A drunk man looks at the thistle

TO F. G. SCOTT.

Can ratt-rime and ragments o’ quenry And recoll o’ Gillha’ requite Your faburdoun, figuration, and gemmell, And prick-sangs’ delight?

Tho’ you’ve cappilowed me in the reapin’ —And yours was a bursten kirn tae!— Yet you share your advantage wi’ me In the end o’ the day.

And my flytin’ and sclatrie sall be Wi’ your fantice and mocage entwined As the bauch Earth is wi’ the lift Or fate wi’ mankind!

AUTHOR’S NOTE.

This gallimaufry is dedicated to my friend, Francis George Scott, the composer, who suggested it, and to whom, during the course of writing it, I have been further greatly indebted for co-operative suggestions and for some of the most penetrating and comprehensive of modern European criticism.

I would gratefully acknowledge, too, the assistance I have received from my friend, Dr Pittendrigh Macgillivray, and from my wife, in the revision of proofs.

To the Editor of ‘The Glasgow Herald’ I have to tender the customary acknowledgements for his kindness in allowing me to republish here certain portions of my poem which originally appeared in his columns.

Drunkenness has a logic of its own with which, even in these decadent days, I believe a sufficient minority of my countrymen remain au fait. I would, however, take the liberty of counselling the others, who have no personal experience or sympathetic imagination to guide them, to be chary of attaching any exaggerated importance, in relation to my book as a whole, to such inadvertent reflections of their own sober minds as they may from time to time—as in a distorting mirror—detect in these pages, and of attempting, in, no doubt, a spirit of real helpfulness, to confer, on the basis of these, a species of intelligibility foreign to its nature, upon my poem. It would have been only further misleading these good folks, therefore, if I had (as, arbitrarily enough at best, I might have done) divided my poem into sections or in other ways supplied any of those “hand-rails” which raise false hopes in the ingenuous minds of readers whose rational intelligences are all too insusceptible of realising the enormities of which “highbrows” of my type are capable—even in Scotland.

I would suggest, on the other hand, if I may, that they should avoid subtleties and simply persist in the pretence that my “synthetic Scots” presents insuperable difficulties to understanding, while continuing to espouse with all the impressiveness at their command the counter-claims of “sensible poetry.”

The whole thing must, of course, be pronounced more Boreali.

H. M’D.

A DRUNK MAN LOOKS AT THE THISTLE.

I amna’ fou’ sae muckle as tired—deid dune. It’s gey and hard wark’ coupin’ gless for gless Wi’ Cruivie and Gilsanquhar and the like, And I’m no’ juist as bauld as aince I wes.

The elbuck fankles in the coorse o’ time, The sheckle’s no’ sae souple, and the thrapple Grows deef and dour: nae langer up and doun Gleg as a squirrel speils the Adam’s apple.

Forbye, the stuffie’s no’ the real Mackay. The sun’s sel’ aince, as sune as ye began it, Riz in your vera saul: but what keeks in Noo is in truth the vilest “saxpenny planet.”

And as the worth’s gane doun the cost has risen. Yin canna thow the cockles o’ yin’s hert Wi’oot ha’en’ cauld feet noo, jalousin’ what The wife’ll say (I dinna blame her fur’t).

It’s robbin’ Peter to pey Paul at least.... And a’ that’s Scotch aboot it is the name, Like a’ thing else ca’d Scottish nooadays —A’ destitute o’ speerit juist the same.

(To prove my saul is Scots I maun begin Wi’ what’s still deemed Scots and the folk expect, And spire up syne by visible degrees To heichts whereo’ the fules ha’e never recked.

But aince I get them there I’ll whummle them And souse the craturs in the nether deeps, —For it’s nae choice, and ony man s’ud wish To dree the goat’s weird tae as weel’s the sheep’s!)

Heifetz in tartan, and Sir Harry Lauder! Whaur’s Isadora Duncan dancin’ noo? Is Mary Garden in Chicago still And Duncan Grant in Paris—and me fou’?

