Todesblumen

One part of my family -- the Diebolds who fled Alsace in 1870 to get away from the Prussians and came to Western Pennsylvania -- retained some of their folk beliefs. One of them was a belief in the personage of The Grim Reaper. I was told of Death coming and knocking three times on a window just as a great aunt died. I used to carry buckets of water from the nearby spring to my great-grandmother's house, and some of those memories blended with the old wives' tale...

Todesblumen

A woman is dying inside,
nestled in quilts and soft pillows.
On the path from the spring,
lit by the eye of an elder moon,
her nephew returns with full wooden buckets.
By the barn, he stares at the tarpapered house.
The kerosene light from the sick room
falls on a trellis: he sees what the women
had whispered about in the kitchen —
that rose abloom in December.

(They reverted to German, called it
Todesblumen, death’s flower bloom,
would not speak of it where Aunt Lena lay,
though she might see, if she looked, a yard
from the house, where it opened.)

Raising his buckets to clear a snowdrift,
the boy hastens by the sickbed window, and there —
white, whiter than snow, without shadow,
but solid, a stark figure steps into the light.
From shapeless robes a skeletal hand emerges:
the shivered rose crumbles, falls petal by petal.
The hand extends further on ghost-white fore-arm.
Now at the window comes the tap-tap-tapping
of Death, and wind, and the barren trellis
shakes. Then nothing, and silence, and then
the keening cry from the women inside.

Mineral Beauty

An exquisite poem about the beauty of the inanimate by the great Barbara A. Holland.

WHEN STONES HAVE SHED THEIR SKINS

by Barbara A. Holland

Who can say there are no souls in stones,
and who can look at Kunzite

and say that they have bodies,

gauze ripped from the garments of the sun,
a plumage shed by luminous

transparent birds, spent splinters of the morning,

mineral and miracle, held at its climax
in a sheath of stone,

gossamer against its ending?

Youth, northern, frangible inside

drops of blue opal as if dawn had bled
its earliest moments, as if clots of sky
concealed in stone, had been preserved
before the daylight killed it;

all the weathers of the world in quartz;

mist depths of white sand shallows in aquamarine
on frost of breath inside a shell of stone

take life from light and strain at carapace

until the day its long endurance breaks

before eternal pressure from within,

Who would be surprised? Not even God

would have expected it!

What must the winds bear up
when stones have hatched:
what wings shall fan

the cold fires of the stars

or beat to warmth the white
heart of the moon

when stones have shed their skins?

Squanto's Wind (Revised)

Boston's John Hancock Tower, constructed in the 1970s, was one of the world's worst architectural disasters. The foundation undermined adjacent buildings, and ten thousand window panes began popping out and falling onto pedestrians below; and the whole building swayed sickeningly in the wind. In this poem I recount some of the building's disastrous details, and speculate about whether some angry Native American spirit might be getting even with Boston. I invoke Squanto, the first Native American to greet the arriving Puritans. By one of the most bizarre coincidences in all history, Squanto had previously been captured, enslaved, and gone to Europe and back, so that he was able to greet the arriving colonists with the words, "Welcome, Englishmen!"
I did a little digital art piece for this too, combining Squanto's portrait with the cursed tower.

Squanto’s Wind

A ruffian wind
content till now to move
through barricades of steel
to tug of sea,
forgetful of forest and creek,
rears up at last,

howls No emphatically
at the Hancock tower,
a block as gray as greed,
lunging from bedrock to sky.

The primal No acquires more force,
plucks glass like seeds
from a ruptured grape.
The window panes explode —a million shards
of architectural sneeze
scattered by gravity
to punctuate the streets
with gleaming arrowheads,
obsidian spears,
black tomahawks
of dispossession. 

What Manitou is this
who shakes his fist
at the barons of finance?
Whatever happened to
“Welcome, Englishmen!”
(the first words spoken
by Native to Puritan)?

The engineers move in,
revise their blueprints
while covered walkways
protect pedestrians
from Hancock’s continued
     defenestration.

Months pass, and yet
a lingering wind remains,
circling the sheltered walks,
lapping at plywood sheets,
a sourceless gale
that ruffles Bostonians
with its reiterated cry,
not on this land you don’t.

On really windy days
the whole tower sways
and workers turn green
from motion sickness.

Millions are spent
on a countersliding bed
of lubricated lead
to gyro the floor to apparent
stillness; millions more
from the slap-suited builders
on fifteen hundred tons
of diagonal braces,
all to to stop
the whole ziggurat
from an inevitable topple,
should just one wind,
at just one angle
bring everything down
in a snarl of pretzeled girders.

Finally all ten thousand panes
are one by one, removed
and one by one replaced. 

Is Squanto satisfied
that the tower was sold,
that the new owners slid
to bankruptcy (at least
on paper), though bankers slide
from one debacle to another
and earn baronial bonuses? 

No! His feathered face frowns
on clouded-over golf days.
His never-tiring gusts divert
the errant baseball, ensuring
decades of home-game dejection. 

It will take more than
double-dug foundations,
wind-tunnel-tested
new window panes,
to still these vectors of rage.

Token pow-wows at shopping malls
and suburban parks
do not fool old Squanto:
sharp-dealing and inhospitable,
Boston must pay!

Revised 5/12/2012

Music is Poetry Too with Augustin Hadelich

Augustin Hadelich played the Beethoven Concerto last night in Providence for the RI Philharmonic. Here he is in the finale to the Dvorak Violin Concerto. Amazing!

