DON PATERSON
Address To The Unco Guid, Or The Rigidly Righteous by Robert Burns
If I had to choose just one Burns poem it would be Address To The Unco Guid.
And if you have to choose one Burns poem, that poem will always say as much about you as him – for the simple reason that Burns was at least 20 different people, and you’ve probably just chosen the Burns you most identify with.
But this poem is Burns at his most self-aware: not a high bar, perhaps, but so laser-sharp is his insight here, I think it can teach us all a little about ourselves too.
At one level, it’s just a retrospective defence of Burns’s almost comic inability to – how shall we put this? – keep his feelings under control.
But Burns isn’t the first poet to find his fieriest eloquence in self-justification.
The poem soon transcends its dodgy occasion, and argues that we all act, in the end, only according to an internal moral law that is ours alone.
It’s very easy to behave yourself if you suffer no temptation to sin (and, as Burns adds scurrilously, if you offer no temptation to anyone else either).
The poem integrates those 20 Rabbies by being them all at once – there’s comedy here, sermon, lyric, bawdry, metaphysics – and Burns uses his full range, which moves from Ayrshire Scots to high Augustan English so smoothly you barely notice the gradient.
If you need to tell someone off for judging someone else too hastily (especially if it’s you), quote the last verse.
My Son, these maxims make a rule, An’ lump them aye thegither; The Rigid Righteous is a fool, The Rigid Wise anither:
The cleanest corn that ere was dight May hae some pyles o’ caff in; So ne’er a fellow-creature slight For random fits o’ daffin. Solomon (Eccles. ch. vii. verse 16)
O ye wha are sae guid yoursel’, Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell Your neibours’ fauts and folly! Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill, Supplied wi’ store o’ water;
The heaped happer’s ebbing still, An’ still the clap plays clatter.
Hear me, ye venerable core,
As counsel for poor mortals
That frequent pass douce Wisdom’s door For glaikit Folly’s portals:
I, for their thoughtless, careless sakes, Would here propone defences Their donsie tricks, their black mistakes, Their failings and mischances.
Ye see your state wi’ theirs compared, And shudder at the niffer;
But cast a moment’s fair regard, What maks the mighty differ; Discount what scant occasion gave, That purity ye pride in;
And (what’s aft mair than a’ the lave), Your better art o’ hidin.
Think, when your castigated pulse Gies now and then a wallop! What ragings must his veins convulse, That still eternal gallop!
Wi’ wind and tide fair i’ your tail, Right on ye scud your sea-way;
But in the teeth o’ baith to sail,
It maks a unco lee-way.
See Social Life and Glee sit down, All joyous and unthinking,
Till, quite transmugrified, they’re grown Debauchery and Drinking:
O would they stay to calculate
Th’ eternal consequences;
Or your more dreaded hell to state, Damnation of expenses!
Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames, Tied up in godly laces,
Before ye gie poor Frailty names, Suppose a change o’ cases; A dear-lov’d lad, convenience snug, A treach’rous inclination –
But let me whisper i’ your lug, Ye’re aiblins nae temptation.
Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman;
Tho’ they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human:
One point must still be greatly dark, – The moving Why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark, How far perhaps they rue it.
Who made the heart, ’tis He alone Decidedly can try us;
He knows each chord, its various tone,
Each spring, its various bias: Then at the balance let’s be mute, We never can adjust it;
What’s done we partly may compute, But know not what’s resisted.
The Golden Treasury Of Scottish Verse is edited by Kathleen Jamie, Don Paterson and Peter Mackay (published by Canongate, £30)
All three editors will be in conversation about The Golden Treasury of Scottish Verse at Edinburgh International Book Festival on Wednesday, 5.30-6.30pm. Head to edbookfest.co.uk for details