HUMOUR OF SCOTTISH POETS
There have been few great poets—few poets of any appreciable quality,
indeed—anywhere, who have not had a lively and appreciative sense
of humour, if they have not actually been positive and productive
humourists. It is a faculty of the human mind without which no man can be
intellectually great—without which no view of life can be comprehensive
and true; a faculty without which Shakespeare could no more have sounded
the gamut of human feeling as he did than a man who is colour-blind could
describe the glowing iridescence of the rainbow. In Burns and Scott,
the most notable among Scottish poets—and mighty influences both in the
republic of letters—the faculty of original humour was revealed to an
extraordinary degree. In the case of Scott the playfulness of his fancy
was made manifest essentially, no doubt, in the _Waverley Novels_, and
in conversations with individuals; his poetry being mainly martial and
moving, and severe rather than lightsome. In Burns, the greater poet,
and the more impulsive genius, there was revealed the greater humourist
and the readier wit, as well as the finer sentimentalist. Alone amid the
sublimities of Nature, or touched by the muse in her diviner moods, he
was reverent in spirit and glowed with adoration as fervid and sincere
as ever animated the breast of the royal Hebrew bard himself; but
prompted to join the social circle at the festive board, and fired by the
spirit of fun, he would dazzle and delight a party for hours together
by the brilliance and rapidity of his flashes of ready wit and humorous
satire. The most ample and effective examples of Burns’s humour occur,
of course, in his poems—notably in “Tam o’ Shanter,” and “The Jolly
Beggars”; in his songs “Duncan Gray,” “Tam Glen,” and “Sic a Wife as
Willie had”; and in some of the rhymed epistles. The impromptu epitaphs
and epigrams, etc., which find a place in nearly every edition of his
works, afford convincing evidence of the pungency of his electric wit,
and the annihilating weight of his equally ready satire. But with all of
these—particularly the poems and the songs—every adult person in Scotland
is so familiar that to quote from one or other of them here would be
something like superfluous labour. A few of the nimbler of the impromptu
rhymes and epigrams, with descriptions of the circumstances under which
they were provoked, may, however, be reproduced _en passant_. The process
will freshen the reader’s memory, if it does not actually enlighten his
mind.
Burns, like true steel, was ever ready to give fire at the touch of the
flint, and being present in a company where an ill-educated _parvenu_ was
boring everyone by boasting of the many great people he had lately been
visiting, the poet gave vent to his feelings in the following impromptu
stanza, which we may be sure effectually silenced the babbling snob
before him:—
“No more of your titled acquaintances boast,
And in what lordly circles you’ve been;
An insect is only an insect at most,
Though it crawl on the curls of a queen.”
Having been storm-sted one Sunday at Lamington, in Clydesdale, the poet
went to church, but the day was so cold, the place so uncomfortable, and
the sermon so poor, that he left this protest on the pew which he had
occupied:—
“As cauld a wind as ever blew,
A caulder kirk, and in ’t but few;
As cauld a preacher’s ever spak’—
Ye’ll a’ be het ere I come back.”
While in Edinburgh, he visited at the studio of a well-known painter, who
was at that time engaged on a picture of Jacob’s dream. Burns embodied
his criticism of the work in the following lines, which he wrote on the
back of a sketch still preserved in the painter’s family:—
“Dear ⸺, I’ll gie ye some advice,
You’ll tak’ it no uncivil;
You shouldna paint at angels mair,
But try and paint the devil.
To paint an angel’s kittle wark,
Wi’ Auld Nick there’s less danger;
You’ll easy draw a weel-kent face,
But no sae weel a stranger.”
Never perhaps was there a neater compliment paid to feminine loveliness
than that paid by Burns to Miss Ainslie in an impromptu rhyme. During the
poet’s Border tour he went to church on Sunday, accompanied by the sister
of his travelling companion, Mr. Robert Ainslie, of Berrywell, Dunse. The
text for the day happened to contain a severe denunciation of obstinate
sinners, and the poet, observing the young lady intently turning over the
leaves of her Bible in search of the passage, took out a small piece of
paper, and wrote the following lines, which he immediately passed to her:—
“Fair maid, you need not take the hint,
Nor idle texts pursue;
’Twas guilty sinners that he meant,
Not angels such as you.”
Ready-witted “graces before meat” were evolved by the poet on demand,
time and again. Having met some friends to dine with them at the Globe
Tavern, Dumfries, on one occasion, when a sheep’s head happened to be
the fare provided, he was asked to give something new as a grace, and
instantly delivered the following, which has certainly little wit to
recommend it:—
“O Lord, when hunger pinches sore,
Do Thou stand us in stead,
And send us from thy bounteous store
A tup, or wether’s head.”
After having dined, however, and greatly enjoyed the repast, he was
appealed to to return thanks, and did so in four lines revealing native
wit, by saying:—
“O Lord, sine we have feasted thus,
Which we so little merit,
Let Meg now take away the flesh,
And Jock bring in the spirit.”
Than Burns’s epitaph “On a Suicide,” nothing more scathingly sarcastic
was ever written. It is as if he could not express too much scorn of the
miserable coward who would eschew the obligations of life by an act of
self-destruction:—
“Earth’d up, here lies an imp o’ hell,
Planted by Satan’s dibble;
Poor, silly wretch, he’s damned himsel’
To save the Lord the trouble.”
Burns was standing one day on the quay at Greenock, when a wealthy
merchant belonging to the town had the misfortune to fall into the
harbour. He was no swimmer, and would certainly have been drowned had
not a sailor, at the risk of his own life, plunged in and rescued him
from his dangerous situation. The merchant, upon recovering a little
from his fright, put his hand into his pocket and presented the sailor
with a shilling. The crowd, who were by this time collected, loudly
protested against the insignificance of the sum; but Burns, with a smile
of ineffable scorn, entreated them to restrain their clamour, “For,” said
he, “the gentleman is, of course, the best judge of the value of his own
life.”
