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First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

O Prince! O Chief of many thronèd pow’rs!

That led th’ embattl’d seraphim to war —

Milton.

O Thou! whatever title suit thee —

Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie — old, cloven-hoofed

Wha in yon cavern grim an’ sootie, who, filled with soot

Clos’d under hatches,

5 Spairges about the brunstane cootie, splashes, brimstone dish

To scaud poor wretches! scald

Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee, old hangman, while

An’ let poor damnèd bodies be;

I’m sure sma’ pleasure it can gie, give

10 Ev’n to a deil, devil

To skelp an’ scaud poor dogs like me hit/slap, scald

An’ hear us squeel!

Great is thy pow’r an’ great thy fame;

Far kend, an’ noted is thy name; known

15 An’ tho’ yon lowan heugh’s thy hame, moaning, hollow, home

Thou travels far;

An’ faith! thou’s neither lag, nor lame, backward

Nor blate nor scaur. bashful, afraid

Whyles, ranging like a roarin lion, sometimes

20 For prey, a’ holes an’ corners tryin;

Whyles, on the strong-wing’d Tempest flyin,

Tirlan the Kirks; stripping – attacking

Whyles, in the human bosom pryin,

Unseen thou lurks.

25 I’ve heard my rev’rend Graunie say, grannie

In lanely glens ye like to stray; lonely

Or, where auld ruin’d castles grey old

Nod to the moon,

Ye fright the nightly wand’rer’s way

30 Wi’ eldritch croon. unearthly eerie moan

When twilight did my Graunie summon, grannie

To say her pray’rs, douce, honest woman! sober/prudent

Aft yont the dyke she’s heard you bumman, away beyond

Wi’ eerie drone;

35 Or, rustlin, thro’ the boortries coman, alder trees coming

Wi’ heavy groan.

Ae dreary, windy, winter night, one

The stars shot down wi’ sklentan light, slanting

Wi’ you mysel, I gat a fright: got

40 Ayont the lough, beyond, loch

Ye, like a rash-buss, stood in sight, bunch of rushes

Wi’ waving sugh: moan

The cudgel in my nieve did shake, fist

Each bristl’d hair stood like a stake;

45 When wi’ an eldritch, stoor quaick, quaick, unearthly harsh, duck quack

Amang the springs, among

Awa ye squatter’d like a drake, away, a noisy take-off

On whistling wings.

Let Warlocks grim, an’ wither’d Hags,

50 Tell how wi’ you, on ragweed nags, ragwort

They skim the muirs an’ dizzy crags, moors, high peaks

Wi’ wicked speed;

And in kirk-yards renew their leagues,

Owre howket dead. over those raised from the grave

55 Thence, countra wives, wi’ toil an’ pain, country

May plunge an’ plunge the kirn in vain; churn

For Och! the yellow treasure’s taen taken

By witching skill;

An’ dawtit, twal-pint Hawkie’s gaen petted, 12-pint cow has gone

60 As yell’s the Bill. dry, bull

Thence, mystic knots mak great abuse

On Young-Guidmen, fond, keen an’ croose; husbands, over confident

When the best warklum i’ the house, work-tool, penis

By cantraip wit, magic/evil

65 Is instant made no worth a louse,

Just at the bit. stopped before ejaculation

When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord, thawes, snowy hoard

An’ float the jinglin icy boord, water’s surface

Then, Water-kelpies haunt the foord, imaginary water-spirits, ford

70 By your direction,

An’ nighted Trav’llers are allur’d

To their destruction.

An’ aft your moss-traversing Spunkies often, bog-, demons

Decoy the wight that late an’ drunk is: fellow

75 The bleezan, curst, mischievous monkies

Delude his eyes,

Till in some miry slough he sunk is, dirty hole

Ne’er mair to rise. more

When MASONS’ mystic word an’ grip

80 In storms an’ tempests raise you up,

Some cock or cat your rage maun stop, shall

Or, strange to tell!

