University of Virginia Library

The Text of Burns' "The Jolly Beggars"
by
John C. Weston, Jr.

Robert Burns advised George Thomson against suggested changes in one of Allan Ramsay's poems: "Ramsay, as every other Poet, has not been equally happy in his pieces: still I cannot approve of taking such liberties with an Author. . . . Let a poet, if he chuses, take up the idea of another, and work it into a piece of his own; but to mangle the works of the poor Bard whose tuneful tongue is now mute forever in the dark and narrow house, by Heaven 'twould be sacriledge."[1]

Ironically enough, just such mangling has, I think, taken place in Burns' posthumous "The Jolly Beggars." This poem, perhaps Burns' greatest, is ordinarily printed with a passage about a Merry Andrew, consisting of a recitative and a song, which it is the contention of this paper Burns did not want included in the final version of the poem and which only got into the poem when Burns' "tuneful tongue" was "mute forever" and unable to protest its intrusion.[2]

Two holograph copies of the poem survive, one at the Burns Museum at Alloway and the other in the Laing Collection of the Library of the University of Edinburgh. The history of the first is the more interesting because it is fuller and because it concludes with the posthumous printing of the poem. In the autumn of the year 1785, Burns, along with his two most intimate friends of that period, John Richmond and James Smith, after a meeting at John Dow's Inn, went to an alehouse operated by one Mrs. Gibson, otherwise known as Poosie Nancy. There they witnessed noisy merry-making by a group of vagrants and after a short time departed.[3]

This information was given by Richmond himself to Robert Chambers, the Scottish author and publisher, and is almost the only information we have of the occasion of the poem. In a few days, Chambers continues, Burns recited a part of the poem to Richmond, who remembered that there were songs by a sweep and a sailor, now lost. Richmond moved to Edinburgh about Martinmas, 1785, and took with him the Merry-Andrew portion of the poem, which Burns had given him.[4] Some time later Burns gave a copy of the poem without the Merry-Andrew section to the obscure David Woodburn, factor for Mr. M'Adam of Craigen-Gillan, a wealthy Ayrshire gentleman with whom Burns seems to have had some acquaintance. Woodburn gave his copy of the poem to a merchant in Glasgow, from whom it passed through a series of hands to Thomas Stewart, who was coincidently the nephew of Burns' friend John Richmond, the poet's companion during the evening at Poosie Nancy's.[5] Stewart published this manuscript in the first of the famous Stewart and Meikle tracts on July 13, 1799, without authorization; and there followed in the same year a second and a third edition of the first tract. The tracts were gathered together and published by Stewart and Meikle in 1800 in one cover.[6] "The Jolly Beggars" was printed again in 1801 by Stewart in a more widely circulated Glasgow volume, Poems Ascribed to Robert Burns, the Ayrshire Bard (HH, II, 286). All of these printings of the poem in 1799, 1800, and 1801 derived from the Woodburn manuscript descending to Stewart, which did not, to repeat, contain the Merry-Andrew portion.

Thomas Stewart evidently in 1801 received from his uncle John Richmond the single sheet containing the Merry-Andrew portion which the latter had taken to Edinburgh in 1785. The single sheet Stewart thus received was mechanically different from the manuscript he had been printing from: it was written in a larger character, with a different tint of ink, and on a different quality of paper.[7] Stewart printed it separately in another Glasgow volume which appeared February, 1802, entitled Stewart's Elegant Pocket Edition of Burns's Poems.[8] As far as I can determine, the first editor to print the poem with the Merry-Andrew section included as part of the poem was R. H. Cromek, who published Select Scotish Songs in 1810. Cromek says that he used the Stewart manuscript as a source (although, as we shall see later, there is evidence that he had access to another manuscript); he presents this footnote to the title: "The present copy is printed from a MS. by Burns, in 4to, belonging to Mr Stewart, of Greenock. This gentleman first introduced it to the public." The Merry-Andrew section is found in this edition in its now-traditional place (after the second song). Stewart, before he loaned his manuscript to Cromek, or indeed anybody having access to it, could have made the decision to place the Merry Andrew after the second song, for Stewart's manuscript, now in the Burns Museum, contains the single-sheet later addition in its traditional place. Or Stewart or another could have followed Cromek's example in placing it there. Although an edition the next year (1811) by Josiah Walker, Poems by Robert Burns, prints the poem without the section in question (because Walker used Stewart's 1801 versions of Burns' posthumous poems as a source), all subsequent editors, beginning with Allan Cunningham's edition of 1834, print the poem with the Merry-Andrew section in the place where Stewart or Cromek inserted it. Probably one or the other of these two men started the tradition which it is the purpose of this paper to question.