A writer who happened to be present in a company along with Burns when
the conversation turned on “Tam o’ Shanter,” and stung, perhaps, with the
sarcastic touch on the legal fraternity—
“Three lawyers’ tongues turned inside out,
Wi’ lees seemed like a beggar’s clout,”
remarked that he thought the witches’ orgies obscure.
“Obscure, sir,” exclaimed the poet; “ye know not the language of the
great master of your own art; the devil! If you get a witch for your
client, you will not be able to manage her defence.”
Burns lived five months in a house which was occupied by an old man named
David Cully, or Kelly. The poet sometimes read books not usually seen in
people’s hands on the Sabbath. His landlord checked him for this, when
the bard laughingly replied—
“You’ll not think me so good a man as Nancy Kelly is a woman, I suppose?”
“Indeed, no.”
“Then I’ll tell you what happened this morning. When I took a walk by the
banks o’ the Nith, I heard Nancy Kelly praying long before I came to her.
I walked on, and before I returned I saw her helping herself to an armful
of my fitches.” The parties kept a cow.
On one occasion Nance and the bard were sitting in the “spence,” when the
former turned the conversation on her favourite topic—religion. Burns
sympathised with the matron, and quoted so much Scripture that she was
fairly astonished. By and by she said to her husband, “Oh, Dauvit, how
they have wranged that man; for I think he has mair o’ the Bible on
his tongue than Mr. Inglis himsel’.” Mr. Inglis was the Anti-burgher
minister. Burns enjoyed that compliment, and almost the first thing he
communicated to his wife on her arrival was the lift he had got from old
Nance.
Than “the glorious ploughman,” no one was kinder to such helpless
creatures as were weak in mind, and who sauntered harmlessly about. A
poor half-witted creature—the Madge Wildfire, it is said, of Scott—always
found a mouthful ready for her at the bard’s fireside. He was equally
kind, Allan Cuningham tells, to a crazy and tippling prodigal named Quin.
“Jamie,” said the poet one day, as he gave this character a penny, “you
should pray to be turned from the evil of your ways; you are ready now to
melt that penny into whisky.”
“Turn!” exclaimed Jamie, who was a wit in his way, “I wish some ane wad
turn me into the worm o’ Will Hyslop’s whisky-still, that the drink micht
dribble through me for ever.”
“Weel said, Jamie,” responded the poet; “you shall have a glass of whisky
once a week for that if you will come sober for it.”
A friend rallied Burns for indulging such creatures.
“You don’t understand the matter,” said he; “they are poets; they have
the madness of the muse, and all they want is the inspiration—a mere
trifle!”
A prophet has no honour in his own country, and few of the peasantry
personally acquainted with Burns were willing to allow that his merit
exceeded their own. Mrs. M’Quistan, the housekeeper at Dunlop House,
where the poet was a frequent visitor, saw nothing in his writings
calling for special admiration, and doubted the propriety of her mistress
entertaining a mere ploughman who made rhymes. As regarded “The Cottar’s
Saturday Night,” she declared to Mrs. Dunlop, with much shaking of the
head, that “Nae doubt gentlemen and ladies think muckle o’ that, but,
for me, it’s naething but what I saw in my ain faither’s house every
day, and I dinna see who he could hae tauld it ony other way.” It was a
splendid compliment. Yet the author once received perhaps a better—in his
own hearing, too—one, at least, which he appreciated more. A little boy
was asked which of the poet’s works he liked best. “I like ‘The Cottar’s
Saturday Night’ far best,” he exclaimed, “though it made me greet when my
father made me read it to my mother.”
The poet, with a sudden start, looked into the boy’s face intently, and,
patting him on the cheek, said, the tear glistening in his eye the while,
“Well, my callant, it made me greet, too, more than once, when I was
writing it at my father’s fireside.”
Scott, when about seventeen years of age, saw Burns in Edinburgh, and
has afforded the most truthful and graphic account of his personal
appearance extant. It was at a literary dinner at Professor Fergusson’s
that they met. The wondrous boy enlightened the party as to the
authorship of the line—
“The child of misery baptized in tears,”
by telling them it was Langhorne’s,[2] whereupon Burns looked towards
him and exclaimed, “You will be a man yet.” No prophecy received fuller
fulfilment; for if Sir Walter Scott did not rise to the full stature of
true manhood, no mere man ever did. Scott brought pleasure with him into
every party he chose to enter. His rich, racy humour in telling stories
and giving anecdotes, always on the spur of the moment, was delightful.
He had an anecdote ready, a story to match, or “cap,” as he used to
call it, every one he heard, and with most perfect ease and hearty good
humour. His first publisher, says one, Robert Millar, gave anecdotes very
pleasantly, and one day, after dinner, he was telling the company that
he, or some friend, had been present at an Assize Court in Jedburgh, when
a farm servant had summoned his master for non-payment of wages, which
he, the servant, had justly forfeited through some misconduct. After a
great deal of cross-questioning—
“I’m sure, my lord,” said the pursuer, “I’m seeking nowt but what I’ve
rowt for!”
“Ay, my man,” responded the judge, “but I’m thinking ye’ll hae to _rowt_
a wee langer afore ye get it, though;” and nonsuited him.
[2] The company had been admiring a print of Banbury’s,
representing a soldier lying dead on the snow—the dog sitting
in misery on the one side—on the other, his widow with a child
in her arms. These lines were written underneath:—
“Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden’s plain,
Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain;
Bent o’er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years—
The child of misery baptized in tears.”