The youngest Brother ye wad whip would

Aff straught to Hell. off straight

85 Lang syne in Eden’s bonie yard, long ago

When youthfu’ lovers first were pair’d,

An’ all the Soul of Love they shar’d,

The raptur’d hour,

Sweet on the fragrant flow’ry swaird, grassy edge

90 In shady bow’r:

Then you, ye auld, snick-drawing dog! old, sly door opener

Ye cam to Paradise incog, came, disguised

An’ play’d on man a cursed brogue trick

(Black be your fa’!), fall

95 An’ gied the infant warld a shog, gave, world, shake

’Maist ruin’d a’. almost

D’ye mind that day when in a bizz flurry/bustle

Wi’ reeket duds, an’ reestet gizz, smoky clothes, scorched wig

Ye did present your smoutie phiz smutty face

100 ’Mang better folk;

An’ sklented on the man of Uzz squinted at Job

Your spitefu’ joke?

An’ how ye gat him i’ your thrall, got, spell

An’ brak him out o’ house an’ hal’, broke

105 While scabs an’ blotches did him gall,

Wi’ bitter claw;

An’ lows’d his ill-tongu’d wicked Scawl — slackened, scolding wife

Was warst ava? worst of all

But a’ your doings to rehearse,

110 Your wily snares an’ fechtin fierce, fighting

Sin’ that day MICHAEL did you pierce

Down to this time,

Wad ding a Lallan tongue, or Erse, would, beat, Lowland Scots, Irish

In Prose or Rhyme.

115 An’ now, auld Cloots, I ken ye’re thinkan, old, know

A certain Bardie’s rantin, drinkin,

Some luckless hour will send him linkan, hurrying

To your black pit; Hell

But, faith! he’ll turn a corner jinkin, dodging

120 An’ cheat you yet.

But fare-you-weel, auld Nickie-ben! old

O wad ye tak a thought an’ men’! would, mend

Ye aiblins might — I dinna ken — perhaps, do not know

Still hae a stake: have

125 I’m wae to think upo’ yon den, sad

Ev’n for your sake.

Burns mentions to John Richmond on 17th February 1786 that he had recently completed this poem. It is normally dated to the winter of 1785–6. A poem of this length Burns might have turned out quickly, so it is probably one of the fruits of his intense writing campaign leading to publication of the Kilmarnock edition.

This poem is now generally accepted as a relatively light-weight piece of near comic knockabout as Burns mocks the allegedly fast-fading figure of the Devil from his hitherto central role in Scottish theology and folk-lore. In his essay ‘Robert Burns, Master of Scottish Poetry’ (Uncollected Scottish Criticism, ed. Noble (London), pp. 199–200), Edwin Muir analyses this poem as the centre-piece of his persuasive argument that during the eighteenth century enlightened, improving, secularising Scotland had lost both its theological passion and its sense of supernatural mystery integral to its older poetry:

… two centuries of religious terrors had faded under the touch of reason and enlightenment, and the mysterious problems of election and damnation, had turned into amusing doggerel:

O Thou wha in the Heavens dost dwell,

Wha, as it pleases best thysel’;

Sends ane to heaven and ten to hell,

A’ for thy glory,

And no for any guid or ill

They’ve done afore thee!

Calvinism, once feared as a power or hated as a superstition, became absurd under the attack of common reason. The growing powers of the Enlightenment encouraged the change in the universities, the churches, in popular debate, and among the people. The ideas of liberty and equality did their part; Scotland became a place where a man was a man for a’ that; the new humanistic attitude to religion led people to believe that ‘The hert’s aye the pairt aye that mak’s us richt or wrang.’ The story of the Fall became a simple story of human misfortune to two young people whose intentions had been so good, ‘Lang syne in Eden’s bonnie yard’.

Then you, ye auld sneck-drawing dog!

Ye cam to Paradise incog.

And played on a man a curse brogue

(Black be your fa!)

An’ gled the infant world a shog

Maist ruined a’.

