Robert Burns Club of Milwaukee

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Robert Burns Goes to the Dogs -- With Poetic License

Poem of the Month for October, 1999

Contributed by Pete Kucik

Robert Burns was subject to mood swings. When someone asked him to write a poem, he could be excessively charming and flattered or unbelievably rude and cruel. He loved animals, especially dogs. Many poems reflect the fact that humans, who want freedom for themselves, are tyrants over the inhabitants of nature.

He wrote this famous

Epitaph on a Lapdog

In wood and wild, ye warbling throng,
Your heavy loss deplore
Now half extinct your powers of song
Sweet Echo is no more

Ye jarring, screeching things around,
Scream your discordant joys:
Now half your din of tuneless sound
With Echo silent lies

According to the Centennary edition of Burns's works, he did it unwillingly, and in the second verse this comes through:

His problem seemed to be with the woman, not the dog, for in other poems he clearly sees dogs as superior to humans. For example,

On A Dog of Lord Eglinton's

One of a number of short pieces and fragments collected by James Grierson of Dalgoner, an early collector of Burnsiana (c. 1805).

    I never barked when out of season,
    I never bit without a reason;
    I ne'er insulted weaker brother,
    Nor wronged by force or fraud another.
    We brutes are placed a rank below;
    Happy for man could he say so.

He also identified with the sexual antics of dogs. In his poem to his illegitimate daughter, he refers to himself as: The Rantin Dog, The Daddie O'T

--Pete Kucik, September 1999

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