Vulgar words in The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. - With a New Life of the Poet, and Notices, Critical and Biographical by Allan Cunningham (Page 1)
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It is not known that William Burns was aware before his death that his eldest son had sinned in rhyme; but we have Gilbert's assurance, that his father went to the grave in ignorance of his son's errors of a less venial kind--unwitting that he was soon to give a two-fold proof of both in "Rob the Rhymer's Address to his Bastard Child"--a poem less decorous than witty.
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Of this changed aspect of things he complained to a friend: but his real sorrows were mixed with those of the fancy:--he told Mrs. Dunlop with what pangs of heart he was compelled to take shelter in a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle him in the mire.
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So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe, that even he, an obscure, nameless Bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as--an impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and, because he can make a shift to jingle a few doggerel Scotch rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of no small consequence, forsooth!
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Sir Violino, with an air That show'd a man of spunk, Wish'd unison between the pair, An' made the bottle clunk To their health that night.
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"See, here's a scythe, and there's a dart, They hae pierc'd mony a gallant heart; But Doctor Hornbook, wi' his art And cursed skill, Has made them baith no worth a f----t, Damn'd haet they'll kill.
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My lan ahin's[9] a weel gaun fillie, That aft has borne me hame frae Killie,[10] An' your auld burro' mony a time, In days when riding was nae crime-- But ance, whan in my wooing pride, I like a blockhead boost to ride, The wilfu' creature sae I pat to, (L--d pardon a' my sins an' that too!)
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Come, bring the tither mutchkin in, And here's for a conclusion, To every New Light[18] mother's son, From this time forth Confusion: If mair they deave us wi' their din, Or Patronage intrusion, We'll light a spunk, and ev'ry skin, We'll rin them aff in fusion Like oil, some day.
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The star that rules my luckless lot, Has fated me the russet coat, An' damn'd my fortune to the groat; But in requit, Has blest me with a random shot O' countra wit.
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I started, mutt'ring, blockhead!
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O for a spunk o' Allan's glee, Or Fergusson's, the bauld and slee, Or bright Lapraik's, my friend to be, If I can hit it!
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[This hasty and not very decorous effusion, was originally entitled "The Poet's Welcome; or, Rab the Rhymer's Address to his Bastard Child."
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Paint Scotland greetin' owre her thrizzle, Her mutchkin stoup as toom's a whissle: An' damn'd excisemen in a bussle, Seizin' a stell, Triumphant crushin't like a mussel Or lampit shell.
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Dempster, a true blue Scot I'se warran'; Thee, aith-detesting, chaste Kilkerran;[46] An' that glib-gabbet Highland baron, The Laird o' Graham;[47] An' ane, a chap that's damn'd auldfarren, Dundas his name.
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His free life, and free speech, exposed him to the censures of that stern divine, Daddie Auld, who charged him with the sin of absenting himself from church for three successive days; for having, without the fear of God's servant before him, profanely said damn it, in his presence, and far having gallopped on Sunday.
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No--stretch a point to catch a plack; Abuse a brother to his back; Steal thro' a winnock frae a whore, But point the rake that taks the door; Be to the poor like onie whunstane, And haud their noses to the grunstane, Ply ev'ry art o' legal thieving; No matter--stick to sound believing.
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Learn three-mile pray'rs an' half-mile graces, Wi' weel-spread looves, and lang wry faces; Grunt up a solemn, lengthen'd groan, And damn a' parties but your own; I'll warrant then, ye're nae deceiver, A steady, sturdy, staunch believer.
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In this strange land, this uncouth clime, A land unknown to prose or rhyme; Where words ne'er crost the muse's heckles, Nor limpet in poetic shackles: A land that prose did never view it, Except when drunk he stacher't thro' it, Here, ambush'd by the chimla cheek, Hid in an atmosphere of reek, I hear a wheel thrum i' the neuk, I hear it--for in vain I leuk.-- The red peat gleams, a fiery kernel, Enhusked by a fog infernal: Here, for my wonted rhyming raptures, I sit and count my sins by chapters; For life and spunk like ither Christians, I'm dwindled down to mere existence, Wi' nae converse but Gallowa' bodies, Wi' nae kend face but Jenny Geddes.
