemporaneous productions. Some were composed in writing and remain today incised in windows of various inns he frequented. Other works he created mentally, in memory, and later, after a long journey on horseback perhaps, put in writing.¹¹ The oral sound rather than the written text may well have controlled his composition.¹² His use of proverbs and sayings from oral tradition,¹³ phrases from traditional songs,¹⁴ not to mention the whole stanzas and refrains which provided the basic material for many of his songs suggests a compositional technique akin to oral formulaic composition.¹⁵ Multiple versions of some of his works may also reflect a concept of artistic product which does not insist on fixity of text; such disregard for a definitive text links Burns to the world of traditional oral composition. In many ways, Burns was a kind of transition figure—an individual who straddled both the literate and the oral worlds, and his own method of composition reflected compositional approaches from both worlds.

He composed and wrote, of course, as all artists do—at least in part—in order to communicate, perhaps to influence. But he created as well to provide solace for himself: 'However as I hope my poor, country Muse, who, all rustic, akward [sic], and unpolished as she is, has more charms for me than any other of the pleasures of life beside—as I hope she will not then desert me, I may, even then, learn to be, if not happy, at least easy, and south a sang to sooth my misery.—'¹⁶ And he created to relieve tension—as entertainment—as part of life. Creating, composing was for Burns, as for oral poets past and present, organically a part of the life he led:

And the use of poetic and song form, recognisably distinct from daily discourse, allowed Burns to write of love for women whom he could not ordinarily so address and to write of subjects, especially bawdry, he might not discuss in polite conversation. The functions of his art were many.

Burns' focus in his early work on local topics, his frequent use of traditional material, his acceptance of the fluidity of texts, his stress on audience and the oral socialisation of his own works, and his articulated views on the function of composition—all suggest Burns' strong and largely intuitive ties to the traditional and partially oral matrix of late eighteenth-century Ayrshire. This is not meant to diminish his relationship with the literary world: he read; he felt a debt to Allan Ramsay, to Robert Fergusson and others—both Scottish and English. And it was through the creative medium—writing and related print—he shared with them that his work lives today. But the literary and literate world was superimposed on the traditional and oral world which formed the very basis of his being. It provided him with forms and structures, content and contexts on which to build. Scottish tradition and Scottish oral artistry were his birthright.

Burns utilised various aspects of the whole gamut of traditional life and art available to him. The content of his poems and songs overtly drew upon the repeated themes, made reference to known locale as well as to facets of the shared oral art; utilised phrases, lines and stanzas extant in the tradition; described custom, practice, belief, and milieu; and repeatedly used the structures and forms of the traditional oral artistry circulating in his milieu. Not only was the content and often the structure of his work drawn from the folkloric milieu, but his very medium of communicating—the Scots vernacular—and stylistic devices such as repetition and frequent use of refrain assert his cultural heritage. And in several works he replicates the traditional matrix for artistic communication. Scottish traditional life and especially its oral and artistic forms dominated Burns' own aesthetic perspective and formed, frequently, the unconscious basis for his creativity.

Burns' most obvious debt to the oral world of which he was part is at the level of overt content. His kinship with earlier poetry and song is illustrated by his use of themes, shared with his predecessors, whether their medium was oral or written. Earlier in the eighteenth century, the Jacobite theme had certainly had definite political overtones, but as restoration of an independent Scotland and a distinctly Scottish monarch became less and less a possibility, the Jacobite theme became the accepted vehicle for popular nationalistic expression, indulged in, through composition or participation, by persons who might not have supported the Jacobite risings of the first half of the century. This romantic Jacobitism had many adherents, Burns among them, and vague references to Bonnie Prince Charlie, especially to his absence and to the implications of his overseas' residence for Scotland, occur in Burns' songs, particularly when he draws on earlier Jacobite songs and phrases to provide a link with the established tradition—'him that's far awa',¹⁷ the White Cockade, the badge of the Stuarts,¹⁸ 'Here's a Health to them that's awa'.¹⁹ While nationalism appears in various guises in Burns' work as in 'The Vision' (no. 62) with its celebration of the power of poetry in proclaiming a Scottish nation, the theme is more often than not linked with Jacobite sentiment as in the 'Song—'….

