Poetry
The Jolly Beggars
Robert Burns · 1799
Opening lines
When lyart leaves bestrow the yird,
Or wavering like the bauckie-bird,
Bedim cauld Boreas’ blast;
When grey leaves strew the earth,
Or, wavering like the bat,
Darken cold Boreas' blast;
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
One evening in late autumn, at the first frosts, a band of vagabonds drinks away its rags in Poosie Nansie's tavern. An old maimed soldier sings of his campaigns, his companion tells of the men she has followed, a jester sings of his madness, a thief weeps for her hanged Highlander. A little fiddler courts her, a tinker contests her with him. Each has his own song, announced by a recitative. The last to rise is a poet, who has nothing either.
Context
The cantata was written around 1785, after a night spent in a tavern at Mauchline in the company of two friends. It did not appear in his lifetime: he was dissuaded from publishing it, and a professor of rhetoric in Edinburgh, who judged it too licentious, weighed in its exclusion from the Edinburgh edition of 1787. When a song publisher reminded him of it in 1793, he replied that he had forgotten it and kept no copy. It appeared in part in 1799 in a fifteen-page pamphlet, without authorisation, and complete only three years later.
Who it is for
More than three hundred lines, mostly in Ayrshire Scots, with a glossary needed. The cantata was set to music by Henry Bishop in 1818 and Cedric Thorpe Davie in 1953.
Prizes and reception
Set aside by Currie from the first collected edition in 1800, it is now regarded as one of its author's finest achievements.
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