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The Northern Muse
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Poets and Song Collectors 1
ALLAN RAMSAY AND ROBERT FERGUSSON
It is often heard to distinguish between the Scots poetry tradition and the Scots song tradition because so often they overlap. This was particularly true in the eighteenth century, when our three major poets were also song collectors, songwriters and - almost certainly - singers. They were Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns. Viewed against the background of historical events, it seems clear that the betrayal of Scotland in 1707 by its landowners and gentry, the infamous Act of Union, which robbed Scotland of its Parliament, was met with a groundswell of passion among its people to uphold their language and traditions.
Allan Ramsay was born in 1686 and came to Edinburgh in the early 1700s to further his social ambitions and found a literary circle. Although influenced by English literary fashion, he strove to project a strong Scottish identity. He became a collector of old songs and wrote poems about urban low life and also pastoral works like The Gentle Shepherd, a kind of early musical. He set up as a bookseller and tried to found a theatre. His Tea Table Miscellany was aimed at genteel Edinburgh, where his song sheets also sold in the streets like hot cakes. He was an extremely popular and influential poet who lived a long and happy life. The following pastoral love song is from The Gentle Shepherd, in which a young shepherd sings of guarding the sheep fold in company with his sweetheart :-
THE WAUKIN O THE FAULD
My Peggy is a young thing just entered in her teens
Fair as the day and sweet as May
Fair as the day and always gay,
My Peggy is a young thing and I'm not very auld
Yet well I like to meet her at the waukin o the fauld.
My Peggy speaks sae sweetly whene'er we meet alane
I wish nae mair tae lay my care
I wish nae mair o aa that's rare.
My Peggy speaks sae sweetly to aa the lave I'm cauld
But she gars aa my spirits glow at the waukin o the fauld.
My Peggy speaks sae kindly whene'er I whisper love
That I look down upon the town
That I look down upon a crown
My Peggy speaks sae kindly it makes me blithe and bauld
And naethin gies me sic delight at the waukin o the fauld.
My Peggy sings sae softly when on my pipe I play
By aa the rest it is contest
By aa the rest that she sings best
My Peggy sings sae softly and in her sangs are tald,
With innocence, the wale o sense at waukin o the fauld.
Unlike Allan Ramsay, who died in 1758 at the age of 72, hailed as the National Poet of Scotland, Robert Fergusson, who was born in the Auld Toun of Edinburgh in 1750, had a short, tragic but very productive life. His university career at St Andrews was cut short when his father died, and after a humiliating experience with an aunt and uncle in Aberdeen, who did nothing to help him, he walked back to Edinburgh to support himself and his mother by copying legal documents in the commisary clerk's office. He became well known and liked on the Edinburgh literary scene, but had a nervous breakdown and died in the madhouse in 1774. Most of his poetry celebrates contemporary life in the city, often satirically, with warmth and colour and an excellent use of Scots. Burns had a very high regard for his work and later put up a tombstone on his grave in Canongate Kirkyard at his own expense. Fergusson's Farmer's Ingle was the inspiration for Burns Cottar's Saturday Night, and in my opinion it is the better poem. Even if there are a few unfamiliar words in it, the modern listener can understand the gist of it. Here is a sample :-
THE FARMER'S INGLE
When gloamin gray ootowre the welkin keeks
When Batie caas his oxen to the byre
When Thrasher John, sair dung, his barn door steeks
And lusty lasses at the dightin tire,
What bangs fu leal the eenins comin cauld
And gars snaw-tappit winter freeze in vain,
Gars dowie mortals look baith blithe and bauld
Nor fleyed wi aa the poortith o the plain,
Begin my Muse and chaunt in hamely strain.
Frae the big stack weel winnowt on the hill
Wi divots theekit frae the weet and drift
Sods, peats and heathery truffs the chimley fills
And gar their thickenin smeek salute the lift,
The guidman new come hame is blythe tae find
That ilka tum is handled to his mind;
That aa his hoosie looks sae cosh and clean
For cleanly hoose loes he, though e'er sae mean.
Weel kens the guidwife that the pleuchs require
A heartsome meltith and refreshin synd
0 nappy liquor, owre a bleezin fire;
Sair wark and poortith downa weel be joined.
Wi buttered bannocks noo the girdle reeks
I the far nook the bowie briskly reams;
The readied kail stands by the chimley cheek
And hauds the riggin het wi welcome streams
Whilk than the daintiest kitchen nicer seem.
Frae this let gentler gabs a lesson lear
Wad they to labour lend an eident hand
They's rax fell strong upon the simplest fare
Nor find their stamacks ever at a stand.
