A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle


_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

    SANGSCHAW. (1925.) 5/-
    PENNY WHEEP. (1926.) 5/-

IN PREPARATION.

    TO CIRCUMJACK CENCRASTUS.




                           A Drunk Man Looks At
                               The Thistle

                                    BY
                              HUGH M’DIARMID
                       AUTHOR OF ‘SANGSCHAW,’ ETC.

                  _Vast imbecile mentality of those
                  Who cannot tell a thistle from a rose,
                  This is for others._

                                    —SACHEVERELL SITWELL.

                      WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS LTD.
                           EDINBURGH AND LONDON
                                   1926

          _Printed in Great Britain_      _All Rights reserved_




_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.

    As Kirks wi’ Christianity ha’e dune,
    Burns’ Clubs wi’ Burns—wi’ a’thing it’s the same,
    The core o’ ocht is only for the few,
    Scorned by the mony, thrang wi’ts empty name.

    And a’ the names in History mean nocht
    To maist folk but “ideas o’ their ain,”
    The vera opposite o’ onything
    The Deid ’ud awn gin they cam’ back again.

    A greater Christ, a greater Burns, may come.
    The maist they’ll dae is to gi’e bigger pegs
    To folly and conceit to hank their rubbish on.
    They’ll cheenge folks’ talk but no their natures, fegs!

    I maun feed frae the common trough ana’
    Whaur a’ the lees o’ hope are jumbled up;
    While centuries like pigs are slorpin’ owre’t
    Sall my wee ’oor be cryin’: “Let pass this cup?”

    In wi’ your gruntle then, puir wheengin’ saul,
    Lap up the ugsome aidle wi’ the lave,
    What gin it’s your ain vomit that you swill
    And frae Life’s gantin’ and unfaddomed grave?

    I doot I’m geylies mixed, like Life itsel’,
    But I was never ane that thocht to pit
    An ocean in a mutchkin. As the haill’s
    Mair than the pairt sae I than reason yet.

    I dinna haud the warld’s end in my heid
    As maist folk think they dae; nor filter truth
    In fishy gills through which its tides may poor
    For ony _animalculæ_ forsooth.

    I lauch to see my crazy little brain
    —And ither folks’—tak’n itsel’ seriously,
    And in a sudden lowe o’ fun my saul
    Blinks dozent as the owl I ken’t to be.

    I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur
    Extremes meet—it’s the only way I ken
    To dodge the curst conceit o’ bein’ richt
    That damns the vast majority o’ men.

    I’ll bury nae heid like an ostrich’s,
    Nor yet believe my een and naething else.
    My senses may advise me, but I’ll be
    Mysel’ nae maitter what they tell’s....

    I ha’e nae doot some foreign philosopher
    Has wrocht a system oot to justify
    A’ this: but I’m a Scot wha blin’ly follows
    Auld Scottish instincts, and I winna try.

    For I’ve nae faith in ocht I can explain,
    And stert whaur the philosophers leave aff,
    Content to glimpse its loops I dinna ettle
    To land the sea serpent’s sel’ wi’ ony gaff.

    Like staundin’ water in a pocket o’
    Impervious clay I pray I’ll never be,
    Cut aff and self-sufficient, but let reenge
    Heichts o’ the lift and benmaist deeps o’ sea.

    Water! Water! There was owre muckle o’t
    In yonder whisky, sae I’m in deep water
    (And gin I could wun hame I’d be in het,
    For even Jean maun natter, natter, natter)....

    And in the toon that I belang tae
    —What tho’ts Montrose or Nazareth?—
    Helplessly the folk continue
    To lead their livin’ death!...

      [1]_At darknin’ hings abune the howff
      A weet and wild and eisenin’ air.
      Spring’s spirit wi’ its waesome sough
      Rules owre the drucken stramash there._

      _And heich abune the vennel’s pokiness,
      Whaur a’ the white-weshed cottons lie;
      The Inn’s sign blinters in the mochiness,
      And lood and shrill the bairnies cry._

      _The hauflins ’yont the burgh boonds
      Gang ilka nicht, and a’ the same,
      Their bonnets cocked; their bluid that stounds
      Is playin’ at a fine auld game._

      _And on the lochan there, hauf-herted
      Wee screams and creakin’ oar-locks soon’,
      And in the lift, heich, hauf-averted,
      The mune looks owre the yirdly roon’._

      _And ilka evenin’, derf and serious
      (Jean ettles nocht o’ this, puir lass),
      In liquor, raw yet still mysterious,
      A’e freend’s aye mirrored in my glass._

      _Ahint the sheenin’ coonter gruff
      Thrang barmen ding the tumblers doun
      “In vino veritas” cry rough
      And reid-een’d fules that in it droon._

      _But ilka evenin’ fey and fremt
      (Is it a dream nae wauk’nin’ proves?)
      As to a trystin’-place undreamt,
      A silken leddy darkly moves._

      _Slow gangs she by the drunken anes,
      And lanely by the winnock sits;
      Frae’r robes, atour the sunken anes,
      A rooky dwamin’ perfume flits._

      _Her gleamin’ silks, the taperin’
      O’ her ringed fingers, and her feathers
      Move dimly like a dream wi’in,
      While endless faith aboot them gethers._

      _I seek, in this captivity,
      To pierce the veils that darklin’ fa’
      —See white clints slidin’ to the sea,
      And hear the horns o’ Elfland blaw._

      _I ha’e dark secrets’ turns and twists,
      A sun is gi’en to me to haud,
      The whisky in my bluid insists,
      And spiers my benmaist history, lad._

      _And owre my brain the flitterin’
      O’ the dim feathers gangs aince mair,
      And, faddomless, the dark blue glitterin’
      O’ twa een in the ocean there._

      _My soul stores up this wealth unspent,
      The key is safe and nane’s but mine.
      You’re richt, auld drunk impenitent,
      I ken it tae—the truth’s in wine!_

    The munelicht’s like a lookin’-glass,
    The thistle’s like mysel’,
    But whaur ye’ve gane, my bonnie lass.
    Is mair than I can tell.

    Were you a vision o’ mysel’,
    Transmuted by the mellow liquor?
    Neist time I glisk you in a glass,
    I’se warrant I’ll mak’ siccar.

    A man’s a clean contrairy sicht
    Turned this way in-ootside,
    And, fegs, I feel like Dr Jekyll
    Tak’n guid tent o’ Mr Hyde....

    Gurly thistle—hic—you canna
    Daunton me wi’ your shaggy mien,
    I’m sair—hic—needin’ a shave,
    That’s plainly to be seen.

    But what aboot it—hic—aboot it?
    Mony a man’s been that afore.
    It’s no’ a fact that in his lugs
    A wund like this need roar!...

      [2]_I hae forekent ye! O I hae forekent.
      The years forecast your face afore they went.
      A licht I canna thole is in the lift.
      I bide in silence your slow-comin’ pace.
      The ends o’ space are bricht: at last—oh swift!
      While terror clings to me—an unkent face!_

      _Ill-faith stirs in me as she comes at last,
      The features lang forekent ... are unforecast.
      O it gangs hard wi’me, I am forspent.
      Deid dreams ha’e beaten me and a face unkent
      And generations that I thocht unborn
      Hail the strange Goddess frae my hert’s-hert torn!_...

    Or dost thou mak’ a thistle o’ me, wumman? But for thee
    I were as happy as the munelicht, withoot care,
    But thocht o’ thee—o’ thy contempt and ire—
    Turns hauf the warld into the youky thistle there,

    Feedin’ on the munelicht and transformin’ it
    To this wanrestfu’ growth that winna let me be.
    The munelicht is the freedom that I’d ha’e
    But for this cursèd Conscience thou hast set in me.

    It is morality, the knowledge o’ Guid and Ill,
    Fear, shame, pity, like a will and wilyart growth,
    That kills a’ else wi’in its reach and craves
    Nae less at last than a’ the warld to gi’e it scouth.

    The need to wark, the need to think, the need to be,
    And a’ thing that twists Life into a certain shape
    And interferes wi’ perfect liberty—
    These feed this Frankenstein that nae man can escape.

    For ilka thing a man can be or think or dae
    Aye leaves a million mair unbeen, unthocht, undune,
    Till his puir warped performance is,
    To a’ that micht ha’ been, a thistle to the mune.

    It is Mortality itsel’—the mortal coil,
    Mockin’ Perfection, Man afore the Throne o’ God.
    He yet has bigged himsel’, Man torn in twa
    And glorious in the lift and grisly on the sod!...

    There’s nocht sae sober as a man blin’ drunk.
    I maun ha’e got an unco bellyfu’
    To jaw like this—and yet what I am sayin’
    Is a’ the apter, aiblins, to be true.

    This munelicht’s fell like whisky noo I see’t.
    —Am I a thingum mebbe that is kept
    Preserved in spirits in a muckle bottle
    Lang centuries efter sin’ wi’ Jean I slept?

    —Mounted on a hillside, wi’ the thistles
    And bracken for verisimilitude,
    Like a stuffed bird on metal like a brainch,
    Or a seal on a stump o’ rock-like wood?

    Or am I juist a figure in a scene
    O’ Scottish life A.D. one-nine-two-five?
    The haill thing kelters like a theatre claith
    Till I micht fancy that I was alive!

    I dinna ken and nae man ever can.
    I micht be in my ain bed efter a’.
    The haill damned thing’s a dream for ocht we ken,
    —The Warld and Life and Daith, Heaven, Hell ana’.

    We maun juist tak’ things as we find them then,
    And mak’ a kirk or mill o’ them as we can,
    —And yet I feel this muckle thistle’s staun’in’
    Atween me and the mune as pairt o’ a Plan.

    It isna there—nor me—by accident.
    We’re brocht thegither for a certain reason,
    Ev’n gin it’s naething mair than juist to gi’e
    My jaded soul a necessary _frisson_.

    I never saw afore a thistle quite
    Sae intimately, or at sic an ’oor.
    There’s something in the fickle licht that gi’es
    A different life to’t and an unco poo’er.

      [3]“_Rootit on gressless peaks, whaur its erect
      And jaggy leafs, austerely cauld and dumb,
      Haud the slow scaly serpent in respect,
      The Gothic thistle, whaur the insect’s hum
      Soon’s fer aff, lifts abune the rock it scorns
      Its rigid virtue for the Heavens to see.
      The too’ering boulders gaird it. And the bee
      Mak’s honey frae the roses on its thorns._”

    But that’s a Belgian refugee, of coorse.
    _This_ Freudian complex has somehoo slunken
    Frae Scotland’s soul—the Scots aboulia—
    Whilst a’ its _terra nullius_ is _betrunken_.

    And a’ the country roon’ aboot it noo
    Lies clapt and shrunken syne like somebody wha
    Has lang o’ seven devils been possessed;
    Then when he turns a corner tines them a’,

    Or like a body that has tint its soul.
    Perched like a monkey on its heedless kist,
    Or like a sea that peacefu’ fa’s again
    When frae its deeps an octopus is fished.

    I canna feel it has to dae wi’ me
    Mair than a composite diagram o’
    Cross-sections o’ my forbears’ organs
    —And mine—’ud bring a kind o’ freen’ly glow.

    And yet like bindweed through my clay it’s run,
    And a’ my folks’—it’s queer to see’t unroll.
    My ain soul looks me in the face, as ’twere,
    And mair than my ain soul—my nation’s soul!

    And sall a Belgian pit it into words
    And sing a sang to’t syne, and no’ a Scot?
    Oors is a wilder thistle, and Ramaekers
    Canna bear aff the gree—avaunt the thocht!

    To meddle wi’ the thistle and to pluck
    The figs frae’t is _my_ metier, I think.
    Awak’, my muse, and gin you’re in puir fettle,
    We aye can blame it on th’ inferior drink.

    T. S. Eliot—it’s a Scottish name—
    Afore he wrote ‘The Waste Land’ s’ud ha’e come
    To Scotland here. He wad ha’e written
    A better poem syne—like this, by gum!

    Type o’ the wissenschaftsfeindlichkeit,
    Begriffsmüdigkeit that has gar’t
    Men try Morphologies der Weltgeschichte,
    And mad Expressionismus syne in Art.

      [4]_A shameless thing, for ilka vileness able,
      It is deid grey as dust, the dust o’ a man.
      I perish o’ a nearness I canna win awa’ frae,
      Its deidly coils aboot my buik are thrawn._

      _A shaggy poulp, embracin’ me and stingin’,
      And as a serpent cauld agen’ my hert.
      Its scales are poisoned shafts that jag me to the quick
      —And waur than them’s my scunner’s fearfu’ smert!_

      _O that its prickles were a knife indeed,
      But it is thowless, flabby, dowf, and numb.
      Sae sluggishly it drains my benmaist life
      A dozent dragon, dreidfu’, deef, and dumb._

      _In mum obscurity it twines its obstinate rings
      And hings caressin’ly, its purpose whole;
      And this deid thing, whale-white obscenity,
      This horror that I writhe in—is my soul!_

    Is it the munelicht or a leprosy
    That spreids aboot me; and a thistle
    Or my ain skeleton through wha’s bare banes
    A fiendish wund’s begood to whistle?

    The devil’s lauchter has a _hwll_ like this.
    My face has flown open like a lid
    —And gibberin’ on the hillside there
    Is a’ humanity sae lang has hid!...

    My harns are seaweed—when the tide is in
    They swall like blethers and in comfort float,
    But when the tide is oot they lie like gealed
    And runkled auld bluid-vessels in a knot!

    The munelicht ebbs and flows and wi’t my thocht,
    Noo’ movin’ mellow and noo lourd and rough.
    I ken what I am like in Life and Daith,
    But Life and Daith for nae man are enough....

    And O! to think that there are members o’
    St Andrew’s Societies sleepin’ soon’,
    Wha to the papers wrote afore they bedded
    On regimental buttons or buckled shoon,

    Or use o’ England whaur the U.K.’s meent,
    Or this or that anent the Blue Saltire,
    Recruitin’, pedigrees, and Gude kens what,
    Filled wi’ a proper patriotic fire!

    Wad I were them—they’ve chosen a better pairt,
    The couthie craturs, than the ane I’ve ta’en,
    Tyauvin’ wi’ this root-hewn Scottis soul;
    A fer, fer better pairt—except for men.

    Nae doot they’re sober, as a Scot ne’er was,
    Each tethered to a punctual-snorin’ missus,
    Whilst I, puir fule, owre continents unkent
    And wine-dark oceans waunder like Ulysses....

      [5]_The Mune sits on my bed the nicht unsocht,
      And mak’s my soul obedient to her will;
      And in the dumb-deid, still as dreams are still,
      Her pupils narrow to bricht threids that thrill
      Aboot the sensuous windin’s o’ her thocht._

      _But ilka windin’ has its coonter-pairt
      —The opposite ’thoot which it couldna be—
      In some wild kink or queer perversity
      O’ this great thistle, green wi’ jealousy,
      That breenges ’twixt the munelicht and my hert._...

    Plant, what are you then? Your leafs
    Mind me o’ the pipes’ lood drone
    —And a’ your purple tops
    Are the pirly-wirly notes
    That gang staggerin’ owre them as they groan.

