ROBERT BURNS
HOW TO KNOW HIM

By
WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON
Professor of English, Harvard University

Author of
Essentials of Poetry, etc.

WITH PORTRAIT

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1917
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N.Y.

TO
MY BROTHER

The Nasmyth Portrait of Robert Burns.

LIST OF POEMS

CONTENTS

  • chapter page
  1. [Biography] [1]
    1. [Alloway, Mount Oliphant, and Lochlea] [3]
    2. [Mossgiel] [31]
    3. [Edinburgh] [44]
    4. [Ellisland] [58]
    5. [Dumfries] [62]
  2. [Inheritance: Language and Literature] [69]
  3. [Burns and Scottish Song] [90]
  4. [Satires and Epistles] [171]
  5. [Descriptive and Narrative Poetry] [206]
  6. [Conclusion] [310]
  7. [Index] [325]

ROBERT BURNS

CHAPTER I
BIOGRAPHY

“I have not the most distant pretence to what the pye-coated guardians of Escutcheons call a Gentleman. When at Edinburgh last winter, I got acquainted at the Herald's office; and looking thro' the granary of honors, I there found almost every name in the kingdom; but for me,

My ancient but ignoble blood
Has crept thro' scoundrels since the flood.

Gules, purpure, argent, etc., quite disowned me. My forefathers rented land of the famous, noble Keiths of Marshal, and had the honor to share their fate. I do not use the word ‘honor’ with any reference to political principles: loyal and disloyal I take to be merely relative terms in that ancient and formidable court known in this country by the name of ‘club-law.’ Those who dare welcome Ruin and shake hands with Infamy, for what they believe sincerely to be the cause of their God or their King, are—as Mark Antony in Shakspear says of Brutus and Cassius—‘honorable men.’ I mention this circumstance because it threw my Father on the world at large; where, after many years' wanderings and sojournings, he picked up a pretty large quantity of observation and experience, to which I am indebted for most of my pretensions to Wisdom. I have met with few who understood Men, their manners and their ways, equal to him; but stubborn, ungainly Integrity, and headlong, ungovernable Irascibility, are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born, a very poor man's son.”

“You can now, Sir, form a pretty near guess of what sort of Wight he is, whom for some time you have honored with your correspondence. That Whim and Fancy, keen sensibility and riotous passions, may still make him zig-zag in his future path of life is very probable; but, come what will, I shall answer for him—the most determinate integrity and honor [shall ever characterise him]; and though his evil star should again blaze in his meridian with tenfold more direful influence, he may reluctantly tax friendship with pity, but no more.”

These two paragraphs form respectively the beginning and the end of a long autobiographical letter written by Robert Burns to Doctor John Moore, physician and novelist. At the time they were composed, the poet had just returned to his native county after the triumphant season in Edinburgh that formed the climax of his career. But no detailed knowledge of circumstances is necessary to rouse interest in a man who wrote like that. You may be offended by the self-consciousness and the swagger, or you may be charmed by the frankness and dash, but you can not remain indifferent. Burns had many moods besides those reflected in these sentences, but here we can see as vividly as in any of his poetry the fundamental characteristics of the man—sensitive, passionate, independent, and as proud as Lucifer—whose life and work are the subject of this volume.

1. Alloway, Mount Oliphant, and Lochlea

William Burnes, the father of the poet, came of a family of farmers and gardeners in the county of Kincardine, on the east coast of Scotland. At the age of twenty-seven, he left his native district for the south; and when Robert, his eldest child, was born on January 25, 1759, William was employed as gardener to the provost of Ayr. He had besides leased some seven acres of land, of which he planned to make a nursery and market-garden, in the neighboring parish of Alloway; and there near the Brig o' Doon built with his own hands the clay cottage now known to literary pilgrims as the birthplace of Burns. His wife, Agnes Brown, the daughter of an Ayrshire farmer, bore him, besides Robert, three sons and three daughters. In order to keep his sons at home instead of sending them out as farm-laborers, the elder Burnes rented in 1766 the farm of Mount Oliphant, and stocked it on borrowed money. The venture did not prosper, and on a change of landlords the family fell into the hands of a merciless agent, whose bullying the poet later avenged by the portrait of the factor in [The Twa Dogs].

