Any reader familiar with Gavin Douglas's description of a Scottish winter in his Prologue to the twelfth book of the _Æneid_ will be struck by the resemblance to this passage both in subject and manner. It is doubtful whether Burns knew more of Douglas than the motto to _Tam o' Shanter_, but from the days of the turbulent bishop in the early sixteenth century down to Burns's own time Scottish poetry had never lost touch with nature, and had rendered it with peculiar faithfulness. It is interesting to note that while _The Brigs of Ayr_ is Burns's most successful attempt at the heroic couplet, and though it contains verses that must have encouraged his ambition to be a Scottish Pope, yet it is sprinkled with touches of natural observation quite remote from the manner of that master. Compare, on the one hand, such couplets as these:
Will your poor narrow foot-path of a street, Where twa wheel-barrows tremble when they meet,--
And tho' wi' crazy eild I'm sair forfairn [old age, sorely worn-out] I'll be a brig when ye're a shapeless cairn! [heap of stones]
Forms like some bedlam statuary's dream, The craz'd creations of misguided whim;
As for your priesthood, I shall say but little, Corbies and clergy are a shot right kittle; [Ravens, sort, ticklish]
couplets of which Pope need hardly have been ashamed, with such touches of nature as these:
Except perhaps the robin's whistling glee, Proud o' the height o some bit half-lang tree:
The silent moon shone high o'er tow'r and tree: The chilly frost, beneath the silver beam, Crept, gently crusting, owre the glittering stream.
These examples of his power of exact, vigorous, or delicate rendering of familiar sights and sounds may be supplemented with a few from other poems.
O sweet are Coila's haughs an' woods, [intervales] When lintwhites chant amang the buds, [linnets] And jinkin' hares, in amorous whids, [dodging, gambols] Their loves enjoy, While thro' the braes the cushat croods [coos] Wi' wailfu' cry!
Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me When winds rave thro' the naked tree; Or frost on hills of Ochiltree Are hoary gray; Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, Dark'ning the day! _Epistle to William Simpson._
Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, As thro' the glen it wimpled; Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays; Whyles in a wiel it dimpled; Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, Wi' bickering, dancing dazzle; Whyles cookit underneath the braes, Below the spreading hazel, Unseen that night. _Halloween._