No More Learning

Canst thou leave me thus, my Katy? [273]

Well! I think this, to be done in two or three turns across my room,
and with two or three pinches of Irish blackguard, is not so far
amiss. You see I am determined to have my quantum of applause from
somebody.

Tell my friend Allan (for I am sure that we only want the trifling
circumstance of being known to one another, to be the best friends on
earth) that I much suspect he has, in his plates, mistaken the figure
of the stock and horn. I have, at last, gotten one, but it is a very
rude instrument. It is comprised of three parts; the stock, which is
the hinder thigh bone of a sheep, such as you see in a mutton ham; the
horn, which is a common Highland cow's horn, cut off at the smaller
end, until the aperture be large enough to admit the stock to be
pushed up through the horn until it be held by the thicker end of the
thigh-bone; and lastly, an oaten reed exactly cut and notched like
that which you see every shepherd boy have, when the corn-stems are
green and full grown. The reed is not made fast in the bone, but is
held by the lips, and plays loose in the smaller end of the stock;
while the stock, with the horn hanging on its larger end, is held by
the hands in playing. The stock has six or seven ventages on the upper
side, and one back-ventage, like the common flute. This of mine was
made by a man from the braes of Athole, and is exactly what the
shepherds wont to use in that country.

However, either it is not quite properly bored in the holes, or else
we have not the art of blowing it rightly; for we can make little of
it. If Mr. Allan chooses, I will send him a sight of mine, as I look
on myself to be a kind of brother-brush with him. "Pride in poets is
nae sin;" and I will say it, that I look on Mr. Allan and Mr.
Burns to
be the only genuine and real painters of Scottish costume in the
world.

R. B.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 273: Song CCXXXVII. ]

* * * * *




CCCVII.


TO PETER MILLER, JUN. , ESQ. ,

OF DALSWINTON.

[In a conversation with James Perry, editor of the Morning Chronicle,
Mr. Miller, who was then member for the Dumfries boroughs, kindly
represented the poverty of the poet and the increasing number of his
family: Perry at once offered fifty pounds a year for any
contributions he might choose to make to his newspaper: the reasons
for his refusal are stated in this letter. ]

_Dumfries, Nov. 1794. _

DEAR SIR,

Your offer is indeed truly generous, and most sincerely do I thank you
for it; but in my present situation, I find that I dare not accept it.
You well know my political sentiments; and were I an insular
individual, unconnected with a wife and a family of children, with the
most fervid enthusiasm I would have volunteered my services: I then
could and would have despised all consequences that might have ensued.

My prospect in the Excise is something; at least it is, encumbered as
I am with the welfare, the very existence, of near half-a-score of
helpless individuals, what I dare not sport with.

In the mean time, they are most welcome to my Ode; only, let them
insert it as a thing they have met with by accident and unknown to
me.