Robert Burns: How To Know Him

by William Allan Neilson

In mony a torrent down the snaw-broo rowes; melted snow rolls

While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate, flood

Sweeps dams, an' mills, an' brigs, a' to the gate; way (to the sea)

And from Glenbuck, down to the Ralton-key,

Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd, tumbling sea;

Then down ye'll hurl, deil nor ye never rise! devil if

And dash the gumlie jaup up to the pouring skies! muddy splashes

Any reader familiar with Gavin Douglas's description of a Scottish winter in his Prologue to the twelfth book of the Æneid will be struck by the resemblance to this passage both in subject and manner. It is doubtful whether Burns knew more of Douglas than the motto to [Tam o' Shanter], but from the days of the turbulent bishop in the early sixteenth century down to Burns's own time Scottish poetry had never lost touch with nature, and had rendered it with peculiar faithfulness. It is interesting to note that while The Brigs of Ayr is Burns's most successful attempt at the heroic couplet, and though it contains verses that must have encouraged his ambition to be a Scottish Pope, yet it is sprinkled with touches of natural observation quite remote from the manner of that master. Compare, on the one hand, such couplets as these:

Will your poor narrow foot-path of a street,

Where twa wheel-barrows tremble when they meet,—