The small birds rejoice in the green leaves returning,
The murmuring streamlet winds clear thro' the vale;
The primroses blow in the dews of the morning,
And wild-scattered cowslips bedeck the green dale:
But what can give pleasure, or what can seem fair,
When the lingering moments are numbered by Care?
No birds sweetly singing, nor flowers gayly springing,
Can sooth the sad bosom of joyless Despair.—

The deed that I dared, could it merit their malice,
a king and a father to place on his throne;
His right are these hills, and his right are these vallies,
Where wild beasts find shelter but I can find none:
But 'tis not my sufferings, thus wretched, forlorn,
My brave, gallant friends, 'tis your ruin I mourn;
Your faith proved so loyal in hot, bloody trial,
Alas, can I make it no sweeter return!
(no. 220)²⁰

Additionally, this song utilises another recurring theme—the contrast of the seasons and the moods they project and reflect.²¹ Playing against this theme in 'Sonnet, on the Death of Robert Riddel, Esq. of Glen Riddel, April 1794', Burns speaks of the inappropriateness of spring to his mood in this comment:

No more, ye warblers of the wood, no more,
Nor pour your descant, grating, on my soul:
Thou young-eyed spring, gay in the verdant stole,
More welcome were to me grim winter's wildest roar.
(ll. 1–4, no. 445)

Laments, too, were a form or kind of song Burns shared with his predecessors and contemporaries though he recognised their stereotyped nature when he wrote: 'These kind of subjects are much hackneyed; and besides, the wailings of the rhyming tribe over the ashes of the Great, are damnably suspicious, and out of all character for sincerity.—These ideas damp'd my Muse's fire.'²² Nonetheless he succumbed to writing laments from time to time.²³

Since he was familiar with both oral and written artistry, it is understandable that he should have drawn from the great corporate fund such themes and topics as the chanson de malmarié,²⁴ the romantic view of the rural population implicit in such works as 'The Cotter's Saturday Night',²⁵ praise of liberty,²⁶ and especially glorification of love and the lasses, found notably in such songs as the famous 'I love my Jean'….

Sharing not only themes but also superficial content with both popular and oral literature and with his traditionally oriented world, Burns utilised stereotyped, pastoral names for his protagonists; see his many Elizas and Jockeys. And he referred almost as frequently to local events or persons, often women, as in his lines on Elizabeth Paton:

Local places too find specific inclusion—Stewart Kyle, Mauchline.²⁷ Additionally, Burns borrowed common places, sometimes entire lines and phrases, from earlier oral and written literature as well as from life: 'An' she has twa sparkling, rogueish een';²⁸ 'An' durk an' pistol at her belt';²⁹ Now fare ye well, an' joy be wi you';³⁰ 'In ploughman phrase "GOD send you speed",/Still daily to grow wiser.';³¹ 'saut tear blin't his e'e', reminiscent of 'Sir Patrick Spens' and other ballads;³² and proverbs, such as 'Deil tak the hindmost'.³³ Burns also picked up the sexual slang of the vernacular and subtly incorporated it into his work, using, for example, the hunting metaphor with reference to Elizabeth Paton, printed above, and in 'The Hunting Song' (no. 190); he also used the term 'brose and butter' in his poem of that name (no. 78), referring, in the argot, to an abundance of semen. His references to traditional belief and custom are, of course, nowhere in greater concentration than in 'Halloween' (no. 73); but they are found in many works. The devil, so familiar a figure in Scots tradition that he is called 'auld cloven Clooty', 'Auld Nick',³⁴ appears from time to time,³⁵ as does death, personified, carrying a scythe over one shoulder and a three-pronged spear over the other.³⁶ Burs mentions belief in second-sight, that is the ability to foresee the future, a trait often attributed to poets.³⁷ And as part of his local, traditional orientation he alludes to legendary figures such as King Coil, said once to have been King of Kyle.³⁸

Burns' most significant and pervasive use of traditional material as the basis for his works' content is, undoubtedly, in his songs.³⁹ He was deeply involved with song, that artistic complex of text and tune, throughout his life. His first known work, 'O once I lov'd' to the tune 'I am a man unmarried', written at fourteen, was a song; and his last work was a song. Thus songwriting framed his artistic life. Since, however, it became a very conscious process and his primary artistic mode after his Edinburgh stay, discussion of the songs will, for the most part, be left until Chapter 3.