Burns was so much affected by the picture, or rather the ideas
which it suggested to his mind, that he actually shed tears. He
asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that among all who
were present, and the company included the celebrated Dugald
Stewart, and other men of letters, young Scott alone remembered
that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne’s, called
by the unpromising title of “The Justice of the Peace.”
Scott, with the others, was well pleased with this dialogue, and, in his
easy unaffected manner, said—
“Well, something of a similar nature occurred when a friend of mine was
present at the Justice Court at Jedburgh. Two fellows had been taken
up for sheep-stealing; there was a dense crowd, and we were listening
with breathless attention to the evidence, when, from what reason I have
forgotten, there was a dead pause, during which the judge, observing a
rosy-cheeked, chubby-faced country boy, who seemed to pay the utmost
attention to what was going on, and continued to fix his eyes on his
Lordship’s countenance, cried out to the callant—
“‘Well, my man, what do you say to the cause!’
“‘Eh, gosh!’ answered the boy, ‘but that’s a gude ane! What div I say?
I whiles say, _Pui hup!_ and whiles I say _Pui ho!_ to the caws,’
meaning, of course, the calves. But the business was quickly decided, for
the whole Court, judge and jury, were thrown into such convulsions of
laughter that nothing more could be said or done.”
“It is interesting to observe,” says Gilfillan, “how not a few of
the familiar names known to Scott in his youth or boyhood have been
preserved on his written pages and are now classical. Thus Meg Dods was
the real name of a woman, or ‘Luckie,’ in Howgate, ‘who brewed good ale
for gentlemen.’ In the account of a Galloway trial, in which Scott was
counsel, occurs the name ‘Mac-Guffog,’ afterwards that of the famous
turnkey in _Guy Mannering_. The name ‘Durward’ may still be seen on the
signs of Arbroath and Forfar, and Scott had doubtless met it there; as
well as that of ‘Prudfute,’ or ‘Proudfoot,’ in or near Perth; ‘Morton,’
in the lists of the Western Whigs; and ‘Gilfillan,’ in the catalogue of
the prisoners in Dunnottar Castle. Nothing, in fact, that ever flashed on
the eye or vibrated on the ear of this extraordinary man but was in some
form or other reproduced in his writings.” In a remarkable sense here the
child was father of the man. When a lad at school, a boy in the same
class was asked by the dominie what part of speech “with” was.
“A noun, sir,” answered the boy.
“You young blockhead,” cried the pedagogue, “what example can you give of
such a thing?”
“I can tell you, sir,” interrupted Scott. “You know there’s a verse in
the Bible which says—‘They bound Samson with _withs_!’”
Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of the popular version of “The Flowers of the
Forest,” the one beginning “I’ve seen the smiling of fortune beguiling,”
has left a curious account of an interview which she had with Scott,
when a boy not quite six years old. He was reading a poem to his mother
when the lady entered, the subject of which was the description of a
shipwreck. His passion rose with the storm, and he lifted up his eyes and
hands—
“There’s a mast gone,” says he; “crash it goes; they will all perish!”
After his agitation, he turned to Mrs. Cockburn, and said—
“That is too melancholy. I had better read you something more amusing.”
Mrs. Cockburn preferred a little chat, and asked his opinion of Milton
and other books which he had been reading, which he gave wonderfully.
One of his observations was—“How strange that Adam, just new come into
the world, should know everything. That must be the poet’s fancy,” said
he. But when told he was created perfectly by God Himself, he instantly
yielded.
When he was taken to bed the same evening, he told his aunt that he liked
Mrs. Cockburn, “for I think,” said he, “she is a _virtuoso_ like myself.”
“Dear Walter, what is a _virtuoso_?” inquired his aunt.
“Don’t you know?” said he. “Why, it’s one that will know everything.”
He was still a boy, when a lady friend remarked in company on the almost
perpetual drizzle which prevails in the West of Scotland, and declared
herself at a loss to account for it.
Popping his head up from below the table, “It is,” said he, “only Nature
weeping for the barrenness of her soil.”
It was Sir Walter Scott who said that “his friends werna great
book-readers, but they were maistly a’ grand book-_keepers_”—a common
accomplishment of the friends and acquaintances of all men, alas!
Tom Purdie, Sir Walter’s favourite servant, appeared before the Sheriff
first as a poacher; when Scott became so interested in his story, which
he told with a mixture of pathos, simplicity, and pawky humour, that he
granted him forgiveness, and ultimately engaged him as a sort of factotum
at Abbotsford. Tom served him long and faithfully. Only “leeward whiles
he took a bicker” towards the dram. Scott is said to have proposed for
Tom’s epitaph the words—“Here lies one who might have been trusted with
a purse of untold gold, but _not_ with a barrel of unmeasured whisky.”
But more pungent than this even was his remark at the funeral ceremony of
the eccentric Earl of Buchan. In accordance with the Christian mode of
burial, the body should have been carried into the chapel, where it was
to be interred, feet first. Sir David Brewster was one of the mourners,
and was the first to observe that the head of the coffin was first in. He
said—“We have brought the Earl’s head in the wrong way.”
“Never mind,” replied Scott. “His Lordship’s head was turned when he was
alive, and it is not worth our while to shift it now.”
Long before the secret of the Waverley novels had been blown about, the
Ettrick Shepherd divined it, and as the novels appeared he had them
re-bound and lettered “Scott’s Novels.” While visiting Hogg at Altrive,
the author ventured to remark in a dry humorous tone, “Jamie, your
bookseller must be a stupid fellow, to spell _Scott’s_ with two _t’s_.”
Hogg replied, “Ah, Watty, I am ower auld a cat to draw that strae before.”
Mrs. John Ballantyne tells a story of Scott and Hogg not to be found in
Lockhart.