I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day,—

And mony a time my heart's been wae,—

Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash,

How they maun thole a factor's snash;

He'll stamp and threaten, curse and swear,

He'll apprehend them, poind their gear;

While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble,

And hear it a', and fear and tremble!

In 1777 Mount Oliphant was exchanged for the farm of Lochlea, about ten miles away, and here William Burnes labored for the rest of his life. The farm was poor, and with all he could do it was hard to keep his head above water. His health was failing, he was harassed with debts, and in 1784 in the midst of a lawsuit about his lease, he died.

In spite of his struggle for a bare subsistence, the elder Burnes had not neglected the education of his children. Before he was six, Robert was sent to a small school at Alloway Mill, and soon after his father joined with a few neighbors to engage a young man named John Murdoch to teach their children in a room in the village. This arrangement continued for two years and a half, when, Murdoch having been called elsewhere, the father undertook the task of education himself. The regular instruction was confined chiefly to the long winter evenings, but quite as important as this was the intercourse between father and sons as they went about their work.

“My father,” says the poet's brother Gilbert, “was for some time almost the only companion we had. He conversed familiarly on all subjects with us, as if we had been men; and was at great pains, as we accompanied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the conversation to such subjects as might tend to increase our knowledge, or confirm our virtuous habits. He borrowed Salmon's Geographical Grammar for us, and endeavoured to make us acquainted with the situation and history of the different countries in the world; while, from a book-society in Ayr, he procured for us Derham's Physics and Astro-Theology, and Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, to give us some idea of astronomy and natural history. Robert read all these books with an avidity and industry scarcely to be equalled. My father had been a subscriber to Stackhouse's History of the Bible ...; from this Robert collected a competent knowledge of ancient history; for no book was so voluminous as to slacken his industry, or so antiquated as to dampen his researches. A brother of my mother, who had lived with us some time, and had learned some arithmetic by our winter evening's candle, went into a book-seller's shop in Ayr to purchase the Ready Reckoner, or Tradesman's Sure Guide, and a book to teach him to write letters. Luckily, in place of the Complete Letter-Writer, he got by mistake a small collection of letters by the most eminent writers, with a few sensible directions for attaining an easy epistolary style. This book was to Robert of the greatest consequence. It inspired him with a strong desire to excel in letter-writing, while it furnished him with models by some of the first writers in our language.”

Interesting as are the details as to the antiquated manuals from which Burns gathered his general information, it is more important to note the more personal implications in this account. Respect for learning has long been wide-spread among the peasantry of Scotland, but it is evident that William Burnes was intellectually far above the average of his class. The schoolmaster Murdoch has left a portrait of him in which he not only extols his virtues as a man but emphasizes his zest for things of the mind, and states that “he spoke the English language with more propriety—both with respect to diction and pronunciation—than any man I ever knew, with no greater advantages.” Though tender and affectionate, he seems to have inspired both wife and children with a reverence amounting to awe, and he struck strangers as reserved and austere. He recognized in Robert traces of extraordinary gifts, but he did not hide from him the fact that his son's temperament gave him anxiety for his future. Mrs. Burnes was a devoted wife and mother, by no means her husband's intellectual equal, but vivacious and quick-tempered, with a memory stored with the song and legend of the country-side. Other details can be filled in from the poet's own picture of his father's household as given with little or no idealization in [The Cotter's Saturday Night].

THE COTTER'S SATURDAY NIGHT

My lov'd, my honour'd, much respected friend!

No mercenary bard his homage pays:

With honest pride I scorn each selfish end,

My dearest meed a friend's esteem and praise:

To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,

The lowly train in life's sequester'd scene;

The native feelings strong, the guileless ways;

What Aiken in a cottage would have been—

Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier there, I ween.

November chill blaws load wi' angry sough; wail

The shortening winter-day is near a close;

The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;

The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose:

The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,

This night his weekly moil is at an end,

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,

And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.

At length his lonely cot appears in view,

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin', stacher through stagger

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise an' glee. fluttering

His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnilie, fire

His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile,

The lisping infant prattling on his knee,

Does a' his weary kiaugh and care beguile, worry

An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil.

Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in, Soon

At service out, amang the farmers roun';

Some ca' the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin drive, heedful run

A cannie errand to a neibor town: quiet

Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,

In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her e'e, eye

Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new gown, fine

Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee, hard-won wages

To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.

With joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters meet,

An' each for other's weelfare kindly spiers: asks

The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnoticed fleet;

Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears; wonders

The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;

Anticipation forward points the view.