The present, the local, Burns' own world is overwhelmingly obvious in the content of a group of poems often referred to as 'manners-painting'. Together these poems might well be called ethnographic or ethnoliterature, for they depict the environment from a variety of perspectives, exhibiting a multiplicity of aspects of life. Detailing various facets of life in eighteenth-century Ayrshire, these verbal pictures have served for subsequent generations as records of the life of the times: in fact, various works on eighteenth-century Scotland quote Burns as the source of their information and other publications provide corroborative parallel information.⁴⁰ I have enlarged the parameters of this group to include a number of works which contain, albeit sometimes briefly and incidentally, valuable detail about the life and times, which Burns incorporated into his works as important indicators of time and place.⁴¹ Dealing with aspects of life which are traditional, long having been a part of the yearly round of existence, many of these poems focus on custom, those repeated practices which dominate life; on belief; and on various aspects of life found in rural Ayrshire. In most, the description of the traditional practices provides the broad canvas on which Burns paints his conception of life and against which he outlines various aspects for particular notice. His selection of detail is not random: elements were specifically chosen to make a point and, in the works judged the best, to enable implied social comment; the descriptions served well as valid backgrounds from which to work. As early as 1783, Burns had articulated his own interest in the study of men, their manners and their ways 'and for this darling subject, I chearfully sacrifice every other consideration'.⁴² 'Believe me … it is the only study in this world will yield solid satisfaction'.⁴³ This interest, widespread among the educated élite in the eighteenth century, no doubt stimulated Burns' selective descriptions of aspects of traditional life.

The bulk and most significant examples of Burns' focus on traditional life were probably written between 1784 and 1785. They include insignificant incidental detail of a man's wardrobe, refer to calendar customs such as Hogmanay and harvest home, to traditional food and drink as well as to hiring practices and welcoming gifts—to man and animal. Additionally, beliefs about witches and the devil find frequent articulation. Five extended examples should illustrate the centrality of his own traditional milieu, the way of life handed down from generation to generation, in his artistry. Here the description of ethnographic detail is not incidental, but integral.

Burns' ethnographic bent may well have reached its apogee in 'Halloween' (no. 73), his poem dealing with the sacred night when spirits overtly walk mortal territory and under proper ritual circumstances may foretell or enable prophecy of the future. The poem is explicitly descriptive of certain elements of the calendar celebration, is prefaced by an explanatory introduction, and is copiously footnoted by Burns to explain the rituals mentioned to the uninitiated. It is perhaps a universal human desire to know and, if possible, to control the future: in different times and places, the means of doing so will, of course, differ. In eighteenth-century Ayrshire, prognosticatory customs were practised on various days—Halloween being one—in an attempt to foretell future relationships between individuals of different sexes. In Burns' poem, the participants are young people looking forward to the next rite of passage, the next radical change in their own lives, and hoping to know something about what to expect. Burns vividly describes the various rituals—performed, at least to some extent, because of belief in their efficacy: pulling up stalks of kail, of oats; throwing yarn into a kiln; eating an apple in front of a mirror; pretending to winnow; and sewing hemp. Kinsley and others from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries have shown that all of these practices were both widespread and well-known. The practice of pulling up green kail stocks is a case in point: according to Eve Blantyre Simpson, a couple—eyes shut, hand in hand—should pull stocks from the garden of an unmarried man or woman. If the stock is stout, the future will be good; if the roots have no dirt attached to them, poverty will be their lot; furthermore, the taste of the stock's kernel will indicate the future spouse's temperament.⁴⁴ Similarly, William Grant Stewart discusses this 'customary art of divination'. A couple, blindfolded, pull up a stock of kail; its qualities enable prophesy of the future mate's size and shape. If dirt adheres to the root, they will have good fortune; the taste of the stem foretells the disposition of the future mate.⁴⁵ M. Macleod Banks, and others, also record the tradition.⁴⁶ Burns' own note touches on these same points, undoubtedly indicating his own observation of this practice:

The first ceremony of Halloween, is, pulling each a Stock, or plant of kail. They must go out, hand in hand, with eyes shut, and pull the first they meet with: its being big or little, straight or crooked, is prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of all their Spells—the husband or wife. If any yird, or earth, stick to the root, that is tocher, or fortune; the taste of the custoc, that is, the heart of the stem, is indicative of the natural temper and disposition.⁴⁷

All of these rituals may give valuable hints about one's future—who one will marry, whether or not the girl will be a virgin, whether present courtship will be smooth, what status or occupation the future mate will have. But 'Halloween' would be rather a dry, anthropological account had not Burns particularised the general by peopling his celebration with willing, hopeful individuals—joined together in fun and anticipation in a calendar custom long known. Burns names spots they might visit—known in legend to be fairy rings—and he suggests the validity of the rituals when he has Grannie warn against certain practices—for, in the past, they have driven people mad, at least temporarily—and she describes one such account. A young lad, anxious to disprove her warning and simultaneously to prove himself to his assembled peers, takes it as a dare and goes out alone; but he succumbs to fear if not to madness. These are real people, come together, who interact—however disjointedly—before our eyes, making their beliefs and customs alive and functioning. The concluding stanza

makes it clear that the rituals were performed in a social context which included the telling of tales and jokes, the exchange of chatter, as well as a traditional dish of sowens (a mixture of oatmeal and sour milk), with butter, on this significant day of the year.

'Halloween' describes both belief and custom and the people who hold them: thus the traditional milieu is, to all extents and purposes, the subject of the poem. The preface and the epigraph from Goldsmith alert one to Burns' distanced stance—these practices are of the uneducated but worthy rural folk—and explain Burns' detached focus in the poem proper. But the description and thus the poem itself are sympathetic and there is no contrast with the ways of educated folk, essentially because Burns describes his own physical—if not mental—milieu; and he has given us a scene of multiple dimensions, having the force of reality. His own world, however limited, was the basis of his artistry; such a work as this shows his dependence on the people he knew—'their manners and their ways'. There would otherwise have been no poem.

In the song 'Tam Glen' (no. 236), we get a far less sustained description of prognostication having to do with relationships of the sexes both on Halloween and on St. Valentine's Day. Here the belief and custom support the dominant idea of the song: that Tam Glen is the only lad for her:

The traditional evidences used to support her choice are only part of her argument, but they are valid within the poem's milieu. In this brief look at the rationalising of a young girl, Burns has, in referring to shared traditional practices, made her dilemma far more interesting and lifelike, exemplifying yet again his debt to the milieu of his birth.

In 'The Holy Fair' (no. 70) Burns describes an annual event, an ingathering of Clergy and parishioners from an extended local area for worship and communion. Although the event was begun with the sacred in mind, the secular now reigns and Burns' deft flashes from scene to scene give us a look at this tradition. His selection of foci presents the events, contrasts them, and concludes that the effective reason for having such fairs is hardly the obvious religious one:

This is not description for description's sake; it is a selective panoramic perspective, presenting a spectrum of viewpoints, which no doubt reflect reality. But in an age when the clergy and Kirk session had so much control over the lives of the people, such noncompliance appears startling. Burns was not deceived: it was not religion man loved and clung to; rather it was secular delight. Those who deny the truth, blind to what is in front of their eyes, proclaiming the sacred holiness of the day, they are wrong; they are hypocrites. We know what such 'holy fairs' were like because of Burns' description, but we must recognise that the description was but a vehicle and perhaps an essential one for Burns' comment about the people among whom he lived. Thus, the traditions of his day, generally known to his audience, provided the shared background, and through selective and judicious choice from a wide spectrum of behaviour, he forces the reader to question with him the Holy Fair's very being.