    Or your leafs are alligators
    That ha’e gobbled owre a haill
    Company o’ Heilant sodgers,
    And left naethin’ but the toories
    O’ their Balmoral bonnets to tell the tale.

    Or a muckle bellows blawin’
    Wi’ the sperks a’ whizzin’ oot;
    Or green tides sweeshin’
    ’Neth heich-skeich stars,
    Or centuries fleein’ doun a water-chute.

    Grinnin’ gargoyle by a saint,
    Mephistopheles in Heaven,
    Skeleton at a tea-meetin’,
    Missin’ link—or creakin’
    Hinge atween the deid and livin’....

    (I kent a Terrier in a sham fecht aince,
    Wha louped a dyke and landed on a thistle.
    He’d naething on ava aneth his kilt.
    Schönberg has nae notation for his whistle.)...

    (Gin you’re surprised a village drunk
    Foreign references s’ud fool in,
    You ha’ena the respect you s’ud
    For oor guid Scottish schoolin’.

    For we’ve the maist unlikely folk
    Aye braggin’ o’ oor lear,
    And, tho’ I’m drunk, for Scotland’s sake
    I tak’ my barrowsteel here!

    Yet Europe’s faur eneuch for me,
    Puir fule, when bairns ken mair
    O’ th’ ither warld than I o’ this
    —But that’s no’ here nor there!)...

    Guid sakes, I’m in a dreidfu’ state.
    I’ll ha’e nae inklin’ sune
    Gin I’m the drinker or the drink,
    The thistle or the mune.

    I’m geylies feart I couldna tell
    Gin I su’d lay me doon
    The difference betwixt the warld
    And my ain heid gaen’ roon’!...

    Drums in the Walligate, pipes in the air,
    Come and hear the cryin’ o’ the Fair.

    A’ as it used to be, when I was a loon
    On Common-Ridin’ Day in the Muckle Toon.

    The bearer twirls the Bannock-and-Saut-Herrin’,
    The Croon o’ Roses through the lift is farin’,

    The aucht-fit thistle wallops on hie;
    In heather besoms a’ the hills gang by.

    But noo it’s a’ the fish o’ the sea
    Nailed on the roond o’ the Earth to me.

    Beauty and Love that are bobbin’ there;
    Syne the breengin’ growth that alane I bear;

    And Scotland followin’ on ahint
    For threepenny bits spleet-new frae the mint.

    Drums in the Walligate, pipes in the air,
    The wallopin’ thistle is ill to bear.

    But I’ll dance the nicht wi’ the stars o’ Heaven
    In the Mairket Place as shair’s I’m livin’.

    Easy to cairry roses or herrin’,
    And the lave may weel their threepenny bits earn.

    Devil the star! It’s Jean I’ll ha’e
    Again as she was on her weddin’ day....

    Nerves in stounds o’ delight,
    Muscles in pride o’ power,
    Bluid as wi’ roses dight
    Life’s toppin’ pinnacles owre,
    The thistle yet’ll unite
    Man and the Infinite!

    Swippert and swith wi’ virr
    In the howes o’ man’s hert
    Forever its muckle roots stir
    Like a Leviathan astert,
    Till’ts coils like a thistle’s leafs
    Sweep space wi’ levin sheafs.

    Frae laichest deeps o’ the ocean
    It rises in flight upon flight,
    And ’yont its uttermaist motion
    Can still set roses alight,
    As else unreachable height
    Fa’s under its triumphin’ sight.

    Here is the root that feeds
    The shank wi’ the blindin’ wings
    Dwinin’ abuneheid to gleids
    Like stars in their keethin’ rings,
    And blooms in sunrise and sunset
    Inowre Eternity’s yett.

    Lay haud o’ my hert and feel
    Fountains ootloupin’ the starns
    Or see the Universe reel
    Set gaen’ by my eident harns,
    Or test the strength o’ my spauld
    The wecht o’ a’ thing to hauld!

    —The howes o’ Man’s hert are bare,
    The Dragon’s left them for good,
    There’s nocht but naethingness there,
    The hole whaur the Thistle stood,
    That rootless and radiant flies
    A Phœnix in Paradise!...

    Masoch and Sade
    Turned into ane
    Havoc ha’e made
    O’ my a’e brain.

    Weel, gin it’s Sade
    Let it be said
    They’ve made me mad
    —That’ll da’e instead.

    But it’s no’ instead
    In Scots, but insteed.
    —The life they’ve led
    In my puir heid.

    But aince I’ve seen
    In the thistle here
    A’ that they’ve been
    I’ll aiblins wun clear.

      _Thistleless fule,
      You’ll ha’e nocht left
      But the hole frae which
      Life’s struggle is reft!_...

    Reason ser’s nae end but pleasure,
    Truth’s no’ an end but a means
    To a wider knowledge o’ life
    And a keener interest in’t.

    We wha are poets and artists
    Move frae inklin’ to inklin’,
    And live for oor antrin lichtnin’s
    In the haingles atweenwhiles,

    Laich as the feck o’ mankind
    Whence we breenge in unkennable shapes
      —_Crockats up, hair kaimed to the lift,
      And no’ to cree legs wi’!_...

    We’re ootward boond frae Scotland.
    Guid-bye, fare-ye-weel; guid-bye, fare-ye-weel.
    —A’ the Scots that ever wur
    Gang ootward in a creel.

    We’re ootward boond frae Scotland.
    Guid-bye, fare-ye-weel; guid-bye, fare-ye-weel.
    The cross-tap is a monkey-tree
    That nane o’ us can spiel.

    We’ve never seen the Captain,
    But the first mate is a Jew.
    We’ve shipped aboord Eternity.
    Adieu, kind freends, adieu!...

    In the creel or on the gell
    O’ oor coutribat and ganien.
    What gin ithers see or hear
    Naething but a gowkstorm?

    Gin you stop the galliard
    To teach them hoo to dance,
    There comes in Corbaudie
    And turns their gammons up!...

    You vegetable cat’s melody!
    Your _Concert Miaulant_ is
    A triumph o’ discord shairly,
    And suits my fancy fairly
    —I’m shair that Scott’ll agree
    He canna vie wi’ this....

    Said my body to my mind,
    “I’ve been startled whiles to find,
    When Jean has been in bed wi’ me,
    A kind o’ Christianity!”

    To my body said my mind,
    “But your benmaist thocht you’ll find
    Was ‘Bother what I think I feel
    —Jean kens the set o’ my bluid owre weel,
    And lauchs to see me in the creel
    O’ my courage-bag confined.’”...

    I wish I kent the physical basis
    O’ a’ life’s seemin’ airs and graces.

    It’s queer the thochts a kittled cull
    Can lowse or splairgin’ glit annul.

    Man’s spreit is wi’ his ingangs twined
    In ways that he can ne’er unwind.

    A wumman whiles a bawaw gi’es
    That clean abaws him gin he sees.

    Or wi’ a movement o’ a leg
    Shows’m his mind is juist a geg.

    I’se warrant Jean ’ud no’ be lang
    In findin’ whence this thistle sprang.

    Mebbe it’s juist because I’m no’
    Beddit wi’ her that gars it grow!...

    A luvin’ wumman is a licht[6]
    That shows a man his waefu’ plicht,
    Bleezin’ steady on ilka bane,
    Wrigglin’ sinnen an’ twinin’ vein,
    Or fleerin’ quick an’ gane again,
    And the mair scunnersome the sicht
    The mair for love and licht he’s fain
    Till clear and chitterin’ and nesh
    Move a’ the miseries o’ his flesh....

    O lass, wha see’est me
    As I daur hardly see,
    I marvel that your bonny een
    Are as they hadna’ seen.

    Through a’ my self-respect
    They see the truth abject
      —_Gin you could pierce their blindin’ licht
      You’d see a fouler sicht!_...

    O wha’s the bride that cairries the bunch
    O’ thistles blinterin’ white?
    Her cuckold bridegroom little dreids
    What he sail ken this nicht.

    For closer than gudeman can come
    And closer to’r than hersel’,
    Wha didna need her maidenheid
    Has wrocht his purpose fell.

    O wha’s been here afore me, lass,
    And hoo did he get in?
    —_A man that deed or I was born
      This evil thing has din._

    And left, as it were on a corpse,
    Your maidenheid to me?
      —_Nae lass, gudeman, sin’ Time began
      ’S hed ony mair to gi’e._

    _But I can gi’e ye kindness, lad,
    And a pair o’ willin’ hands,
    And you sall ha’e my briests like stars,
    My limbs like willow wands,_

      _And on my lips ye’ll heed nae mair,
      And in my hair forget,
      The seed o’ a’ the men that in
      My virgin womb ha’e met_....

    Millions o’ wimmen bring forth in pain
    Millions o’ bairns that are no’ worth ha’en.

    Wull ever a wumman be big again
    Wi’s muckle’s a Christ? Yech, there’s nae sayin’.

    Gin that’s the best that you ha’e comin’,
    Fegs but I’m sorry for you, wumman!

    Yet a’e thing’s certain.—Your faith is great.
    Whatever happens, you’ll no’ be blate!...

    Mary lay in jizzen
    As it were claith o’ gowd,
    But it’s in orra duds
    Ilka ither bairntime’s row’d.

    Christ had never toothick,
    Christ was never seeck,
    But Man’s a fiky bairn
    Wi’ bellythraw, ripples, and worm-i’-the-cheek!...

    Dae what ye wull ye canna parry
    This skeleton-at-the-feast that through the starry
    Maze o’ the warld’s intoxicatin’ soiree
    Claughts ye, as micht at an affrontit quean
    A bastard wean!

    Prood mune, ye needna thring your shouder there,
    And at your puir get like a snawstorm stare,
    It’s yours—there’s nae denyin’t—and I’m shair
    You’d no’ enjoy the evenin’ much the less
    Gin you’d but openly confess!

    Dod! It’s an eaten and a spewed-like thing,
    Fell like a little-bodies’ changeling,
    And it’s nae credit t’ye that you s’ud bring
    The like to life—yet, gi’en a mither’s love,
    —Hee, hee!—wha kens hoo’t micht improve?...

    Or is this Heaven, this yalla licht,
    And I the aft’rins o’ the Earth,
    Or sic’s in this wanchancy time
    May weel fin’ sudden birth?

    The roots that wi’ the worms compete
    Hauf-publish me upon the air.
    The struggle that divides me still
    Is seen fu’ plainly there.

    The thistle’s shank scarce holes the grun’,
    My grave’ll spare nae mair I doot.
    —_The crack’s fu’ wide; the shank’s fu’ strang;
    A’ that I was is oot._

    My knots o’ nerves that struggled sair
    Are weel reflected in the herb;
    My crookit instincts were like this,
    As sterile and acerb.

    My self-tormented spirit took
    The shape repeated in the thistle;
    Sma’ beauty jouked my rawny banes
    And maze o’ gristle.

    I seek nae peety, Paraclete,
    And, fegs, I think the joke is rich
    —_Pairt soul, pairt skeleton’s come up;
    They kentna which was which!_...

    Thou Daith in which my life
    Sae vain a thing can seem,
    Frae whatna source d’ye borrow
    Your devastatin’ gleam?

    Nae doot that hidden sun
    ’Ud look fu’ wae ana’,
    Gin I could see it in the licht
    That frae the Earth you draw!...

    Shudderin’ thistle, gi’e owre, gi’e owre!
    A’body’s gi’en in to the facts o’ life;
    The impossible truth’ll triumph at last,
    And mock your strife.

    Your sallow leafs can never thraw,
    Wi’ a’ their oorie shakin’,
    Ae doot into the hert o’ life
    That it may be mistak’n....

    _O Scotland is
    =The= barren fig.
    Up, carles, up
    And roond it jig._

    _Auld Moses took
    A dry stick and
    Instantly it
    Floo’ered in his hand._

    _Pu’ Scotland up,
    And wha can say
    It winna bud
    And blossom tae._

    _A miracle’s
    Oor only chance.
    Up, carles, up
    And let us dance!_

    Puir Burns, wha’s bouquet like a shot kail blaws
    —Will this rouch sicht no’ gi’e the orchids pause?
    The Gairdens o’ the Muses may be braw,
    But nane like oors can breenge and eat ana’!

    And owre the kailyaird-wa’ Dunbar they’ve flung,
    And a’ their countrymen that e’er ha’e sung
    For ither than ploomen’s lugs or to enrichen
    Plots on Parnassus set apairt for kitchen.

    Ploomen and ploomen’s wives—shades o’ the Manse
    May weel be at the heid o’ sic a dance,
    As through the polish’t ha’s o’ Europe leads
    The rout o’ bagpipes, haggis, and sheep’s heids!

    The vandal Scot! Frae Branksome’s deidly barrow
    I struggle yet to free a’e winsome marrow,
    To show what Scotland micht ha’e hed instead
    O’ this preposterous Presbyterian breed.

    (Gin Glesca folk are tired o’ Hengler,
    And still need breid and circuses, there’s Spengler,
    Or gin ye s’ud need mair than ane to teach ye,
    Then learn frae Dostoevski and frae Nietzsche.

    And let the lesson be—to be yersel’s,
    Ye needna fash gin it’s to be ocht else.
    To be yersel’s—and to mak’ that worth bein’.
    Nae harder job to mortals has been gi’en.

    To save your souls fu’ mony o’ ye are fain,
    But de’il a dizzen to mak’ it worth the daein’.
    I widna gi’e five meenits wi’ Dunbar
    For a’ the millions o’ ye as ye are).

    I micht ha’e been contentit wi’ the Rose
    Gin I’d had ony reason to suppose
    That what the English dae can e’er mak’ guid
    For what Scots dinna—and first and foremaist should.

    I micht ha’e been contentit—gin the feck
    O’ my ain folk had grovelled wi’ less respec’,
    But their obsequious devotion
    Made it for me a criminal emotion.

    I micht ha’e been contentit—ere I saw
    That there were fields on which it couldna draw,
    (While strang-er roots ran under’t) and a’e threid
    O’t drew frae Scotland a’ that it could need,

    And left the maist o’ Scotland fallow
    (Save for the patch on which the kail-blades wallow),
    And saw hoo ither countries’ genius drew
    Elements like mine that in a rose ne’er grew....

    Gin the threid haud’n us to the rose were snapt,
    There’s no’ a’e petal o’t that ’ud be clapt.
    A’ Scotland gi’es gangs but to jags or stalk,
    The bloom is English—and ’ud ken nae lack!...

    O drumlie clood o’ crudity and cant,
    Obliteratin’ as the Easter rouk
    That rows up frae the howes and droons the heichs,
    And turns the country to a faceless spook.

    Like blurry shapes o’ landmarks in the haar
    The bonny idiosyncratic place-names loom,
    Clues to the vieve and maikless life that’s lain
    Happit for centuries in an alien gloom....

    _Eneuch! For noo I’m in the mood,
    Scotland, responsive to my thoughts,
    Lichts mile by mile, as my ain nerves,
    Frae Maidenheid to John o’ Groats!_

    What are prophets and priests and kings,
    What’s ocht to the people o’ Scotland?
    Speak—and Cruivie’ll goam at you,
    Gilsanquhar jalouse you’re dottlin!

