Rabbie Burns' "Rhyming Wrath" Bloodies Boneheads

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From fifteen, "When I first committed the sin of rhyme,"
to "Stringing blethers up in rhyme/ for fools to sing."

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On Politics, For Candidates

In politics if thou would'st mix,
And mean thy fortunes be;
Bear this in mind - be deaf and blind,
Let great folks hear and see.

(Poem, 1793)

In Manteca, that means acceptable candidates must hold membership in the Good Ol' Boys Club, 'cause those "great folks" run the city for their own benefit.

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"Burns was not fond of civil servants either. He particularly disliked a man called Thomas Goldie, a commissary of the sherriff-court in Dumfries and the President of a right wing political club called 'The Loyal Natives' whose political views were anathema to a democrat like Burns. So he wrote this quatrain about Thomas Goldie's lack of brains and the thickness of his skull!"

Lord, to account who does Thee call,
Or e'er dispute Thy pleasure?
Else why within so thick a wall
Enclose so poor a treasure?

(from "Burns the Improviser", by Robert H. Carnie)


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On a local political contest
(with a slight amendment to the intended)

What dost thou in that mansion fair?
Flit, [BDG], and find
Some narrow, dirty, dungeon cave,
The picture of thy mind.


No Stewart art thou, [BDG],
The Stewarts all were brave;
Besides, the Stewarts were but fools,
Not one of them a knave.


Bright ran thy line, O [BDG],
Thro' many a far-fam'd sire!
So ran the far-fam'd Roman way,
So ended in a mire.


Spare me thy vengeance, [BDG]!
In quiet let me live:
I ask no kindness at thy hand,
For thou hast none to give.

(Epigrams Against The Earl Of Galloway, 1793)

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On Wat

Sic a reptile was Wat,
Sic a miscreant slave,
That the vera' worms damn'd [her]
When laid in [her] grave;

"In [her] flesh there's a famine,"
A starved reptile cries,
"And [her] heart is rank poison!"
Another replies.

(Epitaph for Walter Riddell, 1794)

Forget Walter Riddell! I think "Wat" is Lyin' Lynda Sue Allen!

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Two Poems on Quisling Arrogance

The Toad-Eater

What of [mayors] with whom you have supt,
And of [chiefs] that you dined with yestreen?
Lord! A louse, [lass], is still but a louse,
Though it crawl on the curl of a queen.

(Poem, 1791, Cunningham version, altered)

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Reply to the True "Loyal Natives"
(redirected to those immediate fools, the Barefoot Dirty Girls)

Ye [impugned “Grandfathered,”] attend to my song,
In [drug-hazed conniving] rejoice the night long;
From Envy or Hatred your corps is exempt,
But where is your shield from the darts of Contempt?

(Poem, 1793)

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Epitaph On A Noisy Polemic*

Below thir stanes lie [Lynda's] banes:
O Death, it's my opinion,
Thou ne'er took such a bleth'rin bitch
Into thy dark dominion!

(Epitaph, 1784)

* po·lem·ic (n) A person engaged in or inclined to controversy, argument, or refutation. (adj) of or relating to a controversy, argument, or refutation.

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"Burns had another talent that is not so often celebrated, and that is his ability, to compose, 'off the cuff' and apparently without much previous thought, little snatches of verse - two, four , eight or 16 lines - which commemorate, celebrate, or excoriate some event or experience in his own life. ... As he puts it in one of his less well known poetic epistles:"

Some rhyme a neebor's name to lash;
Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu' cash;
Some rhyme to court the countra clash
And raise a din;
For me, an aim I never fash;
I rhyme for fun.

(from "Burns the Improviser", by Robert H. Carnie)

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from THE KIRK'S ALARM, A BALLAD.

Calvin's sons, Calvin's sons,
Seize your spiritual guns,
Ammunition ye never can need;
Your hearts are the stuff,
Will be powder enough,
And your skulls are a storehouse o' lead,
Calvin's sons,
And your skulls are a storehouse o' lead.

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Letter to Mr. Cunningham

"[To Clarke, the Schoolmaster, Burns, it is said, addressed several letters, which on his death were put into the fire by his widow, because of their license of language.]"

11th June, 1791.


... 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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My lament and resolve:

Fickle Fortune

Though fickle Fortune has deceived me,
She promis’d fair and perform’d but ill:
Of mistress, friends and wealth bereav’d me,
Yet I bear a heart shall support me still.-


I’ll act with prudence as far’s I’m able,
But if success I must never find,
Then come misfortune, I bid thee welcome,
I’ll meet thee with an undaunted mind.

(Poem, fragment, 1782)

"Prometheus" by Franz von Stuck




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