At her dinner table in Hanover Street, she says, the Shepherd was
present, and was amusing the company very much by his attempts to
dissect “twa teugh auld chuckies,” and was making the legs and wings
and gravy fly in every direction, to the annoyance of every one in his
neighbourhood. Suddenly he stopped, dipped a napkin in the finger-glass,
and began to mop his face, which was “a’ jappit wi’ the juice.”
Scott saw his friend’s dilemma, and out of the goodness of his heart
determined to create a diversion in his favour. Addressing Mrs.
Ballantyne, he asked this question—“Mrs. John, once on a time all the
letters of the alphabet were invited out to their dinner—they all came
but U. Why did not U come?” On giving it up, Scott said, “Why, then, the
reason why U did not come to dinner is very clear—because U never comes
till after (T).”
Sometimes a very trifling joke or anecdote adds to the gaiety of a
company. It was so in this case, the story passed round, but Hogg
could not understand it, and he asked what they were all laughing
at. “It’s about U (you),” cried Mrs. Ballantyne, and this made Hogg
quite indignant. He rose and brandished his knife, and inquired in a
blood-thirsty sort of way what they could possibly see about him to speak
and laugh about. This made the joke tell all the better, when it was
explained to him.
Carlyle recites with approbation a saying of somebody to the effect that
no man has written so many volumes as Scott having so few sentences
that can be quoted, and Gilfillan, replying to the charge, says he is
prepared to prove that in no other novelist—not even Cervantes, or
Bulwer, or Goodwin—is there to be found a greater number of separate and
quotable beauties than in Scott. Gilfillan’s offer is not extravagant.
Regarding the humorous side of the Waverley novels alone, which is all
that concerns us here, one has only to think of Caleb Balderston, of Edie
Ochiltree, of Cuddie Headrigg, of Andrew Fairservice; has but to utter
aloud to himself the familiar “Ma conscience!” of Bailie Nicol Jarvie;
the “Prodigious!” of Dominie Samson; the “Jeanie, woman!” of the Laird of
Dumbiedikes—to have his mind peopled like a market-place with familiar
figures, and his memory serving his tongue with passage upon passage,
page upon page, and all with the freedom and rapidity of electric
telegraphy. The temptation to quote now is strong; but I must resist it
in order to overtake less familiar, though perhaps less delectable matter.
How humour will serve one in circumstances where sheer eloquence might
pall is well illustrated by an important incident in the life of Scott.
When George IV. visited Scotland in 1812, Sir Walter was largely “in
evidence” in Edinburgh, eager to greet his Sovereign and afford him a
royal welcome. Elaborate preparations had been made in the Capital in
order that the reception might be worthy of the illustrious visitor,
but when the royal yacht arrived in the Forth, the rain poured down in
torrents. Sir Walter accordingly visited the King on board, and, in
asking him to defer his landing on account of the inclemency of the
weather, made one of the happiest speeches of his life—a speech which we
may be sure delighted no one more than the King himself:—
“Impatient, Sire,” said he, “as your loyal subjects are to see you plant
your foot upon their soil, they hope you will consent to postpone your
public entry until to-morrow. In seeing the state of the weather, I am
myself forcibly reminded of a circumstance which once occurred to me. I
was about to make a tour through the Western Highlands with part of my
family. I wrote to the innkeeper of a certain hostelry, where I meant to
halt a day or two, to have rooms prepared for me. On the day appointed it
rained, as it does to-day, ceaselessly. As we drew near our quarters, we
were met on the hill over his house by our Boniface, with bared head, and
backing every yard as I advanced, who thus addressed me:—
“‘Guid guide us, Sir Walter! This is just awfu’! Siccan a downpour! Was
ever the like? I really beg your pardon! I’m sure it’s nae faut o’ mine;
I canna think how it should happen to rain this way, just as you, o’ a’
men in the warld, should come to see us! It looks amaist personal! I can
only say for my part, I’m just ashamed o’ the weather!’
“And so, Sire, I do not know that I can improve upon the language of the
honest innkeeper; I cannot think how it should rain this way, just as
your Majesty, of all men in the world, should have condescended to come
and see us. I can only say in the name of my countrymen, I’m just ashamed
o’ the weather!”
Sir Walter welcomed his Majesty not only in person, but also in song, by
writing a long ballad in two parts, to the old tune of “Carle, and the
King Come.” Simultaneously with this loyal piece there, however, appeared
in the _London Examiner_ a satirical effusion, entitled, “Sawney, now the
King’s Come,” which caused some stir, and greatly annoyed the sensitive
loyalty of the author of _Waverley_.
The writer was Alexander Rodger, of Glasgow, the well-known author
of “Robin Tamson’s Smiddy,” “Behave yersel’ before Folk,” and other
popular humorous songs; and the ultra-radical opinions for which he had
already languished in “Bridewell,” it cannot be denied, rendered the
humour of this counterblast rather too broad for general circulation.
Its cleverness, however, was undoubted. A poet of admitted quality,
Rodger had a rich and ready humour which helped him through many a
difficulty. Whilst for the treasonable character of his contributions
to the _Spirit of the Union_ he lay in a Glasgow prison, where he was
used with reprehensible harshness, he solaced himself in his solitude by
singing, at the top of his lungs, his own political song compositions,
some of which were so spiced with humorous satire that they could not
be very grateful to the ears of his jailors. Once, when his house was
searched for seditious publications (terrible bugbears at that time to
the local authorities of Glasgow), Sandy handed the Family Bible to the
Sheriff’s officer, with the remark that that was the only treasonable
book in his possession; and for proof he referred the aghast official to
the chapter on Kings, in the first Book of Samuel. Rodger’s contributions
to _Whistle-Binkie_ form perhaps the most delightsome items of that
perennial collection of Scottish lyrics, none of them being a whit less
felicitous than his lyrical address to Peter M’Kay—“Ane sober advice
to ane drucken souter in Perth”—of which the following forms the first
verse:—
“O, Peter M’Kay! O, Peter M’Kay!
