janewilliams20

If you're going to Mel's Burns Night party tomorrow, warning, spoilers ahead. Read if you wish, of course.

I started with this:
http://www.worldburnsclub.com/poems/translations/459.htm

and ended up with something called "Humphrey, the Sinister Haggis". It assumes you know the basics of haggis-hunting (the beastie has a round, smooth body, a long white furry tail from which sporrans are made, and the legs on one side are longer than those on the other so it can run round mountains: to hunt, chase it the wrong way round the mountain, and it rolls down into the nets.)

Five verses, plus chorus.
( Read more... )

Well, it's the rhyming pattern he prefers (there's probably a proper name for it, but it's the syllable/rhyme pattern of 8A 8A 8A 4B 8A 4B). It uses less in the way of Scots words than is usual for him, but then verse 3 may explain why. And it's unfinished....

Sometimes to write I lack the will
When from the bottle ink doth spill
The box yields but a broken quill
My thought I lose
Sich mundane tasks my mind must fill
This foils the Muse

So when a salesman, keen and bright
Accosts me on a Friday night
And wishes me to see the light
Of his new tool
The ale is guid: he may be right
I am a fule.

But what avail, to tell me how
I should spell? I ken, I trow
More words than this beast will allow
T'would suit me fine
If I should ne'er more see, I vow
Red underline

I'll throw the damn thing in the brook
Ill health to him from whom I took
This cursed device that wrecks each book
(and there it breaks off)

More seriously, I'd like to put another verse in between 2 and 3, but I was short of time (writing the last two after we'd finished the haggis - me, leave it to the last minute?) I can't do formal poetry with metre and so on, we know that...