At slaps the billies halt a blink, [gaps, kids]
Till lasses strip their shoon;
Wi' faith an' hope, an' love an' drink, [shoes]
They're a' in famous tune
For crack that day. [chat]
How mony hearts this day converts
O' sinners and o' lasses!
Their hearts o' static, gin night, are gane [before]
As saft as ony flesh is.
There's some are fou o' love divine,
There's some are fou o' brandy;
An' mony jobs that day begin,
May end in houghmagandie [fornication]
Some ither day.
[20] The rationalism of the New Lights.
It must be admitted that, as we pass from poem to poem, Scottish
manners are becoming freer, Scottish drink is more potent, Scottish
religion is no longer pure and undefiled. Yet the poet hardly seems
to be at a disadvantage. He certainly is no less interesting; he
impresses our imaginations and rouses our sympathetic understanding as
keenly as ever; there is no abatement of our esthetic relish.
We have seen the Ayrshire peasant alone with his family, at social
gatherings, and at church. We have to see him with his cronies and at
the tavern. Scotch manners and Scotch religion we know now; it is the
turn of Scotch drink. The spirit of that conviviality which was one of
Burns's ruling passions, and which in his class helped to color the
grayness of daily hardship, was rendered by him in verse again and
again: never more triumphantly than in the greatest of his
bacchanalian songs, _Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut_.
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