EPISTLE TO JOHN GOLDIE To tell the truth, they seldom fash'd him, Then wi' a rhyme or sang he lash'd 'em, Tho' he was bred to kintra-wark, To mak a man; But tell him, he was learn'd and clark," Epistle to John Goldie, in Kilmarnock.1 AUTHOR OF THE GOSPEL RECOVERED.-AUGUST 1785. O GOWDIE, terror o' the whigs, Girns an' looks back, Wishing the ten Egyptian plagues Poor gapin, glowrin Superstition! Alas, there's ground for great suspicion Enthusiasm's past redemption, Her feeble pulse gies strong presumption, Auld Orthodoxy lang did grapple, Haste, gie her name up in the chapel,1 It's you an' Taylor2 are the chief An' twa red peats wad bring relief, E'en swinge the dogs, and thresh them sickers! O' something stout; It gars an owthor's pulse beat quicker, THE HOLY FAIR There's naething like the honest nappy*; As them wha like to taste the drappie, I've seen me dazed upon a time, Then back I rattle on the rhyme, 1"Holy Fair" is a common phrase in the west of Scotland for a sacramental occasion.-R. B. Smith, of the "Cauld Harangues" (stanza 14), was an ancestor of Mr Robert Louis Stevenson. As Lockhart justly observes, Burns, in another mood, could have given a solemn picture of a very solemn occasion. These Holy Fairs arose in the Cromwellian occupation of Scotland, among the Protesters or Remonstrants, the extreme Left of the Covenanters. "A mighty multitude of devout men assemble for the wor the least bit. f fresh. ship of God, beneath the open heaven, and above the graves of their fathers,' Burns had little or nothing of the old leaven of the Covenant: he descended, intellectually, from the populace whom Knox deprived of their Robin Hood Games and Sunday Golf. Heron, following, perhaps, the Letter of a Blacksmith (1759), detected an element of "old Popish festivals" in the mingled religion and frolic of Holy Fairs. The Kirk had taken the mirth out of Scotland, tamen usque recurret, in the most incongruous of " " The rising sun owre Galston muirs THE HOLY FAIR Quo' she, an' laughin as she spak, "Ye, for my sake, hae gien the fecka Of a' the ten comman's A screed some day." "My name is Fun-your cronie dear, An' this is Superstition here, I'm gaun to Mauchline 'holy fair,' Gin ye'll go there, yon runkl'dd pair, At them this day." Quoth I, "Wi' a' my heart, I'll do't; Faith, we'se hae fine remarkin! "1 For roads were clad, frae side to side, In droves that day. Here farmers gash,' in ridin graith," Gaed hoddin by their cotters; There swankies1 young, in braw braid-claith, The lasses, skelpin' barefit, thrang, In silks an' scarlets glitter; Wi' sweet-milk cheese, in mony a whang, Fu' crump that day. |