    And Edinburgh and Glasgow
    Are like ploomen in a pub.
    They want to hear o’ naething
    But their ain foul hubbub....

    The fules are richt; an extra thocht
    Is neither here nor there.
    Oor lives may differ as they like
    —The self-same fate we share.

    And whiles I wish I’d nae mair sense
    Than Cruivie and Gilsanquhar,
    And envy their rude health and curse
    My gnawin’ canker.

    Guid sakes, ye dinna need to pass
    Ony exam. to dee
    —Daith canna tell a common flech
    Frae a performin’ flea!...

    It sets you weel to slaver
    To let sic gaadies fa’
    —_The mune’s the muckle white whale
    I seek in vain to kaa!_

    _The Earth’s my mastless samyn,
    The thistle my ruined sail._
    —Le’e go as you maun in the end,
    And droon in your plumm o’ ale!...

    Clear keltie aff an’ fill again
    Withoot corneigh bein’ cryit,
    The drink’s aye best that follows a drink.
    Clear keltie aff and try it.

    Be’t whisky gill or penny wheep,
    Or ony ither lotion,
    We ’bood to ha’e a thimblefu’ first,
    And syne we’ll toom an ocean!...

    “To Luna at the Craidle-and-Coffin
    To sof’n her hert if owt can sof’n:—

    Auld bag o’ tricks, ye needna come
    And think to stap me in your womb.

    You needna fash to rax and strain.
    Carline, I’ll _no_ be born again

    In ony brat you can produce.
    Carline, gi’e owre—O what’s the use?

    You pay nae heed but plop me in,
    Syne shove me oot, and winna be din,

    —Owre and owre, the same auld trick,
    Cratur withoot climateric!...

    “Noo Cutty Sark’s tint that ana,
    And dances in her skin—Ha! Ha!

    I canna ride awa’ like Tam,
    But e’en maun bide juist whaur I am.

    I canna ride—and gin I could,
    I’d sune be sorry I hedna stood,

    For less than a’ there is to see
    ’ll never be owre muckle for me.

    Cutty, gin you’ve mair to strip,
    Aff wi’t, lass—and let it rip!”...

    Ilka pleesure I can ha’e
    Ends like a dram ta’en yesterday.

    And tho’ to ha’e it I am lorn
    —What better ’ud I be the morn?...

    My belly on the gantrees there,
    The spigot frae my cullage,
    And wow but how the fizzin’ yill
    In spilth increased the ullage!

    I was an anxious barrel, lad,
    When first they tapped my bung.
    They whistled me up, yet thro’ the lift
    My freaths like rainbows swung.

    Waesucks, a pride for ony bar,
    The boast o’ barleyhood,
    Like Noah’s Ark abune the faem
    Maun float, a gantin’ cude,

    For I was thrawn fu’ cock owre sune,
    And wi’ a single jaw
    I made the pub a blindin’ swelth,
    And how’d the warld awa’!...

    What forest worn to the back-hauf’s this,
    What Eden brocht doon to a bean-swaup?
    The thistle’s to earth as the man
    In the mune’s to the mune, puir chap.

    The haill warld’s barkin’ and fleein’,
    And this is its echo and aiker,
    A soond that arrears in my lug
    Herrin’-banein’ back to its maker,

    A swaw like a flaw in a jewel
    Or _nadryv_[7] jaloused in a man,
    Or Creation unbiggit again
    To the draucht wi’ which it began....

    Abordage o’ this toom houk’s nae mowse.
    It munks and’s ill to lay haud o’,
    As gin a man ettled to ride
    On the shouders o’ his ain shadow.

    I canna biel’t; tho’ steekin’ an e’e
    Tither’s munkie wi’ munebeam for knool in’t,
    For there’s nae sta’-tree and the brute’s awa’
    Wi’ me kinkin’ like foudrie ahint....

    Sae Eternity’ll buff nor stye
    For Time, and shies at a touch, man;
    Yet aye in a belth o’ Thocht
    Comes alist like the Fleein’ Dutchman....

    As the worms’ll breed in my corpse until
    It’s like a rice-puddin’, the thistle
    Has made an eel-ark o’ the lift
    Whaur elvers like skirl-in-the-pan sizzle,

    Like a thunder-plump on the sunlicht,
    Or the slounge o’ daith on my dreams,
    Or as to a fair forfochen man
    A breedin’ wife’s beddiness seems,

    Saragossa Sea, St Vitus’ Dance,
    A _cafard_ in a brain’s despite,
    Or lunacy that thinks a’ else
    Is loony—and is dootless richt!...

    Gin my thochts that circle like hobby-horses
    ’Udna loosen to nightmares I’d sleep;
    For nocht but a chowed core’s left whaur Jerusalem lay
    Like aipples in a heap!...

    It’s a queer thing to tryst wi’ a wumman
    When the boss o’ her body’s gane,
    And her banes in the wund as she comes
    Dirl like a raff o’ rain.

    It’s a queer thing to tryst wi’ a wumman
    When her ghaist frae abuneheid keeks,
    And you see in the licht o’t that a’
    You ha’e o’r’s the cleiks....

    What forest worn to the backhauf’s this,
    What Eden brocht doon to a beanswaup?
    —A’ the ferlies o’ natur’ spring frae the earth,
    And into’t again maun drap.

    Animals, vegetables, what are they a’
    But as thochts that a man has ha’en?
    And Earth sall be like a toom skull syne.
    —Whaur’ll its thochts be then?...

    The munelicht is my knowledge o’ mysel’,
    Mysel’ the thistle in the munelicht seen,
    And hauf my shape has fund itsel’ in thee
    And hauf my knowledge in your piercin’ een.

    E’en as the munelicht’s borrowed frae the sun
    I ha’e my knowledge o’ mysel’ frae thee,
    And much that nane but thee can e’er mak’ clear,
    Save my licht’s frae the source, is dark to me.

    Your acid tongue, vieve lauchter, and hawk’s een,
    And bluid that drobs like haill to quicken me,
    Can turn the mid-day black or midnicht bricht,
    Lowse me frae licht or eke frae darkness free.

    Bite into me forever mair and lift
    Me clear o’ chaos in a great relief
    Till, like this thistle in the munelicht growin’,
    I brak in roses owre a hedge o’ grief....

    I am like Burns, and ony wench
    Can ser’ me for a time.
    Licht’s in them a’—in some a sun,
    In some the merest skime.

    I’m no’ like Burns, and weel I ken,
    Tho’ ony wench can ser’,
    It’s no’ through mony but through yin
    That ony man wuns fer....

    I weddit thee frae fause love, lass,
    To free thee and to free mysel’;
    But man and wumman tied for life
    True can be and truth can tell.

    Pit ony couple in a knot
    They canna lowse and needna try,
    And mair o’ love at last they’ll ken
    —If ocht!—than joy’ll alane descry.

    For them as for the beasts, my wife,
    A’s fer frae dune when pleesure’s owre,
    And coontless difficulties gar
    Ilk hert discover a’ its power.

    I dinna say that bairns alane
    Are true love’s task—a sairer task
    Is aiblins to create oorsels
    As we can be—it’s that I ask.

    Create oorsels, syne bairns, syne race.
    Sae on the cod I see’t in you
    Wi’ Maidenkirk to John o’ Groats
    The bosom that you draw me to.

    And nae Scot wi’ a wumman lies,
    But I am he and ken as ’twere
    A stage I’ve passed as he maun pass’t,
    Gin he grows up, his way wi’ her!...

    A’thing wi’ which a man
    Can intromit’s a wumman,
    And can, and s’ud, become
    As intimate and human.

    And Jean’s nae mair my wife
    Than whisky is at times,
    Or munelicht or a thistle
    Or kittle thochts or rhymes.

    He’s no’ a man ava’,
    And lacks a proper pride,
    Gin less than a’ the warld
    Can ser’ him for a bride!...

    Use, then, my lust for whisky and for thee,
    Your function but to be and let me be
    And see and let me see.

    If in a lesser licht I grope my way,
    Or use’t for ends that need your different ray
    Whelm’t in superior day.

    Then aye increase and ne’er withdraw your licht.
    —Gin it shows either o’s in hideous plicht,
    What gain to turn’t to nicht?

    Whisky mak’s Heaven or Hell and whiles mells baith,
    Disease is but the privy torch o’ Daith,
    —But sex reveals life, faith!

    I need them a’ and maun be aye at strife.
    Daith and ayont are nocht but pairts o’ life.
    —Then be life’s licht, my wife!...

    Love often wuns free
    In lust to be strangled,
    Or love, o’ lust free,
    In law’s sairly tangled.

    And it’s ill to tell whether
    Law or lust is to blame
    When love’s chokit up
    —It comes a’ to the same.

    In this sorry growth
    Whatna beauty is tint
    That freed o’t micht find
    A waur fate than is in’t?...

    _Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!_

    God gied man speech and speech created thocht,
    He gied man speech but to the Scots gied nocht
    Barrin’ this clytach that they’ve never brocht
    To onything but sic a Blottie O
    As some bairn’s copybook micht show,

    A spook o’ soond that frae the unkent grave
    In which oor nation lies loups up to wave
    Sic leprous chuns as tatties have
    That cellar-boond send spindles gropin’
    Towards ony hole that’s open,

    Like waesome fingers in the dark that think
    They still may widen the ane and only chink
    That e’er has gi’en mankind a blink
    O’ Hope—tho’ ev’n in that puir licht
    They s’ud ha’e seen their hopeless plicht.

    This puir relation o’ my topplin’ mood,
    This country cousin, streak o’ churl-bluid,
    This hopeless airgh ’twixt a’ we can and should,
    This Past that like Astarte’s sting I feel,
    This arrow in Achilles’ heel.

    _Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!_

    Mebbe we’re in a vicious circle cast,
    Mebbe there’s limits we can ne’er get past,
    Mebbe we’re sentrices that at the last
    Are flung aside, and no’ the pillars and props
    O’ Heaven foraye as in oor hopes.

    Oor growth at least nae steady progress shows,
    Genius in mankind like an antrin rose
    Abune a jungly waste o’ effort grows,
    But to Man’s purpose it mak’s little odds,
    And seems irrelevant to God’s....

    Eneuch? Then here you are. Here’s the haill story.
    Life’s connached shapes too’er up in croons o’ glory,
    Perpetuatin’, natheless, in their gory
    Colour the endless sacrifice and pain
    That to their makin’s gane.

    The roses like the saints in Heaven treid
    Triumphant owre the agonies o’ their breed,
    And wag fu’ mony a celestial heid
    Abune the thorter-ills o’ leaf and prick
    In which they ken the feck maun stick.

    _Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!_

    A mongrel growth, jumble o’ disproportions,
    Whirlin’ in its incredible contortions,
    Or wad-be client that an auld whore shuns,
    Wardin’ her wizened orange o’ a bosom
    Frae importunities sae gruesome,

    Or new diversion o’ the hormones
    Mair fond o’ procreation than the Mormons,
    And fetchin’ like a devastatin’ storm on’s
    A’ the uncouth dilemmas o’ oor natur’
    Objectified in vegetable maitter.

    _Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!_

    And heed nae mair the foolish cries that beg
    You slice nae mair to aff or pu’ to leg,
    You skitin’ duffer that gar’s a’body fleg,
    —What tho’ you ding the haill warld oot o’ joint
    Wi’ a skier to cover-point!

    _Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!_

    There _was_ a danger—and it’s weel I see’t—
    Had brocht ye like Mallarmé to defeat:—
    “Mon doute, amas de nuit ancienne s’achève
    En maint rameau subtil, qui, demeuré les vrais
    Bois même, prouve, hélas! que bien seul je m’offrais
    Pour triomphe le faute idéale des roses.”[8]

    _Yank oot your orra boughs, my hert!_...

    I love to muse upon the skill that gangs
    To mak’ the simplest thing that Earth displays,
    The eident life that ilka atom thrangs,
    And uses it in the appointit ways,
    And a’ the endless brain that nocht escapes
    That myriad moves them to inimitable shapes.

    Nor to their customed form nor ony ither
    New to Creation, by man’s cleverest mind,
    A’ needfu’ particles first brocht thegither,
    Could they wi’ timeless labour be combined.
    There’s nocht that Science yet’s begood to see
    In hauf its deemless detail or its destiny.

    Oor een gi’e answers based on pairt-seen facts
    That beg a’ questions, to ebb minds’ content,
    But hoo a’e feature or the neist attracts,
    Wi’ millions mair unseen, wha kens what’s meant
    By human brains and to what ends may tell
    —For naething’s seen or kent that’s near a thing itsel’!

    Let whasae vaunts his knowledge then and syne
    Sets up a God and kens _His_ purpose tae
    Tell me what’s gart a’e strain o’ maitter twine
    In sic an extraordinary way,
    And what God’s purpose wi’ the Thistle is
    —I’ll aiblins ken what he and his God’s worth by this.

    I’ve watched it lang and hard until I ha’e
    A certain symp’thy wi’ its orra ways
    And pride in its success, as weel I may,
    In growin’ exactly as its instinct says,
    Save in sae fer as thwarts o’ weather or grun’
    Or man or ither foes ha’e’ts aims perchance fordone.

    But I can form nae notion o’ the spirit
    That gars it tak’ the difficult shape it does,
    Nor judge the merit yet or the demerit
    O’ this detail or that sae fer as it goes
    T’ advance the cause that gied it sic a guise
    As maun ha’e pleased its Maker wi’ a gey surprise.

    The craft that hit upon the reishlin’ stalk,
    Wi’ts gausty leafs and a’ its datchie jags,
    And spired it syne in seely flooers to brak
    Like sudden lauchter owre its fousome rags
    Jouks me, sardonic lover, in the routh
    O’ contrairies that jostle in this dumfoondrin’ growth.

    What strength ’t’ud need to pit its roses oot,
    Or double them in number or in size,
    He canna tell wha canna plumb the root,
    And learn what’s gar’t its present state arise,
    And what the limits are that ha’e been put
    To change in thistles, and why—and what a change ’ud boot....

    I saw a rose come loupin’ oot[9]
    Frae a camsteerie plant.
    O wha’d ha’e thocht yon puir stock had
    Sic an inhabitant?

    For centuries it ran to waste,
    Wi’ pin-heid flooers at times.
    O’ts hidden hert o’ beauty they
    Were but the merest skimes.

    Yet while it ran to wud and thorns,
    The feckless growth was seekin’
    Some airt to cheenge its life until
    A’ in a rose was beekin’.

    “Is there nae way in which my life
    Can mair to flooerin’ come,
    And bring its waste on shank and jags
    Doon to a minimum?

    “It’s hard to struggle as I maun
    For scrunts o’ blooms like mine,
    While blossom covers ither plants
    As by a knack divine.

    “What hinders me unless I lack
    Some needfu’ discipline?
    —I wis I’ll bring my orra life
    To beauty or I’m din!”

    Sae ran the thocht that hid ahint
    The thistle’s ugsome guise,
    “I’ll brak’ the habit o’ my life
    A worthier to devise.”