There are many remnants today of the visual acuity pre-eminent in days of old when oral, aural, and visual were the rule and reading and writing the possession of few. For goodness knows how long shops and taverns announced their function and name in signs hung prominently to attract the cognoscenti—which in this case was virtually everyone—with known and recognised symbols, rather than words. Such signs were part of the known. In brief, hardly flattering verses, 'Versicles on Sign-posts' (no. 244), Burns again plays against the known—a visual traditional art/craft—to satirise qualities of various unnamed individuals—such as the man too wont to smile:

His face with smile eternal drest
Just like the Landlord to his guest,
High as they hang with creaking din
To index out the country Inn—
(ll. 6–9, no. 244)

But Burns' ethnography is perhaps most complete in the scene and context described in 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' (no. 72). The technique for such description may well have come from Robert Fergusson's 'The Farmer's Ingle' and a model for comment from such English authors as Gray, whose lines appear as epigraph to the poem, but the basis of the poem is a description of the traditional and typical life around him, illustrating all humanity's inherent dignity, nowhere more obvious than among the poor of Scotland. Burns' depiction of a man—weary from six day's toil—in domestic repose must be recognised as filtered and skewed, an ideal rather than an actuality. But in the description there is much detail about life: the gear of his work, his ploughing, the indication of the coming Sabbath as a day of rest; the visitation of his children fee'd out to plough, herd, or run errands; the sharing of news while light sociable tasks like mending continue; the modest supper of porridge and cheese followed by the family worship around the fire, begun with the singing of a psalm, followed by the reading of the scripture, and culminating with the prayer. There is considerable evidence to support the accuracy of various portions of Burns' account—concerning food, religious practices, and economic circumstances. Henry Gray Graham describes the necessity earlier in the eighteenth century of daily religious worship in the home, devolving later to the Saturday-night observance of Burns' depiction.⁴⁸ Marjorie Plant describes the centrality of 'meal' in the diet, supplemented in the poem with cheese.⁴⁹ And R. H. Cromek describes the domicile of a cotter and his house, including a description of family worship which he suggests was never depicted more eloquently than by Burns.⁵⁰ Gilbert Burns recorded that Burns was inspired by the invocation 'Let us worship God' proclaiming the start of family worship. General accounts of the eighteenth century confirm the veracity of Burns' presentation of the life of the cotter, caught at the bottom of the economic heap in the agricultural upheavals of the eighteenth century which did away with much of the joint land tenure and communal work, thereby creating a classed society with the 'have-nots', sending their children out to work and yet still barely managing to survive, becoming more numerous. And the testimony—early attributed to a servant of Burns' friend and correspondent Mrs Dunlop but subsequently to others—that 'I've seen the same thing in my ain father's house mony a time, and he couldna hae described it ony ither gate' suggests the reliability of his account.⁵¹ Another version recorded by John D. Ross tells of Burns' pleasure when he asked a Mossgiel friend how she liked his poems—'Weel, Rab, gin ye canna write something we dinna ken, dinna put aff yer time writing sic havers; I'm sure there's naething new in that; we see a' that ongauns every day o' our lives.'⁵² And biographical critics have suggested that Burns was actually depicting here his own early environment—although strictly speaking William Burnes was a class above, a tenant farmer, although a poor one. Artistically Burns here combines his knowledge of English and Scottish literary traditions; but far more importantly he limns the traditional matrix, the way of life, choosing from it positive and humanising elements for comment and reflection, as well as for contrast. His own folkways provided him with the shared elements from and through which to make his point. Unwittingly on the one hand, but necessarily and predictably on the other, Burns was an ethnographer, describing the life he knew best as an integral part of his own artistry.

The traditional milieu provided more than content for his poems and songs; it also provided models for some of his verse forms and structures. He used the ballad and folksong stanza pattern, to be described in Chapter 3, throughout his life, both intuitively and consciously. Additionally, he used the traditional form for his epigrams and epitaphs which were usually topical and of questionable poetic value.

Notes

¹ August Angellier in Robert Burns, La Vie, Les Oeuvres, 2 vols (Paris, 1983) pointed to this when he said: 'But underneath this scholarly poetry there existed a popular poetry which was very abundant, very vigorous, very racy and very original'. See especially p. 14 of Jane Burgoyne's selected translation from Angellier in the Burns Chronicle and Club Directory, 1969. Other portions of the translation appeared in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973.

