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She kiltit up her kirtle weel To show her bonie cutes sae sma', And walloped about the reel, The lightest louper o' them a'! While some, like slav'ring, doited stots Stoit'ring out thro' the midden dub, Fankit their heels amang their coats And gart the floor their backsides rub; Gordon, the great the gay, the gallant, Skip't like a maukin owre a dyke: Deil tak me, since I was a callant, Gif e'er my een beheld the like!
This is a poem by Robert Burns. It was written in and is read here by Clare Grogan.
The famously, 'mad, bad and dangerous to know', Lord Byron died on April 19th, 1825. In Burns's antithetical mind' he had detected both 'dirt and deity'. Byron was very proud of his connection to the aristocratic Gordons of Aberdeenshire. Jane, Duchess of Gordon, a society hostess, was an ardent patroness of the Bard. Burns wrote in defence of her reputation to the editor of a London newspaper in April, 1789. The paper had reprinted some defamatory verses wrongly attributed to the poet. Maybe there was some dirt in HER deity too!
Donny O'Rourke
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