    “My nobler instincts sall nae mair
    This contrair shape be gi’en.
    I sall nae mair consent to live
    A life no’ fit to be seen.”

    Sae ran the thocht that hid ahint
    The thistle’s ugsome guise,
    Till a’ at aince a rose loupt out
    —I watched it wi’ surprise.

    A rose loupt oot and grew, until
    It was ten times the size
    O’ ony rose the thistle afore
    Had heistit to the skies.

    And still it grew till a’ the buss
    Was hidden in its flame.
    I never saw sae braw a floo’er
    As yon thrawn stock became.

    And still it grew until it seemed
    The haill braid earth had turned
    A reid reid rose that in the lift
    Like a ball o’ fire burned.

    The waefu’ clay was fire aince mair,
    As Earth had been resumed
    Into God’s mind, frae which sae lang
    To grugous state ’twas doomed.

    Syne the rose shrivelled suddenly
    As a balloon is burst;
    The thistle was a ghaistly stick,
    As gin it had been curst.

    Was it the ancient vicious sway
    Imposed itsel’ again,
    Or nerve owre weak for new emprise
    That made the effort vain,

    A coward strain in that lorn growth
    That wrocht the sorry trick?
    —The thistle like a rocket soared
    And cam’ doon like the stick.

    Like grieshuckle the roses glint,
    The leafs like farles hing,
    As roond a hopeless sacrifice
    Earth draws its barren ring.

    The dream o’ beauty’s dernin’ yet
    Ahint the ugsome shape.
    —Vain dream that in a pinheid here
    And there can e’er escape!

    The vices that defeat the dream
    Are in the plant itsel’,
    And till they’re purged its virtues maun
    In pain and misery dwell.

    Let Deils rejoice to see the waste,
    The fond hope brocht to nocht.
    The thistle in their een is as
    A favourite lust they’re wrocht.

    The orderin’ o’ the thistle means
    Nae richtin’ o’t to them.
    Its loss they ca’ a law, its thorns
    A fule’s fit diadem.

    And still the idiot nails itsel’
    To its ain crucifix,
    While here a rose and there a rose
    Jaups oot abune the pricks.

    Like connoisseurs the Deils gang roond
    And praise its attitude,
    Till on the Cross the silly Christ
    To fidge fu’ fain’s begood!

    Like connoisseurs the Deils gang roond
    Wi’ ready platitude.
    It’s no’ sae dear as vinegar,
    And every bit as good!

    The bitter taste is on my tongue,
    I chowl my chafts, and pray
    “Let God forsake me noo and no’
    Staund connoisseur-like tae!”...

    The language that but sparely flooers
    And maistly gangs to weed;
    The thocht o’ Christ and Calvary
    Aye liddenin’ in my heid;
    And a’ the dour provincial thocht
    That merks the Scottish breed
    —These are the thistle’s characters,
    To argie there’s nae need.
    Hoo weel my verse embodies
    The thistle you can read!
    —But will a Scotsman never
    Frae this vile growth be freed?...

    O ilka man alive is like
    A quart that’s squeezed into a pint
    (A maist unScottish-like affair!)
    Or like the little maid that showed
    Me into a still sma’er room.

    What use to let a sunrise fade
    To ha’e anither like’t the morn,
    Or let a generation pass
    That ane nae better may succeed,
    Or wi’ a’ Time’s machinery
    Keep naething new aneth the sun,
    Or change things oot o’ kennin’ that
    They may be a’ the mair the same?

    The thistle in the wund dissolves
    In lichtnin’s as shook foil gi’es way
    In sudden splendours, or the flesh
    At Daith lets slip the infinite soul;
    And syne it’s like a sunrise tint
    In grey o’ day, or love and life,
    That in a cloody blash o’ sperm
    Undae the warld to big’t again,
    Or like a pickled foetus that
    Nae man feels ocht in common wi’
    —But micht as easily ha’ been!
    Or like a corpse a soul set free
    Scunners to think it tenanted
    —And little recks that but for it
    It never micht ha’ been at a’,
    Like love frae lust and God frae man!

    The wasted seam that dries like stairch
    And pooders aff, that micht ha’ been
    A warld o’ men and syne o’ Gods;
    The grey that haunts the vievest green;
    The wrang side o’ the noblest scene
    We ne’er can whummle to oor een,
    As ’twere the hinderpairts o’ God
    His face aye turned the opposite road,
    Or’s neth the flooers the drumlie clods
    Frae which they come at sicna odds,
    As a’ Earth’s magic frae a spirt,
    In shame and secrecy, o’ dirt!

    Then shak’ nae mair in silly life,
    Nor stand impossible as Daith,
    Incredible as a’thing is
    Inside or oot owre closely scanned.
    As mithers aften think the warld
    O’ bairns that ha’e nae end or object,
    Or lovers think their sweethearts made
    Yince-yirn—wha haena waled the lave,
    Maikless—when they are naebody,
    Or men o’ ilka sort and kind
    Are prood o’ thochts they ca’ their ain,
    That nameless millions had afore
    And nameless millions yet’ll ha’e,
    And that were never worth the ha’en,
    Or Cruivie’s “latest” story or
    Gilsanquhar’s vows to sign the pledge,
    Or’s if I thocht maist whisky _was_,
    Or failed to coont the cheenge I got,
    Sae wad I be gin I rejoiced,
    Or didna ken my place, in thee.

    O stranglin’ rictus, sterile spasm,
    Thou stricture in the groins o’ licht,
    Thou ootrie gangrel frae the wilds
    O’ chaos fenced frae Eden yet
    By the unsplinterable wa’
    O’ munebeams like a bleeze o’ swords!
    Nae chance lunge cuts the Gordian knot,
    Nor sall the belly find relief
    In wha’s entangled moniplies
    Creation like a stoppage jams,
    Or in whose loins the mapamound
    Runkles in strawns o’ bubos whaur
    The generations gravel.
    The soond o’ water winnin’ free,
    The sicht o’ licht that braks the rouk,
    The thocht o’ every thwart owrecome
    Are in my ears and een and brain,
    In whom the bluid is spilt in stour,
    In whom a’ licht in darkness fails,
    In whom the mystery o’ life
    Is to a wretched weed bewrayed.

    But let my soul increase in me,
    God dwarfed to enter my puir thocht
    Expand to his true size again,
    And protoplasm’s look befit
    The nature o’ its destiny,
    And seed and sequence be nae mair
    Incongruous to ane anither,
    And liquor packed impossibly
    Mak’ pint-pot an eternal well,
    And art be relevant to life,
    And poets mair than dominies yet,
    And ends nae langer tint in means,
    Nor forests hidden by their trees,
    Nor men be sacrificed alive
    In foonds o’ fates designed for them,
    Nor mansions o’ the soul stand toom
    Their owners in their cellars trapped,
    Nor a’ a people’s genius be
    A rumple-fyke in Heaven’s doup,
    While Calvinism uses her
    To breed a minister or twa!

    A black leaf owre a white leaf twirls,
    A grey leaf flauchters in atween,
    Sae ply my thochts aboot the stem
    O’ loppert slime frae which they spring.
    The thistle like a snawstorm drives,
    Or like a flicht o’ swallows lifts,
    Or like a swarm o’ midges hings,
    A plague o’ moths, a starry sky,
    But’s naething but a thistle yet,
    And still the puzzle stands unsolved.
    Beauty and ugliness alike,
    And life and daith and God and man,
    Are aspects o’t but nane can tell
    The secret that I’d fain find oot
    O’ this bricht hive, this sorry weed,
    The tree that fills the universe,
    Or like a reistit herrin’ crines.

    Gin I was sober I micht think
    It was like something drunk men see!

    The necromancy in my bluid
    Through a’ the gamut cheenges me
    O’ dwarf and giant, foul and fair,
    But winna let me be mysel’
    —My mither’s womb that reins me still
    Until I tae can prick the witch
    And “Wumman” cry wi’ Christ at last,
    “Then what hast thou to do wi’ me?”

    The tug-o’-war is in me still,
    The dog-hank o’ the flesh and soul,
    Faither in Heaven, what gar’d ye tak’
    A village slut to mither me,
    Your mongrel o’ the fire and clay?
    The trollop and the Deity share
    My writhen form as tho’ I were
    A picture o’ the time they had
    When Licht rejoiced to file itsel’
    And Earth upshuddered like a star.

    A drucken hizzie gane to bed
    Wi’ three-in-ane and ane-in-three.

    O fain I’d drink until I saw
    Scotland a ferlie o’ delicht,
    And fain bide drunk nor ha’e’t recede
    Into a shrivelled thistle syne,
    As when a sperklin’ tide rins oot,
    And leaves a wreath o’ rubbish there!

    Wull a’ the seas gang dry at last
    (As dry as I am gettin’ noo),
    Or wull they aye come back again,
    Seilfu’ as my neist drink to me,
    Or as the sunlicht to the mune,
    Or as the bonny sangs o’ men,
    Wha’re but puir craturs in themsels,
    And save when genius mak’s them drunk,
    As donnert as their audiences,
    —As dreams that mak’ a tramp a king,
    A madman sane to his ain mind,
    Or what a Scotsman thinks himsel’,
    Tho’ naethin’ but a thistle kyths.

    The mair I drink the thirstier yet,
    And whiles when I’m alowe wi’ booze,
    I’m like God’s sel’ and clad in fire,
    And ha’e a Pentecost like this.
    O wad that I could aye be fou’,
    And no’ come back as aye I maun
    To naething but a fule that nane
    ’Ud credit wi’ sic thochts as thae,
    A fule that kens they’re empty dreams!

    Yet but fer drink and drink’s effects,
    The yeast o’ God that barms in us,
    We micht as weel no’ be alive.
    It maitters not what drink is ta’en,
    The barley bree, ambition, love,
    Or Guid or Evil workin’ in’s,
    Sae lang’s we feel like souls set free
    Frae mortal coils and speak in tongues
    We dinna ken and never wull,
    And find a merit in oorsels,
    In Cruivies and Gilsanquhars tae,
    And see the thistle as ocht but that!

    For wha o’s ha’e the thistle’s poo’er
    To see we’re worthless and believe ’t?

    A’thing that ony man can be’s
    A mockery o’ his soul at last.
    The mair it shows’t the better, and
    I’d suner be a tramp than king,
    Lest in the pride o’ place and poo’er
    I e’er forgot my waesomeness.
    Sae to debauchery and dirt,
    And to disease and daith I turn,
    Sin’ otherwise my seemin’ worth
    ’Ud block my view o’ what is what,
    And blin’ me to the irony
    O’ bein’ a grocer ’neth the sun,
    A lawyer gin Justice ope’d her een,
    A pedant like an ant promoted,
    A parson buttonholin’ God,
    Or ony cratur o’ the Earth
    Sma’-bookt to John Smith, High Street, Perth,
    Or sic like vulgar gaffe o’ life
    _Sub speciem aeternitatis_—
    Nae void can fleg me hauf as much
    As bein’ mysel’, whate’er I am,
    Or, waur, bein’ onybody else.

    The nervous thistle’s shiverin’ like
    A horse’s skin aneth a cleg,
    Or Northern Lichts or lustres o’
    A soul that Daith has fastened on,
    Or mornin’ efter the nicht afore.

    _Shudderin’ thistle, gi’e owre, gi’e owre_....

    _Grey sand is churnin’ in my lugs
    The munelicht flets, and gantin’ there
    The grave o’ a’ mankind’s laid bare
    —On Hell itsel’ the drawback rugs!_

    _Nae man can ken his hert until
    The tide o’ life uncovers it,
    And horror-struck he sees a pit
    Returnin’ life can never fill!_...

    Thou art the facts in ilka airt
    That breenge into infinity,
    Criss-crossed wi’ coontless ither facts
    Nae man can follow, and o’ which
    He is himsel’ a helpless pairt,
    Held in their tangle as he were
    A stick-nest in Ygdrasil!

    The less man sees the mair he is
    Content wi’t, but the mair he sees
    The mair he kens hoo little o’
    A’ that there is he’ll ever see,
    And hoo it mak’s confusion aye
    The waur confoondit till at last
    His brain inside his heid is like
    Ariadne wi’ an empty pirn,
    Or like a birlin’ reel frae which
    A whale has rived the line awa’.

    What better’s a forhooied nest
    Than skasloch scattered owre the grun’?

    O hard it is for man to ken
    He’s no’ creation’s goal nor yet
    A benefitter by’t at last—
    A means to ends he’ll never ken,
    And as to michtier elements
    The slauchtered brutes he eats to him
    Or forms o’ life owre sma’ to see
    Wi’ which his heedless body swarms,
    And a’ man’s thocht nae mair to them
    Than ony moosewob to a man,
    His Heaven to them the blinterin’ o’
    A snail-trail on their closet wa’!

    For what’s an atom o’ a twig
    That tak’s a billion to an inch
    To a’ the routh o’ shoots that mak’
    The bygrowth o’ the Earth aboot
    The michty trunk o’ Space that spreids
    Ramel o’ licht that ha’e nae end,
    —The trunk wi’ centuries for rings,
    Comets for fruit, November shooers
    For leafs that in its Autumns fa’
    —And Man at maist o’ sic a twig
    Ane o’ the coontless atoms is!

    My sinnens and my veins are but
    As muckle o’ a single shoot
    Wha’s fibre I can ne’er unwaft
    O’ my wife’s flesh and mither’s flesh
    And a’ the flesh o’ humankind,
    And revelled thrums o’ beasts and plants
    As gangs to mak’ twixt birth and daith
    A’e sliver for a microscope;
    And a’ the life o’ Earth to be
    Can never lift frae underneath
    The shank o’ which oor destiny’s pairt
    As heich’s to stand forenenst the trunk
    Stupendous as a windlestrae!

    I’m under nae delusions, fegs!
    The whuppin’ sooker at wha’s tip
    Oor little point o’ view appears,
    A midget coom o’ continents
    Wi’ blebs o’ oceans set, sends up
    The braith o’ daith as weel as life,
    And we maun braird anither tip
    Oot owre us ere we wither tae,
    And join the sentrice skeleton
    As coral insects big their reefs.

    What is the tree? As fer as Man’s
    Concerned it disna maitter
    Gin but a giant thistle ’tis
    That spreids eternal mischief there,
    As I’m inclined to think.
    Ruthless it sends its solid growth
    Through mair than he can e’er conceive,
    And braks his warlds abreid and rives
    His Heavens to tatters on its horns.

    The nature or the purpose o’t
    He needna fash to spier, for he
    Is destined to be sune owre grown
    And hidden wi’ the parent wud
    The spreidin’ boughs in darkness hap,
    And a’ its future life’ll be
    Ootwith’m as he’s ootwith his banes.

    Juist as man’s skeleton has left
    Its ancient ape-like shape ahint,
    Sae states o’ mind in turn gi’e way
    To different states, and quickly seem
    Impossible to later men,
    And Man’s mind in its final shape,
    Or lang’ll seem a monkey’s spook,
    And, strewth, to me the vera thocht
    O’ Thocht already’s fell like that!
    Yet still the cracklin’ thorns persist
    In fitba’ match and peepy show,
    To antic hay a dog-fecht’s mair
    Than Jacob _v._ the Angel,
    And through a cylinder o’ wombs,
    A star reflected in a dub,
    I see as ’twere my ain wild harns
    The ripple o’ Eve’s moniplies.