² J. De Lancey Ferguson (ed.) The Letters of Robert Burns, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), 1: 106, no. 125. Burns adopted a superior tone here in keeping with the accepted pose of the eighteenth-century man of letters. All references to Burns' letters are to Ferguson's edition. Only letter numbers will be given when the citation appears in the text proper.

³ Most critics and students of Burns take some stance towards his relationship with previous work. Hans Hecht, Robert Burns: The Man and His Work, 2nd rev. ed. (London: William Hodge & Company, 1950), p. 29, suggests that Burns was the culmination of a tradition, but he speaks of a literary rather than a cultural inheritance.

⁴ See T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (London: Methuen, 1950), pp. 47–59.

⁵ Angellier earlier suggested this division and I agree with him that Burns' work prior to Edinburgh was dominated by depiction of the world around him. After Edinburgh, Angellier indicates that Burns relied less on the specific incidents and more on general sentiments. I concur again but the significance of this move to generality is in Burns' nationalism.

⁶ Hecht, Robert Burns, p. 86 discusses the Kilmarnock poems as Heimatkunst.

⁷ For an example of Hugh MacDiarmid's view of Burns, see Burns Today and Tomorrow (Edinburgh: Castle Wynd Printers, 1959).

⁸ See John Strawhorn, 'Burns and the Bardie Clan', Scottish Literary Journal, 8 (1981): 5–23 for a discussion of fellow poets.

⁹ No. 180 'On scaring some Water-Fowl in Loch-Turit, a wild scene among the Hills of Oughtertyre' is said to have been read one evening after supper. See Robert Chambers and William Wallace (eds), The Life and Works of Robert Burns, 4 vols (New York: Long-mans, Green, and Co., 1896), 2: 193. W. E. Henley and T. F. Henderson (eds), The Poetry of Robert Burns, 4 vols (Edinburgh: T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1896–7) mention several additional instances: see, for example, 1:328.

¹⁰ All references to Burns' work are to James Kinsley (ed.), The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). Item numbers will be given hereafter in the text. 'The Ordination' is no. 85.

¹¹ See for example 'The Banks of Nith' (no. 229) and Burns' comment in Ferguson, Letters, no. 265, that it was composed as he jogged along the bank.

¹² James Cameron Ewing and Davidson Cook (eds), Robert Burns's Commonplace Book 1783–1785 (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965), p. 39. In describing the inspiration for his fragment 'Altho' my bed were in you muir' (Kinsley, Poems and Songs, no. 22) said to be an imitation of 'a noble old Scottish Piece called McMillan's Peggy', Burns comments: 'I have even tryed to imitate, in this extempore thing, that irregularity in the rhyme which, when judiciously done, has such a fine effect on the ear.—'

¹³ 'Worth gaun a mile to see' is from 'The Humble Petition of Bruar Water to the Noble Duke of Athole', Kinsley, Poems and Songs, no. 172.

¹⁴ See 'For lake o" from '[Lines written on a Banknote]', ibid., no. 106.

¹⁵ See the general work on this subject by Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (New York: Atheneum, 1971) and a book which presents specific application of this theory to the Scottish scene, David Buchan's The Ballad and the Folk (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972).

¹⁶ Ewing and Cook, Commonplace Book, p. 42.

¹⁷ See Kinsley, Poems and Songs, no. 208—'Musing on the roaring Ocean'.

¹⁸ Ibid., no. 306, 'The White Cockade'.

¹⁹ Ibid., no. 391, 'Here's a Health to them that's awa'.

²⁰ It is perhaps interesting to note that this Jacobite verse is written in standard, literary English, indicative of the broad popularity of this theme.

²¹ For other examples, see Kinsley, Poems and Songs, nos 3 'I dream'd I lay', 10 'Winter, A Dirge', 66 'The Braes o' Ballochmyle', 138 'Again rejoicing Nature sees', 218 'The Winter it is Past', 316 'Lament of Mary Queen of Scots on the Approach of Spring', 336 'Gloomy December'.

²² Ferguson, Letters, no. 164.

