SCARLET
A moral based on The Twa Dogs ( Luath and Caesar), by Rabbie Burns.
'But pleasures are like poppies spread' – Tam O Shanter.
For a collie swift and nimble, he picked
A Gaelic name
And for his favourite songs and rhymes,
Collected Gaelic airs
And when he chose a Highland girl
To be his bonie lass
Rabbie thought o simple pleasures –
Sweet clovered meadow grass.
What would the bard who told the world
Of schemes that were best laid
Make of Scottish politicians
Or of Section 28?
I doot he'd be impressed wi spin,
Mcleish or officegate
Or tuition abolition, masking
Student Endowment Rates.
In a world o high tech workers and of the internet
We still need to pay a mortgage
We still need to pay a rent.
What would Rabbie think o gentry buying crofting lands
En masse
Or wee Free Presbyterians bearing battering rams
To kirk?
In a world of e-mail conference and of technology
Ye still canna beat a meeting wi an honest, gentle ee
For it's the nuances o voice, o cadences, and stress
It's music, dance and laughter an the pooer o a kiss!
I doot he'd need viagra
When he'd meet his bonie lass
Oor poet knew that freedom's
Taking pleasure in the grass.
The moral of the story for all you richly clad
It's not in Caesar's palaces there's pleasures to be had:
But where the wind sweeps through the machair
Where the peewits pierce the dawn
And where the loveliest o God's flooers
is the
rebel
In the corn.
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