    And faith! yestreen in Cruivie’s een
    Life rocked at midnicht in a tree,
    And in Gilsanquhar’s glower I saw
    The taps o’ waves ’neth which the warld
    Ga’ed rowin’ like a jeelyfish,
    And whiles I canna look at Jean
    For fear I’d see the sunlicht turn
    Worm-like into the glaur again!

    A black leaf owre a white leaf twirls,
    My liver’s shadow on my soul,
    And clots o’ bluid loup oot frae stems
    That back into the jungle rin,
    Or in the waters underneath
    Kelter like seaweed, while I hear
    Abune the thunder o’ the flood,
    The voice that aince commanded licht
    Sing ‘Scots Wha Ha’e’ and hyne awa’
    Like Cruivie up a different glen,
    And leave me like a mixture o’
    A wee Scotch nicht and Judgment Day,
    The bile, the Bible, and the _Scotsman_,
    Poetry and pigs—Infernal Thistle,
    Damnition haggis I’ve spewed up,
    And syne return to like twa dogs!
    Blin’ Proteus wi’ leafs or hands
    Or flippers ditherin’ in the lift
    —Thou Samson in a warld that has
    Nae pillars but your cheengin’ shapes
    That dung doon, rise in ither airts
    Like windblawn reek frae smoo’drin’ ess!
    —Hoo lang maun I gi’e aff your forms
    O’ plants and beasts and men and Gods
    And like a doited Atlas bear
    This steeple o’ fish, this eemis warld,
    Or, maniac heid wi’ snakes for hair,
    A Maenad, ape Aphrodite,
    And scunner the Eternal sea?

    Man needna fash and even noo
    The cells that mak’ a’e sliver wi’m,
    The threidy knit he’s woven wi’,
    ’Ud fain destroy what sicht he has
    O’ this puir transitory stage,
    Yet tho’ he kens the fragment is
    O’ little worth he e’er can view,
    Jalousin’ it’s a cheatrie weed,
    He tyauves wi’ a’ his micht and main
    To keep his sicht despite his kind
    Conspirin’ as their nature is
    ’Gainst ocht wi’ better sicht than theirs.

    What gars him strive? He canna tell—
    It may be nocht but cussedness.
    —At best he hopes for little mair
    Than his suspicions to confirm,
    To mock the sicht he hains sae weel
    At last wi’ a’ he sees wi’ it,
    Yet, thistle or no’ whate’er its end,
    Aiblins the force that mak’s it grow
    And lets him see a kennin’ mair
    Than ither folk and fend his sicht
    Agen their jealous plots awhile
    ’ll use the poo’ers it seems to waste,
    This purpose ser’d, in ither ways,
    That may be better worth the bein’
    —Or sae he dreams, syne mocks his dream
    Till Life grows sheer awa’ frae him,
    And bratts o’ darkness plug his een.

    It may be nocht but cussedness,
    But I’m content gin a’ my thocht
    Can dae nae mair than let me see,
    Free frae desire o’ happiness,
    The foolish faiths o’ ither men
    In breedin’, industry, and War,
    Religion, Science, or ocht else
    Gang smash—when I ha’e nane mysel’,
    Or better gin I share them tae,
    Or mind at least a time I did!

    Aye, this is Calvary—to bear
    Your Cross wi’in you frae the seed,
    And feel it grow by slow degrees
    Until it rends your flesh apairt,
    And turn, and see your fellow-men
    In similar case but sufferin’ less
    Thro’ bein’ mair wudden frae the stert!...

    _I’m fu’ o’ a stickit God._
    THAT’S _what’s the maitter wi’ me,
    Jean has stuck sic a fork in the wa’
    That I row in agonie_.

    _Mary never let dab._
    SHE _was a canny wumman_.
    _She hedna a gaw in Joseph at a’
    But, wow, this seecund comin’!_...

    _Narodbogonosets_[10] are my folk tae,
    But in a sma’ way nooadays—
    A faitherly God wi’ a lang white beard,
    Or painted Jesus in a haze
    O’ blue and gowd, a gird aboot his heid
    Or some sic thing. It’s been a sair come-doon,
    And the trade’s nocht to what it was.
    Unnatural practices are the cause.
    Baith bairns and Gods’ll be obsolete soon
    (The twaesome gang thegither), and forsooth
    Scotland turn Eliot’s waste—the Land o’ Drouth.

    But even as the stane the builders rejec’
    Becomes the corner-stane, the time may be
    When Scotland sall find oot its destiny,
    And yield the _vse-chelovek_.[11]
    —At a’ events, owre Europe flaught atween,
    My whim (and mair than whim) it pleases
    To seek the haund o’ Russia as a freen’
    In workin’ oot mankind’s great synthesis....

    Melville[12] (a Scot) kent weel hoo Christ’s
    Corrupted into creeds malign,
    Begotten strife’s pernicious brood
    That claims for patron Him Divine.
    (The Kirk in Scotland still I cry
    Crooks whaur it canna crucify!)

    Christ, bleedin’ like the thistle’s roses,
    He saw—as I in similar case—
    Maistly, in beauty and in fear,
    ’Ud “paralyse the nobler race,
    Smite or suspend, perplex, deter,
    And, tortured, prove the torturer.”

    And never mair a Scot sall tryst,
    Abies on Calvary, wi’ Christ,
    Unless, mebbe, a poem like this’ll
    Exteriorise things in a thistle,
    And gi’e him in this form forlorn
    What Melville socht in vain frae Hawthorne....

    Spirit o’ strife, destroy in turn
    Syne this fule’s Paradise, syne that;
    In thee’s in Calvaries that owrecome
    Daith efter Daith let me be caught,

    Or in the human form that hauds
    Us in its ignominious thrall,
    While on brute needs oor souls attend
    Until disease and daith end all,

    Or in the grey deluded brain,
    Reflectin’ in anither field
    The torments o’ its parent flesh
    In thocht-preventin’ thocht concealed,

    Or still in curst impossible mould,
    Last thistle-shape men think to tak’,
    The soul, frae flesh and thocht set free,
    On Heaven’s strait if unseen rack.

    There may be heicher forms in which
    We can nae mair oor plicht define,
    Because the agonies involved
    ’ll bring us their ain anodyne.

    Yet still we suffer and still sall,
    Altho’, puir fules, we mayna kent
    As lang as like the thistle we
    In coil and in recoil are pent.

    And ferrer than mankind can look
    Ghast shapes that free but to transfix
    Twine rose-crooned in their agonies,
    And strive agen the endless pricks.

    The dooble play that bigs and braks
    In endless victory and defeat
    Is in your spikes and roses shown,
    And a’ my soul is haggar’d wi’t....

    Be like the thistle, O my soul,
    Heedless o’ praise and quick to tak’ affront,
    And growin’ like a mockery o’ a’
    Maist life can want or thole,
    And manifest forevermair
    Contempt o’ ilka goal.

    O’ ilka goal—save ane alane;
    To be yoursel’, whatever that may be,
    And as contemptuous o’ that,
    Kennin’ nocht’s worth the ha’en,
    But certainty that nocht can be,
    And hoo that certainty to gain.

    For this you still maun grow and grope
    In the abyss wi’ ever-deepenin’ roots
    That croon your scunner wi’ the grue
    O’ hopeless hope
    —And gin the abyss is bottomless,
    Your growth’ll never stop!...

    What earthquake chitters oot
    In the Thistle’s oorie shape,
    What gleids o’ central fire
    In its reid heids escape,
    And whatna coonter forces
    In growth and ingrowth graip
    In an eternal clinch
    In this ootcuissen form
    That winna be outcast,
    But triumphs at the last
    (Owre a’ abies itsel’
    As fer as we can tell,
    Sin’ frae the Eden o’ the world
    Ilka man in turn is hurled,
    And ilka gairden rins to waste
    That was ever to his taste?)

    _O keep the Thistle ’yont the wa’
    Owre which your skeletons you’ll thraw._

    I, in the Thistle’s land,
    As you[13] in Russia where
    Struggle in giant form
    Proceeds for evermair,
    In my sma’ measure ’bood
    Address a similar task,
    And for a share o’ your
    Appallin’ genius ask.

    Wha built in revelations
    What maist men in reserves
    (And only men confound!)
    A better gift deserves
    Frae ane wha like hissel
    (As ant-heap unto mountain)
    Needs bigs his life upon
    The everloupin’ fountain
    That frae the Dark ascends
    Whaur Life begins, Thocht ends
    —A better gift deserves
    Than thae wheen yatterin’ nerves!

    For mine’s the clearest insicht
    O’ man’s facility
    For constant self-deception,
    And hoo his mind can be
    But as a floatin’ iceberg
    That hides aneth the sea
    Its bulk: and hoo frae depths
    O’ an unfaddomed flood
    Tensions o’ nerves arise
    And humours o’ the blood
    —Keethin’s nane can trace
    To their original place.

    _Hoo mony men to mak’ a man
    It tak’s he kens wha kens Life’s plan._

    But there are flegsome deeps
    Whaur the soul o’ Scotland sleeps
    That I to bottom need
    To wauk Guid kens what deid,
    Play at stertle-a-stobie,
    Wi’ nation’s dust for hobby,
    Or wi’ God’s sel’ commerce
    For the makin’ o’ a verse.

    _“Melville, sea-compelling man,
    Before whose wand Leviathan
    Rose hoary-white upon the Deep,”[14]
    What thou hast sown I fain ’ud reap
    O’ knowledge ’yont the human mind
    In keepin’ wi’ oor Scottish kind,
    And, thanks to thee, may aiblins reach
    To what this Russian has to teach,
    Closer than ony ither Scot,
    Closer to me than my ain thocht,
    Closer than my ain braith to me,
    As close as to the Deity
    Approachable in whom appears
    This Christ o’ the neist thoosand years._

    As frae your baggit wife
    You turned whenever able,
    And often when you werena,
    Unto the gamin’ table,
    And opened wide to ruin
    Your benmaist hert, aye brewin’
    A horror o’ whatever
    Seemed likely to deliver
    You frae the senseless strife
    In which alane is life,
    —As Burns in Edinburgh
    Breenged arse-owre-heid thoro’
    A’ _it_ could be the spur o’
    To pleuch his sauted furrow,
    And turned frae a’ men honour
    To what could only scunner
    Wha thinks that common-sense
    Can e’er be but a fence
    To keep a soul worth ha’en
    Frae what it s’ud be daein’
    —Sae I in turn maun gie
    My soul to misery,
    Daidle disease
    Upon my knees,
    And welcome madness
    Wi’ exceedin’ gladness
    —Aye, open wide my hert
    To a’ the thistle’s smert.

    And a’ the hopes o’ men
    Sall be like wiles then
    To gar my soul betray
    Its only richtfu’ way,
    Or as a couthie wife
    That seeks nae mair frae life
    Than domesticity
    E’en wi’ the likes o’ me—
    As gin I could be carin’
    For her or for her bairn
    When on my road I’m farin’
    —O I can spend a nicht
    In ony man’s Delicht
    Or wi’ ony wumman born
    —But aye be aff the morn!

    In a’ the inklin’s cryptic,
    Then, o’ an epileptic,
    I ha’e been stood in you
    And droukit in their grue
    Till I can see richt through
    Ilk weakness o’ my frame
    And ilka dernin’ shame,
    And can employ the same
    To jouk the curse o’ fame,
    Lowsed frae the dominion
    O’ popular opinion,
    And risen at last abune
    The thistle like a mune
    That looks serenely doon
    On what queer things there are
    In an inferior star
    That couldna be, or see,
    Themsel’s, except in me.

    _Wi’ burnt-oot hert and poxy face
    I sall illumine a’ the place,
    And there is ne’er a fount o’ grace
    That isna in a similar case._

    Let a’ the thistle’s growth
    Be as a process, then,
    My spirit’s gane richt through,
    And needna threid again,
    Tho’ in it sall be haud’n
    For aye the feck o’ men
    Wha’s queer contortions there
    As memories I ken,
    As memories o’ my ain
    O’ mony an ancient pain.
    But sin’ wha’ll e’er wun free
    Maun tak’ like coorse to me,
    A fillip I wad gi’e
    Their eccentricity,
    And leave the lave to dree
    Their weirdless destiny.

    It’s no’ withoot regret
    That I maun follow yet
    The road that led me past
    Humanity sae fast,
    Yet scarce can gi’e a fate
    That is at last mair fit
    To them wha tak’ that gait
    Than theirs wha winna ha’e’t,
    Seein’ that nae man can get
    By ony airt or wile,
    A destiny quite worth while
    As fer as he can tell
    —Or even you yoursel’!

    And O! I canna thole
    Aye yabblin’ o’ my soul,
    And fain I wad be free
    O’ my eternal me,
    Nor fare mysel’ alane
    —Withoot that tae be gane,
    And this, I ha’e nae doot,
    This road’ll bring aboot.

    The munelicht that owre clear defines
    The thistle’s shrill cantankerous lines
    E’en noo whiles insubstantialises
    Its grisly form and ’stead devises
    A maze o’ licht, a siller-frame,
    As ’twere God’s dream frae which it came,
    Ne’er into bein’ coorsened yet,
    The essence lowin’ pure in it,
    As tho’ the fire owrecam’ the clay,
    And left its wraith in endless day.

    These are the moments when a’ sense
    Like mist is vanished and intense,
    Magic emerges frae the dense
    Body o’ bein’ and beeks immense
    As, like a ghinn oot o’ a bottle,
    Daith rises frae’s when oor lives crottle.

    These are the moments when my sang
    Clears its white feet frae oot amang
    My broken thocht, and moves as free
    As souls frae bodies when they dee.
    There’s naething left o’ me ava’
    Save a’ I’d hoped micht whiles befa’.

    Sic sang to men is little worth.
    It has nae message for the earth.
    Men see their warld turned tapsalteerie,
    Drookit in a licht owre eerie,
    Or sent birlin’ like a peerie—
    Syne it turns a’ they’ve kent till then
    To shapes they can nae langer ken.

    Men canna look on nakit licht.
    It flings them back wi’ darkened sicht,
    And een that canna look at it,
    Maun draw earth closer roond them yet
    Or, their sicht tint, find nocht instead
    That answers to their waefu’ need.

    And yet this essence frae the clay
    In dooble form aye braks away,
    For, in addition to the licht,
    There is an e’er-increasin’ nicht,
    A nicht that is the bigger, and
    Gangs roond licht like an airn band
    That noo and then mair tichtly grips,
    And snuffs it in a black eclipse,
    But rings it maistly as a brough
    The mune, till it’s juist bricht enough—
    O wull I never lowse a licht
    I canna dowse again in spite,
    Or dull to haud within my sicht?

    The thistle canna vanish quite.
    Inside a’ licht its shape maun glint,
    A spirit wi’ a skeleton in’t

    The world, the flesh, ’ll bide in us
    As in the fire the unburnt buss,
    Or as frae sire to son we gang
    And coontless corpses in us thrang.

