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A far cry from the urban-dwelling poets of The Age of Reason, "Bobbie" Burns was a man of the soil. Until his mid-teens he worked on the farms of the lowlands of Scotland. By his early 20s he was a veteran of love affairs and a regular of the local taverns.

He found time to journey through the backwoods areas of northern England and the Scottish Highlands collecting and preserving the songs and ballads of the common people with a particular emphasis accurate reproduction of regional dialects.

He was also well read in the classics and wrote perfect English in his ordinary correspondence. He saved his Scottish dialect for conversation, for wooing the many women he seduced, and for poetry, and we are the richer for it.

In his poems, plants, animals and creatures of nature are treated as creatures with the same sorrows, difficulties, and pleasures known to humankind. In one of his most famous poems, he even asked why landscape and birds could be so cheerful in view of his own difficulties.

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom so fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I so weary, full o' care . . . .

In To a Mouse, each verse shows the respect and value Burns accords to all living things, no matter how lowly and insignificant.

He begins by addressing the mouse, reassuring the animal that he intends to do it no harm. His promises are couched in what has become known as the Burns (or Scottish) stanza. The rhyme scheme is aaabab, the 4 "a" lines being tetrameter and the 2 "b" lines dimeter.

The dialect causes few problems to an English speaker, and translation to commonplace vocabulary is more detrimental than helpful. The first verse in the original reads:

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee
Wi' murdering pattle.

Words two, three, and four are clearly "sleek, cowering, timorous." I assume (and find fascinating) that "sleekit" was the source of the secondary meaning of crafty that we hear in modern expressions where "sleek" is modified to "slick"; "a slick character" or a "slick liar." Knowing the first three lines are end-rimed, I accept that the first two interior vowel make the sound of the long "a" in "hasty." "Bickering brattle" must support the idea of speedy escape from danger; "laith to rin" must be "loath to run," and the "murdering brattle" can only be a tool associated with the plow that has disturbed the

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