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Notes
William Scott Douglas' distinguished edition, Edinburgh, 1877-79, prints the passage in brackets and gives a rather full account of the history of the manuscript. W. E. Henley's and T. F. Henderson's Centenary Edition, Edinburgh, 1896-97 (hereafter cited as HH), prints the passage without brackets but in a lengthy bibliographical note presents the fullest account of the manuscripts and printings of the poem to be found. J. Logie Robertson, in his Oxford Edition, 1904, prints the passage without brackets and mentions, in an account of the poem, its first printing in "incomplete form" and its subsequent appearance with the questioned passage. To my knowledge, the only twentieth-century printing of the poem without the passage is C. A. Moore, ed., English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century (1935); and Professor Moore does not explain its omission. The one special study of the text of Burns' poems (George Marsh, "The Text of Burns," The Manly Anniversary Studies in Language and Literature [1923], pp. 219-228) does not deal with the posthumous poems.
Douglas, I, 181. Most of this information is verified by an independent witness, Richmond's nephew, Thomas Stewart, who obtained, as we shall see, the Merry-Andrew portion of the poem in 1802. He wrote on the margin of the single sheet containing the portion in question: "The scene of the Merry Andrew was presented to the publisher by Mr. Richmond [ ] Mauchline after the first Ed. of the Jolly Beggars was published. Mr. Richmond who was with the Bard in Poosie Nancy's on the night he saw some of the characters who are drawn in the admirable production, says that there were three [sic] scenes more which are now totally lost, viz a Sailor, a Sootyman and [ ]----T. Stewart." A photograph of this single-sheet section of the ms can be seen in Memorial Catalogue of the Burns Exhibition (Glasgow, 1898). The ms itself is in the Burns Museum, Alloway.
J[ames] G[ibson], The Bibliography of Robert Burns (1881), p. 272. Gibson evidently got his information from the preface to the facsimile printing of the poem by James Lumsden and Son (1823); see HH, II, 306. Woodburn is difficult to identify and probably was only a slight acquaintance of Burns. Burns mentions the M'Adam family three times: (1) he wrote, probably in 1786, a poetical epistle to M'Adam "in answer to an obliging letter he sent in the commencement of my poetical career," (HH, II, 87-88); (2) he referred to the marriage of M'Adam's daughter in a letter of 1787 (Ferguson, The Letters, I, 63); and (3) he praised M'Adam's son briefly in the "Second Heron Election Ballads" (HH, II, 196, 404). To Woodburn himself we find no allusion made by Burns. It is unlikely this is the Capt. Woodburn, born at Adamton Mill by Ayr, whom Mrs. Dunlop mentions in her letter to Burns of 9 Jan. 1787 (Robert Burns and Mrs Dunlop, William Wallace, ed., [1898], I, 8).
J. W. Egerer, Robert Burns, An Exhibition of Some Early Editions of his Work (Dartmouth College Library, 1946), pp. 15-16; HH, II, 284.
Douglas, I, 181; Fac-Simile of Burns' Celebrated Poem Entitled The Jolly Beggars (1838), p. 7. I have personally inspected the Richmond-Stewart ms in the Burns Museum at Alloway (The Burns Cottage, Alloway: Catalogue [1950], Item 188). Since I have been unable to get a photoprint of this ms for detailed study, I have used the excellent facsimile edition noted above.
Egerer, p. 16; HH, II 287. Since this volume was printed in parts (all but one evidently now lost) beginning in July, 1801, the Merry-Andrew section probably first appeared, in fact, between that date and Feb., 1802. But since Stewart claimed to have published it for the first time, the printing of it in a rare edition by Duncan (1801) must have come from Stewart's printing and not from a separate and now lost ms (HH, II, 286-287).