    And e’en the glory that descends
    I kenna whence on _me_ depends,
    And shapes itsel’ to what is left
    Whaur I o’ me ha’e me bereft,
    And still the form is mine, altho’
    A force to which I ne’er could grow
    Is movin’ in’t as ’twere a sea
    That lang syne drooned the last o’ me
    —That drooned afore the warld began
    A’ that could ever come frae Man.

    And as at sicna times am I,
    I wad ha’e Scotland to my eye
    Until I saw a timeless flame
    Tak’ Auchtermuchty for a name,
    And kent that Ecclefechan stood
    As pairt o’ an eternal mood.

    Ahint the glory comes the nicht
    As Maori to London’s ruins,
    And I’m amused to see the plicht
    O’ Licht as’t in the black tide droons,
    Yet even in the brain o’ Chaos
    For Scotland I wad hain a place,
    And let Tighnabruaich still
    Be pairt and paircel o’ its will,
    And Culloden, black as Hell,
    A knowledge it has o’ itsel’.

    Thou, Dostoevski, understood,
    Wha had your ain land in your bluid,
    And into it as in a mould
    The passion o’ your bein’ rolled,
    Inherited in turn frae Heaven
    Or sources fer abune it even.

    _Sae God retracts in endless stage
    Through angel, devil, age on age,
    Until at last his infinite natur’
    Walks on earth a human cratur’
    (Or less than human as to my een
    The people are in Aiberdeen);
    Sae man returns in endless growth
    Till God in him again has scouth._

    For sic a loup towards wisdom’s croon
    Hoo fer a man maun base him doon,
    Hoo plunge aboot in Chaos ere
    He finds his needfu’ fittin’ there,
    The matrix oot o’ which sublime
    Serenity sall soar in time!

    Ha’e I the cruelty I need,
    Contempt and syne contempt o’ that,
    And still contempt in endless meed
    That I may never yet be caught
    In ony satisfaction, or
    Bird-lime that winna let me soar?

    Is Scotland big enough to be
    A symbol o’ that force in me,
    In wha’s divine inebriety
    A sicht abune contempt I’ll see?

    For a’ that’s Scottish is in me,
    As a’ things Russian were in thee,
    And I in turn ’ud be an action
    To pit in a concrete abstraction
    My country’s contrair qualities,
    And mak’ a unity o’ these
    Till my love owre its history dwells,
    As owretone to a peal o’ bells.

    And in this heicher stratosphere
    As bairn at giant at thee I peer....

    _O Jean, in whom my spirit sees,
    Clearer than through whisky or disease,
    Its dernin’ nature, wad the searchin’ licht
    Oor union raises poor’d owre me the nicht._

    _I’m faced wi’ aspects o’ mysel’
    At last wha’s portent nocht can tell,
    Save that sheer licht o’ life that when we’re joint
    Loups through me like a fire a’ else t’ aroint._

    _Clear my lourd flesh, and let me move
    In the peculiar licht o’ love,
    As aiblins in Eternity men may
    When their swack souls nae mair are clogged wi’ clay._

    _Be thou the licht in which I stand
    Entire, in thistle-shape, as planned,
    And no’ hauf-hidden and hauf-seen as here
    In munelicht, whisky, and in fleshly fear,_

    _In fear to look owre closely at
    The grisly form in which I’m caught,
    In sic a reelin’ and imperfect licht
    Sprung frae incongruous elements the nicht!_

    _But wer’t by thou they were shone on,
    Then wad I ha’e nae dreid to con
    The ugsome problems shapin’ in my soul,
    Or gin I hed—certes, nae fear you’d thole!_

    _Be in this fibre like an eye,
    And ilka turn and twist descry,
    Hoo here a leaf, a spine, a rose—or as
    The purpose o’ the poo’er that brings ’t to pass._

    _Syne liberate me frae this tree,
    As wha had there imprisoned me,
    The end achieved—or show me at the least
    Mair meanin’ in’t, and hope o’ bein’ released._

    I tae ha’e heard Eternity drip water
    (Aye water, water!), drap by drap
    On the a’e nerve, like lichtnin’, I’ve become,
    And heard God passin’ wi’ a bobby’s feet
    Ootby in the lang coffin o’ the street
    —Seen stang by chitterin’ knottit stang loup oot
    Uncrushed by th’ echoes o’ the thunderin’ boot,
    Till a’ the dizzy lint-white lines o’ torture made
    A monstrous thistle in the space aboot me,
    A symbol o’ the puzzle o’ man’s soul
    —And in my agony been pridefu’ I could still
    Tine nae least quiver or twist, watch ilka point
    Like a white-het bodkin ripe my inmaist hert,
    And aye wi’ clearer pain that brocht nae anodyne,
    But rose for ever to a fer crescendo
    Like eagles that ootsoar wi’ skinklan’ wings
    The thieveless sun they blin’
              —And pridefu’ still
    That ’yont the sherp wings o’ the eagles fleein’
    Aboot the dowless pole o’ Space,
    Like leafs aboot a thistle-shank, my bluid
    Could still thraw roses up
              —And up!

    O rootless thistle through the warld that’s pairt o’ you,
    Gin you’d withstand the agonies still to come,
    You maun send roots doon to the deeps unkent,
    Fer deeper than it’s possible for ocht to gang,
    Savin’ the human soul,
    Deeper than God himsel’ has knowledge o’,
    Whaur lichtnin’s canna probe that cleave the warld,
    Whaur only in the entire dark there’s founts o’ strength
    Eternity’s poisoned draps can never file,
    And muckle roots thicken, deef to bobbies’ feet.

    A mony-brainchin’ candelabra fills
    The lift and’s lowin’ wi’ the stars;
    The Octopus Creation is is wallopin’
    In coontless faddoms o’ a nameless sea.
    I am the candelabra, and burn
    My endless candles to an Unkent God.
    I am the mind and meanin’ o’ the octopus
    That thraws its empty airms through a’ th’ Inane.

    And a’ the bizzin’ suns ha’e bigged
    Their kaims upon the surface o’ the sea.
    My lips may feast for ever, but my guts
    Ken naething o’ the Food o’ Gods.

    “Let there be Licht,” said God, and there was
    A little: but He lacked the poo’er
    To licht up mair than pairt o’ space at aince,
    And there is lots o’ darkness that’s the same
    As gin He’d never spoken
              —Mair darkness than there’s licht,
    And dwarfin’t to a candle-flame,
    A spalin’ candle that’ll sune gang oot.
    —Darkness comes closer to us than the licht,
    And is oor natural element. We peer oot frae’t
    Like cat’s een bleezin’ in a goustrous nicht
    (Whaur there is nocht to find but stars
    That look like ither cats’ een),
    Like cat’s een, and there is nocht to find
    Savin’ we turn them in upon oorsels;
    Cats canna.
              Darkness is wi’ us a’ the time, and Licht
    But veesits pairt o’ us, the wee-est pairt
    Frae time to time on a short day atween twa nichts.
    Nae licht is thrawn on _them_ by ony licht.
    Licht thraws nae licht upon itsel’;
    But in the darkness them wha’s een
    Nae fleetin’ lichts ha’e dazzled and deceived
    Find qualities o’ licht, keener than ony licht,
    Keen and abidin’;
    That show the nicht unto itsel’,
    And syne the licht,
    That queer extension o’ the dark,
    That seems a separate and a different thing,
    And, seemin’ sae, has lang confused the dark,
    And set it at cross-purposes wi’ itsel’.

              O little Life
    In which Daith guises and deceives itsel’,
    Joy that mak’s Grief a Janus,
    Hope that is Despair’s fause-face,
    And Guid and Ill that are the same,
    Save as the chance licht fa’s!

    And yet the licht is there,
    Whether frae within or frae withoot.
    The conscious Dark can use it, dazzled nor deceived.
    The licht is there, and th’ instinct for it,
    Pairt o’ the Dark and o’ the need to guise,
    To deceive and be deceived,
    But let us then be undeceived
    When we deceive,
    When we deceive oorsels.
    Let us enjoy deceit, this instinct in us.
    Licht cheenges naething,
    And gin there is a God wha made the licht
    We are adapted to receive,
    _He_ cheenged naething,
    And hesna kythed Hissel!
    Save in this licht that fa’s whaur the Auld Nicht was,
    Showin’ naething that the Darkness didna hide,
    And gin it shows a pairt o’ that
    Confoondin’ mair than it confides
    Ev’n in that.

    The epileptic thistle twitches
    (A trick o’ wund or mune or een—or whisky).
    A brain laid bare,
    A nervous system,
    The skeleton wi’ which men labour
    And bring to life in Daith
    —I, risen frae the deid, ha’e seen
    My deid man’s eunuch offspring.
    —The licht frae bare banes whitening evermair,
    Frae twitchin’ nerves thrawn aff,
    Frae nakit thocht,
    Works in the Darkness like a fell disease,
    A hungry acid and a cancer,
    Disease o’ Daith-in-Life and Life-in-Daith.

    O for a root in some untroubled soil,
    Some cauld soil ’yont this fevered warld,
    That ’ud draw darkness frae a virgin source,
    And send it slow and easefu’ through my veins,
    Release the tension o’ my grisly leafs,
    Withdraw my endless spikes,
    Move coonter to the force in me that hauds
    Me raxed and rigid and ridiculous
              —And let my roses drap
    Like punctured ba’s that at a Fair
    Fa’ frae the loupin’ jet!
              —Water again!...

    Omsk and the Calton turn again to dust,
    The suns and stars fizz out with little fuss,
    The bobby booms away and seems to bust,
    And leaves the world to darkness and to us.

    The circles of our hungry thought
    Swing savagely from pole to pole.
    Death and the Raven drift above
    The graves of Sweeney’s body and soul.

    My name is Norval. On the Grampian Hills
    It is forgotten, and deserves to be.
    So are the Grampian Hills and all the people
    Who ever heard of either them or me.

    What’s in a name? From pole to pole
    Our interlinked mentality spins.
    I know that you are Deosil, and suppose
    That therefore I am Widdershins.

    Do you reverse? Shall us? Then let’s.
    Cyclone and Anti?—how absurd!
    She should know better at her age.
    Auntie’s an ass, upon my word.

    This is the sort of thing they teach
    The Scottish children in the school.
    Poetry, patriotism, manners—
    No wonder I am such a fool....

    Hoo can I graipple wi’ the thistle syne,
    Be intricate as it and up to a’ its moves?
    A’ airts its sheenin’ points are loupin’ ’yont me,
    Quhile still the firmament it proves.

    And syne it’s like a wab in which the warld
    Squats like a spider, quhile the mune and me
    Are taigled in an endless corner o’t
    Tyauvin’ fecklessly....

    _The wan leafs shak’ atour us like the snaw.
    Here is the cavaburd in which Earth’s tint.
    There’s naebody but Oblivion and us,
    Puir gangrel buddies, waunderin’ hameless in’t._

    _The stars are larochs o’ auld cottages,
    And a’ Time’s glen is fu’ o’ blinnin’ stew.
    Nae freen’ly lozen skimmers: and the wund
    Rises and separates even me and you._[15]

    _I ken nae Russian and you ken nae Scots.
    We canna tell oor voices frae the wund.
    The snaw is seekin’ everywhere: oor herts
    At last like roofless ingles it has f’und,_

    _And gethers there in drift on endless drift,
    Oor broken herts that it can never fill;
    And still—its leafs like snaw, its growth like wund.—
    The thistle rises and forever will!..._

    The thistle rises and forever will,
    Getherin’ the generations under’t.
    This is the monument o’ a’ they were,
    And a’ they hoped and wondered.

    The barren tree, dry leafs, and cracklin’ thorns,
    This is the mind o’ a’ humanity,
    —The empty intellect that left to grow
    ’ll let nocht ither be.

    Lo! It has choked the sunlicht’s gowden grain,
    And strangled syne the white hairst o’ the mune.
    Thocht that mak’s a’ the food o’ nocht but Thocht
    Is reishlin’ grey abune....

    _O fitly frae oor cancerous soil
    May this heraldic horror rise!
    The Presbyterian thistle flourishes,
    And its ain roses crucifies...._

    No’ Edinburgh Castle or the fields
    O’ Bannockburn or Flodden
    Are dernin’ wi’ the miskent soul
    Scotland sae lang has hod’n.

    It hands nae pew in ony kirk,
    The soul Christ cam’ to save;
    Nae R.S.A.’s ha’e pentit it,
    F.S.A.’s fund its grave.

    Is it alive or deid? I show
    My hert—wha will can see.
    The secret clyre in Scotland’s life
    Has brust and reams through me,

    A whummlin’ sea in which is heard
    The clunk o’ nameless banes;
    A grisly thistle dirlin’ shrill
    Abune the broken stanes.

    Westminster Abbey nor the Fleet,
    Nor England’s Constitution, but
    In a’ the michty city there,
    You mind a’e fleggit slut,

    As Tolstoi o’ Lucerne alane
    Minded a’e beggar minstrel seen!
    The woundit side draws a’ the warld.
    Barbarians ha’e lizards’ een.

    Glesca’s a gless whaur Magdalene’s
    Discovered in a million crimes.
    Christ comes again—wheesht, whatna bairn
    In backlands cries betimes?

    Hard faces prate o’ their success,
    And pickle-makers awn the hills.
    There is nae life in a’ the land
    But this infernal Thistle kills....

      Nae mair I see
      As aince I saw
      Mysel’ in the thistle
      Harth and haw!

    Nel suo profondo vidi che s’interna
    Legato con amore in un volume
    (Or else by Hate, fu’ aft the better Love)
    Ciò che per l’universo si squaderna.

    Sustanzia ed accidenti, e lor costume.
    Quasi conflati insieme fer tal modo.
    (The michty thistle in wha’s boonds I rove)
    Ché ciò ch’io dico è un semplice lume.[16]

      And kent and was creation
      In a’ its coontless forms,
      Or glitterin’ in raw sunlicht,
      Or dark wi’ hurrying storms.

      But what’s the voice
      That sings in me noo?
      —A’e hauf o’ me tellin’
      The tither it’s fou!

      It’s the voice o’ the Sooth
      That’s held owre lang
      My Viking North
      Wi’ its siren sang....

    _Fier comme un Ecossais._

    If a’ that I can be’s nae mair
    Than what mankind’s been yet, I’ll no’
    Begink the instincts thistlewise
    That dern—and canna show.

    Damned threids and thrums and skinny shapes
    O’ a’ that micht, and su’d, ha’ been
    —Life onyhow at ony price!—
    In sic I’ll no’ be seen!

    _Fier comme un Ecossais._

    The wee reliefs we ha’e in booze,
    Or wun at times in carnal states,
    May hide frae us but canna cheenge
    The silly horrors o’ oor fates.

    _Fier—comme un Ecossais!_

    There’s muckle in the root
    That never can wun oot,
    Or’t owre what is ’ud sweep
    Like a thunderstorm owre sheep.

    But shadows whiles upcreep,
    And heavy tremors leap ...
    C’wa’, Daith, again, sned Life’s vain shoot,
    And your ain coonsel keep!...