Muir further thinks that this new enlightened poetry is, with ‘something of Voltaire’s contes and Bernard Shaw’s plays’, witty but lightweight, even, relative to the old poetry, superficial. There are two related fundamental miscomprehensions in Muir’s account. First, the power of folklore is present in the poem though not, say, as we find its direct intrusion as in the great Scottish Ballad tradition, so beloved by Muir, but in Burns’s ambivalent treatment of it. As he wrote to Dr Moore:

I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of Philosophy to shake of these idle terrors (Letter 125).

What we see in this particular poem from ll. 5–84 is no simple send-up of foolishly atavistic folk-superstition. Not only is Burns intent on anthropologically recording, as in Halloween, the customs and beliefs of his rural community but, as in Tam o’Shanter, conveying the still ‘eerie’ potency of that world. (See Edward J. Cowan, ‘Burns and Superstition’, Love and Liberty, pp. 229–37.) He is also, as usual, making salacious jokes inspired by the bottomless well of sexual metaphor supplied to him by folk-tradition. Hugh Blair wanted ll. 61–6 deleted as ‘indecent’ because they depend on the identification of lume/loom with the penis. (See BC, 1932, p. 95.)

Muir, however, is absolutely wrong in thinking that it is the diminished power of Calvinism on the Scottish psyche that leads to the poem’s, to him, lightweight tone. This is a particularly weird error in Muir, who more than any other figure in a profoundly anti-Calvinist, Scottish Renaissance group believed that Knox (of whom he actually wrote a biography) had not lost his sadistic, disintegrating grip on the Scottish soul. Further, that Scottish reintegration meant a return to catholic, European humanism.

Burns is certainly partly laughing at the Devil in the poem’s opening sequences (ll. 1–24) by the reductive ridicule of reducing the devil’s energies to being devoted to the poet’s petty transgressions. The Devil, however, is not for his own sake being laughed out of court. Burns’s poetic wit is in direct proportion to his most potent enemies. The enemy here is not the devil but those who seek demonically to control mankind in his name. For their power structure to remain intact the Devil could not be allowed to become a laughing matter. This is why, even more than the more personally abusive clerical satires, this poem caused such an outcry. As Carol McGuirk finely writes:

A ringing blow in Burns’s quarrel with the Auld Licht, this satire caused a major local scandal. Several of the anonymous contributors to Animadversions, James Maxwell’s compilation of evangelical attacks on Burns (Paisley, 1788), saw this poem as final proof of Burns’s evil values. Alexander (‘Saunders’) Tait of Tarbolton, a mantua-maker and tailor who considered himself Burns’s equal as a satirist, also seized upon this as Burns’s most shocking poem, publishing his attack in 1790.

Burns intended it to shock, and so structures the poem round what any Auld Licht partisan would see as a heretical statement of Arminianism: the deil’s long-ago invasion of Eden only ‘almost’ ‘ruined all’ for Adam and Eve (l. 96): the stain of sin is not ineradicable and even Satan (if he wished) could ‘tak a thought’ and mend=change and receive forgiveness. Burns’s ‘deil’ is neither the sadistic demon of Auld Licht sermons nor the tragic hero Milton’s Satan considered himself to be. A rather forlorn and unsuccessful mischief-maker, his smudged (‘smoutie’) face ashy from brimstone and his plots against humanity invariably thwarted, the deil is addressed more or less as just another ‘poor, damned body’. The poet is dramatising his rejection of predestination. The Arminians had challenged Calvinist ‘election’ (salvation through grace alone, not human effort) but Burns focuses on its corollary—repudiation, a doctrine that insisted that the reprobated are eternally cast away from grace, whatever their benighted individual efforts to be (and do) good. Burns, by contrast, announces that he considers himself salvageable (ll. 119–20) –andif ‘a certain Bardie’ can besaved, then there must be hope for a mere devil. The poet is paying a backhanded compliment to his own sinfulness as he mocks the Auld Licht. No one – not even the deil – is all bad and forever incapable of change, the poem argues with a cheerful perversity that enraged the Auld Licht. A more orthodox point is also made: hope of heaven is more likely to convert sinners than fear of damnation. (pp. 233–4)