Science - A Poem by Sarah Helen Whitman

While the dull fates sit nodding at their loom,

Benumbed and drowsy with its ceaseless boom,
I hear, as in a dream, the monody
Of life's tumultuous, ever-ebbing sea;
The iron tramp of armies hurrying by
Forever and forever but to die;
The tragedies of time, the dreary years,
The frantic carnival of hopes and fears,
The wild waltz-music wailing through the gloom,
The slow death-agonies, the yawning tomb,
The loved ones lost forever to our sight,
In the wild waste of chaos and old night;
Earth's long, long dream of martyrdom and pain;
No God in heaven to rend the welded chain
Of endless evolution!
                                               Is this all?
And mole-eyed "Science," gloating over bones,
The skulls of monkeys and the Age of Stones,
Blinks at the golden lamps that light the hall
Of dusty death, and answers: "It is all."
This poem is by Providence's most famous poet, one-time fiancee of Edgar Allan Poe.

September in Gotham

This is the only poem I have been able to write about 9/11. It is the darkest shadow in my 40-poem Anniversarius cycle.

SEPTEMBER IN GOTHAM

This is New York, and fall

     has caught us unawares.

From Palisade bus I view

     the gap-toothed skyline,

a forest whose tallest trees

     are suddenly missing.

In Gotham, they say,

strange breezes from the south

make certain elders remember

downwind from the death camps.

There is talk of stolen watches

from shops beneath the rubble,

the discovery daily

     of severed limbs.

Month’s end, I walk all day

     in midtown,

with shoppers determined

to do something normal,

eat Szechuan lunch, browse

books, consider new software.

Like many others around me,

I pick things up from the counter,

     then put them back —

everyday urges seem so trivial.

There is not one note of music.

People keep stopping

     to stare nervously

     at the Empire State,

     like frightened squirrels

     in the shadow

     of a threatened sequoia.

The sycamores in Bryant Park

beam back the sun,

     an interrupted medley

     of overhanging clouds

     that pause, then part,

     then scud away.

Seedpods of honey locust fall,

curl brown like overdone toast

     on the pavement,

but the delicate leaves remain above,

     still adamant green.

It is not till night,

     till I turn the corner on Lexington

     and spy the dark hunched shell

     of the Gramercy Park Armory,

that I see the leaves of this autumn,

     its feuilles morts,

taped to treetrunks, walls and windows,

     tied to a chain link fence,

     row on row to the end of seeing,

flapping in rainstorm,  tattered, tearing,

soon to be ankle deep in the gutter —

these album-leaves of anguish

burst forth with human colors —

faces brown and pink and salmon,

oak and ash and ebony,

the rainbow of human flesh,

     of eyeflash —

visages still in their conquering twenties,

snapshot in happy moments,

    embracing their brides,

          babies on knees,

license, yearbook, graduation photos,

smiling at beach or barbecue,

ink fading or bleeding now

     in the sky’s abundant tearfall.

In the language we use

for the recovery of wayward pets,

these posters beg the impossible:

IF ANYONE HAS SEEN HER —

     MISSING   —   MISSING

LEFT SHOULDER SCAR —

A DOLPHIN TATTOO —

MISSING     —     MISSING

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?—

MISSING   —   MISSING

PLEASE FIND ME

MISSING  —   MISSING

WORLD TRADE CENTER

—September 30, 2001, New York City

In Prague, A Tree of Many Colors

When the Czech student Jan Palach set fire to himself to protest the Soviet invasion of his country, I wrote this poem in his honor. It was not until very recently that we had any details about his death in the West; I had never even seen his picture until this year. The square where he committed suicide is now named after him, and the Communist government fell in 1989 during "Palach Week," a period of protest and turmoil over which his spirit certainly presided. He was 21, a student of philosophy. My poem suffered from lack of details. In 1996, I learned about the students' resistance to the invaders and worked that into the poem; now, in 2011, I know more and can make this poem more of a narrative. And I have finally given a coherent voice to the real narrator of the poem: a linden tree in Prague.
This poem is Number 2 in my new edition of Anniversarius: The Book of Autumn, a 40-poem cycle soon to be published.
New note: I have just revised this poem again, adding more details about the Linden tree, which, it turns out, is the national emblem of Czechoslovakia (!): the Muse once again led me to the one and only tree that I could have used. I have also retitled the poem, "The Linden Tree in Prague."

THE LINDEN TREE IN PRAGUE

for Jan Palach, Czech martyr,

who set himself on fire January 16, 1969

to protest the occupation of his country

 

1
Linden in Prague’s Museum Square:
I was born, I was sown
of mother and father trees in some forest.
I screamed as the sun troped me out of the earth,
grew slowly in the shadows of tall buildings.
thrust out my blossoms at the hope of spring,
Years passed; I grew protective rings
around me. Exhorted into summer by sun
and the bacchanal of squirrels, I owe each year
millions of leaf-deaths and resurrections.
The solemn students and professors
stride by with dour looks, eyes locked
into the mysteries of Marx and Engels.

I must pretend to stand up straight.
I must not follow the mocking sun
and its false revolutions.
I must wait for the ultimate paradise,
world’s daylight redistributed for all.
I tremble as angry gardeners trim
the arrogant beard-branchlets
that fringe my still-adolescent trunk.
I am all passion and impracticality.
My heart-shaped leaves are on my sleeves
as I greedily drink sunlight, give shade
to those below in blossom-fall, exude the scent
that maddens lovers to Unter der Linde mania,
then paint myself in hues of gold and brown,
shedding my currency in one great shrug
as summer ebbs to frost-dawn.
Behaving well, it seems,
is not in my nature, despite those lectures
on dialectics I hear each afternoon
from the open lecture hall’s window.