Gin ye’d do like the brutes, only drink when ye’re dry,
Ye might gather cash yet, grow gaucy and gash yet,
And carry your noddle Perth-Provost pow-high;
But poor, drucken deevil, ye’re wed to the evil
Sae closely, that naething can sever the tie;
Wi’ boring and boosing, and snoring and snoozing,
Ye emulate _him_ that inhabits—the sty.”
George Outram, another Glasgow poet, claims particular attention when
and wherever the humour of Scottish poets and poetry is the subject of
consideration. Such of his pieces as “The Annuity,” “Drinkin’ Drams,”
and “Soumin’ an’ Roumin’,” are amongst the most humoursome effusions
in the native tongue. The temperance cause has made great progress
since the bacchanalian heroic above named was penned, and it is now
the teetotallers who laugh most over the ironical humour expressed in
the lines. His “Annuity” is familiar to everybody, and the same may be
said of “Soumin’ an’ Roumin’.” The following illustration of his wit in
the shape of an epigram, which he composed on hearing a lady praise a
certain reverend Doctor’s eyes, is, however, not so well known as it
deserves—
“I cannot praise the Doctor’s eyes,
I never saw his glance divine;
He always shuts them when he prays,
And when he preaches he shuts mine,”
and the whimsical humour contained in the subjoined little sketch will
warrant its quotation:—
“My twa swine on the midden,
Wi’ very fat their een are hidden;
Their wames are swell’d beyond dimension,
Their shapes!—ye hae nae comprehension.
Sic a sicht!—their tails are curly,
Their houghs sae round, their necks sae burly;
In the warld there’s naething bigger
Than the tane—except the tither.”
The next prominent among Scottish poet-humourists that occurs here
is Professor Wilson, whose claim is made perfect by the unique and
incomparable “Noctes Ambrosianæ,” originally contributed to _Blackwood’s
Magazine_ under the pen name of “Christopher North.” Here there is humour
to the knees, humour to the loins, humour to swim in—a great river! But
we dare not enter, even though the temptation is strong. One solitary
example of Wilson’s genial humour, gleaned outside of the “Noctes,” must
serve here. It involves the name of another poet-humourist of almost
equal renown—namely, Professor Aytoun, author of the celebrated _Lays of
the Scottish Cavaliers_ and joint-author with Sir Theodore Martin of
the _Bon Gaultier Ballads_. Aytoun, as everybody knows, married Wilson’s
daughter, Miss Emily Jane. When, after the usual preliminaries, he made
a proposal of marriage to her, the young lady, as a matter of course,
referred him to her father. Aytoun was uncommonly diffident, and said,
“Emily, my dear, you must speak for me. I could not summon courage to
speak to the Professor on the subject.”
“Papa is in the library,” remarked the lady.
“Then you had better go to him,” said the suitor, “and I will wait here
for you.”
There being apparently no help for it, the lady proceeded to the library,
and, taking her father affectionately by the hand, mentioned that Aytoun
had asked her in marriage, and added, “Shall I accept his offer, papa; he
is so shy and diffident that he cannot speak to you himself?”
“Then we must deal tenderly with him,” said the hearty old man; and
writing his reply on a slip of paper, he pinned it on her back.
“Papa’s answer is on the back of my dress,” said Miss Wilson, as she
re-entered the drawing-room. Turning her round, the delighted swain
perceived these words—“With the author’s compliments.”
Susanna, Countess of Eglinton, Allan Ramsay’s patroness, to whom he
dedicated his immortal “Gentle Shepherd,” once sent him a basket of fine
fruit. No poet of the last century could let such a circumstance pass
unsung; accordingly, honest Allan composed the following complimentary
epigram, which he sent with his note of acknowledgment to the Countess:—
“Now Priam’s son, ye may be mute,
For I can bauldly brag with thee;
Thou to the fairest gave the fruit—
The fairest gave the fruit to me.”
Neatly turned, you say! Yes; but, not content with sending the epigram to
the person for whom it was particularly intended, he enclosed a copy to
his friend Budgell, who soon sent him back the subjoined comment upon it,
which, we need not doubt, severely wounded the vanity of the wig-maker
poet:—
“As Juno fair, as Venus kind,
She may have been who gave the fruit;
But had she had Minerva’s mind,
She’d ne’er have given ’t to such a brute.”
The following epigram, by a living Scottish writer, is decidedly pointed
and clever, and has the additional merit of being self-explanatory:—
“He was a burglar stout and strong,
Who held ‘It surely can’t be wrong,
To open trunks and rifle shelves,
For “God helps those who help themselves.”’
But when before the court he came,
And boldly rose to plead the same,
The judge replied—‘That’s very true;
You’ve helped yourself—_now God help you_!’”
I have spoken of Professor Aytoun, and his connection with the _Bon
Gaultier Ballads_. As everybody knows, “The Massacre of the Phairshon,”
“With four-and-twenty men
And five-and-thirty pipers,”
is from Aytoun’s pen. In the Memoirs of the poet, written by his friend
and collaborator, Sir Theodore Martin, there is this capital story of
the ballad. “Being asked to get up an impromptu amusement at a friend’s
house in 1844, for some English visitors, who were enthusiastic about
the Highlanders and the Highlands, he fished out from his wardrobe the
kilt with which he had electrified the men of Thurso in his boyish
days. Arraying himself in this, and a blue cloth jacket with white
metal buttons, which he had got years before to act a charity boy, in a
charade, he completed his costume by a scarf across his shoulders, short
hose, and brogues! The brevity of the kilt produced a most ludicrous
effect, and not being eked out with the usual ‘sporran’ left him much
in the condition of the ‘Cutty Sark’ of Burns’s poem. With hair like
Katterfelto’s, on end in wild disorder, Aytoun was ushered into the
drawing-room. He bore himself with more than Celtic dignity, and saluted
the Southrons with stately courtesy, being introduced to them as the
famous Laird of Macnab. The ladies were delighted with the Chieftain,
who related many highly exciting traits of Highland manners. Among other
things, when his neighbours, as he told them, made a foray, which they
often did, upon his cattle, he thought nothing of ‘sticking a tirk into
their powels,’ when the ladies exclaimed, in horror, ‘O, laird, you don’t
say so!’