The mother, wi' her needle an' her sheers,

Gars auld claes look amaist as weel's the new; Makes old clothes

The father mixes a' wi' admonition due.

Their master's an' their mistress's command

The younkers a' are warnèd to obey; youngsters

An' mind their labours wi' an eydent hand, diligent

An' ne'er, tho' out o' sight, to jauk or play: trifle

‘And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway,

An' mind your duty, duly, morn an' night!

Lest in temptation's path ye gang astray, go

Implore His counsel and assisting might:

They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright!’

But hark! a rap comes gently to the door;

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, knows

Tells how a neibor lad cam o'er the moor,

To do some errands, and convoy her hame.

The wily mother sees the conscious flame

Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek;

Wi' heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name,

While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak; half

Weel pleased the mother hears it's nae wild worthless rake.

Wi' kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben; in

A strappin' youth; he takes the mother's eye;

Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en;

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye. chats, cows

The youngster's artless heart o'erflows wi' joy,

But blate and laithfu', scarce can weel behave; shy, bashful

The mother, wi' a woman's wiles, can spy

What makes the youth sae bashfu' an' sae grave;

Weel-pleased to think her bairn's respected like the lave. child, rest

O happy love! where love like this is found;

O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!

I've pacèd much this weary mortal round,

And sage experience bids me this declare:—

‘If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,

One cordial in this melancholy vale,

'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair

In other's arms breathe out the tender tale,

Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.’

Is there, in human form, that bears a heart—

A wretch, a villain, lost to love and truth—

That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art,

Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting youth?

Curse on his perjur'd arts, dissembling, smooth!

Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd?

Is there no pity, no relenting ruth,

Points to the parents fondling o'er their child?

Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their distraction wild?

But now the supper crowns their simple board,

The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia's food: wholesome

The sowpe their only hawkie does afford, milk, cow

That 'yont the hallan snugly chows her cood; beyond, partition, cud

The dame brings forth in complimental mood,

To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd kebbuck, fell; well-saved cheese, strong

And aft he's prest, and aft he ca's it good;

The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell

How 'twas a towmond auld sin' lint was i' the bell. twelve-month, flax, flower

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face

They round the ingle form a circle wide;

The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,

The big ha'-bible, ance his father's pride: family-Bible

His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,

His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare; gray hair on temples

Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide—

He wales a portion with judicious care, chooses

And ‘Let us worship God!’ he says with solemn air.

They chant their artless notes in simple guise;

They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;

Perhaps Dundee's wild warbling measures rise,

Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;

Or noble Elgin beets the heav'nward flame, fans

The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:

Compared with these, Italian trills are tame;

The tickled ears no heartfelt raptures raise;

Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise. No, have

The priest-like father reads the sacred page,

How Abram was the friend of God on high;

Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage

With Amalek's ungracious progeny;

Or how the royal bard did groaning lie

Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;

Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;

Or rapt Isaiah's wild seraphic fire;

Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,

How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;

How He who bore in Heaven the second name

Had not on earth whereon to lay His head;

How His first followers and servants sped;

The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:

How he, who lone in Patmos banishèd,

Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,

And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command.

Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King

The saint, the father, and the husband prays:

Hope ‘springs exulting on triumphant wing’

That thus they all shall meet in future days:

There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,

Together hymning their Creator's praise,

In such society, yet still more dear;

While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere.

Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride,

In all the pomp of method and of art,

When men display to congregations wide

Devotion's every grace, except the heart!

The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert,

The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;

But haply, in some cottage far apart,

May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul;

And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enrol.

Then homeward all take off their several way;

The youngling cottagers retire to rest:

The parent-pair their secret homage pay,

And proffer up to Heav'n the warm request,

That He who stills the raven's clamorous nest,

And decks the lily fair in flowery pride,

Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,

For them and for their little ones provide;

But chiefly in their hearts with grace divine preside.

From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs,

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad:

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

‘An honest man's the noblest work of God;’

And certes, in fair Virtue's heavenly road,

The cottage leaves the palace far behind;

What is a lordling's pomp? a cumbrous load,

Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,

Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin'd!

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent!

Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil

Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!

And O may Heaven their simple lives prevent

From luxury's contagion, weak and vile;

Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be rent,

A virtuous populace may rise the while,

And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle.

