[317-4] The gage was a cap or glove, or some other symbol to show that he had performed the deeds which Ellie had demanded of him.
[317-5] Guerdon means reward.
THE COTTER’S SATURDAY NIGHT
By Robert Burns
Note.—There are many homes we like to visit in imagination, even if we cannot really go into them. It does not matter so much if they are not the homes of people in our own country who live as we do. For instance, Robert Burns described so well for us once the simple little home of a poor Scotch farmer that we read his words again and again with pleasure. It is such a poor little place, low-walled, thatched-roofed, part stable, that it would be unpleasant to us if we did not see it full of the spirit that makes true homes everywhere. The hard-working old farmer, his faithful wife, their industrious children, the oldest girl Jenny and her lover, all seem to us like very real people, whose joys and griefs are ours as much as theirs. We should like to sit with them at their humble table, to join in the good old hymns, and finally to kneel among them while the gentle old man said the evening prayer. We would not notice their homely clothes, coarse hands and simple, unscholarly language, for their real manliness and womanliness would win our esteem and love.
On the pages that follow we have printed the poem as Burns wrote it, except for some few stanzas it has seemed best to omit. The first nine stanzas contain many Scottish words and expressions, but after the ninth stanza, Burns uses plain English. It was a habit he had of writing sometimes in Scotch dialect and sometimes in fine English. People who have studied his work say that when he speaks right from his heart and because he really cannot help writing, he uses the dialect, but when he tries to teach a lesson, to advise any one, or to moralize, he always uses the English phraseology.