"I once was a maid, tho' I cannot tell when, And still my delight is in proper young men.... Some one of a troop of dragoons was my daddie, No wonder I'm fond of a sodger laddie. The first of my loves was a swaggering blade, To rattle the thundering drum was his trade.... The sword I forsook for the sake of the church.... Full soon I grew sick of my sanctified sot, The regiment at large for a husband I got, From the gilded spontoon to the fife I was ready, I ask no more but a sodger laddie. But the peace it reduc'd me to beg in despair, Till I met my old boy at a Cunningham fair; His rags regimental they flutter'd so gaudy, My heart it rejoic'd at a sodger laddie.... But whilst with both hands I can hold the glass steady, Here's to thee, my hero, my sodger laddie." This is certainly a free and easy style, and the poet is not mealy mouthed. His other characters arc in the same taste, a Merry Andrew, a raucle carlin (a stout beldame), "a pigmy-scraper wi' his fiddle," a travelling tinker--all in rags, brawlers and gypsies, who fight, bang, and kiss each other, and make the glasses ring with the noise of their good humor: "They toomed their pocks, and pawned their duds, They scarcely left to co'er their fuds, To quench their lowin' drouth." And their chorus rolls about like thunder, shaking the rafters and walls. "A fig for those by law protected! Liberty's a glorious feast! Courts for cowards were erected, Churches built to please the priest! "What is title? What is treasure? What is reputation's care? If we lead a life of pleasure, 'Tis no matter how or where! "With the ready trick and fable, Round we wander all the day; And at night, in barn or stable, Hug our doxies on the hay. "Life is all a variorum, We regard not how it goes; Let them cant about decorum, Who have characters to lose. "Here's to budgets, bags and wallets! Here's to all the wandering train! Here's our ragged brats and callets! One and all cry out--Amen." Has any man better spoken the language of rebels and levellers? There is here, however, something else than the instinct of destruction and an appeal to the senses; there is hatred of cant and return to nature. Burns sings: "Morality, thou deadly bane, Thy tens o' thousands thou hast slain; Vain is his hope, whose stay and trust is In moral mercy, truth and justice!"[81] Mercy! this grand word renews all. Now, as formerly, eighteen centuries ago, men rose above legal formulas and prescriptions; now, as formerly, under Vergil and Marcus Aurelius, refined sensibility and wide sympathies embraced beings who seemed forever out of the pale of society and law. Burns pities, and that sincerely, a wounded hare, a mouse whose nest was upturned by his plough, a mountain daisy. Is there such a very great difference between man, beast, or plant? A mouse stores up, calculates, suffers like a man: "I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve; What then? poor beastie, thou maun live."