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Details
BURNS, Robert (1759-1796). Autograph manuscript entitled 'The Ordination. -- A Scotch Poem', beginning:
'Kilm -- ck wabsters, fidge an' claw,
An' pour your creeshie nations;
An' ye wha leather rax an' draw,
of a' denominations;'
4 pages, folio (slightly soiled).
First collected in the Poems published at Kilmarnock in late July 1786. Kingsley takes as his master text the Edinburgh edition of 1787, collected with those of 1793, 1794. He cites two MSS with variant readings which he had not traced, to which can be added the present manuscript. This contains variant readings in lines 28, 30, 32, 34 (stanza IV), and in lines 38, 39, 40, 41 (stanza V), that is, variants similar but not identical with those in the two cited MSS. In the present manuscript Burns inserts the proper names (omitted in the printed text), and adds a note on the identity of Maggie Lauder.
Burns took as his subject matter the arrival of the Revd. James MacKinlay, an evangelical, to the Laigh Kirk, Kilmarnock, an appointment which was opposed by the Kilmarnock moderates. The Ordination was written probably in the first weeks of 1786, 'an anticipatory view of the approaching ceremony' to console the moderates.
Literature: James Kingsley ed. The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, 1968, I. 213-17; III. 1164-67.
'Kilm -- ck wabsters, fidge an' claw,
An' pour your creeshie nations;
An' ye wha leather rax an' draw,
of a' denominations;'
4 pages, folio (slightly soiled).
First collected in the Poems published at Kilmarnock in late July 1786. Kingsley takes as his master text the Edinburgh edition of 1787, collected with those of 1793, 1794. He cites two MSS with variant readings which he had not traced, to which can be added the present manuscript. This contains variant readings in lines 28, 30, 32, 34 (stanza IV), and in lines 38, 39, 40, 41 (stanza V), that is, variants similar but not identical with those in the two cited MSS. In the present manuscript Burns inserts the proper names (omitted in the printed text), and adds a note on the identity of Maggie Lauder.
Burns took as his subject matter the arrival of the Revd. James MacKinlay, an evangelical, to the Laigh Kirk, Kilmarnock, an appointment which was opposed by the Kilmarnock moderates. The Ordination was written probably in the first weeks of 1786, 'an anticipatory view of the approaching ceremony' to console the moderates.
Literature: James Kingsley ed. The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, 1968, I. 213-17; III. 1164-67.