BOOK TO READ

The Vicar of Wakefield (Everyman’s Library).

Chapter LXXII BURNS—­THE PLOWMAN POET

SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min’? 
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days o’ lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot,
Sin auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, etc.

We twa hae paidl’t i’ the burn,
Frae mornin’ sun til dine:*
But seas between us braid hae roar’d,
Sin auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, etc.

And here’s a hand, my trusty fiere,**
And gie’s a hand o’ thine;
And we’ll tak a right guid-willie waught,***
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, etc.

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,****
And surely I’ll be mine;
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Dinner. *Companion. ***Drink. ****Measure.

NO song, perhaps, is so familiar to English-speaking people as that with which this chapter begins.  In the back woods of Canada, in far Australia, on the wide South African veldt, wherever English-speaking people meet and gather, they join hands to sing that song.  To the merriest gathering it comes as a fitting close.  It is the hymn of home, of treasured friendships, and of old memories, just as “God save the King” is the hymn of loyalty, and yet it is written in Scots, which English tongues can hardly pronounce, and many words of which to English ears hardly carry a meaning.  But the plaintive melody and the pathetic force of the rhythm grip the heart.  There is no need to understand every word of this “glad kind greeting"* any more than there is need to understand what some great musician means by every note which his violin sings forth.

Carlyle.

The writer of that song was, like Caedmon long ago, a son of the soil, he, too, was a “heaven-taught ploughman."*

Henry Mackenzie.

While Goldsmith lay a-dying in London, in the breezy Scottish Lowlands a big rough lad of fifteen called Robert Burns was following his father’s plow by day, poring over Shakespeare, the Spectator, and Pope’s Homer, of nights, not knowing that in years to come he was to be remembered as our greatest song writer.  Robert was the son of a small farmer.  The Burns had been farmer folk for generations, but William Burns had fallen on evil days.  From his northern home he drifted to Ayrshire, and settled down in the village of Alloway as a gardener.  Here with his own hands he built himself a mud cottage.  It consisted only of a “room” and a kitchen, whitewashed within and without.  In the kitchen there was a fireplace, a bed, and a small cupboard, and little else beyond the table and chairs.