_Sic transit gloria Scotia_—a’ the floo’ers O’ the Forest are wede awa’. (A blin’ bird’s nest Is aiblins biggin’ in the thistle tho’?... And better blin’ if’ts brood is like the rest!)

You canna gang to a Burns supper even Wi’oot some wizened scrunt o’ a knock-knee Chinee turns roon to say, “Him Haggis—velly goot!” And ten to wan the piper is a Cockney.

No’ wan in fifty kens a wurd Burns wrote But misapplied is a’body’s property, And gin there was his like alive the day They’d be the last a kennin’ haund to gie—

Croose London Scotties wi’ their braw shirt fronts And a’ their fancy freen’s, rejoicin’ That similah gatherings in Timbuctoo, Bagdad—and Hell, nae doot—are voicin’

Burns’ sentiments o’ universal love, In pidgin’ English or in wild-fowl Scots, And toastin’ ane wha’s nocht to them but an Excuse for faitherin’ Genius wi’ their thochts.

A’ they’ve to say was aften said afore A lad was born in Kyle to blaw aboot. What unco fate mak’s him the dumpin’-grun’ For a’ the sloppy rubbish they jaw oot?

Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name Than in ony’s barrin’ liberty and Christ. If this keeps spreedin’ as the drink declines, Syne turns to tea, wae’s me for the Zeitgeist!

Rabbie, wad’st thou wert here—the warld hath need, And Scotland mair sae, o’ the likes o’ thee! The whisky that aince moved your lyre’s become A laxative for a’ loquacity.

O gin they’d stegh their guts and haud their wheesht I’d thole it, for “a man’s a man,” I ken, But though the feck ha’e plenty o’ the “a’ that,” They’re nocht but zoologically men.

I’m haverin’, Rabbie, but ye understaun’ It gets my dander up to see your star A bauble in Babel, banged like a saxpence ’Twixt Burbank’s Baedeker and Bleistein’s cigar.

There’s nane sae ignorant but think they can Expatiate on you, if on nae ither. The sumphs ha’e ta’en you at your wird, and, fegs! The foziest o’ them claims to be a—Brither!

Syne “Here’s the cheenge”—the star o’ Rabbie Burns. Sma’ cheenge, “Twinkle, Twinkle.” The memory slips As G. K. Chesterton heaves up to gi’e “The Immortal Memory” in a huge eclipse,

Or somebody else as famous if less fat. You left the like in Embro’ in a scunner To booze wi’ thieveless cronies sic as me. I’se warrant you’d shy clear o’ a’ the hunner

Odd Burns’ Clubs tae, or ninety-nine o’ them, And haud your birthday in a different kip Whaur your name isna’ ta’en in vain—as Christ Gied a’ Jerusalem’s Pharisees the slip,

—Christ wha’d ha’e been Chief Rabbi gin he’d lik’t!— Wi’ publicans and sinners to forgether, But, losh! the publicans noo are Pharisees, And I’m no’ shair o’ maist the sinners either.

But that’s aside the point! I’ve got fair waun’ert. It’s no’ that I’m sae fou’ as juist deid dune, And dinna ken as muckle’s whaur I am Or hoo I’ve come to sprawl here ’neth the mune

That’s it! It isna me that’s fou’ at a’, But the fu’ mune, the doited jade, that’s led Me fer agley, or ’mogrified the warld. —For a’ I ken I’m safe in my ain bed.

Jean! Jean! Gin _she_’s no’ here it’s no’ oor bed, Or else I’m dreamin’ deep and canna wauken, But it’s a fell queer dream if this is no’ A real hillside—and thae things thistles and bracken!

It’s hard wark haud’n by a thocht worth ha’en’ And harder speakin’t, and no’ for ilka man; Maist Thocht’s like whisky—a thoosan’ under proof, And a sair price is pitten on’t even than.