The history of the second surviving holograph copy of the poem, now in the Laing Collection at the University of Edinburgh, is less full and more conjectural. This copy bears the title "Love and Liberty." Like the original version of the only other surviving autograph copy of the poem, the Laing manuscript does not contain the Merry-Andrew section and, further, has no possible place for it, the beginning of the "raucle carlin's" recitative following

immediately on the same page after the end of the "martial chuck's" song. It is part of a miscellaneous collection of Burns' autograph letters and poems bound into one volume. Although David Laing unfortunately did not record how the poem came into his possession, Burns probably copied it to present to one of the Glencairn family, because most of the other items in the volume in which it is bound are endorsed to the Earl, Lady Henrietta Don (his sister), or Lady Elizabeth Cunningham (another sister).[9] It is also probable that this copy of the poem is the one that Dr. James Currie inspected and rejected as morally unsuitable for inclusion in the first printing of Burns' complete works, the four-volume edition of 1800. At least the following letter of Alexander Cunningham, September 17, 1796, shows him, as Burns' literary executor who collected manuscripts which he later turned over to Dr. Currie, referring to this title; and since the Laing copy is the only surviving one with this title, there is some warrant for believing Cunningham held it when he wrote the following: "There has been put into my hand a poem entitled Love and Liberty. I presume you have seen it. Were the pruning-knife applied to some of the broad humour it might be published without incurring much censure—at least it would be admired by many and is surely too valuable to be thrown aside" (HH, I, 305).

There is evidence that other manuscripts of the poem existed. An "early draft" of the poem, which is now evidently lost, was sold in 1861 (HH, II, 306). And R. H. Cromek in his printing of 1810 evidently had access to a different copy, perhaps the "early draft" just mentioned, because although he states he used the Stewart manuscript as a basis for his version, he presents one distinctive difference ("A Sailor" for "The fiddler," l. 230), a variant found in the Laing manuscript to which he evidently did not have access. Further, he presents a variant for lines 211-212 which is not found either in the Stewart or the Laing manuscripts.[10] Probably the title of this version was, like that of the Laing version, "Love and Liberty," because Cromek adds that title as an alternative to the traditional title in his printing of the poem, an alternative not present in his ostensible source, the Stewart manuscript. But nothing pertinent to our problem can be gained from speculations about these lost versions. We can conclude, however, from the evidence of the only two surviving autograph copies of the poem, that since the Merry-Andrew section was originally not a part of the one

and never a part of the other, it has very little warrant for being where it is in almost all printings of the poem.[11]

