Part 1

A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle

_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._

SANGSCHAW. (1925.) 5/- PENNY WHEEP. (1926.) 5/-

IN PREPARATION.

TO CIRCUMJACK CENCRASTUS.

A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle

BY HUGH M’DIARMID AUTHOR OF ‘SANGSCHAW,’ ETC.

_Vast imbecile mentality of those Who cannot tell a thistle from a rose, This is for others._

—SACHEVERELL SITWELL.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS LTD. EDINBURGH AND LONDON 1926

_Printed in Great Britain_ _All Rights reserved_

_TO F. G. SCOTT._

Can ratt-rime and ragments o’ quenry And recoll o’ Gillha’ requite Your faburdoun, figuration, and gemmell, And prick-sangs’ delight?

Tho’ you’ve cappilowed me in the reapin’ —And yours was a bursten kirn tae!— Yet you share your advantage wi’ me In the end o’ the day.

And my flytin’ and sclatrie sall be Wi’ your fantice and mocage entwined As the bauch Earth is wi’ the lift Or fate wi’ mankind!

AUTHOR’S NOTE.

This gallimaufry is dedicated to my friend, Francis George Scott, the composer, who suggested it, and to whom, during the course of writing it, I have been further greatly indebted for co-operative suggestions and for some of the most penetrating and comprehensive of modern European criticism.

I would gratefully acknowledge, too, the assistance I have received from my friend, Dr Pittendrigh Macgillivray, and from my wife, in the revision of proofs.

To the Editor of ‘The Glasgow Herald’ I have to tender the customary acknowledgements for his kindness in allowing me to republish here certain portions of my poem which originally appeared in his columns.

Drunkenness has a logic of its own with which, even in these decadent days, I believe a sufficient minority of my countrymen remain _au fait_. I would, however, take the liberty of counselling the others, who have no personal experience or sympathetic imagination to guide them, to be chary of attaching any exaggerated importance, in relation to my book as a whole, to such inadvertent reflections of their own sober minds as they may from time to time—as in a distorting mirror—detect in these pages, and of attempting, in, no doubt, a spirit of real helpfulness, to confer, on the basis of these, a species of intelligibility foreign to its nature, upon my poem. It would have been only further misleading these good folks, therefore, if I had (as, arbitrarily enough at best, I might have done) divided my poem into sections or in other ways supplied any of those “hand-rails” which raise false hopes in the ingenuous minds of readers whose rational intelligences are all too insusceptible of realising the enormities of which “highbrows” of my type are capable—even in Scotland.

I would suggest, on the other hand, if I may, that they should avoid subtleties and simply persist in the pretence that my “synthetic Scots” presents insuperable difficulties to understanding, while continuing to espouse with all the impressiveness at their command the counter-claims of “sensible poetry.”

The whole thing must, of course, be pronounced _more Boreali_.

H. M’D.

A DRUNK MAN LOOKS AT THE THISTLE.

I amna’ fou’ sae muckle as tired—deid dune. It’s gey and hard wark’ coupin’ gless for gless Wi’ Cruivie and Gilsanquhar and the like, And I’m no’ juist as bauld as aince I wes.

The elbuck fankles in the coorse o’ time, The sheckle’s no’ sae souple, and the thrapple Grows deef and dour: nae langer up and doun Gleg as a squirrel speils the Adam’s apple.

Forbye, the stuffie’s no’ the real Mackay. The sun’s sel’ aince, as sune as ye began it, Riz in your vera saul: but what keeks in Noo is in truth the vilest “saxpenny planet.”

And as the worth’s gane doun the cost has risen. Yin canna thow the cockles o’ yin’s hert Wi’oot ha’en’ cauld feet noo, jalousin’ what The wife’ll say (I dinna blame her fur’t).

It’s robbin’ Peter to pey Paul at least.... And a’ that’s Scotch aboot it is the name, Like a’ thing else ca’d Scottish nooadays —A’ destitute o’ speerit juist the same.

(To prove my saul is Scots I maun begin Wi’ what’s still deemed Scots and the folk expect, And spire up syne by visible degrees To heichts whereo’ the fules ha’e never recked.

But aince I get them there I’ll whummle them And souse the craturs in the nether deeps, —For it’s nae choice, and ony man s’ud wish To dree the goat’s weird tae as weel’s the sheep’s!)

Heifetz in tartan, and Sir Harry Lauder! Whaur’s Isadora Duncan dancin’ noo? Is Mary Garden in Chicago still And Duncan Grant in Paris—and me fou’?