Much passes beneath my shadow:
across the square, crowds press
to bourgeois marriages and funerals —
the upright grooms go in,
the silver-handled caskets come out,
the church, the state, the people
move on in soot and sorrow, day to day.
On one side, Marx and Engels;
on the other, tradition, and just beyond
my line of sight that monument to Huss,
the great religious martyr. Conflict
divides us like the great Moldau.


We have lived through Kings and Empires,
bad governments and good. Everyone seemed
to think it was getting better last year.
But something has changed now:
Why do these people whisper always?
Why do so many avert their eyes from me?
Why does neighbor spy on his neighbor,
reporting every oddity to the men in black?
Why do I hear the rumble of thunder?
Why does the symphony break off
in the middle of rehearsing Smetana?
Why have the women gone to the cellars?
The earth shakes. Soldiers and tanks everywhere!
The streets are full of Russians and Poles,
Hungarians, Bulgarians, East Germans —
all of East Europe has come to crush us!
Men with fur hats speak swollen, Slavic words.

Death is here. The smell of blood is here.
My roots touch the entrails of the hastily buried.
Anger is everywhere. I hold my leaves,
make camouflage for lovers, conspirators.


Students rip down the street signs
and hide them in my upper boughs —
the invaders drive in circles
and cannot find their destinations.
I open my bark for secret messages,
encourage pigeons to carry the word
of where is safe, and who is betrayed.
I guess I am guilty of anti-people
tendencies — who would have thought?

Here comes that student, Jan Palach,
he’s all of twenty-one, dark-haired,
a delicate face meant for poetry,
though worn by the study
of too much philosophy, too young.
He is the ardent one, the solitary dreamer.
And more: he intends to do something.
He and some others have made a vow,
a terrible pact. He will go first.
He is not Jan Huss,
burned by his fellow citizens
over the flavor of God:
he is just Jan Palach from Všetaty,
and he will burn in the world’s eyes
because of Philosophy
(Plato’s tanks crushed
the Age of Reason).

I am his unindicted ally.
The winter ground is covered still
with the dried leaves of my autumn,
some damp, some dry and worn
to little more than vein lines.
He scoops them up; he stuffs his coat with them,
fills his cap, book bag and pockets,
fuel and kindling for his mission.
He is the icon of our unhappiness:
he will open like a triptych of gold
into a flame to embarrass the sun.
He opens the can of gasoline,
and before anyone can stop him,
he explodes into a fireball,
a flaring marionette; he whirls three times
then falls into a curled ball
of incendiary horror.


2
Earth gives him no resting place.
As mourners gather
in ominous groupings,
the men in black dig Palach up,
cremate his already-half-cremated frame
and send the urn off to his mother.
There, in Všetaty, no one is allowed
to give him another burial.
No graveyard dares take the ashes
for half a decade.
In Prague, Palach’s first grave
Is repossessed. The state deposits there
the corpse of a nameless old woman.
On your way now, nothing to see —
just some old cleaning lady’s grave.
No Martyrs in this cemetery —
I’ll see your papers please.


3
Twenty years on, a crowd will gather
for something called “Jan Palach Week,”
a pretext to take to the streets again,
and one day later,
the Communist government falls.

Your ashes, Jan Palach, will return in Prague.
I will be beyond returning, for long ago
an angry axe man removed all trees,
to the despair of poets and squirrels,
the better to conduct surveillance
of all the law-abiding citizens.

There, on the spot of his immolation,
a bronze marker, half cross,
both Catholic and Slav,
lifts out of mosaic’d pavement.
My last root is hidden beneath it,
as leaf by dry leaf, and ash by ash,
my ghost is a receptacle for tears, and memory.
I was there, around and within him.
I, too, exploded for Liberty.


— October 1969, New York, revised 1986,
rewritten 1996; rewritten 2011

Ben Jonson's Witches' Song

More of my work on Volume 2 of Matthew Gregory Lewis's 1801 anthology, Tales of Wonder. Here is Ben Jonson's wonderful "Witches' Song" from 1609. The witches recite a veritable botanica of plants used in witchcraft, including the mandrake root. I have annotated the entire poem to make clear all of its references to the witch lore of antiquity and of the 1600s. These stage witches were quite believable to Jonson's audiences. The Masque production must have been lavish, calling for a dozen witches to sing out these lines.

The Witches’ Song

BEN JONSON.

     From the Masque of Queens, presented at Whitehall, Feb. 2d, 1609

1 WITCH.
I have been all day looking after
A raven feeding upon a quarter;¹
And, soone as she turn’d her beak to the south,
I snatch’d this morsell out of her mouth.

2 WITCH.
I have beene gathering wolves haires,
The madd dogges foames, and adders eares;
The spurging² of a deadman’s eyes:
And all since the evening starre³ did rise.

3 WITCH.
I last night lay all alone
On the ground, to heare the mandrake⁴ grone;
And pluck’d him up, though he grew full low:
And, as I had done, the cocke did crow.⁵

____
1. Quarter. A piece of an animal’s carcass, or, more suggestively, a piece of a human body that has been drawn and quartered. Each part of a quartered body contains one limb (arm or leg) and whatever else came detached with it.
2. Spurging. Decaying matter foaming up or being exuded.
3. Evening starre. Venus.
4. Mandrake. Mandrake, or “May Apple” has a root resembling a human form. Folklore asserted that mandrakes grew spontaneously under gallows, where the sperm of hanged men supposedly fell into the ground and produced mandrakes.
5. Cocke did crow. Witches’ activities are often interrupted by the rooster’s crow, announcing the coming day. The rising sun dispelled all supernatural activities. Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre and Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain are 19^thcentury musical works depicting this sudden interruption of witch frenzy by the coming of day.