There is a less strong but additional line of argument possible based on evidence of the manuscript Burns considered as fit for publication. Chambers started a tradition that Burns thought poorly of this poem because of the adverse criticism of the Mossgiel household. And Wallace says, "There is no evidence that Burns contemplated giving it ["The Jolly Beggars"] to the world."[12] This statement is untrue. Between his arrival in Edinburgh and March, 1787, Burns submitted the manuscript of the poem to Hugh Blair. Burns was considering including this poem in the forthcoming Edinburgh volume as an addition to the poems which appeared in the Kilmarnock edition and wanted Blair's opinion. In a memorandum Blair says, "The Whole of What is called the Cantata, the Songs of the Beggars & their Doxies, with the Grace at the end of them, are altogether unfit in my opinion for publication. They are much too licentious; and fall below the dignity which Mr Burns possesses in the rest of his poems & would rather degrade them."[13] If we could absolutely determine the identity of the manuscript which Burns submitted to Blair, we would know what version Burns wanted to publish and whether that version contained the Merry-Andrew section. But we cannot so determine because Blair does not refer to the poem by title and thus allow us to point to either the Laing or the Stewart versions. Both surviving versions have "A Cantata" as sub-title. Evidently the "Grace" of which Blair speaks is the last song that the Bard sings and leads the others in singing, a sort of drinking song in thanksgiving for the joys of the outcast's life. It is possible, perhaps probable, that when Blair condemned the poem, Burns gave the rejected manuscript either to Woodburn or to one of his new Edinburgh friends in the Glencairn family. And we have seen that the Woodburn (Stewart) manuscript did not have a Merry Andrew when Woodburn received it and that the Glencairn (Laing) manuscript never has had him.

Although Burns obviously wrote the Merry-Andrew fragment to be inserted in a version of this poem, it is my contention that after writing he it excised it in the process of revising the poem to a later form which had no place for it. There are numerous ways of demonstrating this proposition. There is evidence, to begin, that a more complicated version of the poem did at one time exist. We have heard of songs of a sailor and of a sootyman or a sweep that Burns evidently wrote and discarded upon reconsideration. The Laing manuscript of this poem shows evidence of an incomplete revision

from an earlier version which included the sailor: "A sailor" stands in place of the obviously correct "The fiddler" in line 230.[14] The "tinkler hizzie" (84), the Merry Andrew's companion, probably had in previous version some relation, quite naturally, with the tinker, who figures in the action of the existing version. For in the existing version she is, unlike all the other female characters, unrelated to the action of the poem. She does not figure in the exchange between the soldier laddie and the camp follower, which forms the overture; nor in the operetta itself, which involves, first, the dramatic conflict between the pigmy fiddler and the tinker over the affections of a woman pickpocket and, second, the resolution provided by the beggar poet's giving the loser of the rivalry one of his three doxies; nor in the finale, which consists of the last recitative and the bard's final climactic song making magnificently explicit the revolutionary theme.[15] Perhaps Professor Snyder's feeling that the poem is "possibly incomplete"[16] results from the presence of the Merry Andrew and his wench, who are inorganic to the poem and who give evidence of an earlier version. It may be argued that the Merry-Andrew section is a later addition, but it is certainly more likely that Burns worked from imperfection to perfection than from perfection to imperfection, for the later addition of the Merry Andrew impairs the poem. It is unlikely that Burns would have intended to add to a tightly and carefully structured poem a section which seriously impairs the dramatic continuity and the tone. The Merry Andrew is clearly a part of an earlier, more complicated version.

Given the earlier version containing the Merry Andrew, there remains to show that he does not belong in the present one. My first point is a negative one. The Merry Andrew is the only singing character who can be removed, who is not tied by cross references to other parts of the poem. He and his companion are alone not mentioned in other sections than their own: the campfollower is not only mentioned in the recitative of her song but in that of her soldier laddie (18); the fiddler is not only mentioned in the recitative of his song but in those of the campfollower's (54-55), the tinker's (188-202), and the bard's (230-31), and so on for all the characters in the poem except the Merry Andrew and his companion.

Second, we turn from how the Merry Andrew can be removed to why he should be. The Merry Andrew, like his "tinkler hizzie," does not advance the action of the drama, that is, does not form a part of the pickpocket-fiddler-tinker triangle nor of the group which provides the resolution,

namely, the bard and his three doxies.[17] Perhaps one might say that the Merry Andrew provides an additional song in the overture and that the maimed veteran and the campfollower do not advance the action either. But there is no dramatic need for the Merry Andrew, the scene and tone and theme having been set adequately by the soldier and his lass.