_Sic transit gloria Scotia_—a’ the floo’ers O’ the Forest are wede awa’. (A blin’ bird’s nest Is aiblins biggin’ in the thistle tho’?... And better blin’ if’ts brood is like the rest!)

You canna gang to a Burns supper even Wi’oot some wizened scrunt o’ a knock-knee Chinee turns roon to say, “Him Haggis—velly goot!” And ten to wan the piper is a Cockney.

No’ wan in fifty kens a wurd Burns wrote But misapplied is a’body’s property, And gin there was his like alive the day They’d be the last a kennin’ haund to gie—

Croose London Scotties wi’ their braw shirt fronts And a’ their fancy freen’s, rejoicin’ That similah gatherings in Timbuctoo, Bagdad—and Hell, nae doot—are voicin’

Burns’ sentiments o’ universal love, In pidgin’ English or in wild-fowl Scots, And toastin’ ane wha’s nocht to them but an Excuse for faitherin’ Genius wi’ _their_ thochts.

A’ _they’ve_ to say was aften said afore A lad was born in Kyle to blaw aboot. What unco fate mak’s _him_ the dumpin’-grun’ For a’ the sloppy rubbish they jaw oot?

Mair nonsense has been uttered in his name Than in ony’s barrin’ liberty and Christ. If this keeps spreedin’ as the drink declines, Syne turns to tea, wae’s me for the _Zeitgeist_!

Rabbie, wad’st thou wert here—the warld hath need, And Scotland mair sae, o’ the likes o’ thee! The whisky that aince moved your lyre’s become A laxative for a’ loquacity.

O gin they’d stegh their guts and haud their wheesht I’d thole it, for “a man’s a man,” I ken, But though the feck ha’e plenty o’ the “a’ that,” They’re nocht but zoologically men.

I’m haverin’, Rabbie, but ye understaun’ It gets my dander up to see your star A bauble in Babel, banged like a saxpence ’Twixt Burbank’s Baedeker and Bleistein’s cigar.

There’s nane sae ignorant but think they can Expatiate on _you_, if on nae ither. The sumphs ha’e ta’en you at your wird, and, fegs! The foziest o’ them claims to be a—Brither!

Syne “Here’s the cheenge”—the star o’ Rabbie Burns. Sma’ cheenge, “Twinkle, Twinkle.” The memory slips As G. K. Chesterton heaves up to gi’e “The Immortal Memory” in a huge eclipse,

Or somebody else as famous if less fat. You left the like in Embro’ in a scunner To booze wi’ thieveless cronies sic as me. I’se warrant you’d shy clear o’ a’ the hunner

Odd Burns’ Clubs tae, or ninety-nine o’ them, And haud your birthday in a different kip Whaur your name isna’ ta’en in vain—as Christ Gied a’ Jerusalem’s Pharisees the slip,

—Christ wha’d ha’e been Chief Rabbi gin he’d lik’t!— Wi’ publicans and sinners to forgether, But, losh! the publicans noo are Pharisees, And I’m no’ shair o’ maist the sinners either.

But that’s aside the point! I’ve got fair waun’ert. It’s no’ that I’m sae fou’ as juist deid dune, And dinna ken as muckle’s whaur I am Or hoo I’ve come to sprawl here ’neth the mune

That’s it! It isna me that’s fou’ at a’, But the fu’ mune, the doited jade, that’s led Me fer agley, or ’mogrified the warld. —For a’ I ken I’m safe in my ain bed.

_Jean! Jean!_ Gin _she_’s no’ here it’s no’ _oor_ bed, Or else I’m dreamin’ deep and canna wauken, But it’s a fell queer dream if this is no’ A real hillside—and thae things thistles and bracken!

It’s hard wark haud’n by a thocht worth ha’en’ And harder speakin’t, and no’ for ilka man; Maist Thocht’s like whisky—a thoosan’ under proof, And a sair price is pitten on’t even than.

As Kirks wi’ Christianity ha’e dune, Burns’ Clubs wi’ Burns—wi’ a’thing it’s the same, The core o’ ocht is only for the few, Scorned by the mony, thrang wi’ts empty name.

And a’ the names in History mean nocht To maist folk but “ideas o’ their ain,” The vera opposite o’ onything The Deid ’ud awn gin they cam’ back again.

A greater Christ, a greater Burns, may come. The maist they’ll dae is to gi’e bigger pegs To folly and conceit to hank their rubbish on. They’ll cheenge folks’ talk but no their natures, fegs!

I maun feed frae the common trough ana’ Whaur a’ the lees o’ hope are jumbled up; While centuries like pigs are slorpin’ owre’t Sall my wee ’oor be cryin’: “Let pass this cup?”