    Time like a bien wife,
    Truth like a dog’s gane—
    The bien wife’s gane to the aumrie
    To get the puir dog a bane.

    Opens the aumrie door,
    And lo! the skeleton’s there,
    And the gude dog, Truth, has gotten
    Banes for evermair....

    _Maun I tae perish in the keel o’ Heaven,
    And is this fratt upon the air the ply
    O’ cross-brath’d cordage that in gloffs and gowls
    Brak’s up the vision o’ the warld’s bricht gy?_

    _Ship’s tackle and an eemis cairn o’ fraucht
    Darker than clamourin’ veins are roond me yet,
    A plait o’ shadows thicker than the flesh,
    A fank o’ tows that binds me hand and fit._

    _What gin the gorded fullyery on hie
    And a’ the fanerels o’ the michty ship
    Gi’e back mair licht than fa’s upon them ev’n
    Gin sic black ingangs haud us in their grip?_

    Grugous thistle, to my een
    Your widdifow ramel evince,
    Sibness to snakes wha’s coils
    Rin coonter airts at yince,
    And fain I’d follow each
    Gin you the trick’ll teach.

    Blin’ root to bleezin’ rose,
    Through a’ the whirligig
    O’ shanks and leafs and jags
    What sends ye sic a rig?
    Bramble yokin’ earth and heaven,
    Till they’re baith stramulyert driven!

    Roses to lure the lift
    And roots to wile the clay
    And wuppit brainches syne
    To claught them ’midyards tae
    Till you’ve the precious pair
    Like hang’d men dancin’ there,

    Wi’ mony a seely prickle
    You’ll fleg a sunburst oot,
    Or kittle earthquakes up
    Wi’ an amusin’ root,
    While, kilted in your tippet,
    They still can mak’ their rippit....

    And let me pit in guid set terms
    My quarrel wi’ th’owre sonsy rose,
    That roond aboot its devotees
    A fair fat cast o’ aureole throws
    That blinds them, in its mirlygoes,
    To the necessity o’ foes.

    Upon their King and System I
    Glower as on things that whiles in pairt
    I may admire (at least for them),
    But wi’ nae claim upon my hert,
    While a’ their pleasure and their pride
    Ootside me lies—and there maun bide.

    Ootside me lies—and mair than that,
    For I stand still for forces which
    Were subjugated to mak’ way
    For England’s poo’er, and to enrich
    The kinds o’ English, and o’ Scots,
    The least congenial to my thoughts.

    Hauf his soul a Scot maun use
    Indulgin’ in illusions,
    And hauf in gettin’ rid o’ them
    And comin’ to conclusions
    Wi’ the demoralisin’ dearth
    O’ onything worth while on Earth....

    I’m weary o’ the rose as o’ my brain,
    And for a deeper knowledge I am fain
    Than frae this noddin’ object I can gain.

    Beauty is a’e thing, but it tines anither
    (For, fegs, they never can be f’und thegither),
    And ’twixt the twa it’s no’ for me to swither.

    As frae the grun’ sae thocht frae men springs oot,
    A ferlie that tells little o’ its source, I doot,
    And has nae vera fundamental root.

    And cauld agen my hert are laid
    The words o’ Plato when he said,
    “God o’ geometry is made.”

    Frae my ain mind I fa’ away,
    That never yet was feared to say
    What turned the souls o’ men to clay,

    Nor cared gin truth frae me ootsprung
    In ne’er a leed o’ ony tongue
    That ever in a heid was hung.

    I ken hoo much oor life is fated
    Aince its first cell is animated,
    The fount frae which the flesh is jetted.

    I ken hoo lourd the body lies
    Upon the spirit when it flies
    And fain abune its stars ’ud rise.

    And see I noo a great wheel move,
    And a’ the notions that I love
    Drap into stented groove and groove?

    It maitters not my mind the day,
    Nocht maitters that I strive to dae,
    —For the wheel moves on in its ain way.

    I sall be moved as it decides
    To look at Life frae ither sides;
    Rejoice, rebel, its turn abides.

    And as I see the great wheel spin
    There flees a licht frae’t lang and thin
    That Earth is like a snaw-ba’ in.

    (To the uncanny thocht I clutch
    —The nature o’ man’s soul is such
    That it can ne’er wi’ life tine touch.

    Man’s mind is in God’s image made,
    And in its wildest dreams arrayed
    In pairt o’ Truth is still displayed.

    Then suddenly I see as weel
    As me spun roon’ within the wheel,
    The helpless forms o’ God and Deil.

    And on a birlin’ edge I see
    Wee Scotland squattin’ like a flea,
    And dizzy wi’ the speed, and me!)

    I’ve often thrawn the warld frae me,
    Into the Pool o’ Space, to see
    The Circles o’ Infinity.

    Or like a flat stane gar’d it skite,
    A Morse code message writ in licht
    That yet I couldna read aricht

    The skippin’ sparks, the ripples, rit
    Like skritches o’ a grain o’ grit
    ’Neth Juggernaut in which I sit.

    Twenty-six thoosand years it tak’s
    Afore a’e single roond it mak’s,
    And syne it melts as it were wax.

    The Phœnix guise ’tll rise in syne
    Is mair than Euclid or Einstein
    Can dream o’ or’s in dreams o’ mine.

    Upon the huge circumference are
    As neebor points the Heavenly War
    That dung doun Lucifer sae far,

    And that upheaval in which I
    Sodgered ’neth the Grecian sky
    And in Italy and Marseilles,

    And there isna room for men
    Wha the haill o’ history ken
    To pit a pin twixt then and then.

    Whaur are Bannockburn and Flodden?
    —O’ a’e grain like facets hod’n,
    Little wars (twixt that which God in

    Focht and won, and that which He
    Took baith sides in hopelessly),
    Less than God or I can see.

    By whatna cry o’ mine oottopped
    Sall be a’ men ha’e sung and hoped
    When to a’e note they’re telescoped?

    And Jesus and a nameless ape
    Collide and share the selfsame shape
    That nocht terrestrial can escape?

    But less than this nae man need try.
    He’d better be content to eye
    The wheel in silence whirlin’ by.

    Nae verse is worth a ha’et until
    It can join issue wi’ the Will
    That raised the Wheel and spins it still,

    But a’ the music that mankind
    ’S made yet is to the Earth confined,
    Poo’erless to reach the general mind,

    Poo’erless to reach the neist star e’en,
    That as a pairt o’ts sel’ is seen,
    And only men can tell between.

    Yet I exult oor sang has yet
    To grow wings that’ll cairry it
    Ayont its native speck o’ grit,

    And I exult to find in me
    The thocht that this can ever be,
    A hope still for humanity.

    For gin the sun and mune at last
    Are as a neebor’s lintel passed,
    The wheel’ll tine its stature fast,

    And birl in time inside oor heids
    Till we can thraw oot conscious gleids
    That draw an answer to oor needs,

    Or if nae answer still we find
    Brichten till a’ thing is defined
    In the huge licht-beams o’ oor kind,

    And if we still can find nae trace
    Ahint the Wheel o’ ony Face,
    There’ll be a glory in the place,

    And we may aiblins swing content
    Upon the wheel in which we’re pent
    In adequate enlightenment.

    Nae ither thocht can mitigate
    The horror o’ the endless Fate
    A’thing ’s whirled in predestinate.

    O whiles I’d fain be blin’ to it,
    As men wha through the ages sit,
    And never move frae aff the bit,

    Wha hear a Burns or Shakespeare sing,
    Yet still their ain bit jingles string,
    As they were worth the fashioning.

    Whatever Scotland is to me,
    Be it aye pairt o’ a’ men see
    O’ Earth and o’ Eternity

    Wha winna hide their heids in’t till
    It seems the haill o’ Space to fill,
    As t’were an unsurmounted hill.

    He canna Scotland see wha yet
    Canna see the Infinite,
    And Scotland in true scale to it.

    Nor blame I muckle, wham atour
    Earth’s countries blaw, a pickle stour,
    To sort wha’s grains they ha’e nae poo’er.

    E’en stars are seen thegither in
    A’e skime o’ licht as grey as tin
    Flyin’ on the wheel as t’were a pin.

    Syne ither systems ray on ray
    Skinkle past in quick array
    While it is still the self-same day,

    A’e day o’ a’ the million days
    Through which the soul o’ man can gaze
    Upon the wheel’s incessant blaze,

    Upon the wheel’s incessant blaze
    As it were on a single place
    That twinklin’ filled the howe o’ space.

    A’e point is a’ that it can be,
    I wis nae man ’ll ever see
    The rest o’ the rotundity.

    Impersonality sall blaw
    Through me as ’twere a bluffert o’ snaw
    To scour me o’ my sense o’ awe,

    A bluffert o’ snaw, the licht that flees
    Within the Wheel, and Freedom gi’es
    Frae Dust and Daith and a’ Disease,

    —The drumlie doom that only weighs
    On them wha ha’ena seen their place
    Yet in creation’s lichtnin’ race,

    In the movement that includes
    As a tide’s resistless floods
    A’ their movements and their moods,—

    Until disinterested we,
    O’ a’ oor auld delusions free,
    Lowe in the wheel’s serenity

    As conscious items in the licht,
    And keen to keep it clear and bricht
    In which the haill machine is dight,

    The licht nae man has ever seen
    Till he has felt that he’s been gi’en
    The stars themsels insteed o’ een,

    And often wi’ the sun has glowered
    At the white mune until it cowered,
    As when by new thocht auld’s o’erpowered.

    Oor universe is like an e’e
    Turned in, man’s benmaist hert to see,
    And swamped in subjectivity.

    But whether it can use its sicht
    To bring what lies withoot to licht
    To answer’s still ayont my micht.

    But when that inturned look has brocht
    To licht what still in vain it’s socht
    Ootward maun be the bent o’ thocht.

    And organs may develop syne
    Responsive to the need divine
    O’ single-minded humankin’.

    The function, as it seems to me,
    O’ Poetry is to bring to be
    At lang, lang last that unity....

    But wae’s me on the weary wheel!
    Higgledy-piggledy in’t we reel,
    And little it cares hoo we may feel.

    Twenty-six thoosand years ’tll tak’
    For it to threid the Zodiac
    —A single roond o’ the wheel to mak’!

    Lately it turned—I saw mysel’
    In sic a company doomed to mell.
    I micht ha’e been in Dante’s Hell.

    It shows hoo little the best o’ men
    E’en o’ themsels at times can ken,
    —I sune saw _that_ when I gaed ben.

    The lesser wheel within the big
    That moves as merry as a grig,
    Wi’ mankind in its whirligig

    And hasna turned a’e circle yet
    Tho’ as it turns we slide in it,
    And needs maun tak’ the place we get,

    I felt it turn, and syne I saw
    John Knox and Clavers in my raw,
    And Mary Queen o’ Scots ana’,

    And Rabbie Burns and Weelum Wallace,
    And Carlyle lookin’ unco gallus,
    And Harry Lauder (to enthrall us).

    And as I looked I saw them a’,
    A’ the Scots baith big and sma’,
    That e’er the braith o’ life did draw.

    “Mercy o’ Gode, I canna thole
    Wi’ sic an orra mob to roll.”
    —“_Wheesht! It’s for the guid o’ your soul._”

    “_But what’s the meanin’, what’s the sense?_”
    —“_Men shift but by experience.
    ’Twixt Scots there is nae difference._

    _They canna learn, sae canna move,
    But stick for aye to their auld groove
    —The only race in History who’ve_

    _Bidden in the same category
    Frae stert to present o’ their story,
    And deem their ignorance their glory._

    _The mair they differ, mair the same.
    The wheel can whummle a’ but them,
    —They ca’ their obstinacy ‘Hame,’_

    _And ‘Puir Auld Scotland’ bleat wi’ pride,
    And wi’ their minds made up to bide
    A thorn in a’ the wide world’s side._

    _There ha’e been Scots wha ha’e ha’en thochts,
    They’re strewn through maist o’ the various lots
    —Sic traitors are nae langer Scots!_”

    “But in this huge ineducable
    Heterogeneous hotch and rabble,
    Why am _I_ condemned to squabble?”

    “_A Scottish poet maun assume
    The burden o’ his people’s doom,
    And dee to brak’ their livin’ tomb._

    _Mony ha’e tried, but a’ ha’e failed.
    Their sacrifice has nocht availed.
    Upon the thistle they’re impaled._

    _You maun choose but gin ye’d see
    Anither category ye
    Maun tine your nationality._”

    And I look at a’ the random
    Band the wheel leaves whaur it fand ’em.
                              “Auch, to Hell,
    I’ll tak’ it to avizandum.” ...

    O wae’s me on the weary wheel,
    And fain I’d understand them!

    And blessin’ on the weary wheel
    Whaurever it may land them!...

    But aince Jean kens what I’ve been through
    The nicht, I dinna doot it,
    She’ll ope her airms in welcome true,
    And clack nae mair aboot it....

           *       *       *       *       *

    The stars like thistle’s roses floo’er
    The sterile growth o’ Space ootour,
    That clad in bitter blasts spreids oot
    Frae me, the sustenance o’ its root.

    O fain I’d keep my hert entire,
    Fain hain the licht o’ my desire,
    But ech! the shinin’ streams ascend,
    And leave me empty at the end.

    For aince it’s toomed my hert and brain,
    The thistle needs maun fa’ again.
    —But a’ its growth ’ll never fill
    The hole it’s turned my life intill!...

    Yet ha’e I Silence left, the croon o’ a’.

    No’ her, wha on the hills langsyne I saw
    Liftin’ a foreheid o’ perpetual snaw.

    No’ her, wha in the how-dumb-deid o’ nicht
    Kyths, like Eternity in Time’s despite.

    No’ her, withooten shape, wha’s name is Daith,
    No’ Him, unkennable abies to faith

    —God whom, gin e’er He saw a man, ’ud be
    E’en mair dumfooner’d at the sicht than he.

    —But Him, whom nocht in man or Deity,
    Or Daith or Dreid or Laneliness can touch,
    _Wha’s deed owre often and has seen owre much_.

    O I ha’e Silence left,

                          —“And weel ye micht,”
    Sae Jean’ll say, “efter sic a nicht!”


THE END.




FOOTNOTES


[1] From the Russian of Alexander Blok.

[2] Freely adapted from the Russian of Alexander Blok.

[3] From the Belgian poet, George Ramaekers.

[4] Adapted from the Russian of Zinaida Hippius.

[5] Suggested by the German of Else Lasker-Schüler.

[6] Suggested by the French of Edmond Rocher.

[7] Tragical crack (Dostoevski’s term).

[8] The line which precedes these in Mallarmé’s poem is “Aimai-je un
rêve?” and Wilfrid Thorley translates the passage thus:—

                    “Loved I Love’s counterfeit?
    My doubts, begotten of the long night’s heat,
    Dislimn the woodland till my triumph shows
    As the flawed shadow of a frustrate rose.”

[9] _The General Strike (May 1926)._

[10] God-bearers.

[11] The All-Man or Pan-Human.

[12] Hermann Melville.

[13] Dostoevski.

[14] Quoted from Robert Buchanan.

[15] Dostoevski.