Fu hale and healthy wad they pass the day;
At nicht in calmest slumbers dose fu sound
Nor doctor need their weary life to spae
Nor drogs their noddle and their sense confound;
Till death slip sleely in and gie the hindmost wound.
It seems that the young city clerk shared the same ideas about the life of country folk as Bums, the Ayrshire farmer, who is remembered for his championing of the poor, simple cottar and his plain living and high thinking.
Fergusson's poems of Edinburgh life included The Daft Days, Leith Races, and Auld Reikie, which paint a lively picture of life in the Auld Toun. Among his most lyrical pieces is the song Maily Leigh, about a local beauty, who would walk down the Canongate fashionably dressed, in a capuchin or hooded cloak, making hearts beat faster :-
MALLY LEIGH
As Mally Leigh cam doon the street
Her capuchin did flee
She cast a look behind her back
To see her negligee
CHORUS:-
And we're aa gaun east and west
We're aa gaun aye ajee,
We're aa gaun east and west
A-coortin Mally Leigh.
Aa doon alang the Canongate
Were beaux o ilk degree
And mony a ane turned roon aboot
The comely sicht tae see.
The lass gaed thro the palace haa
And nane sae braw as she
A prince speired leave tae dance wi her
And earlier twa or three.
But Heilan Brodie fleered them aa
Wi prood and glancin ee
He's won for aye the heart an hand
0 bonnie Mally Leigh.
It seems that in the period following the Union Of 1707, signed without the consent of the Scottish people, by the landed gentry who supposedly represented their interests and who alone had the right to vote, there was a strong popular upsurge of poetry, song and literature. The Northern Muse asserted its identity with a vengeance.
THE ROMANTIC IMAGE
Many things contributed to the creation of the romantic image of Scotland in 19th century literature. The most powerful influence was of course Sir Walter Scott and his Waverley Novels. These were written as pot-boilers to pay off his debts, but they were very much more than that. Scott collected the ballads sung in the Borders about the old reiving times in the Debateable Lands and his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border is one of the most important of our song collections. He also wrote long narrative poems with complicated plots which foreshadowed his later novels. Novels like Ivanhoe, The Talisman, The Fair Maid of Perth and The bride of Lammermuir, as well as being full of different strands of story, were highly poetic and imaginative.
There was of course a Romantic movement in poetry all over Europe in which the imagination took over the high place which the previous century had given to reason. There was also a fashion for harking back to a dim heroic past in prose and poetry embellished with archaic language and medieval imagery. The supernatural, with all its associated persona of ghosts, witches, fairies and dwarves, was a favourite preoccupation of writers like Scott and James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. Nostalgia for a romantic and heroic past that never existed was understandable in a century that saw the Industrial Revolution, the expansion of trade and colonisation and, in Scotland, the Highland Clearances.
Here are some samples of the poetry of Scott and Hogg. First from The Lay of the Last Minstrel, the opening lines of the introduction, describing the old harper and creating the atmosphere of nostalgia :-
The way was long, the wind was cold
The Minstrel was infirm and old,
The withered cheek and tresses grey
Seemed to have known a better day.
His harp, his sole remaining joy,
Was carried by an orphan boy.
The last of all the bards was he
Who sings of Border chivalry;
For well-a-day ! their day was fled
His tuneful brethren all were dead,
And he, neglected and oppressed,
Wished to be with them and at rest.
No more of prancing palfrey borne
He carolled, light as lark at morn;
No longer courted and caressed
High placed in hall, a welcome guest,
He poured to lord and lady gay
The unpremeditated lay;
Old times were changed, old manners gone,
A stranger filled the Stuarts' throne;
The bigots of the iron time
Had called his harmless art a crime.
A wandering harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to door;
And tuned to please a peasant's ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.
It's all there - the harking back to the good old days, the romanticising of the past, the medieval imagery, all personified in the figure of the old minstrel. The tale that the minstrel begins is a poetic romance set in castle halls and haunted landscapes :-
The feast was over in Branksome tower
And the lady had gone to her secret bower;
Her bower that was guarded by word and spell,
Deadly to hear and deadly to tell -
Jesu Maria shield her well!
No living wight, save the Ladye alone,
Had dared to cross the threshold stone.
The tables were drawn, it was idlesse all,
Knight and page and household squire
Loitered through the lofty hall
Or crowded round the ample fire.
The stag-hounds weary with he chase
Lay stretched upon the rushy floor,
And urged in dreams the forest race
From Teviot-stone to Eskdale-moor.