Mandrake root, from de Bry’s Florilegium Renovatum et Auctum, 1641.

4 WITCH.
And I ha’ beene chusing out this scull
From charnell houses⁶ that were full;
From private grots,⁷ and publike pits;⁸
And frighted a sexton⁹ out of his wits.

5 WITCH.
Under a cradle I did crepe
By day; and, when the childe was a-sleepe
At night, I suck’d the breath;¹⁰ and rose,
And pluck’d the nodding nurse by the nose.

6 WITCH.
I had a dagger: what did I with that?
Killed an infant to have his fat.
A piper it got¹¹ at a church-ale,¹²
I bade him again blow the wind i’ the taile.¹³

____
6. Charnell houses. Buildings or vaults used as a repository of bones. Bodies were routinely removed from European churchyards after twenty years’ interment to make room for more burials; only the rich and powerful were allotted permanent graves. Bones were either piled up in the open air in a bone-yard, or stored in a charnel house or ossuary. Skulls were readily available for pilfering from such places.
7. Private grots. A grotto, cave, or crypt owned by a family and used as a mausoleum.
8. Publike pits. Common graves for paupers, potters’ fields, or mass graves used for hasty burial of victims of epidemics or warfare.
9. Sexton. A church official responsible for buildings and grounds, bell-ringing, and care of the churchyard. A position frequently occupied by an elder, with little by the way of duties and a great temptation for sleep, idleness and drunkenness.
10. Suck’d the breath. Witches were accused of smothering infants, often in the shape of a cat. Cats, atttracted to the smell of milk on babies’ mouths, would occasionally visit an infant’s cradle: hence, cats as witches or witches’ familiars caught the blame for crib deaths. This folk belief still prevails in the Appalachian region of the United States.
11. A piper it got. The witch used the dagger to puncture a bagpipe.
12. Church-ale. In the 16^th Century, English churches dispensed ale on key festival days such as Easter, Christmas and Whitsuntide.
13. Wind i’ the taile. Possibly obscene.

___________________________________________

7 WITCH.
A murderer, yonder, was hung in chaines;¹⁴
The sunne and the wind had shrunke his veines:
I bit off a sinew; I clipp’d his haire;
I brought off his ragges, that danced i’ the ayre.

8 WITCH.
The scrich-owles egges and the feathers blacke,
The bloud of the frogge, and the bone in his backe
I have been getting; and made of his skin
A purset, to keep Sir Cranion in.¹⁵

9 WITCH.
And I ha’ beene plucking (plants among)
Hemlock, henbane, adders-tongue, ¹⁶
Night-shade, moone-wort, libbards bane; ¹⁷
And twise by the dogges was like to be tane. ¹⁸

____
14. Murderer . . . in chaines. The bodies of murderers, traitors and other serious offenders were left exposed to the elements, to be picked over by crows. This gruesome display served as a warning to would-be offenders.
15. Sir Cranion. Probably the witch’s familiar, a demon assuming the form of a small animal.
16. Hemlock, henbane, adders-tongue. Hemlock describes a variety of poisonous plants, the Mediterranean form of which was used to poison Socrates. Henbane is a narcotic and poisonous weed, Hyoscyamus niger, believed to kill poultry. Adder’s tongue is a fern (Ophioglossum) whose structure suggests a snake’s tongue and mouth.
17. Night-shade, moone-wort, libbards bane. Deadly Nightshade (Atropa belladonna) is a poisonous and narcotic plant. Moonwort is a small fern whose fronds have a crescent shape, believed to be a treatment for the bite of a mad dog. Libbards-bane, from Leopard’s bane, is a member of the Aconitum family to which wolfsbane also belongs, a source of paralyzing strychnine.
18. Tane. Taken.

10 WITCH.
I from the jawes of a gardener’s bitch
Did snatch these bones, and then leap’d the ditch:
Yet went I back to the house againe,
Kill’d the blacke cat, and here is the braine.

11 WITCH.
I went to the toad, breedes under the wall,
I charmed him out, and he came at my call;
I scratch’d out the eyes of the owle before;
I tore the batt’s wing: what would you have more?

DAME.
Yes: I have brought, to helpe your vows,
Horned poppie, cypresse boughes, ¹⁹
The fig-tree wild, that growes on tombes,
And juice that from the larch-tree comes,²⁰
The basiliske’s bloud,²¹ and the viper’s skin:
And now our orgies let’s begin.

Tam O'Shanter

I just finished annotating one of the most famous of all supernatural poems, the 1791 chased-by-witches poem by Robert Burns titled "Tam O'Shanter." Between the Scottish dialect, the place names, and the supernatural allusions, it has taken a long time to create what I hope is the ultimate annotated text of this poem. It's intended to help students, scholars and casual readers get the full meaning of a poem that is truly fun to read. It's part of a great tradition of horseback chase poems. German ghost ballads like "Erlkonig" and "Lenore" belong to the same class of narrative.

Sooo, for those who dare, here is the text, interspersed with the annotations, broken up as it will appear in my forthcoming Volume 2 of "Tales of Wonder."

Tam O’Shanter

ROBERT BURNS

[A Tale.

