As saft as ony flesh is.
There's some are fou o' love divine,
There's some are fou o' brandy;
An' mony jobs that day begin,
May end in houghmagandie fornication
Some ither day.
[20] ] The rationalism of the New Lights.
It must be admitted that, as we pass from poem to poem, Scottish manners are becoming freer, Scottish drink is more potent, Scottish religion is no longer pure and undefiled. Yet the poet hardly seems to be at a disadvantage. He certainly is no less interesting; he impresses our imaginations and rouses our sympathetic understanding as keenly as ever; there is no abatement of our esthetic relish.
We have seen the Ayrshire peasant alone with his family, at social gatherings, and at church. We have to see him with his cronies and at the tavern. Scotch manners and Scotch religion we know now; it is the turn of Scotch drink. The spirit of that conviviality which was one of Burns's ruling passions, and which in his class helped to color the grayness of daily hardship, was rendered by him in verse again and again: never more triumphantly than in the greatest of his bacchanalian songs, [Willie Brew'd a Peck o' Maut]. Indeed it would be hard to find anywhere in our literature a more revealing utterance of those effects of alcohol that are not discussed in scientific literature—the joyous exhilaration, the conviction of (comparative) sobriety, the temporary intensification of the feeling of good fellowship. The challenge to the moon is unsurpassable in its unconscious humor. Yet Arnold thought the world of Scotch drink unbeautiful.