O Thou! who poured the patriotic tide

That streamed thro' Wallace's undaunted heart,

Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride,

Or nobly die—the second glorious part,

(The patriot's God, peculiarly thou art,

His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)

O never, never, Scotia's realm desert;

But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard,

In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!

No less impressive than that of his father is the intellectual hunger of the future poet himself. We have had Gilbert's testimony to the eagerness with which he devoured such books as came within his reach, and the use he made of his later fragments of schooling points the same way. He had a quarter at the parish school of Dalrymple when he was thirteen; and in the following summer he attended the school at Ayr under his former Alloway instructor. Murdoch's own account of these three weeks gives an idea of Burns's quickness of apprehension; and the style of it is worth noting with reference to the characteristics of the poet's own prose.

“In 1773,” says Murdoch, “Robert Burns came to board and lodge with me, for the purpose of revising English grammar, etc., that he might be better qualified to instruct his brothers and sisters at home. He was now with me day and night, in school, at all meals, and in all my walks. At the end of one week, I told him as he was now pretty much master of the parts of speech, etc., I should like to teach him something of French pronunciation, that when he should meet with the name of a French town, ship, officer, or the like, in the newspapers, he might be able to pronounce it something like a French word. Robert was glad to hear this proposal, and immediately we attacked the French with great courage.

“Now there was little else to be heard but the declension of nouns, the conjugation of verbs, etc. When walking together, and even at meals, I was constantly telling him the names of different objects, as they presented themselves, in French; so that he was hourly laying in a stock of words, and sometimes little phrases. In short, he took such pleasure in learning, and I in teaching, that it was difficult to say which of the two was most zealous in the business; and about the end of the second week of our study of the French, we began to read a little of the Adventures of Telemachus in Fénelon's own words.

“But now the plains of Mount Oliphant began to whiten, and Robert was summoned to relinquish the pleasing scenes that surrounded the grotto of Calypso, and armed with a sickle, to seek glory by signalising himself in the fields of Ceres; and so he did, for although but about fifteen, I was told that he performed the work of a man.”

The record of Burns's school-days is completed by the mention of a sojourn, probably in the summer of 1775, in his mother's parish of Kirkoswald. Hither he went to study mathematics and surveying under a teacher of local note, and, in spite of the convivial attractions of a smuggling village, seems to have made progress in his geometry till his head was turned by a girl who lived next door to the school.

So far the education gained by Burns from his schoolmasters and his father had been almost exclusively moral and intellectual. It was in less formal ways that his imagination was fed. From his mother he had heard from infancy the ballads, legends, and songs that were traditionary among the peasantry; and the influence of these was re-enforced by a certain Betty Davidson, an unfortunate relative of his mother's to whom the family gave shelter for a time.

“In my infant and boyish days, too,” he writes in the letter to Doctor Moore already quoted, “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 country, of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors.”

His private reading also contained much that must have stimulated his imagination and broadened his interests. It began with a Life of Hannibal, and Hamilton's modernized version of the History of Sir William Wallace, which last, he says, with the touch of flamboyancy that often recurs in his style, “poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.” By the time he was eighteen he had, in addition to books already mentioned, become acquainted with Shakespeare, Pope (including the translation of Homer), Thomson, Shenstone, Allan Ramsay, and a Select Collection of Songs, Scotch and English; with the Spectator, the Pantheon, Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, Sterne, and Henry Mackenzie. To these must be added some books on farming and gardening, a good deal of theology, and, of course, the Bible.

The pursuing of intellectual interests such as are implied in this list is the more significant when we remember that it was carried on in the scanty leisure of a life of labor so severe that it all but broke the poet's health, and probably left permanent marks on his physique. Yet he had energy left for still other avocations. It was when he was no more than fifteen that he first experienced the twin passions that came to dominate his life, love and song. The girl who was the occasion was his partner in the harvest field, Nelly Kilpatrick; the song he addressed to her is the following:

HANDSOME NELL

O, once I lov'd a bonnie lass,

Aye, and I love her still,

And whilst that virtue warms my breast

I'll love my handsome Nell.

As bonnie lasses I hae seen,

And mony full as braw, fine

But for a modest gracefu' mien

The like I never saw.

A bonnie lass, I will confess,

Is pleasant to the e'e, eye

But without some better qualities

She's no a lass for me.