It's worth noting that. despite the Scottish setting, the use of Scottish names of places and characters, some of whom were historical personages and the plot that was woven into 16th century Scottish history, the language is English. The hero William of Deloraine, sent on a quest by Lady Branksome, is described as "a stout moss-trooping Scot" but he speaks like this :-
'O swiftly can speed my dapple-grey steed
That drinks of the Teviot clear,
Ere break of day', the warrior gan say,
'Again will I be here'.
Scott was aiming his work at the Edinburgh literate, who were great protagonists of refinement, which, in their opinion, meant using English and ridding their speech and writing of Scotticisms. James Hogg, on the other hand, in his poem Kilineny about a maiden who is carried off by the fairy folk, still has a Scots tongue :-
Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen
But it wasna to meet Dunira's men,
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see,
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
It was only to hear the yorlin sing
And pu the cress flower round the spring
The scarlet hypp and the hindberry
And the nut that hang frae the hazel tree
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny look owre the waa
And lang may she look i the greenwood shaw;
Lang the laird of Dunira blame
And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame.
The love of supernatural stories in which the world of Elfinland or some Other World figures, is an enduring feature of Celtic story tradition. The heroine pure as the driven snow was of course a medieval touch, but was also a very popular character in 19th century literature. The fairy folk who have carried her off, however, seem to be very holy folk and not at all like the rather unpredictable and arbitrary fairies of Celtic myth. There is talk of heaven and sin and virtue. On her retum, Kilmeny seems to be surrounded by an almost saintly aura :-
For Kilmeny had been she knew not where
And Kilmeny had seen what she could not declare
Kilmeny had been where the cock never crew
Where the rain never fell and the wind never blew,
But it seemed as the harp of the sky had rung
And the airs of heaven played round her tongue,
When she spake of the lovely forms she had seen
And a land where sin had never been.
Here again strangely, the language becomes English. It's reminiscent of those lines of Tam o Shanter, where Burns suddenly switches to English, as in :-
But pleasures are like poppies spread
You seize the flower- it's bloom is shed"
and so on, but while Burns was doing this to poke fun at the English poets of his day, Hogg seems to be doing it because he thinks English more suitable for high-flown passages such as this. This typifies the schizophrenia that began to afflict Scots poets in his day, and can be traced right up to William Soutar in the twentieth century writing in his diary "I feel as if my right nostril is Scottish and my left is English."
ROBERT BURNS AND SATIRE
Much has been made of Robert Burns, the "heaven-taught ploughman", writer of love songs and comic ditties and author of the comic saga Tam o Shanter. He was an outstanding song collector and spent much of his short life trying to make sure the song tradition was kept going, by contributing to it in a manner that has led to his eclipsing every other poet Scotland has ever had in most people's minds. It would have broken his heart to know this, because he more than anyone appreciated that a poetry and song tradition is not kept alive by one person or even by a group of people.
People have a stereotyped image of Burns as a kind of personification of male fantasy : the drinker and womaniser par excellence. But if he is viewed in the context of his own time, he was not exceptional and of course it has been exaggerated by those out to sensationalise his private life or moralise about it. If you read Dean Ramsay's Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character in the 18th century, you will realise that social mores were such that heavy social drinking was the norm and the sowing of wild oats was not something for which young men were condemned, except by the Kirk. When you think of the long hours Burns had to toil in the fields, along with his brother and his father, and when you take into account of the amount of reading he must have done, despite this, to be the highly erudite man that he was, you have to ask just how much time he actually gave to boozing and houghmagandie.
The aspect of Burns I want to look at is quite far removed from the idea of the rural poet : it is his mastery of satire. As well as writing about the field mouse and the mountain daisy, Burns was quite capable of turning his hand to more sophisticated forms of writing and satire is one that requires intellect and wit as well as poetic facility. There is quite a lot of satire in Burns's work generally and none more pointed than in the tale of The Twa Dogs. This is a poem that uses the tale type of the animal fable to poke fun at human folly. We aren't used to long poems that are comic rather than serious and we tend to undervalue them and not appreciate the skill which created them. But there is a long and distinctive tradition of satire in Scots literature, from Henryson and Dunbar in the 14th century right up to and beyond McDiarmid in the 20th. Bums is a part of that.
The Twa Dogs introduces an imaginary conversation between two dogs, one the laird's Newfoundland dog, and the other a shepherd's collie, about the lives their master's led. Of the laird's dog, who is called Caesar, Burns writes :-
His locked and lettered braw brass-collar
Showed him the gentleman and scholar,
slyly suggesting how appearance is taken as an indicator of rank and character. The shepherd's dog, called Luath (Gaelic for Swift), is described in terms of his character as seen in his face :-
His honest sonsy bawsent face
Ay got him friens in ilka place.
