Nor lat your whisht be heard into the house;

Do what she can, or be as loud's she please,

Ne'er mind her flytes but set your heart at ease,
Sit down and blaw your pipe, nor faush your thumb,
An' there's my hand she'll tire, and soon sing dumb;
Sooner shou'd winter cald confine the sea,

An' lat the sma'est o' our burns rin free;
Sooner at Yule-day shall the birk be drest,
Or birds in sapless busses big their nest,
Before a tonguey woman's noisy plea
Shou'd ever be a cause to dantan me.

SANDIE.

Weel cou'd I this abide, but oh! I fear I'll soon be twin'd o' a' my warldly gear; My kirnstaff now stands gizzand at the door, My cheese-rack toom that ne'er was toom before; My ky may now rin rowting to the hill, And on the nakit yird their milkness spill; She seenil lays her hand upon a turn, Neglects the kebbuck, and forgets the kirn; I vow my hair-mould milk would poison dogs, As it stands lapper'd in the dirty cogs. Before the seed I sell'd my ferra cow, An' wi' the profit coft a stane o' woo':

I thought, by priggin, that she might hae spun
A plaidie, light, to screen me frae the sun;
But though the siller's scant, the cleedin dear,
She has na ca'd about a wheel the year.
Last ouk but ane I was frae hame a day,
Buying a threave or twa o' bedding strae:
O' ilka thing the woman had her will,
Had fouth o' meal to bake, and hens to kill;
But hyn awa' to Edinbrough scoured she
To get a making o' her fav'rite tea;1
And 'cause I left her not the weary clink,
She sell❜t the very trunchers frae my bink.

WILLIE.

Her tea! ah! wae betide sic costly gear, Or them that ever wad the price o't spear. Sin my auld gutcher first the warld knew, Fouk had na fund the Indies, whare it grew. I mind mysell, its nae sae lang sin syne, Whan Auntie Marion did her stamack tyne, That Davs our gardener came frae Apple-bogg, An' gae her tea to tak by way o' drog.

SANDIE.

Whan ilka herd for cauld his fingers rubbs, An' cakes o' ice are seen upo' the dubbs; At morning, whan frae pleugh or fauld I come, I'll see a braw reek rising frae my lum, An' ablins think to get a rantin blaze To fley the frost awa' an' toast my taes; But whan I shoot my nose in, ten to ane If I weelfardly see my ane hearthstane;

1 See note prefixed to poem on 'Tea.'

She round the ingle with her gimmers sits,
Crammin their gabbies wi' her nicest bits,
While the gudeman out-by maun fill his crap
Frae the milk coggie, or the parritch cap.

WILLIE.

Sandie, gif this were ony common plea,
I shou'd the lealest o' my counsel gie;
But mak or meddle betwixt man and wife,
Is what I never did in a' my life.

It's wearin on now to the tail o' May,

An' just between the bear seed and the hay;
As lang's an orrow morning may be spar'd,
Stap your wa's east the haugh, an' tell the laird;
For he's a man weel vers'd in a' the laws,

Kens baith their outs and ins, their cracks and flaws,
An' ay right gleg, whan things are out o' joint,
At sattlin o' a nice or kittle point.

But yonder's Jock, he'll ca' your owsen hame,
And tak thir tidings to your thrawart dame,
That ye're awa' ae peacefu' meal to prie,
And take your supper kail or sowens wi' me.

VERSES ON VISITING DUMFRIES.

[The visit which occasioned the present sprightly verses was paid in 1773. The poet was accompanied by a Lieutenant Wilson, R. N. The two friends had walked all the way from the Capital to renew their acquaintance with Charles Salmon, a fellow poet, who had left Edinburgh to pursue the business of a printer with Mr. Jackson, the spirited publisher of the Dumfries Weekly Magazine. Proud of his visitor, Salmon introduced the poet to his numerous admirers in Dum

1 See Additional Notes and Illustrations to Scottish Poems G.

fries: and Fergusson was treated with the most flattering and over-kind distinction. In the hour of parting, being pressed to leave some memorial of his Nithsdale 'visit,' he wrote on the instant the present 'verses.'

They were, so far as I have been able to trace, first published in the Life of Fergusson in the 'Lives of the Scottish Poets,' 3 vols. 12mo. London, 1822. Vol. 2d, Part ÏV. pp. 76–77, having been supplied to the editor by Mayne the author of the Siller Gun' and other excellent Doric poems. Mayne took them down at the time: and he always remembered with pleasure his 'meeting' with Fergusson, to whom in his 'Poems' he never loses an opportunity of paying a compliment.]

THE gods, sure, in some canny hour,
To bonny Nith ha'e ta'en a tour,
Where bonny blinks the cawler flow'r,
Beside the stream;

And, sportive, there ha'e shawn their pow'r
In fairy dream!

Had Kirkhill1 here but kent the gaet,
The beauties on Dumfries that wait,
He'd never turn'd his canker'd pate,
O' satire keen,

When ilka thing's sae trig and feat
To please the een.

I ken, the stirrah loo'd fu' weel
Amang the drinking loons to reel;
On claret brown or porter sweel,

Whilk he cou'd get;

After a shank o' beef he'd peel,

His craig to whet.

1 Churchill the satirist. Churchill fell in with what has been called the national ill-humour against the Scotch which arose out of the political occurrences of the commencement of the reign of George III. His Prophecy of Famine,' a Scotch pastoral, is a most acrimonious, yet withal vigorous caricature of Scottish disadvantages.

L

Wi' blithest sang,

The drink wad round Parnassus rin her
Ere it were lang!

Nae mair he'd sung to auld Mecænas
The blinking een o' bonny Venus;
His leave at ance he wud ha'e ta'en us
For claret here,

Which Jove and a' his gods still rain us
Frae year to year!

O! Jove, man! gie's some orro pence,
Mair siller, and a wee mair sense,
I'd big to you a rural spence,

And bide a' simmer;

And cauld frae saul and body fence

Wi' frequent brimmer!

1 The chief innkeepers in Dumfries. The descendants of the latter form the burden of several of Burns's stinging Epigrams.