“‘Say so!’ he replied, ‘on my saul, laties, and to pe surely, I to it.’
“At supper he was asked to sing a song. ‘I am fery sorry, laties,’ he
replied, ‘that I have no voice; but I will speak to you a translation of
a fery ancient Gaelic poem,’ and proceeded to chant ‘The Massacre of ta
Phairshon,’ which came upon all present as if it were the invention of
the moment, and was greeted with roars of laughter. The joke was carried
on until the party broke up, and the strangers were not undeceived for
some days as to the true character of the great Celtic chief.”
Adam Skirving, author of the popular song of “Johnnie Cope,” and the
equally facetious and felicitous ballad of “Tranent Muir,” was a wealthy
farmer near Haddington, and a man of athletic body as well as of strong
mind. Among the various persons referred to in “Tranent Muir” was a
certain Lieutenant Smith, an Irishman, who displayed much cowardice in
the battle. Says the poet:—
“And Major Bowle, that worthy sowl,
Was brought down to the ground, man;
His horse being shot, it was his lot,
For to get many a wound, man;
Lieutenant Smith, of Irish birth,
Frae whom he called for aid, man,
Being full of dread, lap owre his head,
And wadna be gainsaid, man.
“He made sic haste, sae spurred his beast,
’Twas little there he saw, man;
To Berwick rade, and safely said,
The Scots were rebels a’, man;
But let that end—for weel ’tis kenn’d
His use and wont to lee, man,
The league is nought, he never fought
When he had room to flee, man.”
Immediately on the satire and its source of emanation being communicated
to the heroic (?) Lieutenant Smith, he despatched a junior officer to
Skirving, with a challenge to the poet to meet him in single combat.
The bard’s reply was of a piece with his attack—“Gang back,” said he,
“and tell Lieutenant Smith that I hae nae leisure to come to Haddington;
but tell him to come here, and I’ll tak’ a look o’ him, and if I think
I’m fit to fecht, I’ll fecht him; and if no, I’ll do as he did—_I’ll rin
awa’_.”
Hard and stinging things have been uttered against poets, but the hardest
and sharpest have been those hurled by one poet against another. As
instance, the “Flyting” of Dunbar and Kennedy, the less remote encounter
between Tennyson and Bulwer Lytton in the pages of _Punch_, and the more
recent scalping scuffle which took place between Buchanan, Swinburne, and
Rossetti. The wit of the poet is indispensable for affording the proper
point to the sting of humorous satire. Here is a good example:—A few
years ago the late William C. Cameron, of Glasgow, a shoemaker to trade,
and author of a meritorious volume of verses, entitled _Light, Shade, and
Toil_, contributed a little poem to the columns of the _Weekly Herald_,
each succeeding stanza of which opened somewhat ostentatiously with the
request—“Write me my epitaph!” one entire verse being:—
“Write me my epitaph! short let it be,
Say that here, ’neath the sod, lies one of the free,
One who has wrote and sung the lays of the poor,
One who has loved more than gold, field, wood, and moor.”
Responsive to the poet’s request a local bard wrote, and the _Herald_ of
the following week contained “His Epitaph,” in these words:—
“_Toil_ over, _Light_ snuffed out, himself a _Shade_,
For evermore removed from pitiless chaff,
_Hic jacet!_—A judicious reader made
(Excuse his tears) this touching epitaph.”
Poets there have been, too, who were their own most merciless censors.
Robert Chambers tells that when the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland determined on extending their body of psalmody, they addressed
a circular to the clergy, praying that those who were so inclined would
compose paraphrases of scripture, and transmit them to Edinburgh for the
inspection of the Assembly, that a proper selection might be made for
use. A very old man, and very primitive minister in Caithness, was roused
by this request from prosaic lethargy of a whole lifetime, and felt a
latent spark of poetry suddenly arise in his bosom. So instantaneous was
the effect of this inspiration, that on the very Sunday after he had
received the Assembly’s circular, he had prepared a paraphrase which he
determined to read aloud to his congregation. The first verse ran as
follows:—
“The Deil shall ryve them a’ in rags,
That wicked are in vain;
But if they’re gude and do repent,
They shall be sew’d again.”
But this was quite enough, the audience burst out into such a transport
of laughter on hearing it that the ingenious author saw fit to suppress
the rest, and abandon his poetical attempt.
Then Zachary Boyd, of facetious memory, minister of the Barony Church,
Glasgow, in the time of Charles I., and who translated the Bible into
verse, the MS. of which is preserved in the library of the University of
Glasgow to this day, must have been a frank fellow. He sings:—
“There was a man called Job,
Dwelt in the land of Uz;
He had a good gift of the gob,
The same thing happens us.”
A fatal “gift o’ the gob,” alas!—for perfectly convincing proof of which
see the following verses from his “History of Jonah”—a gem _per se_.
Jonah—according to the poet—soliloquiseth—
“What house is this, where’s neither coal nor candle,
Where I no thing but guts of fishes handle;
The like of this on earth man never saw,
A living man within a monster’s maw.
