To Luath
(Robert Burns’s Dog)
“Darling Jean” was Jean Armour, a “comely country lass” whom Burns met at a penny wedding at Mauchline. They chanced to be dancing in the same quadrille when the poet’s dog sprang to his master and almost upset some of the dancers. Burns remarked that he wished he could get any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.
Some days afterward, Jean, seeing him pass as she was bleaching clothes on the village green, called to him and asked him if he had yet got any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.
That was the beginning of an acquaintance that coloured all of Burns’s life. —Nathan Haskell Dole.
Well, Luath, man, when you came prancing
All glee to see your Robin dancing,
His partner’s muslin gown mischancing
You leaped for joy!
And little guessed what sweet romancing
You caused, my boy!
With happy bark, that moment jolly,
You frisked and frolicked, faithful collie;
His other dog, old melancholy,
Was put to flight—
But what a tale of grief and folly
You wagged that night!
Ah, Luath, tyke, your bonny master
Whose lyric pulse beat ever faster
Each time he saw a lass and passed her
His breast went bang!
In many a woful heart’s disaster
He felt the pang!
Poor Robin’s heart, forever burning,
Forever roving, ranting, yearning,
From you that heart might have been learning
To be less fickle!
Might have been spared so many a turning
And grievous prickle!
Your collie heart held but one notion—
When Robbie jigged in sprightly motion
You ran to show your own devotion
And gambolled too,
And so that tempest on love’s ocean
Was due to you!
Well, it is ower late for preaching
And hearts are aye too hot for teaching!
When Robin with his eye beseeching
By greenside came,
Jeanie—poor lass—forgot her bleaching
And yours the blame!