²³ Kinsley, Poems and Songs, nos 144 'On Fergusson', 160 'On the death of Sir J. Hunter Blair', 186 'On the death of the late Lord President Dundas', 233 'A Mother's Lament for the loss of her only Son', 238 'Sketch for an Elegy', 334 'Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn', 445 'Sonnet, on the Death of Robert Riddel, Esq.'

²⁴ Ibid., no. 235 'Whistle o'er the lave o't'.

²⁵ Ibid., no. 72 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' and also no. 71 'The Twa Dogs. A Tale'.

²⁶ Ibid., no. 451 'Ode for General Washington's Birthday' and no. 625 'The Tree of Liberty.'

²⁷ Ibid., no. 44—'A fragment—When first I came to Stewart Kyle'.

²⁸ Ibid., no. 11, 'On Cessnock banks a lassie dwells'.

²⁹ Ibid., no. 81, 'The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer, to the Right Honorable and Honorable, the Scotch Representatives in the House of Commons'.

³⁰ Ibid., no. 90, 'Letter to J—s T—t, GL—nc—r'.

³¹ Ibid., no. 105, 'Epistle to a Young Friend'.

³² Ibid., no. 216, 'Rattlin, roarin Willie'.

³³ Ibid., no. 136, 'To a Haggis'.

³⁴ Ibid., no. 119B, 'Robert Burns' Answer' to 'Epistle from a Taylor to Robert Burns'.

³⁵ Ibid., no. 54, 'Epitaph on Holy Willie'.

³⁶ Ibid., no. 55, 'Death and Doctor Hornbook. A True Story'.

³⁷ Ibid., no. 120, 'The Brigs of Ayr, a Poem. Inscribed to J. B., Esq; Ayr'.

³⁸ Ibid., no. 71, 'The Twa Dogs. A Tale'.

³⁹ Hecht, Robert Burns, p. 217 says, 'Burns's lyric poetry … clings to the clear realism of its chief sources: the Scottish popular and traditional songs'.

⁴⁰ See as example Marjorie Plant, The Domestic Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (1899; reprint ed., London: Adam & Charles Black, 1969).

⁴¹ I include Kinsley, Poems and Songs, nos 40 'The Ronalds of the Bennals', 57 'Epistle to J. Lk, An Old Scotch Bard', 67 'Third Epistle to J. Lapraik', 70 'The Holy Fair', 71 'The Twa Dogs. A Tale', 72 'The Cotter's Saturday Night', 73 'Halloween', 74 'The Mauchline Wedding', 75 'The Auld Farmer's New-year-morning Salutation to his Auld Mare, Maggie', 76 'Address to the Deil', 77 'Scotch Drink', 79 'To J. S', 86 'The Inventory', 102 'To M^r Gavin Hamilton, Mauchline', 136 'To a Haggis', 140 'There was a lad', 236 'Tarn Glen', 244 'Versicles on Sign-posts', 321 'Tarn o' Shanter. A Tale', 514 'Poem, Addressed to Mr. Mitchell, Collector of Excise'.

⁴² Ferguson, Letters, no. 13.

⁴³ Ibid., no. 10.

⁴⁴ Eve Blantyre Simpson, Folk Lore in Lowland Scotland (London: J. M. Dent, 1908), p. 14.

⁴⁵ William Grant Stewart, The Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements of the Highlanders of Scotland (1851: reprint ed., Hatboro, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions, 1974), p. 161.

⁴⁶ M. Macleod Banks, British Calendar Customs: Scotland, 3 vols (London: William Glaisher, 1937, 1939, 1941), 3: 122–4.

⁴⁷ Kinsley, Poems and Songs, 1: 153–4.

⁴⁸ See H. G. Graham, The Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 5th ed. (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1969), p. 336.

⁴⁹ See Plant, Domestic Life, pp. 97–8.

⁵⁰ R. H. Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song (Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1880), p. 212.

⁵¹ James Ballantine (comp. and ed.), Chronicle of the Hundredth Birthday of Robert Burns (Edinburgh: A. Fullarton & Co., 1859), pp. 70–1.

⁵² John D. Ross, Burnsiana, 5 vols (Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1892), 1: 23–4.