Noe in his ark might goe and also come,
But I sit still in such a straitened roome,
As is most uncouth, head and feet together,
Among such grease as would a thousand smother.
In all the earth like unto me is none,
Farre from all living I heere lye alone,
Where I entombed in melancholy sink,
Choak’t, suffocat, with excremental stink.”
On Burns’s first visit to Edinburgh he was introduced, among many others,
to a Mr. Taylor, then parochial schoolmaster at Currie, and, in his own
estimation, a poet of no mean order. The meeting was effected at the
house of Mr. Heron, at whose table Burns was a frequent guest. Taylor
brought with him his book of manuscript poems, a few of which were read
to Burns for his favourable opinion previous to printing. Some of the
passages were odd enough, such as this, on the title-page—
“Rin, bookie, rin, round the warld lowp,
Whilst I lie in the yird wi’ a cauld dowp,”
at which Burns laughed heartily. Next morning Mr. Heron meeting Taylor,
enquired of him what he thought of the Ayrshire poet.
“Hoot,” quoth the self-admiring pedagogue, “the lad’ll do; considering
his want o’ lear, he’s weel eneuch.”
Though not like it, the foregoing recalls a good anecdote of the poet
Campbell, which recently appeared in print for the first time, in the
columns of the _Christian Leader_.
The author of “The Pleasures of Hope” being on a visit to Ayrshire,
happened to go into a bookseller’s shop in Kilmarnock. The bookseller, as
he entered, whispered something over the counter to a portly and comely
old lady, who was making a small purchase of sealing-wax and notepaper.
“Lord save us,” she replied, in an audible whisper, “ye dinna mean it!”
“It’s true, I tell ye,” said the bookseller, also in a whisper.
The old lady turned towards the poet and said, not without betraying a
slight embarrassment: “An’ sae ye’re the great Thomas Campbell; are ye?
I’m vera prood to meet ye, sir, and didna think when I left hame in the
mornin’ that sic a great honour was to befa’ me.”
The poet felt much flattered by this tribute; but confusion took entire
possession of him, as the worthy old soul continued: “There’s no a man
in Ayrshire that has the great skill ye hae, Mr. Campbell, and I wad be
greatly obleeged to ye if ye wad come and see my coo before ye leave this
part o’ the country, an’ let me ken if ye can do onything for her. She’s
a young beastie, and a guid beastie, and I shouldna like to lose her.”
There was an eminent veterinary surgeon, or cow doctor, in the
neighbouring county of Dumfries, whose name was also Thomas Campbell, and
the worthy woman had mistaken the poet for this celebrated and doubtless
highly respectable person.
Of Campbell and Leyden, Gilfillan tells an interesting and instructive
story in his _Life of Sir Walter Scott_. The former thought the latter
boastful and self-asserting; Leyton thought Campbell jealous and envious.
And there was perhaps a modicum of truth in their estimates of each
other. Campbell had been unfortunate and not over well conducted in his
youth; had been hindered by circumstances in his path to the pulpit;
and this, along with poverty, had soured him. Yet he was a fine-hearted
fellow in the main, as well as a thoroughly true one. Leyden had
something of the self-glorification of the wild Indian chief, fond of
showing his strings of scalps, and chanting fierce war-songs over his
fallen foes; but he, too, was sincere, warm-hearted and guileless. When
he read Campbell’s “Hohenlinden,” he said to Scott, “Dash it! I hate the
fellow, but he has written the best verses I have read for ever so long;”
to which Campbell replied, “I detest Leyden with all my soul, but I know
the value of his critical approbation.”
Every Scottish reader is familiar with Burns’s weird and inimitable
“Address to the Deil,” and some are aware that more than one of our
native bards—from a desire to “give the deil his due,” as we may
suppose—have essayed to catch up the grim humour of the original
effusion, and compose a suitable reply to it. I have myself seen three
efforts of the kind, each of them more or less clever: one by Ebenezer
Picken, of Paisley, who died in 1816; and two of unknown authorship. For
pungency of wit and skill of versification, one of the latter—cut from a
Scottish newspaper published in Burns’s lifetime—indisputably “bears the
gree,” and forms a not unworthy companion-poem to the original “Address.”
It is somewhat lengthy, but its rarity, considered in conjunction with
its merit, will justify its quotation in full:—
THE DEIL’S REPLY TO ROBERT BURNS.
O waes me, Rab! hae ye gane gyte;
What is’t that gars ye tak’ delight
To jeer at me, and ban, and flyte,
In Scottish rhyme,
And fausely gie me a’ the wyte
O’ ilka crime?
O’ auld nicknames ye hae a fouth,
O’ sharp sarcastic rhymes a routh,
And as ye’re bent to gie them scouth,
’Twere just as weel
For you to tell the honest truth,
And shame the deil.
I dinna mean to note the whole
O’ your confounded rigmarole,
I’d rather haud my tongue, and thole
Your clishmaclavers,
Than try to plod through sic a scrole
O’ senseless havers.
O’ warlocks and o’ witches a’,
O’ spunkies, kelpies, great or sma’,
There isna ony truth ava
In what you say,
For siccan frichts I never saw,
Up to this day.
The truth is, Rab, that wicked men,
When caught in crimes that are their ain,
To find a help, are unco fain,
To share the shame,
And so they shout, wi’ micht and main,
The deil’s to blame.
Thus, I am blamed for Adam’s fa’.
You say that I maist ruined a’;
I’ll tell ye a’ e thing, that’s no twa,
It’s just a lee;
I fasht na wi’ the pair ava,
But loot them be.
I’d nae mair haun’ in that transgression,
You deem the source o’ a’ oppression,
And wae, and death, and man’s damnation,
Than you, yersel’;
I filled a decent situation
When Adam fell.
