Finally, there are the English poems to Highland Mary. For some
reason not yet fully understood, the affair with Mary Campbell was
treated by him in a spirit of reverence little felt in his other love
poetry, and this spirit was naturally expressed by him in English. But
in the almost English
"Ye banks and braes and streams around
The Castle of Montgomery,"
and in the pure English _To Mary in Heaven_, he is not at all hampered
by the use of the Southern speech, Scots would not have heightened the
poetry here, and for Burns Scots would have been less appropriate,
less natural even, for the expression of an almost sacred theme.
The case, then, seems to stand thus. Burns commanded two languages,
which he employed instinctively for different kinds of subject and
mood. The subjects and moods which evoked vernacular utterance were
those that with all writers are more apt to yield poetry, and in
consequence most of his best poetry is in Scots. But when a theme
naturally evoking English was imaginatively felt by him, the use of
English did not prevent his writing poetically. And there were themes
which he could handle equally well in either speech--as we see, for
example, in the songs in _The Jolly Beggars_.
Yet the language had an importance in itself. Though its vocabulary is
limited in matters of science, philosophy, religion, and the like,
Lowland Scots is very rich in homely terms and in humorous and tender
expressions.
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