The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

s Thou stock dove whose echo resounds thro' the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green crested lapwing thy screaming forbear, I charge you disturb not my slumbering Fair.

How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills,

io Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills; There daily I wander as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary's sweet Cot0 in my eye. cottage

How pleasant thy banks and green vallies below, Where wild in the woodlands the primroses blow; 15 There oft as mild ev'ning weeps over the lea, The sweet scented birk0 shades my Mary and me. birch

Thy chrystal stream, Afton, how lovely it glides, And winds by the cot where my Mary resides;

1. The Afton is a small river in Ayrshire.

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TAM O' SHANTER: A TALE / 139

How wanton thy waters her snowy feet lave, 20 As gathering sweet flowerets she stems thy clear wave.

Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, Flow gently, sweet River, the theme of my lays; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.

1789 1792

Tam o' Shanter: A Tale1

Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this buke.

Gawin Douglas.

When chapman billies2 leave the street, And drouthy0 neebors neebors meet, thirsty As market-days are wearing late, An' folk begin to tak the gate;0 road

5 While we sit bousing at the nappy,0 strong ale And getting fou� and unco� happy, drunk / very We think na on the lang Scots miles, The mosses, waters, slaps,0 and styles, gaps (in walls) That lie between us and our hame,

10 Whare sits our sulky sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

This truth fand� honest Tam o' Shanter, found As he frae Ayr ae night did canter, 15 (Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a town surpasses, For honest men and bonny lasses).

O Tam! hadst thou but been sae wise, As ta'en thy ain wife Kate's advice! She tauld thee weel thou was a skellum,0 good-for-nothing

20 A blethering,0 blustering, drunken blellum;0 chattering / babbler That frae November till October, Ae market-day thou was nae sober; That ilka� melder,3 wi' the miller, every

1. This poem, written to order for a book on Scottish antiquities, is based on a witch story told about Alloway Kirk, an old ruin near Burns's house in Ayr. As a mock-heroic rendering of folk material, "Tam o' Shanter" is comparable to The Nun's Priest's Tale of Chaucer. Burns recognized that the poem was his most sustained and finished artistic performance; it discovers "a spice of roguish waggery" but also shows "a force of genius and a finishing polish that I despair of ever excelling." The verve and seriocomic sympathy with which Burns manages this misadventure of a confirmed tippler won Wordsworth, a water drinker, to passionate advocacy against the moralists who objected to Burns's ribaldry: "Who, but some impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded puritan in works of art, ever read without delight the picture which he has drawn of the convivial exaltation of the rustic adventurer, Tam o' Shanter?" ("Letter to a Friend of Burns," 1816). The epigraph is from the prologue to book 6 of Gavin Douglas's 16th-century Scots translation of Virgil's Aeneid. In this book the epic hero Aeneas, soon to be the founder of Rome, descends into the world of the dead.

Scots can be easier to understand when heard than when read. For tips on pronunciation listen to the reading of "Tam o' Shanter" at Norton Literature Online.

2. Peddler fellows. 3. The amount of corn processed at a single grinding.

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