And, Rab, gin ye’ll just read your Bible,
Instead o’ blin’ Jock Milton’s fable,
I’ll plank a croon on ony table
Against a groat,
To fin’ my name you’ll no’ be able
In a’ the plot.
Your mither, Eve, I kent her brawly;
A dainty queen she was, and wally,
But destitute o’ prudence wholly,
The witless hizzie,
Aye bent on fun, and whiles on folly,
And mischief busy.
Her Father had a bonnie tree,
The apples on’t allured her e’e;
He warned her no’ the fruit to pree,
Nor clim’ the wa’,
For if she did, she’d surely dee,
And leave it a’.
As for that famous serpent story,
To lee I’d baith be shamed and sorry,
It’s just a clever allegory,
And weel writ doon;
The wark o’ an Egyptian Tory—
I kent the loon.
Your tale o’ Job, the man o’ Uz,
Wi’ reekit claes, and reested guiz,
My hornie hooves, and brockit phiz,
Wi’ ither clatter,
Is maistly, after a’ the bizz,
A moonshine matter.
Auld Job, I kent the carl right weel;
An honest, decent, kintra chiel’
Wi’ head to plan, and heart to feel,
And haun’ to gie—
He wadna wrang’d the verra Deil
A broon bawbee.
The man was gay and weel to do,
Had horse, and kye, and ousen, too,
And sheep, and stots, and stirks enow
To fill a byre;
O’ meat and claes, a’ maistly new,
His heart’s desire.
Forby he had within his dwellings
Three winsome queans and five braw callans
Ye wadna, in the hail braid Lallans,
Hae fand their marrow,
Were ye to search frae auld Tantallans
To Braes o’ Yarrow.
It happened that three breekless bands
O’ caterans came frae distant lands,
And took what fell amang their hands,
O’ sheep and duddies.
Just like your reivin’ Hielan’ clans,
Or Border bodies.
I tell thee, Rab, I had nae share
In a’ the tulzie, here or there,
I lookit on, I do declare,
A mere spectator,
Nor said, nor acted, less or mair,
Aboot the matter.
Job had a minstrel o’ his ain,
A genius rare, and somewhat vain
Of rhyme and lear, but then again,
Just like yersel’,
O’ drink and lasses unco fain,
The ne’er-do-weel.
He’d sing o’ lads and lasses fair,
O’ love, and hope, and mirk despair,
And wond’rous tales wad whiles prepare,
And string together,
For a’ he wanted was a hair
To mak’ a tether.
So with intention fully bent,
My doings to misrepresent,
That Book o’ Job he did invent,
And then his rhymes
Got published, in Arabic prent,
To suit the times.
You poets, Rab, are a’ the same,
O’ ilka kintra, age, and name,
Nae matter what may be your aim,
Or your intentions,
Maist a’ your characters of fame,
Are pure inventions.
Your dogs are baith debaters, rare,
Wi’ sense, galore, and some to spare,
While e’en the verra Brigs o’ Ayr,
Ye gar them quarrel—
Tak’ Coila ben to deck your hair
Wi’ Scottish laurel.
Yet, Robin, lad, for a’ your spite,
And taunts, and jeers, and wrangfu’ wyte,
I find, before you end your flyte,
And wind yer pirn,
Ye’re nae sae cankered in the bite
As in the girn.
For when you think I’m doomed to dwell,
The lang for-ever-mair in hell,
Ye come and bid a kind farewell—
And, guid be here,
E’en for the very Deil himsel’,
Let fa’ a tear.
And, Rab, I’m just as wae for thee,
As ever thou can’st be for me,
For less ye let the drink abee,
I’ll tak’ my aith,
Ye’ll a’ gang wrang, and, maybe, dee
A drunkard’s death.
Sure as ye mourned the daisy’s fate,
That fate is thine, nae distant date,
Stern Ruin’s ploughshare drives elate,
Full on thy bloom,
And crushed beneath the furrow’s weight
May be thy doom.
Much more might be written under this heading, for of the humours of
living and recent poets I have scarcely dared to speak. Yea, of the
humours of those about whom one may write with perfect freedom, the half
has not been told; and to the bookish reader, I feel, the chapter will
be interesting as much for what it suggests as for what it contains.
As a last item, the following humorous “dig” at the rigid and narrow
Sabbatarianism of the early Dissenters, which has had a wonderful
vitality—living as it has done for generations, more in the memory
of what we may call the “long-headed” order of the community than in
printed books—will be enjoyed. Its authorship—presumably a secret
from the first—is still unknown; and it has no history or interesting
particular other than is expressed by itself, further than this, that it
is occasionally sung to a standard Psalm tune, under the old fashion of
“reading the line,” and, when so rendered, sounds inexpressibly droll:—
THE CAMERONIAN’S CAT.
There was an auld Seceder’s cat
Gaed hunting for a prey,
And ben the house she catch’d a mouse
Upon the Sabbath day.
The Whig, he being offended
At such an act profane,
Laid by the Book, the cat he took,
And bound her in a chain.
“Thou damned, thou cursed creature,
This deed so dark with thee,
Think’st thou to bring to hell below
My holy wife and me?
“Assure thyself that for the deed
Thou blood for blood shall pay
For killing of the Lord’s own mouse
Upon the Sabbath day.”
The presbyter laid by the Book,
And earnestly he pray’d
That the great sin the cat had done
Might not on him be laid.
And straight to execution
Poor pussy she was drawn,
And high hang’d up upon a tree—
The preacher sang a psalm.
And when the work was ended,
They thought the cat was dead,
She gave a purr, and then a meow,
And stretched out her head.
“Thy name,” said he, “shall certainly
A beacon still remain,
A terror unto evil doers
For evermore, Amen.”