     “Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke.”]^a

When chapman billies¹ leave the street,
And drouthy² neebors,³ neebors meet,
As market-days are wearing late,
An’⁴  folk begin to tak the gate;⁵ 
While we sit bousing⁶ at the nappy,
An’ getting fou⁷ and unco⁸ happy,
We think na⁹ on the lang Scots miles,¹⁰
The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles,¹¹ 
That lie between us and our hame,¹²
Whare¹³ sits our sulky sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

____
[a] The subtitle “A Tale” and the Epigraph appear in Burns’ Collected Poems, but did not appear in the Lewis volume.
1. Chapman billies. Peddler boys.
2. Drouthy. Thirsty.
3. Neebors. Neighbours.
4. An’. And.
5. Tak the gate. Return home.
6. Bousing. Drinking.
7. Fou. Drunk.
8. Unco. Very.
9. Na. Not.
10. Lang Scots miles. Long Scots miles. Scotland had its own mile, based on the distance from the castle to Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh. Scotland did not adopt English miles until 1824.
11. Mosses, waters, slaps and styles. Bogs, waters, pools, and styles. Styles are openings or breaches in fences or stone walls.
12. Hame. Home.
13. Whar. Where.

__________________________________

          This truth fand¹⁴ honest Tam O’Shanter,
As he frae’¹⁵ Ayr ae¹⁶ night did canter,
(Auld¹⁷ Ayr wham¹⁸  ne’er a town surpasses,
For honest men and bonny¹⁹ lasses.

O Tam! had’st thou but been sae²⁰ wise,
As ta’en thy ain²¹ wife Kate’s advice!
She tauld²² thee weel?²³ thou was a skellum,²⁴
A blethering,²⁵ blustering, drunken blellum;²⁶
That frae November till October,
Ae market-day thou was nae²⁷ sober;
That ilka melder,²⁸ wi’ the miller,
Thou sat as lang as thou had siller;²⁹
That every naig was ca’d a shoe on,³⁰
The smith and thee gat roaring fou on ;
That at the L——d’s house,³¹ even on Sunday,
Thou drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday.
She prophesy’d that, late or soon,
Thou would be found deep drown’d in Doon;³²
Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk,³³
By Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.’³⁴

___________

14. Fand. Found.
15. Frae.  From.
16.  Ae.  One.
17. Auld. Old.
18. Wham. Whom.
19. Bonny, or bonnie. Handsome.
20. Sae. So.
21. Ain. Own.
22. Tauld. Told.
23. Weel. Well.
24. Skellum. A rogue. 
25. Blethering. Talking idly, chattering.
26. Blellum. A babbler.
27. Nae. Never.
28. Ilka melder. Each installment of grain, .i.e., Tam gets drunk while waiting for the miller to grind his grain into flour.
29. Siller. Money, from silver.
30. That every naig was ca’d a shoe on. Every time a horse had a shoe nailed on.
31. L——d’s house. Lord’s House. An act of self-censorship on the part of Lewis’s printer. Burns spells it out in his text. Printers in England were wary of blasphemy charges.

__________________________________

Ah, gentle dames! it gars me greet³⁵
To think how mony³⁶ counsels sweet,
How mony lengthen’d sage advices,
The husband frae the wife despises!

     But to our tale: Ae market night,
Tam had got planted unco right;
Fast by an ingle,³⁷ bleezing³⁸ finely,
Wi’ reaming swats,³⁹ that drank divinely;
And at his elbow, Souter⁴⁰ Johnny,
His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony;⁴¹
Tarn lo’ed him like a vera brither;⁴²
They had been fou for weeks thegither.⁴³
The night drave⁴⁴ on wi’ sangs and clatter;⁴⁵
And ay the ale was growing better :
The landlady and Tam grew gracious,
Wi’ favours, secret, sweet, and precious:
The souter tauld his queerest stories;
The landlord’s laugh was ready chorus :
The storm without might rair’⁴⁶ and rustle,
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle.

  

_______

32. Doon. The River Doon.
33. Mirk. Dark.
34. Alloway Kirk. The roofless church of Alloway, two miles south of the town of Ayr, abandoned in 1756.
35. Gars me greet.  Makes me weep.
36. Mony. Many. 37. Ingle. Fire.
38. Bleezing. Burning.
39. Reaming swats. Foaming ale.
40. Souter. A shoemaker.
41. Crony, or cronie. an old acquaintance.
42. Vera brither. Very brother.
43. Thegither. Together.
44. Drave. Passed.
45. Sangs and clatter. Songs and discourse.
46. Rair. Roar.

________________________________________

Care, mad to see a man sae happy,
E’en drown’d himself amang the nappy,⁴⁷
As bees flee hame wi’ lades⁴⁸ o’ treasure,
The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure:
Kings may be bless’d, but Tam was glorious,
O’er a’⁴⁹ the hills o’ life victorious!

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white — then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form,
Evanishing amid the storm. —

Nae man can tether⁵⁰ time or tide ;
The hour approaches Tam maun⁵¹ ride;
That hour, o’ night’s black arch the key-stane,
That dreary hour he mounts his beast in;
And sic⁵² a night he tacks⁵³ the road in,
As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in.

     The wind blew as ‘twad blawn⁵⁴ its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d;
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow’d:
That night a child might understand,
The deil⁵⁵ had business on his hand.

_____
47. Amang the nappy. Among the ales.
48. Lades. Loads.
49. A’. All.
50. Tether. Tie.
51. Maun, Must.
52. Sic. Such.
53. Tacks. Takes.
54. As ’twad blawn. As if it would have blown.
55. Deil. The Devil.