Indeed—and this is the third point—the Merry Andrew actually destroys the dramatic situation by singing his song when he does. The campfollower has just explained how she has been cured of her "despair" by having met her "old boy in a Cunningham fair" (75-76) and she now rejoices at having a soldier laddie once again (78). The pickpocket immediately reacts to the campfollower's song of joy by manifesting her own unrelieved grief, for, unlike the campfollower, she has not found another man. If one inserts the Merry Andrew between the two, one blunts the dramatic effect of this reaction; and since the reader will have forgotten about the campfollower's joy because of the intervening song of the Merry Andrew, the pickpocket appears to be unmotivated in her wailing and in offering to explain the cause of her grief.[18]

If we accept this explanation for the pickpocket's narrative, we can establish the fourth point: the Merry Andrew is alone unmotivated. He is the only character who has no particular reason for advancing to sing his song, with the exception of the soldier, who because he sings the first song can be excused for beginning the proceedings from mere general ebullience.

Not only does the Merry-Andrew section, then, not belong where it stands, but the first editor to have included it could not have inserted it anywhere else: the Merry Andrew could not appear between the soldier and his lass; could not interrupt the continuous working out of the conflict which constitutes the drama and to which the Merry Andrew is irrelevant;

and certainly could not appear between the bard's first and second song, because the opening lines of the last recitative tie the last section inviolably to the bard's first song: "So sung the bard . . ." (274).

And my final point is perhaps the most conclusive of all: what the Merry Andrew says and how he says it are all wrong for the poem. The other characters, with the exception of the pickpocket whose character is determined by the requirement of the little plot, are not bitter against society; they do not ridicule it by showing its absurdities and corruptions; they merely show a hearty approval of the outcast's life and an equally hearty contempt for the life of lawful respectability. Compare the satirical, self-pitying (107-108) Merry Andrew, who makes fun of himself by mockingly justifying his ignorance and who satirizes society (preachers [111-12], jurists [92], politicians [109-110]) by claiming that they do not know they are fools. The bard's attack upon society in the song that he leads at the end is not satirical, that is, not ironic and ridiculing; the line, for instance, "A fig for those by law protected!" expresses magnificent contempt, not the publing sarcasm of the Merry Andrew. Of course, one finds different kinds of characters in a dramatic poem but not, without special dramatic reason, one character whose attitude is completely at variance with the common attitude of all the others. Further, the Merry Andrew, since he does indulge in satire, is the only character whose song is intellectual, whose song turns upon an idea: the distinction between artificial and natural fools.[19]

By way of summary, this can be said. In the absence of a version of the poem which Burns printed in his life, there is a difficulty, admittedly, as to what the text should be. We do not know the identity of the manuscript which Burns submitted to Blair as a possibility for the Edinburgh edition, although it is perhaps either the Stewart or Laing manuscript. And even if we did know that either surviving manuscript was the one Burns submitted to Blair, we might not want to use it alone as a text because Burns could have bowdlerized it for publication. Henley and Henderson's solution was to take the best readings from both manuscripts, clearly an esthetic textual proceeding, but probably the best course to follow. But even on this esthetic principle the Merry-Andrew section does not belong in the poem. It does not form a part of the original Stewart manuscript, and it is not found at all in the Laing manuscript, where the two sections which adjoin the traditional location of the Merry-Andrew fragment are continuous on the same page. Consequently, the only two surviving manuscript versions which Burns copied out himself as complete poems do not have the passage in question. He must have had reasons for omitting it from the two finished versions, and these reasons I have tried to show in my discussion of the poem. I think, then, that editors of Burns would be more respectful to the poet if they would print the text of "The Jolly Beggars" that Burns probably considered final and not a text that never received his approval in any extant version.

Notes