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Was managing St. Stephen's quorum; If sleekit Chatham Will was livin'; Or glaikit Charlie got his nieve in: How daddie Burke the plea was cookin', If Warren Hastings' neck was yeukin; How cesses, stents, and fees were rax'd, Or if bare a--s yet were tax'd; The news o' princes, dukes, and earls, Pimps, sharpers, bawds, and opera girls; If that daft buckie, Geordie Wales, Was threshin' still at hizzies' tails; Or if he was grown oughtlins douser, And no a perfect kintra cooser.-- A' this and mair I never heard of; And but for you I might despair'd of.
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Rumble John, Rumble John, Mount the steps with a groan, Cry the book is with heresy cramm'd; Then lug out your ladle, Deal brimstone like aidle, And roar every note o' the damn'd, Rumble John, And roar every note o' the damn'd.
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Of Eve's first fire he has a cinder; Auld Tubal-Cain's fire-shool and fender; That which distinguished the gender O' Balaam's ass; A broom-stick o' the witch o' Endor, Weel shod wi' brass.
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An' if the wives an' dirty brats E'en thigger at your doors an' yetts, Flaffan wi' duds an' grey wi' beas', Frightin' awa your deuks an' geese, Get out a horsewhip or a jowler, The langest thong, the fiercest growler, An' gar the tattered gypsies pack Wi' a' their bastards on their back!
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His heart by causeless wanton malice wrung, By blockheads' daring into madness stung; His well-won bays, than life itself more dear, By miscreants torn, who ne'er one sprig must wear: Foil'd, bleeding, tortur'd, in the unequal strife, The hapless poet flounders on through life; Till, fled each hope that once his bosom fir'd, And fled each muse that glorious once inspir'd, Low sunk in squalid, unprotected age, Dead, even resentment, for his injur'd page, He heeds or feels no more the ruthless critic's rage!
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From those drear solitudes and frowsy cells, Where infamy with sad repentance dwells; Where turnkeys make the jealous portal fast, And deal from iron hands the spare repast; Where truant 'prentices, yet young in sin, Blush at the curious stranger peeping in; Where strumpets, relics of the drunken roar, Resolve to drink, nay, half to whore, no more; Where tiny thieves not destin'd yet to swing, Beat hemp for others, riper for the string: From these dire scenes my wretched lines I date, To tell Maria her Esopus' fate.
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it is na fair, First shewing us the tempting ware, Bright wines and bonnie lasses rare, To put us daft; Syne, weave, unseen, thy spider snare O' hell's damn'd waft.
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[These lines allude to the persecution which Hamilton endured for presuming to ride on Sunday, and say, "damn it," in the presence of the minister of Mauchline.]
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The poor man weeps--here Gavin sleeps, Whom canting wretches blam'd: But with such as he, where'er he be, May I be sav'd or damn'd!
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Like Esop's lion, Burns says, sore I feel All others' scorn--but damn that ass's heel.
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Sic a reptile was Wat, Sic a miscreant slave, That the very worms damn'd him When laid in his grave.
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Whoe'er would betray him, on high may he swing; And here's the grand fabric, our free Constitution, As built on the base of the great Revolution; And longer with politics not to be cramm'd, Be Anarchy curs'd, and be Tyranny damn'd; And who would to Liberty e'er prove disloyal, May his son be a hangman, and he his first trial.
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Here lies a mock Marquis, whose titles were shamm'd; If ever he rise, it will be to be damn'd.
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Earth'd up here lies an imp o' hell, Planted by Satan's dibble-- Poor silly wretch, he's damn'd himsel' To save the Lord the trouble.
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Then let us fight about, Dumourier; Then let us fight about, Dumourier; Then let us fight about, Till freedom's spark is out, Then we'll be damn'd, no doubt, Dumourier.