________________________________________

Weel⁵⁶ mounted on his grey mare, Meg,
A better never lifted leg,
Tam skelpit⁵⁷ on through dub and mire,⁵⁸
Despising wind, and rain, and fire;
Whiles⁵⁹ holding fast his gude⁶⁰ blue bonnet;
Whiles crooning⁶¹ o’er some auld Scots sonnet;
Whiles glow’ring’⁶² round wi’ prudent cares,
Lest bogles⁶³ catch him unawares:
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh,
Whare ghaists and houlets⁶⁴ nightly cry. —

_____
56. Weel. Well.
57. Skelpit. Galloped.
58. Dub and mire. Pools of water, and mud.
59. Whiles. Sometimes.
60. Gude. Good.
61. Crooning. Humming or singing.
62. Glow’ring. Staring.
63. Bogles. Bad spirits.
64. Ghaists and houlets. Ghosts and owls.

__________________________________

By this time he was cross the ford,⁶⁵
Whare in the snaw⁶⁶ the chapman smoor’d;⁶⁷
And past the birks⁶⁸ and meikle staine,⁶⁹
Whare drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane;⁷⁰
And thro’ the whins,⁷¹ and by the cairn,⁷²
Whare hunters fand⁷³ the murder’d bairn;⁷⁴
And near the thorn, aboon⁷⁵ the well,
Where Mungo’s mither⁷⁶ hang’d hersel. —

Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole;
Near and more near the thunders roll:
When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees,
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze;⁷⁷
Thro’ ilka bore⁷⁸ the beams were glancing;
And loud resounded mirth and dancing. —

_____
65. Tam crosses a stream called the Slaphouse Burn. Since this stream had bridges and no known local ford, this detail is considered to be imaginative.
66. Snaw. Snow.
67. The chapman smoor’d. The peddler smothered.
68. Birks. Birch trees.
69. Meikle stane. A large stone.
70. Brak’s neck-bane. Broke his neck-bone.
71. Whins. Gorse plants.
72. Cairn. A heap of stones, often a prehistoric burial site. The cairn still stands, on the Campusdoon estate in Ayr.
73. Fand.  Found.
74. Bairn. A child.
75. Aboon. Above.
76. Mungo’s Mither. Mungo’s Mother. St. Mungo’s Well, located just west of Alloway Church. The suicide is imaginary, as St. Mungo is associated with Glasgow. The Alloway Church had been dedicated to St. Mungo, since Glasgow Cathedral had owned the land. Mungo here might simply refer to a person born in Glasgow, St. Mungo’s See. Doubtless the idea of a saint’s mother being a suicide verges on the blasphemous. St. Mungo’s mother was herself canonized as St. Thanew (Harvey 64).
77. Bleeze. Blaze.
78. Ilka bore. Every crevice.

 ________________________________________

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn!⁷⁹
What dangers thou canst make us scorn!
Wi’ tippeny,⁸⁰ we fear nae evil;
Wi’ usquebae⁸¹ we’ll face the devil! —

The swats⁸² sea ream’d in Tammie’s noddle,⁸³
Fair play, he car’d na⁸⁴ deils a boddle;⁸⁵
But Maggie stood right sair⁸⁶ astonish’d,
Till, by the heel and hand admonish’d,
She ventured forward on the light;
And, vow! Tam saw an unco⁸⁷ sight!
Warlocks and witches in a dance;
Nae cotillion brent new frae France,⁸⁸
But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys,⁸⁹ and reels,
Put life and mettle in their heels.
A winnock-bunker⁹⁰ in the east,
There sat auld Nick,⁹¹ in shape o’ beast;
A towzie-tyke,⁹² black, grim, and large,
To gie⁹³ them music was his charge:

___
79. John Barleycorn. The personification of the spirit of ale.
80. Tippeny. A weak ale, sold for two pennies a pint.
81. Usquabae. Whisky.
82. Swats. Fumes.
83. Noddle. head.
84. Car’d na. Minded not.
85. Bodle.  A farthing, a coin worth one quarter of a penny.
86. Sair. Sore, seriously. 
87. Unco. Strange.
88. Cotillion brent new frae France. Cotillion brought new from France. The French cotillion, a variety of contredanse, became popular in England in the 1700s. Placing dancers in square formation, it encouraged flirtation, and is the ancestor of the American rural square dance.
89. Strathspey. A slow and stately Scottish dance in 4/4 time, slower than a jig or reel. The melody for a strathspey often contains many “snaps,” short notes followed by dotted notes. Strathspeys were composed and arranged both for fiddles and for bagpipes.
90. Winnock-bunker. Window seat.
91. Auld Nick. Old Nick, the Devil.
92. Towzie-tyke. A shaggy dog. Mephistopheles first appears in Goethe’s Faust in the form of a black dog. — BR
93. To gie. Give.

 _________________________________________________

He screw’d the pipes and gart⁹⁴ them skirl,⁹⁵
Till roof and rafters a’⁹⁶ did dirl.⁹⁷ —
Coffins stood round, like open presses,⁹⁸
That shaw’d⁹⁹ the dead in their last dresses;
And by some devilish cantrip¹⁰⁰ slight,
Each in its cauld¹⁰¹ hand held a light. —

By which heroic Tam was able
To note upon the haly table,¹⁰²
A murderer’s banes’¹⁰³ in gibbet airns;¹⁰⁴
Twa span-lang,¹⁰⁵ wee,¹⁰⁶ unchristen’d bairns;
A thief, new-cutted frae a rape,¹⁰⁷
Wi’ his last gasp his gab’¹⁰⁸ did gape;
Five tomahawks, wi blude¹⁰⁹ red-rusted,
Five scymitars’,¹¹⁰  wi’ murder crusted;

