Willie: It’s no good taking it so easy, Mr. Burns, thinking you’ll make me quiet by agreeing with me like that. I’ve started, and I’ll finish. It’s been growing in me. We work here for a scant of wages—that’s all fair enough—you can’t afford more. But we want to have a pride in the place, same as you ought to, and don’t. And you can laugh at my truth as you call it, but you feel it all the same. I’ve watched you, and I’ve seen the conscience in your face. You stand down in the fields there like a man moonstruck, when you ought to be keeping your eyes on us. Couldn’t you write your poems on Sabbath afternoons? And you take too much of the liquor. There’s the stuff in Town meadows rotting, we’ve missed the last two Dumfries markets, and there’s a good deal at M’Pherson’s going begging. Now I’ve said my say, and you can turn me off. But I couldn’t watch it with my mouth shut any longer.
[He goes out to the yard.]
Jean: Willie Campbell is forgetting himself.
Burns: No, Jean, he’s right. You know it, and I know it. It isn’t the farm only that’s spoiling.
Jean: I know, Robbie. Can’t you—I mean, it’s hard for you.
Burns: It’s hard for you, lass. I’ve got a head often enough damned well full of resolutions, but what’s the good of them—they scatter. The land’s mean and it’s beaten me. Or I’ve beaten myself. I can’t help the tunes running in my head, or getting a dry gullet. (He goes to the dresser and mixes a bowl of whisky punch.) But I’ve done with the cursed bit of acres. I’ve accepted the excise job at Dumfries.
Jean: Accepted it?
Burns: Aye—we’ll be more certain there. Seventy pounds a year. (Drinking.) We’re famous, Jean, and now we have preferment. The muse is honoured. We should give thanks.
Jean: And there were such fine promises too, from Edinburgh and the like.
Burns: Solicitation—well, there, I’ve had no stomach for it. I’ll not complain.