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_Edinburgh, Dec. 20th, 1786._ MY DEAR FRIEND, I have just time for the carrier, to tell you that I received your letter; of which I shall say no more but what a lass of my acquaintance said of her bastard wean; she said she "did na ken wha was the father exactly, but she suspected it was some o' the bonny blackguard smugglers, for it was like them."
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I will close my letter with this tribute my heart bids me pay you--the many ties of acquaintance and friendship which I have, or think I have in life, I have felt along the lines, and, damn them, they are almost all of them of such frail contexture, that I am sure they would not stand the breath of the least adverse breeze of fortune; but from you, my ever dear Sir, I look with confidence for the apostolic love that shall wait on me "through good report and bad report"--the love which Solomon emphatically says "is strong as death."
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[Footnote 176: Paradise Lost, b. iv] [Footnote 177: "Rob the Rhymer's Welcome to his Bastard Child."
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There is no understanding a man properly, without knowing something of his previous ideas (that is to say, if the man has any ideas; for I know many who, in the animal-muster, pass for men, that are the scanty masters of only one idea on any given subject, and by far the greatest part of your acquaintances and mine can barely boast of ideas, 1.25--1.5--1.75 or some such fractional matter;) so to let you a little into the secrets of my pericranium, there is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching young hussy of your acquaintance, to whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title to my corpus.
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When I must skulk into a corner, lest the rattling equipage of some gaping blockhead should mangle me in the mire, I am tempted to exclaim--"What merits has he had, or what demerit have I had, in some state of pre-existence, that he is ushered into this state of being with the sceptre of rule, and the key of riches in his puny fist, and I am kicked into the world, the sport of folly, or the victim of pride?"
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Human existence in the most favourable situations does not abound with pleasures, and has its inconveniences and ills; capricious foolish man mistakes these inconveniences and ills as if they were the peculiar property of his particular situation; and hence that eternal fickleness, that love of change, which has ruined, and daily does ruin many a fine fellow, as well as many a blockhead, and is almost, without exception, a constant source of disappointment and misery.
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For my part I have galloped over my ten parishes these four days, until this moment that I am just alighted, or rather, that my poor jackass-skeleton of a horse has let me down; for the miserable devil has been on his knees half a score of times within the last twenty miles, telling me in his own way, 'Behold, am not I thy faithful jade of a horse, on which thou hast ridden these many years!'
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and, like Milton's Satan, for private reasons, am forced "To do what yet though damn'd I would abhor."
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_Ellisland, 1791._ Thou eunuch of language: thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed: thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms: thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution: thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice: thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory: thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity: thou butcher, imbruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography: thou arch-heretic in pronunciation: thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis: thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences: thou squeaking dissonance of cadence: thou pimp of gender: thou Lion Herald to silly etymology: thou antipode of grammar: thou executioner of construction: thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded: thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax: thou scavenger of mood and tense: thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou _ignis fatuus_, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance: thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense: thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom: thou persecutor of syllabication: thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus.
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God help the teacher, if a man of sensibility and genius, and such is my friend Clarke, when a booby father presents him with his booby son, and insists on lighting up the rays of science, in a fellow's head whose skull is impervious and inaccessible by any other way than a positive fracture with a cudgel: a fellow whom in fact it savours of impiety to attempt making a scholar of, as he has been marked a blockhead in the book of fate, at the almighty fiat of his Creator.
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How else can you account for it, that born blockheads, by mere dint of _handling_ books, grow so wise that even they themselves are equally convinced of and surprised at their own parts?
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Remember me to Maggy my wife, The neist time ye gang o'er the moor, Tell her she staw the bishop's mare, Tell her she was the bishop's whore.
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This song is the composition of a Jean Glover, a girl who was not only a whore, but also a thief; and in one or other character has visited most of the Correction Houses in the West.
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_Coof_, a blockhead, a ninny.
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_Spunk_, fire, mettle, wit, spark.
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_Staumrel_, a blockhead, half-witted.
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_Stroan_, to spout, to piss.
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_Woo_, to court, to make love to.