But Nelly's looks are blithe and sweet,

And what is best of a', all

Her reputation is complete,

And fair without a flaw.

She dresses aye sae clean and neat,

Both decent and genteel;

And then there's something in her gait

Gars ony dress look weel. Makes

A gaudy dress and gentle air

May slightly touch the heart,

But it's innocence and modesty

That polishes the dart.

'Tis this in Nelly pleases me,

'Tis this enchants my soul!

For absolutely in my breast

She reigns without control.

Since there may still be readers who suppose that Burns was a mere unsophisticated singer, without power of self-criticism, it may be as well to insert here a passage from a Commonplace Book written in 1783, ten years after the composition of the song.

Criticism on the Foregoing Song

“Lest my works should be thought below Criticism; or meet with a Critic who, perhaps, will not look on them with so candid and favorable an eye; I am determined to criticise them myself.

“The first distich of the first stanza is quite too much in the flimsy strain of our ordinary street ballads; and on the other hand, the second distich is too much in the other extreme. The expression is a little awkward, and the sentiment too serious. Stanza the second I am well pleased with; and I think it conveys a fine idea of that amiable part of the Sex—the agreeables, or what in our Scotch dialect we call a sweet sonsy Lass. The third Stanza has a little of the flimsy turn in it; and the third line has rather too serious a cast. The fourth Stanza is a very indifferent one; the first line is, indeed, all in the strain of the second Stanza, but the rest is mostly an expletive. The thoughts in the fifth Stanza come fairly up to my favorite idea [of] a sweet sonsy Lass. The last line, however, halts a little. The same sentiments are kept up with equal spirit and tenderness in the sixth Stanza, but the second and fourth lines ending with short syllables hurts the whole. The seventh Stanza has several minute faults; but I remember I composed it in a wild enthusiasm of passion, and to this hour I never recollect it but my heart melts, and my blood sallies at the remembrance.”

In spite of the early start in poetry given him by Nelly Kilpatrick, he did not produce more than a few pieces of permanent value during the next ten years. He did, however, go on developing and branching out in his social activities, in spite of the depressing grind of the farm. He attended a dancing school (much against his father's will), helped to establish a “Bachelors' Club” for debating, and found time for further love-affairs. That with Ellison Begbie, celebrated by him in The Lass of Cessnock Banks, he took very seriously, and he proposed marriage to the girl in some portentously solemn epistles which remain to us as the earliest examples of his prose. In order to put himself in a position to marry, he determined to learn the trade of flax-dressing; and though Ellison refused him, he went to the neighboring seaport of Irvine to carry out his purpose in the summer of 1781. The flax-dressing experiment ended disastrously with a fire which burned the workshop, and Burns returned penniless to the farm. The poems written about this time express profound melancholy, a mood natural enough in the circumstances, and aggravated by his poor nervous and physical condition.

But his spirit could not remain permanently depressed, and shortly after his return to Lochlea, a trifling accident to a ewe he had bought prompted him to the following delightful and characteristic production.

THE DEATH AND DYING WORDS OF POOR MAILIE, THE AUTHOR'S ONLY PET YOWE

As Mailie, an' her lambs thegither, together

Was ae day nibbling on the tether, one

Upon her cloot she coost a hitch, hoof, looped

An' owre she warsled in the ditch; over, floundered

There, groaning, dying, she did lie,

When Hughoc he cam doytin by. doddering

Wi glowrin' een, an' lifted han's, staring

Poor Hughoc like a statue stan's;

He saw her days were near-hand ended,

But wae's my heart! he could na mend it!

He gapèd wide, but naething spak;

At length poor Mailie silence brak:—

‘O thou, whase lamentable face

Appears to mourn my woefu' case!

My dying words attentive hear,

An' bear them to my Master dear.

‘Tell him, if e'er again he keep own

As muckle gear as buy a sheep,—much money

O bid him never tie them mair

Wi' wicked strings o' hemp or hair!

Bat ca' them out to park or hill, drive

An' let them wander at their will;

So may his flock increase, an' grow

To scores o' lambs, an' packs o' woo'! wool

‘Tell him he was a Master kin',

An' aye was guid to me an' mine;

An' now my dying charge I gie him, give

My helpless lambs, I trust them wi' him.

‘O bid him save their harmless lives

Frae dogs, an' tods, an' butchers' knives! foxes

But gie them guid cow-milk their fill,