Читать книгу The Canongate Burns - Robert Burns - Страница 36

Gone to the West Indies

First printed in the Kilmarnock edition, 1786.

A’ Ye wha live by sowps o’ drink, who, mouthfuls

A’ ye wha live by crambo-clink, who, doggerel verse

A’ ye wha live and never think, who

Come, mourn wi’ me

5 Our billie’s gien us a’ a jink, friend, given, the slip

An’ owre the Sea. over

Lament him a’ ye rantan core, merry crowd

Wha dearly like a random-splore; who, frolic

Nae mair he’ll join the merry roar, no more

10 In social key;

For now he’s taen anither shore, taken another

An’ owre the Sea! over

The bonie lasses weel may wiss him, handsome, well, wish

And in their dear petitions place him:

15 The widows, wives, an’ a’ may bless him

Wi’ tearfu’ e’e; eye

For weel I wat they’ll sairly miss him well I trust/know, sorely

That’s owre the Sea! over

O Fortune, they hae room to grumble! have

20 Hadst thou taen aff some drowsy bummle, taken off, bungler

Wha can do nought but fyke an’ fumble, who, fuss

’Twad been nae plea; it would have, no

But he was gleg as onie wumble, keen-eyed, gimlet (phallus)

That’s owre the Sea! over

25 Auld, cantie KYLE may weepers wear, old, cheerful, mourning cuffs

An’ stain them wi’ the saut, saut tear: salt, salt

’Twill mak her poor auld heart, I fear, old

In flinders flee: splinters fly

He was her Laureat monie a year, poetic champion, many

30 That’s owre the Sea! over

He saw Misfortune’s cauld Nor-west cold, north-

Lang-mustering up a bitter blast; long-

A Jillet brak his heart at last, broke

Ill may she be!

35 So, took a berth afore the mast,

An’ owre the Sea! over

To tremble under Fortune’s cummock, rod

On scarce a bellyfu’ o’ drummock, stomachful, meal & water

Wi’ his proud, independent stomach,

40 Could ill agree;

So, row’t his hurdies in a hammock, rolled, hips/buttocks

An’ owre the Sea! over

He ne’er was gien to great misguidin, given

Yet coin his pouches wad na bide in; pockets would not stay

45 Wi’ him it ne’er was under hidin,

He dealt it free: gave it away

The Muse was a’ that he took pride in,

That’s owre the Sea! over

Jamaica bodies, use him weel, folk, well

50 An’ hap him in a cozie biel: shelter, cosy place

Ye’ll find him ay a dainty chiel, friendly fellow

An’ fou o’ glee: full of good nature

He wad na wrang’d the vera Deil, would not wrong, very Devil

That’s owre the Sea! over

55 Fareweel, my rhyme-composing billie! farewell, friend

Your native soil was right ill-willie: ill-willed

But may ye flourish like a lily,

Now bonilie!

I’ll toast you in my hindmost gillie, last gill (whisky)

60 Tho’ owre the Sea! over

There is unresolved critical contention about the reality of Burns’s plan to immigrate to Jamaica. Kinsley writes (Vol. III, p. 1176):

The spirit of On a Scotch Bard, though sturdily more cheerful than that of the letters, hardly justifies Daiches’s view that Burns was never serious about emigrating (pp. 95, 189). He was volatile, and ready to shift to extremes; he was capable of representing his misfortunes as tragic or comic, as occasions for dependency or from a display of swaggering courage. ‘I have heard Wordsworth praise the ready flow of verse in this poem,’ says Cunningham (1834, II. 288), ‘and recite with much emotion the eighth and ninth stanza’.

Facts would seem to be on Kinsley’s side. The poet’s letters are detailed about the voyage. The ship’s delay seems to have prevented the journey. What is not in doubt is the degree of tormented uncertainty underlying the poetry of that period. He did want to be the rooted, celebrated Bard of Kyle. The bitter fracas with Jean Armour’s family had, however, thrown him into the merciless path of his Auld Licht enemies. He wrote to Dr Moore that:

I had for some time been skulking from covert under all the terrors of a Jail; as some ill-advised, ungrateful people had uncoupled the merciless legal Pack at my heels (Letter 125).

The writ was taken out by Mr Armour, Jean’s father (Letter 254). Even in October 1786, after the Kilmarnock edition, he could still write:

… the consequences of my follies, which may perhaps make it impracticable to stay at home … I have some time been pining under secret wretchedness … the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures … My gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner (Letter 53).

Despite the moment of deeply ill-judged self-pity with the denigration of Jean (ll. 34–5) as mere jilt, the poem is fuelled, if not quite by the ‘madness of an intoxicated criminal’ then certainly by the wild energy of a partly comic revenge fantasy on his often betraying fellow countrymen and women who, in his absence, will certainly bitterly discover what they have lost. Exile and cunning but not silence are part of this national poet’s repertoire.

It should also be noted that this is, deliberately, not straight biography. The poem’s tone and content are wittily distanced by being the monologue of an unnamed but sympathetic poet narrator. This poet, addressing his impoverished fellow poets, turns Burns’s particular case into a general view, as in Goldsmith, of the penurious state of the poetic career in the late eighteenth century. Wordsworth’s perceptive admiration for its linguistic and metrical virtues probably extended to a mutual sympathy for this theme.