The two dogs, though owned by men of different social class, seem to get on well together, human snobberies and airs and graces appearing to have no place in the animal world :-
Nae doubt but they were fain o ither
And unco pack an thick thegither;
Wi social nose they snuff'd and snowket;
Whiles mice an modewurks they howket
Whiles scoured awa in lang excursion
And worry'd ither in diversion,
Til tired at last wi mony a farce
They set them down upon their arse
An there began a lang digression
About the lords o aw creation.
Caesar describes the life of the laird his master with the emphasis on its luxury and ease :-
He caas his coach; he caas his horse
He draws a bonnie silken purse
As lang's my tail, whare thro the steeks
The yellow-lettered geordie keeks.
- that is, he has a purse full of golden guineas. In the big hoose, they always seem to be preparing and serving meals, so that gentry and servants alike are always stuffing themselves:- Frae morn tae een it's nought but toiling
At baking, roasing, frying, boiling,
An tho the gentry folk are steghan,
Yet een the haa folk fill their peghan
Wi sauce, ragouts and sic like trashtrie
That's little short o downright wastrie.
We hear echoes here of the Address to the Haggis, another comic poem of Burns's which is so often taken seriously, when he condemns foreign dishes despised by Scots country folk. Caesar wonders what the poor cottar folk put in their stomachs.
Luath replies cheerfully that while "a cottar howkan in a sheuch" may have a hard life with only his own "hand darg" to rely on, somehow or other he and his like pull through:-
An when they meet wi sair distasters
Like loss o health or want o masters,
Ye maist wad think , a wee touch longer
An they maun starve o cauld and hunger;
But how it comes I never kent yet,
They're maistly wonderfu contentit;
And buirdly chiels and clever hizzies
Are bred in a sic a way as this is.
So Luath paints a picture of poor but contented people which Burns repeats elsewhere, as in A Man's a Man for aa That. So far, so good. The lard's household lives the life of Riley, the poor exist on the verge of starvation.
Caesar then comments on how he's seen the poor folk are despised by the gentry:-
But then to see how ye're negleckit
And huffed an cuffed an disrespeckit!
and if they can't pay their rent :-
Poor tenant bodies scant o cash
How they main thole the factor's snash.
But Luath claims the poor are "not sae wretched's as ye wad think" and describes their happy family life "the dearest comfort o their lives/ Their grushie weans and faithfu wives"and their social pleasures :-
As bleak-faced Hallowmass returns
They get the jovial rantin kirns, (Harvest Homes)
When rural life of every station
Unite in common recreation.
On New Year's Day the fun is so universal that, Luath says, "I for joy hae barket wi them." But he does confess that poor folk suffer from the antics of the rich when they are on the make, as Caesar describes it, "mortgaging, gambling, masquerading." The two agree that when the lard's folk waste their substance, the poor suffer. He sees social climbing and power seeking as liable to destroy the country. There's a sharp contemporary relevance about that, wouldn't you say ? This comic tale of two dogs does more than provoke laughter : it's pure agitprop. Luath recommends a retum to country life and sports as a remedy for these ills. He also reveals envy of the rich folk's "life o pleisure":-
Nae cauld nor hunger e'er can steer them
The verra thought o't needna fear them.
But Caesar reveals that despite all these advantages, the gentry are not contented folk :-
For human bodies are sic fools
For aa their colleges and schools,
That when nae real ills perplex them,
Thay mak enow themsels to vex them.
Once a country man or woman's work is done, they feel satisfied :-
But gentlemen and ladies warst
Wi een down want o wark are curst.
Idleness breeds discontent and mischief, gossip and reckless gambling, a sorry picture. But now it's evening and the dogs must make for home, so "Up they got and shook their lugs / Rejoice'd they werena men but dogs." How much more sensible they seemed than their masters.
THE KAILYAIRD
This was the name given to the literary movement of the 19th century that fostered a rather sentimental approach to both poetry and novel writing. It was based on nostalgia for the rural past, which was understandable in what was becoming a largely urban industrial society. It was also rather constrained by Victorian ideas of propriety and patriarchal family life. Some of its characteristics are well illustrated by Whistle Binkie, or the Piper of the Party, a collection of "songs for the social circle." It was produced in Glasgow by a bookseller called David Robertson in 1853 and, because of its popularity, reprinted in two volumes in 1878. It is characterised by middle-class respectability and a kind of condescension to the idealised "couthy and canty" folk of auld langsyne:-
Here's a sample of its verse from the first volume, a song by William Watson :-
Come sit down, my cronie, and gie me your crack
Let the win tak the cares o this life on its back
Our hearts to despondency we ne'er will submit,
We've aye been providit for an sae will we yet.
