And stockings and pumps to put on my stumps, And ne'er a wrang steek in them a', man.

My sarks they are few, but five o' them new,
Twal' hundred,1 as white as the snaw, man,
A ten shillings hat, a Holland cravat;

There are no mony poets sae braw, man.

I never had frien's, weel stockit in means,
To leave me a hundred or twa, man;
Nae weel-tochered aunts, to wait
drants,

And wish them in hell for it a', man.

stitch

shirts

on their

long prayers

I never was canny for hoarding o' money,
Or claughtin 't together at a', man ;
I've little to spend, and naething to lend,
But deevil a shilling I awe, man.

lucky

catching

*

ON CESSNOCK BANKS.2

TUNE-If he be a Butcher neat and trim.

About this time (1781) Burns had met a young woman possessing many highly agreeable qualities, 1 A kind of cloth.

2 This piece appeared for the first time in Cromek's Reliques, the editor stating that he had recovered it "from the oral communication of a lady residing at Glasgow, whom the

though "without any fortune," on whose hand he had serious views. Her name was Ellison Begbie, the daughter of a small farmer in the parish of Galston : she was now a servant with a family on the banks of the Cessnock, about two miles from the home of the Burnesses. Ellison was not at all a beauty, but yet there was a fascination about her that made her much run after by the young men of the neighborhood. Her charms lay in the life and grace of the mind; in this respect she was so much superior to ordinary girls of her station, that Burns, in maturer years, after he had seen Edinburgh ladies, acknowledged to his family that she was, of all the women he had ever seriously addressed, the one most likely to have formed an agreeable companion for life.1 On her he composed what he called a song of similes- a curious conceit in versification, but yet containing many exquisite lines.

ON Cessnock Banks there lives a lass ;
Could I describe her shape and mien,

The graces of her weel-faured face,

well-favored

And the glancing of her sparkling een!

bard in early life affectionately admired." It seems not unlikely that Ellison herself had grown into this lady. A copy printed from the poet's manuscript in Pickering's edition of his works is considerably different in one stanza, presents an additional one, and exhibits a different concluding line to each verse

"An' she's twa sparkling roguish een."

1 For reasons which are unknown, Ellison did not see fit to encourage the poet's advances.

She's fresher than the morning dawn
When rising Phoebus first is seen,
When dew-drops twinkle o'er the lawn;
And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

She's stately like yon youthful ash,

That grows the cowslip braes between, And shoots its head above each bush; And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

She's spotless as the flowering thorn,

With flowers so white and leaves so green, When purest in the dewy morn;

And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

Her looks are like the sportive lamb,
When flowery May adorns the scene,
That wantons round its bleating dam;
And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

Her hair is like the curling mist

That shades the mountain-side at e'en, When flower-reviving rains are past; And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

Her forehead's like the showery bow,
When shining sunbeams intervene,
And gild the distant mountain's brow;

And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

Her voice is like the evening thrush

That sings in Cessnock Banks unseen, While his mate sits nestling in the bush; And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

Her lips are like the cherries ripe

That sunny walls from Boreas screen; They tempt the taste and charm the sight; And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

Her teeth are like a flock of sheep,
With fleeces newly washen clean,
That slowly mount the rising steep;
And she's twa glancing sparkling een.1

Her breath is like the fragrant breeze
That gently stirs the blossomed bean,
When Phoebus sinks beneath the seas;
And she's twa glancing sparkling een.

[Her cheeks are like yon crimson gem, The pride of all the flowery scene, Just opening on its thorny stem;

And she's twa sparkling roguish een.] 2

1 Variation in Pickering's copy:

Her teeth are like the nightly snow,
While pale the morning rises keen,

While hid the murmuring streamlets flow;

And she's twa sparkling roguish een.

2 The above is the additional stanza in Pickering's edition.

But it's not her air, her form, her face,

Though matching beauty's fabled queen, But the mind that shines in every grace, And chiefly in her sparkling een.

WINTER, A DIRGE.

Towards the end of 1781, Burns was suffering from a severe nervous affection attended with extreme hypochondria. It was probably at this time a time which he says he could not afterwards recall without a shudder that he composed a series of poems expressive of deep suffering, including his Winter, a Dirge,' which he spoke of as the eldest of the pieces in his Edinburgh edition.

THE wintry west extends his blast,'

And hail and rain does blaw;

·

Or, the stormy north sends driving forth

The blinding sleet and snaw:

While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,

And roars frae bank to brae;

And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.

1

The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,' 1
The joyless winter day,