_____
94. Gart. Made.
95. Skirl. Squeal.
96. A’. All.
97. Dirl. Rattle, shake.
98. Presses. Linen closets or wardrobes.
99. Shaw’d.  Showed.
100. Cantrip. A charm or spell.
101. Cauld. Cold.
102. Haly table. Holy table, the church altar.
103. Banes. Bones.
104. Airns. Irons.
105. Twa span-long. Two spans in length. A span is the width of the hand from the end of the thumb to the end of the little finger, with the fingers fully-extended. The span was used in the absence of measuring tapes or rulers as a rude unit of measure.
106. Wee. Little.
107. New-cutted frea a rape. New cut from a rope.
108. Gab. Mouth. / 
109. Blude. Blood.
110. Tomahawks . . . scymitars. Massive emigration from Scotland began around 1725 and accelerated after English repression of Scots culture after the Battle of Culloden in 1745. Tens of thousands, dispossessed by land “clearances” that resembled “ethnic cleansing,” fled to America. Scots were also prominent in the British armed forces, placing them in the campaigns such as the Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War in America) and Scots figured prominently on both sides of the American Revolution. Revolutionary soldiers in America received tomahawks as part of their kit (Thayer XX). Burns here reminds his reader that Scots were dying in faraway places, killed by Indians, Colonials, or Turks, and that their ghosts would nonetheless return to Scotland. —BR

_______________________________________________

A garter, which a babe had strangled,
A knife, a father’s throat had mangled,
Whom his ain¹¹¹ son o’ life bereft,
The grey hairs yet stack¹¹² to the heft;¹¹³
     [Three lawyers’ tongues, turn’d inside out,
     W’ lies seam’d like a beggar’s clout;¹¹⁴
     Three priests’ hearts, rotten black as much,¹¹⁵
     Lay stinking, vile in every neuk.¹¹⁶]¹¹⁷
Wi’ mair¹¹⁸ o’ horrible and awefu’,
Which ev’n to name wad be unlawfu’.¹¹⁹

As Tammie glowr’d, amaz’d, and curious,
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious:
The piper loud and louder blew;
The dancers quick and quicker flew ;
They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they cleekit,¹²⁰
Till ilka carlin¹²¹ swat¹²² and reekit,¹²³
And coost her duddies¹²⁴ to the wark,¹²⁵
And linket¹²⁶ at it in her sark!¹²⁷

____

111. Ain. own.
112. Stack.  Stuck.
113. Heft. Haft, handle.
114. Clout. A patch in a cloth.
115. Much. Muck. Excrement, manure or other rotting organic matter. “Much” appears to be an idiosyncratic Burns spelling, as this does not appear in OED.
116 Neuk. Nook, small corner or recess.
117. Three lawyers . . . / . . . every neuk. Burns suppressed these four lines at the behest of a friend, a judge, and replaced them with the two lines following. They did not appear in Lewis’s edition, or in Grose’s Antiquities of Scotland.
118. Mair. More.
119. Unlawfu’. Unlawful. A nod to the censorship laws that clamped down on English publishing after the French Revolution.
120. Cleekit. Linked together.
121. Carlin. A stout old woman.
122. Swat. Sweated.
123. Reekit. Smoked, steamed.
124. Coost her duddies. Cast off her clothes.
125. Wark. Work.
126. Linkit. Danced.
127. Sark. A shirt or shift, an undergarment.

_____________________________

Now Tam, O Tam! had thae¹²⁸ been queans,¹²⁹
A’ plump and strapping in their teens,
Their sarks, instead o’ creeshie flannen,¹³⁰
Been snaw-white’¹³¹ seventeen hunder linnen!¹³²
Thir breeks¹³³ o’ mine, my only pair,
That ance¹³⁴ were plush, o’ gude blue hair,
I wad hae gi’en them off my hurdies, ¹³⁵
For ae blink¹³⁶ o’ the bonnie burdies!¹³⁷

But wither’d beldams, auld and droll,
Rigwoodie¹³⁸ hags wad spean¹³⁹ a foal,
Lowping¹⁴⁰ an’ flinging on a crummock,¹⁴¹
I wonder didna¹⁴² turn thy stomach.

_____
128. Thae. These.
129. Queans. Young women.
130. Cretshie flannen. Greasy flannel.  Flannel, orginally made from wool, was manufactured in Wales starting in the 17^th century.
131. Snaw-white. Snow-white.
132. Seventeen hunder linnen. Fine linen, 1700-thread gauge. Huguenots settling in Ulster, Ireland after 1695 established the linen-making industry there, and the use of linen expanded rapidly after 1700.
133. Thir breeks. These breeches. Men’s trousers, extending just below the knee. Would be considered an undergarment, as it is the first item one would put on, and the last one would take off.
134. Ance. Once.
135. Hurdies. Buttocks, hips. — OED
136. Ae blink. One look.
137. Bonnie burdies. Pretty creatures.
138. Rigwoodie. Dried-up and wrinkled, resembling twisted twigs, straw or rushes.
139. Wad spean. Lewis footnotes this as “would wean.” Weaning foals seems a rather benign activity for ghosts and witches. Spean also means “to abort,” and “foal” is also used to describe a pregnant mare (OED). This is almost certainly what Burns would have wished to express, since witches were accused of causing stillbirths among humans and animals. The euphemism of weaning for abortion is certainly ironic – abortion being premature weaning! Local “wise women” were midwives and many knew the secrets of abortifacients. Scotland had been swept with witch mania in the 1600s, so this lore would be familiar to Burns’ readers.
140.  Lowping. Jumping.
141. Crummock. A crutch.
142. Didna. Did not.