Let's call for a tankard o nappy brown ale
It will comfort our hearts and enliven our tale;
We'll aye be the merrier the longer we sit,
We've drank wi ither mony a time an sae will we yet.
So rax me my mill an my nose I will prime
Let mirth and sweet innocence employ aa our time
Nae quarr'lin nor fightin we here will admit,
We've parted aye in unity and sae will we yet.
Let the glass keep its course an gae merrily roun
The sun has to rise tho the moon soud gae doun
Till the house be rinnin roun about, it's time eneugh tae flit,
When we fell we aye got up again an sae will we yet.
Like many of its kind, this is a song of male conviviality - rather douce male conviviality - a bit less rombustious than Burns's "We're Geyly Yet" - couched in generalities, rather than dealing with a specific company and events.
William Motherwell, the great Renfrewshire song collector of the time, also contributed a number of poems to Whistle Binkie. Some of them, in the context of their period, are of quite high quality and echo the lyricism of the song tradition, like :-
0 wae be tae the orders that marched my love awa
And wae be tae the cruel cause that gars my tear doon faa;
And wae be tae the bluidy wars in High Germanie
For they hae taen my love an left a broken hairt tae me.
This is even better when it is sung and puts Motherwell head and shoulders above a good many of the Whistle Binkie poets. Another of his poems begins :-
I've wandered east, I've wandered west,
Through mony a weary way;
But never, never can forget
The love o life's young day!
The fire that's blawn on Beltane een
May weel be black gin Yule;
But blacker faa awaits the heart
Where first fond love grows cool.
There's more than a suggestion of balladry about poems like The Mermaiden which begins :-
The nicht is mirk and the wind blaws shrill
And the white faem weets my bree,
And my mind misgies me, gay maiden,
That the land we sall never see.
Then up an spak the mermaiden
And she spak sae blithe and free,
I never said to my bonnie bridegroom
That on land we should weddit be.
That's part of the trouble about so much of the Kailyaird's poetry: most of it is not as good as Motherwell's and is neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring but derivative stuff that's just a pale shadow or reflection of what has gone before. Many of the Kailyaird poets were Burns admirers and imitators, like Alex Rodger who wrote :-
Bonnie blooming Mary Beaton,
Bonnie blooming Mary Beaton,
Could I but gain her for my ain
be the blythest wight in Britain.
Compare this with, however, with :-
How blithely wad I bide the stour
A weary slave fae sun tae sun
Could I the rich reward secure
The lovely Mary Morison.
Some poets use the stanza form favoured by Burns, now known as Standard Habbie, in verse that is rather too self-consciously Scottish and cloyingly sentimental Like :-
Wee, stuffy, stumpy, dumpie laddie,
Thou urchin, elfin, bare and duddy,
Thy plumpit kite an cheek sae ruddy
Are fairly baggit,
Although the breekums on thy fuddy
Are een right raggit.
There's acres of this kind of stuff, which goes even beyond couthieness to extend right into kitschiness. Some of it is almost MacGonagallesque, like these lines by the Glasgow Homer alias Blind Aleck McDonald, a street busker, included in the collection it seems to give those who were merely mediocre something to laugh at :-
I've travelled the world all over
And many a place beside
And I never did see a beautifuller city
Than that on the banks of the navigatable river, the Clyde.
Then there is the rather anglifted efforts of those who would be ultra-refined :-
Tell me, maiden, tell me truly,
Hast thou lost thy heart or no ?
In the charming month of July
Hearts will go a wandering so
Is it so,
Ay or no ?
Hearts win go - with a - heigh ho!
But to be fair, there is plenty of good Scots verse in Whistle Binkie that does not fall into mawkishness or banality. Take this shrewd observation by Robert Malone, from his own experience, perhaps, of one of the facts of life that's as true today as it was a hundred- or a thousand - years ago :-
Are ye doin ought weel ? Are ye thrivin, my man ?
Be thankfu to Fortune for aa that she sen's ye;
Ye'll hae plenty o friens aye to offer their han'
When ye needna their countenance - Aabody kens ye;
Aabody kens ye,
Aabody kens ye,
When ye needna their countenance - aabody kens ye.
But wait ye a wee, till the tide taks a turn,
An awa wi the ebb drifts the favours she lens ye,
Cauld frienship will then leave ye lanely to mourn ;
When ye need aa their frienship, then naebody kens ye;
Naebody kens ye,
Naebody kens ye,
When ye need aa their frienship then naebody kens ye.