JOHANNESBURG, S.A.
TO MY WIFE
NOTE
Some of these verses appeared originally in "The Scots Observer," "The National Observer," "Black and White," "The Outlook," "The Spectator," "Chambers' Journal," and other papers; and a number of them were published in volume form in 1900 by Messrs. D. Wyllie and Son, Aberdeen. In the present collection many new poems appear for the first time.
CONTENTS
[Introduction]
[Hamewith]
[The Alien]
[The Whistle]
[Skeely Kirsty]
[The Antiquary]
[Jeames]
[The Miller]
[The Miller Explains]
[The Packman]
[The Lettergae]
[Margaret Dods]
[The Back o' Beyont is Dry]
[A Green Yule]
[Hame]
[Spring in the Howe o' Alford]
[The Hint o' Hairst]
[Winter]
[R. L. S.]
[Burns' Centenary]
[Fame]
[The Ae Reward]
["My Lord"]
[In the Gloamin']
[The Maid o' the Mill]
[The Witch o' the Golden Hair]
[Arles]
[Where Love was Nane]
[The Deil an' the Deevilock]
[A Backcast]
[The Lawin']
[The Gypsy]
["Bydand"]
[The Outlaw's Lass]
[Charon's Song]
[Virgil in Scots]
[Horace in Scots. Car. I, 11]
[Horace in Scots. Car. I, 38]
[Horace in Scots. Car. II, 10]
[Horace in Scots. Car. III, 9]
[Horace in Scots. Car. III, 15]
[Horace in Scots. Car. III, 26]
[Horace in Scots. Epod. II]
[The Remonstrance]
[The Reply]
[Scotland our Mither]
[Glossary]
INTRODUCTION
Whence arose the popular belief that some persons impart luck to the books of other persons? The answer, if it were not a question of books but of other projectiles, would be (in savage society) that one man has more maya or wakan or orenda than another; has more of a subtle, imponderable, potent, innermost, all-pervading something than another, and that he can communicate this gift, by luck or otherwise, to others. Thus in Rutuya a medicine man communicated his maya to Colonel Gudgeon, to Lieutenant Grant, and other gentlemen, who then walked barefoot but unsinged over a floor of red-hot stones. Obviously our civilized faith in prefaces by other hands than the author's (usually the better man), is part of the orenda or maya superstition or belief.
Were I conscious of possessing maya or luck, I would gladly impart it to all men, if all men were equally virtuous, like the teacher of the art of flying in "Rasselas," by Dr. Samuel Johnson. But I am so far from being conscious of possessing maya that I only wish, if there be indeed a quantity of this transcendental ether, that some one who had plenty of it would write introductions for my books, which stand greatly in need of a supernormal "send off." Still they are not in quite such evil case as they would be were I a poet, for many a man and most women most justly disesteem their own capacity for reading verses. Indeed that art is now almost lost, and it is strange to think that there are probably to-day more persons who write verse than who read it. Poetry, like Christmas cards, is bought, not to keep, but to give away at Christmas, on birthdays, and, by economical friends of the bride, at weddings. There is always plenty of poetry in small volumes, in flabby leather covers, among the array of wedding presents. This offering is a survival: the idea of love is still connected with the writings of Tennyson and Browning, though experience tells us that the poetry-reading days of the pair end at the altar.
The child of an earlier generation, I was capable of reading verses in my youth, and even now can do so, retaining at least that faculty of a dead world, just as the last Pict held the secret of "brewing the ale from the heather bell." Mr. Charles Murray's ale (which is excellent) is all brewed from the heather bell, is pure Scots; and he sings the songs of our national Zion on "a distant and a deadly shore," that of the Transvaal—though this is a mere figure of speech, the Transvaal, like Bohemia, possessing at present no sea-coast.