[16] Wicksteed’s translation of Dante’s Italian (Paradiso, canto xxxiii.
85-90) is as follows: “Within its depths I saw ingathered, bound by
love in one volume, the scattered leaves of all the universe; substance
and accidents and their relations, as though together fused, after such
fashion that what I tell of is one simple flame.”




GLOSSARY.


  _Abaw_—abash, appal.

  _Abies_—except.

  _Abordage_—the act of getting on board.

  _Aft’rins_—the remainder, off-scourings.

  _Agley_—off the right line, wrong.

  _Ahint_—behind.

  _Aiblins_—perhaps.

  _Aidle_—foul slop.

  _Aiker_—motion, or break, made in water by fish swimming rapidly.

  _Airgh_—lack, or what anything requires to bring it up to the level.

  _Airts_—directions.

  _Alist_—_to come alist_; to recover from faintness or decay.

  _Aroint_—clear away.

  _Arrears_—goes backward.

  _Atour_—out from.

  _Aucht-fit_—eight-foot.

  _Aumrie_—cupboard.

  _Awn_ (_to_)—to own.

  _Avizandum_—to defer decision.


  _Back-hauf_ (_to be worn to_)—practically worn out.

  _Backlands_—Glasgow slum tenements.

  _Baggit_—enceinte.

  _Bairn-time_—a woman’s breeding-time.

  _Barkin’ and fleein’_—on the verge of ruin.

  _Barley bree_—whisky.

  _Barrowsteel_ (_to tak’ my_)—to co-operate.

  _Ba’s_—balls.

  _Bauch_—sorry.

  _Bawaw_—an oblique look of contempt or scorn.

  _Beanswaup_—the hull of a bean, anything of no value.

  _Beddiness_—silly importunacy.

  _Beeks_—shows.

  _Belly-thraw_—colic.

  _Belth_—sudden swirl.

  _Ben_ (_to gang_)—to go in.

  _Benmaist_—inmost.

  _Biel_—shelter.

  _Bien_—complacent.

  _Blash_—sudden onset.

  _Blate_—bashful.

  _Blebs_—drops.

  _Blethers_—nonsense.

  _Blinnin’ stew_—storm through which impossible to see.

  _Blinterin’_—gleaming.

  _Blottie O_—a school game.

  _Bluffert_—squall.

  _Bobby_—policeman.

  “_Bood to_”—must.

  _Boss_ (_of body_)—front.

  _Bratts_—scum.

  _Braw_—handsome.

  _Breenge_—burst.

  _Brough_—ring (round moon).

  _Buddies_—folks.

  _Buff nor stye_—one thing or another.

  _Buik_—trunk (of body).

  _Bursten kirn_—difficult harvest.

  _Buss_—bush.


  _Cairn_—pile.

  _Camsteerie_—perverse, unmanageable.

  _Cappilow_ (_to_)—outdistance.

  _Carline_—old woman, witch.

  _Cavaburd_—dense snowstorm.

  _Chafts_—chops.

  _Cheatrie_—deceit, fraud.

  _Chitterin’_—trembling violently, shivering.

  _Chowed_—chewed.

  _Chowl_ (_to_)—twist, distort.

  _Chuns_—sprouts or germs.

  _Claft_—shrunken.

  _Claith_—cloth.

  _Claught_ (_to_)—to grab at.

  _Cleg_—gad-fly.

  _Cleiks_—the merest adumbration.

  _Clints_—cliffs.

  _Clyre_—tumour, gland.

  _Clytach_—balderdash.

  _Cod_—pillow.

  _Come-doon_—degradation.

  _Connached_—abused, spoiled.

  _Coom_—comb.

  _Coonter_—counter.

  _Corbaudie comes in_—that is the obstacle.

  _Cordage_—tackling of a ship.

  _Corneigh_—enough (_lit._ cœur ennuyé, internally disquieted).

  _Cottons_—cottar houses.

  _Coupin’_—overturning, emptying.

  _Courage-bag_—scrotum.

  _Couthie_—comfortable.

  _Coutribat_—struggle.

  _Cree_ (_legs wi’_)—not safe to meddle with.

  _Creel_—in a state of mental excitement or confusion or physical
        agony.

  _Crockats up_—on (one’s) dignity.

  _Cross-brath’d_—braided.

  _Cross-tap_—mizzen-mast.

  _Crottle_—crumble away.

  _Cuckold_—hoodwinked, diddled.

  _Cude_—barrel.

  _Cull_—testicle.

  _Cullage_—genitals.


  _Dander_—temper.

  _Datchie_—sly, secret.

  _Daunton_—overawe.

  _Deef_—deaf, unimpressionable.

  _Deemless_—countless.

  _Derf_—taciturn, cruel.

  _Dern_—hide.

  _Ding_—bang down.

  _Doited_—mad.

  _Donnert_—dazed, stupefied.

  _Dottlin’_—maundering.

  _Doup_—backside.

  _Dour_—intractable.

  _Dowf_—hollow, gloomy, inert.

  _Dowless_—imponderable.

  _Dowse_—quench.

  _Dozent_—stupid.

  _Drobs_—falls like hail.

  _Drookit_—soaked.

  _Drumlie_—troubled, discoloured.

  _Dumb-deid_—midnight.

  _Dwamin’_—overpowering.

  _Dwinin’_—dwindling.


  _Eel-ark_—breeding ground for eels.

  _Eemis_—ill-poised.

  _Een_—eyes.

  _Eident_—busy.

  _Eisenin’_—lustful.

  _Elbuck_—elbow.

  _Ettle_—aspire.


  _Faburdun_—faux bourdon.

  _Fair_—completely.

  _Fanerels_—accessories.

  _Fank o’ tows_—coil of ropes.

  _Fankles_—becomes clumsy.

  _Fantice_—whimsicality.

  _Farles_—filaments of ash.

  _Fash_—trouble.

  _Feck_—majority.

  _Fecklessly_—impotently.

  _Ferlies_—wonders.

  _Fey_—fated.

  _Fidge_—move.

  _Figuration_—harmony.

  _File_—defile.

  _Flauchter_—flutters.

  _Flaught_—abased.

  _Flech_—flea.

  _Fleg_—frighten.

  _Flet_—flit.

  _Forfochen_—completely tired out.

  _Forgether_—meet.

  _Fork-in-the-wa’_—means of diverting share of labour pains to husband.

  _Fou’_—drunk.

  _Foudrie_—lightning.

  _Fousome_—disgusting.

  _Fratt_—fretwork.

  _Fraucht_—cargo.

  _Freaths_—plumes of foam or froth.

  _Fremt_—friendless, isolated.

  _Foziest_—most stupid.

  _Fullyery_—(_lit._) foliage.


  _Gaadies_—bloomers, howlers, gaffes.

  _Gaff_—hook for fish.

  _Galliard_—rapid dance.

  _Gallus_—reckless.

  _Gammons_—feet.

  _Gangrel_—wanderer.

  _Ganien_—rodomontade.

  _Gantin’_—yawning.

  _Gantrees_—planks for putting barrel on.

  _Gausty_—ghastly, ascetic.

  _Gaw_ (_to have a_)—to have a catch upon.

  _Gealed_—congealed.

  _Geg_—trick, deception.

  _Gell_—_on the gell_, on the go.

  _Gemmell_—double harmony.

  _Get_—bastard.

  _Gey_—very.

  _Geylies_—very much.

  _Gill-ha’_—pub of all weathers, hostelry of life.

  _Gird_—hoop.

  _Glaur_—mud.

  _Gleg_—eager.

  _Gleids_—sparks.

  _Glisk_—gleam, glance.

  _Glit_—slime.

  _Gloffs_—darknesses appearing denser than other parts of atmosphere.

  _Glower_—gaze at.

  _Goam_—gaze stupidly at.

  _Gorded_—frosted.

  _Goustrous_—frightful.

  _Gowk-storm_—storm of short duration (sub-sense of foolish fuss).

  _Gowls_—hollows, opposite of gloffs.

  _Gree_ (_to bear off_)—carry off the palm.

  _Grieshuckle_—embers.

  _Grue_—revulsion.

  _Grugous_—ugly.

  _Gruntle_—pig’s nose.

  _Gurly_—savage.

  _Guts_—bowels.

  _Gy_—spectacle.


  _Haggis_—_unknown_.

  _Hain_—preserve.

  _Hair_ (_kaimed to lift_)—on the go.

  _Hairst_—harvest.

  _Happit_—covered.

  _Harns_—brains.

  _Harth_—lean.

  _Hauflins_—adolescent boys.

  _Haw_—hollow.

  _Heich-skeich_—irresponsible.

  _Hod’n_—hidden.

  _Howd_—shorn down.

  _Howe_—hollow.

  _How-dumb-deid_—midnight.

  _Howff_—public-house.

  _Hwll_—ululation.


  _Ilka_—every.

  _Ingangs_—intestines.

  _Ingles_—hearths.

  _Inklins_—intuitions.


  _Jag_—prick.

  _Jalouse_—guess.

  _Jaup_—splash.

  _Jizzen_—child-bed, _lit._ in the straw.

  _Jouk_—dodge.


  _Kaa_—drive.

  _Kaim_—comb.

  _Keethins_—circles betraying fish’s movements.

  _Kelter_—waggle.

  _Keltie_—bumper.

  _Kilted_ (_in a tippit_)—hung in a noose.

  _Kink_ (_to_)—bend or twist.

  _Kirk or mill_ (_to mak’ a_)—to do the best one can.

  _Kist_—chest, breast.

  _Kittle_ (_adj._)—ticklish.

  _Kittle_ (_to_)—tickle.

  _Knool_—pin or peg.

  _Kyths_—appears, shows.


  _Larochs_—foundations.

  _Lave_—rest.

  _Lear_—learning.

  _Leed_—strain.

  _Liddenin’_—going backwards and forwards.

  _Lift_—sky.

  _Little-bodies_—fairies.

  _Lochan_—little loch.

  _Loppert_—coagulated.

  _Lourd_—heavy, over-charged, cloudy.

  _Lowe_—flame.

  _Lowse_—free, loosen.

  _Lozen_—window.

  _Lugs_—ears.


  _Maikless_—matchless.

  _Mapamound_—map of the world.

  _Marrow_ (_winsome_)—a creditable limb.

  _Mells_—mixes.

  _Mirlygoes_—dazzle.

  _Mocage_—banter, irony, contempt.

  _Mochiness_—closeness.

  _Moniplies_—intestines.

  _Moosewob_—spider’s web.

  _Muckle_—big.

  _Muckle Toon_ (_p. 17_)—Langholm in Dumfriesshire.

  _Mum_—silent.

  _Munkie_—rope with noose at end.

  _Munks_—swings away.

  _Mutchkin_—liquor measure, half-bottle.


  _Nae mowse_—perilous.

  _Natheless_—nevertheless.

  _Natter_—rant.

  _Neist_—next.

  _Nesh_—full of awareness.

  _Nocht_—nothing.


  _Oorie_—weird.

  _Ootby_—outside.

  _Ootcuissen_—outcast.

  _Ootrie_—_outré_.

  _Orra_—not up to much.


  _Peepy-show_—cinema.

  _Peerie_—spinning-top.

  _Penny wheep_—small ale.

  _Pickle_—small quantity.

  _Pirn_—reel.

  _Plumm_—deep pool.

  _Pokiness_—congestion.

  _Prick-sang_—compositions.


  _Quean_—lass, woman.

  _Quenry_—reminiscences of dealings with women.


  _Raff_ (_of rain_)—a few streaks of rain.

  _Ragments_—odds and ends.

  _Ramel_—branches.

  _Ratt-rime_—incantations for killing rats.

  _Rax_—strain.

  _Recoll_—reminiscences.

  _Reishlin’_—rustling.

  _Reistit_—dried.

  _Ripe_—search.

  _Rippit_—rumpus.

  _Ripples_—diarrhœa.

  _Rit_—scrape.

  _Rived_—torn.

  _Rooky_—misty.

  _Root-hewn_—awkward.

  _Rouk_—smoke, mist.

  _Row’d_—rolled, wrapped up.

  _Rowin’_—rolling.

  _Rumple-fyke_—itch in anus.

  _Runkled_—wrinkled.


  _Samyn_—deck of ship.

  _Sclatrie_—obscenities.

  _Scount_—small example.

  _Scouth_—scope.

  _Scunner_ (_to_)—disgust.

  _Scunnersome_—repulsive.

  _Seilfu’_—blissful.

  _Sentrices_—scaffolding.

  _Ser’_—serve.

  _Shasloch_—loose straw, litter.

  _Sheckle_—wrist.

  _Sibness_—relationship.

  _Siccar_ (_to mak’_)—to make certain.

  _Sinnen_—sinew.

  _Shoon_—shoes.

  _Skime_—gleam.

  _Skinklan’_—shining, twinkling.

  _Skirl-i’-the-pan_—fried oatmeal.

  _Slorp_—lap up, slobber over.

  _Slounge_—sharp fall.

  _Sonsy_—contented.

  _Spalin’_—burning away.

  _Spiel_—climb.

  _Spier_—ask.

  _Splairgin’_—spluttering.

  _Stang_—paroxysm.

  _Sta’-tree_—pole for tethering cattle to.

  _Steekin’_—shutting.

  _Stegh_—glut.

  _Stented_—appointed.

  _Stertle-a-stobie_—exhalations.

  _Stour_—dust.

  _Stramash_—rumpus.

  _Stramulyert_—panic-stricken.

  _Strawns_—strings or chains.

  _Swack_—active, supple.

  _Swaw_—ripple.

  _Swippert_—lively.

  _Swith wi’ virr_—vehement.

  _Swither_—hesitate.

  _Syne_—thereafter.


  _Taigled_—entangled.

  _Tapsalteerie_—topsy-turvy.

  _Thieveless_—impotent.

  _Thorter-ills_—paralytic seizures.

  _Thow_—thaw.

  _Thowless_—impotent.

  _Thrang_—busy.

  _Thring_—shrug.

  _Toom (to)_—empty.

  _Toories_—pom-poms.

  _Twaesome_—the two of them.

  _Tyauve_ (_to_)—struggle.


  _Ugsome_—ugly, horrid.

  _Ullage_—deficiency in contents of barrel.

  _Unco_—very.

  _Unkennable_—unknowledgable.


  _Vennel_—lane, narrow street.

  _Vieve_—vivid.


  _Wab_—web.

  _Wae_—woeful.

  _Waesome_—woeful.

  _Waesucks_—alas.

  _Wanchancy_—unfortunate.

  _Waun’ert_—confused.

  _Waur_—worse.

  _Weird_—fate.

  _Weirdless_—worthless.

  _Wheengin’_—complaining.

  _Wheesht_—hush.

  _Whummle_—overturn.

  _Widdifow_—perverse.

  _Windlestrae_—straw.

  _Wizened_—shrunk.

  _Worm-i’-the-cheek_—toothache.

  _Wuppit_—winding, wound round.


  _Yabblin’_—gabbling.

  _Yank_—throw.

  _Ygdrasil_—(Celtic) Tree of Life.

                      _Printed in Great Britain by_
                      WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS LTD.