I can find no clear evidence for the statement in HH that "this copy [of the poem] was sent to a lady—Lady Harriet [sic] Don" (II, 307). A number of coarse words are changed from the Stewart ms (e.g., "fuds" to "backs," l. 278) but the most salacious stanza (ll. 71-74) and the most ribald line (230) remain intact in spite of HH's claim that the stanza was omitted (II, 309) and that the Laing ms represents a version modified for the presentation to a lady (II, 307). Here and hereafter I use the line numbers of J. Logie Robertson's Oxford edition (1904).
I shall hereafter present my reasons for believing that the Merry-Andrew fragment is a part of an earlier version and is not a later addition.
HH, II, 311. "The fiddler" appears correctly in the Stewart ms. Note that nautical imagery remains associated with the fiddler in that ms.
Two songs printed in Johnson's Museum (1790) appear to be early versions of the tinker's song and the bard's first song (Robertson, Poetical Works, pp. 17-18).
Some may at first be led to believe that the "fairy fiddler frae the neuk" (54) and "Poor Merry Andrew in the neuk" (83) refer to the same character because they are both specifically located in the corner of the tavern. Thus an attempt might be made to equate the Merry Andrew with the fiddler, who figures in the drama. But this equation is impossible (1) because the Merry Andrew is neither presented as a fiddler nor as diminutive, whereas the character referred to in ll. 54, 155-202, 223, 230 distinctively is; (2) because the characters of the two as seen in their songs are markedly distinct (the one witty, satirical, and self-justifying; the other good natured, emotional and carefree); and (3) because Burns would not likely present a single character singing two songs in the "plotted" part of the poem. The passing confusion which results from specifying so pointedly the corner location of both characters is eliminated by removing the Merry-Andrew section from the final version of the poem and is another indication of the difficulty of including it.
Can one argue that the Merry Andrew's satirical attack on institutions prepares, in the spirit of Gay's Beggar's Opera, for the female pickpocket's curse upon them? Perhaps one can, but such an argument is based on a notion of a sequence of themes, whereas here Burns has written primarily a little drama: this argument does not supply dramatic motivation for the Merry Andrew at all, and it supports a reading of the poem with no dramatic continuity between the end of the campfollower's song and the beginning of the next.
The only other critic, to my knowledge, who has noted the inappropriateness of the Merry-Andrew fragment is the anonymous writer of the "Advertisement" to the facsimile edition of the poem (1838, op. cit.), "W. W.," who writes after summarizing the poem withou the passage in question (p. 7): "We have, as yet, said nothing of 'poor Merry Andrew i' the neuk,' and that for a reason which we shall be better able to make good to the satisfaction of the reader, after he has carefully examined the facsimile of the original MS. of the masterly poem. . . . The first four pages [i.e., the overture], and then the seventh, and from it to the close [i.e., the drama and finale], are apparently written at one stretch; the fifth and sixth [i.e., the Merry-Andrew section] are manifestly 'intercalated.' The hand-writing of these two is of a different time, and also of a different mood; so is the hero. That good-humoured, listless, selfrespectless creature could not have been fashioned by the bard when he was in the vein enthusiastic of the old soldier. Andrew is the jaded joker by profession, seen behind the scenes; the others are mumpers, giving a loose to the superfluity of gladness which has accumulated during a week of feigned suffering. Theirs is the fresh circling blood, and theirs are the crowing lungs of habitual wanderers in the pure air, over hill and by hedge side; his is the lassitude of one constrained to laugh when he has little will to it; he is the exception to which we alluded above [all but one of the characters in the poem "possess untamed, unbroken energy"]—he is, indeed, of 'the lowest of the low' [Walter Scott's phrase describing all the characters, to which W. W. took exception]. He is clearly an afterthought—the creature of another inspiration; he pleases by way of contrast: by himself he would be too much. There is the soul of melancholy in his— 'The chiel that's a fool for himsel'— Guid Lord, he's far dafter than I.'" The Merry Andrew is, as I have argued, not an "afterthought" but a part of an earlier version, a part discarded in favor of the existing version.
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