___________________________________

But Tam kend¹⁴³ what was what fu’ brawlie,¹⁴⁴
There was ae winsome¹⁴⁵ wench and wawlie,¹⁴⁶
That night enlisted in the core,¹⁴⁷
(Lang after kend on Carrick¹⁴⁸ shore;
For mony a beast to dead¹⁴⁹ she shot,
And perish’d mony a bonnie boat,
And shook baith¹⁵⁰ meikle corn and bear,¹⁵¹
And kept the country-side in fear),
Her cutty sark,¹⁵² o’ Paisley harn,¹⁵³
That while a lassie¹⁵⁴ she had worn,
In longitude tho’ sorely scanty,
It was her best, and she was vauntie. — ¹⁵⁵
Ah ! little kend thy reverend grannie, 
That sark she coft¹⁵⁶ for her wee Nannie,
Wi’ twa pund Scots,¹⁵⁷ (’twas a’ her riches),
Wad ever grace a dance of witches!

____
143. Kend. Knew.
144. Brawlie. Very well.
145. Winsome. Buxom.
146. Wawlie. Comely.
147. Core. Corps.
148. Carrick. An Ayreshire district, earldom of the famous Bruce family. — BR.
149. To dead. To death.
150. Baith. Both.
151. Bear. Barley.
152. Cutty sark. A short shift.
153. Paisley harn. A cotton woven in a distinctive pattern, made in the town of Paisley in the Scottish lowlands. The town had a reputation for radical politics and free-thinking, so the wearing of Paisley probably had a caché of radicalism about it. — BR
154. Lassie. Little girl.
155. Vauntie. Proud.
156. Coft. Spun.
157. Twa pund Scots. Two pounds in Scottish currency. The Scots pound was worth only about one-twelfth of the British pound sterling during the period of this poem. It took more than two centuries for the two currencies to merge into one. — BR.

_________________________________________

But here my Muse her wing maun cour;¹⁵⁸
Sic¹⁵⁹ flights are far beyond her pow’r;
To sing how Nannie lap and flang,¹⁶⁰
(A souple¹⁶¹ jade¹⁶² she was and strang),¹⁶³

And how Tam stood, like ane¹⁶⁴ bewitch’d,
And thought his very een¹⁶⁵ enrich’d;
Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain,¹⁶⁶
And hotch’d and blew wi’ might and main;
Till first ae caper, syne anither,¹⁶⁷
Tam tint¹⁶⁸ his reason a’ thegither,¹⁶⁹
And roars out, “Weel done, Cutty-sark!”
And in an instant all was dark:
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied,
When out the hellish legion sallied.

_____
158. Maun cour. Must lower.
159. Sic. Such.
160. Lap and flang. Jumped and flung.
161. Souple Supple.
162. Jade. A term of reprobation applied to a woman. Also used playfully, like hussy or minx. — OED.
163. Strang. Strong.
164. Ane. One.
165. Een. Eyes.
166. Fidg’d fu’ fain. Became very restless.
167. Syne anither. Then another.
168. Tint. Lost.
169. A’ thegither. Altogether, entirely.

_____________________________________

As bees bizz¹⁷⁰ out wi’ angry fyke,¹⁷¹
When plundering herds¹⁷² assail their byke;¹⁷³
As open pussie’s¹⁷⁴ mortal foes,
When pop! she starts before their nose;
As eager runs the market-crowd,
When “Catch the thief!” resounds aloud;
So Maggie runs, the witches follow,
Wi’ mony an eldritch skreech¹⁷⁵ and hollow.

Ah, Tam! Ah, Tam! thou’ll get thy fairin!¹⁷⁶
In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin!
In vain thy Kate awaits thy comin!¹⁷⁷
Kate soon will be a woefu’ woman!
Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg,
And win the key-stane of the brig;¹⁷⁸

____
170. Bizz. Buzz.
171. Fyke. Mood.
172. Herds. Shepherds.
173. Byke. Bee-hive.
174. Pussie’s. A hare.
175. Eldritch screech. A frightful scream. The term “elrich screik” dates to 1513, in Douglas’ Aeneis, VII. 108. Eldritch is a word seldom used outside of the small circle of supernatural writers, but the OED does cites its use by Burns, Hawthorne, Lord Lytton and William Dean Howells. It was one of H.P. Lovecraft’s favorite adjectives. —BR
176. Fairin. A fairing, a present.
177. Comin. Coming.
178. Key-stane of the brig. Key-stone of the bridge, i.e., the centermost part of a stone bridge. “It is a well-known fact that witches, or any evil spirits, have no power to follow a poor wight any farther than the middle of the next running stream. It may be proper likewise to mention to the benighted traveller, that when he falls in with bogies, whatever danger may be in his going forward, there is much more hazard in turning back.” — RB

______________________________________

There at them thy tail may toss,
A running stream they dare na cross.
But ere the key-stane she could make,
The fient a tail¹⁷⁹ she had to shake!
For Nannie, far before the rest,
Hard upon noble Maggie prest,
And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle;¹⁸⁰
But little wist she Maggie’s mettle —
Ae spring¹⁸¹ brought off her master hale,¹⁸²
But left behind her ain¹⁸³ gray tail:
The carlin claught¹⁸⁴ her by the rump,
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.

Now, wha¹⁸⁵ this tale o’ truth shall read,
Ilk¹⁸⁶ man and mother’s son, take heed:
Whene’er to drink you are inclin’d,
Or cutty-sarks run in your mind,
Think, ye may buy the joys o’er dear,¹⁸⁷
Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare.

____
179. The fient a tail.  Fient is a petty oath, as, “The devil a tail.”
180. Ettle. Zeal.
181. Ae spring. One jump.
182. Hale. Whole.
183. Ain. Own .
184. Claught. Seized hold on.
185. Wha. Who.
186. Ilk. Each.
187. O’er dear. Too dear.


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