In wi’ your gruntle then, puir wheengin’ saul, Lap up the ugsome aidle wi’ the lave, What gin it’s your ain vomit that you swill And frae Life’s gantin’ and unfaddomed grave?

I doot I’m geylies mixed, like Life itsel’, But I was never ane that thocht to pit An ocean in a mutchkin. As the haill’s Mair than the pairt sae I than reason yet.

I dinna haud the warld’s end in my heid As maist folk think they dae; nor filter truth In fishy gills through which its tides may poor For ony _animalculæ_ forsooth.

I lauch to see my crazy little brain —And ither folks’—tak’n itsel’ seriously, And in a sudden lowe o’ fun my saul Blinks dozent as the owl I ken’t to be.

I’ll ha’e nae hauf-way hoose, but aye be whaur Extremes meet—it’s the only way I ken To dodge the curst conceit o’ bein’ richt That damns the vast majority o’ men.

I’ll bury nae heid like an ostrich’s, Nor yet believe my een and naething else. My senses may advise me, but I’ll be Mysel’ nae maitter what they tell’s....

I ha’e nae doot some foreign philosopher Has wrocht a system oot to justify A’ this: but I’m a Scot wha blin’ly follows Auld Scottish instincts, and I winna try.

For I’ve nae faith in ocht I can explain, And stert whaur the philosophers leave aff, Content to glimpse its loops I dinna ettle To land the sea serpent’s sel’ wi’ ony gaff.

Like staundin’ water in a pocket o’ Impervious clay I pray I’ll never be, Cut aff and self-sufficient, but let reenge Heichts o’ the lift and benmaist deeps o’ sea.

Water! Water! There was owre muckle o’t In yonder whisky, sae I’m in deep water (And gin I could wun hame I’d be in het, For even Jean maun natter, natter, natter)....

And in the toon that I belang tae —What tho’ts Montrose or Nazareth?— Helplessly the folk continue To lead their livin’ death!...

[1]_At darknin’ hings abune the howff A weet and wild and eisenin’ air. Spring’s spirit wi’ its waesome sough Rules owre the drucken stramash there._

_And heich abune the vennel’s pokiness, Whaur a’ the white-weshed cottons lie; The Inn’s sign blinters in the mochiness, And lood and shrill the bairnies cry._

_The hauflins ’yont the burgh boonds Gang ilka nicht, and a’ the same, Their bonnets cocked; their bluid that stounds Is playin’ at a fine auld game._

_And on the lochan there, hauf-herted Wee screams and creakin’ oar-locks soon’, And in the lift, heich, hauf-averted, The mune looks owre the yirdly roon’._

_And ilka evenin’, derf and serious (Jean ettles nocht o’ this, puir lass), In liquor, raw yet still mysterious, A’e freend’s aye mirrored in my glass._

_Ahint the sheenin’ coonter gruff Thrang barmen ding the tumblers doun “In vino veritas” cry rough And reid-een’d fules that in it droon._

_But ilka evenin’ fey and fremt (Is it a dream nae wauk’nin’ proves?) As to a trystin’-place undreamt, A silken leddy darkly moves._

_Slow gangs she by the drunken anes, And lanely by the winnock sits; Frae’r robes, atour the sunken anes, A rooky dwamin’ perfume flits._

_Her gleamin’ silks, the taperin’ O’ her ringed fingers, and her feathers Move dimly like a dream wi’in, While endless faith aboot them gethers._

_I seek, in this captivity, To pierce the veils that darklin’ fa’ —See white clints slidin’ to the sea, And hear the horns o’ Elfland blaw._

_I ha’e dark secrets’ turns and twists, A sun is gi’en to me to haud, The whisky in my bluid insists, And spiers my benmaist history, lad._

_And owre my brain the flitterin’ O’ the dim feathers gangs aince mair, And, faddomless, the dark blue glitterin’ O’ twa een in the ocean there._

_My soul stores up this wealth unspent, The key is safe and nane’s but mine. You’re richt, auld drunk impenitent, I ken it tae—the truth’s in wine!_

The munelicht’s like a lookin’-glass, The thistle’s like mysel’, But whaur ye’ve gane, my bonnie lass. Is mair than I can tell.

Were you a vision o’ mysel’, Transmuted by the mellow liquor? Neist time I glisk you in a glass, I’se warrant I’ll mak’ siccar.

A man’s a clean contrairy sicht Turned this way in-ootside, And, fegs, I feel like Dr Jekyll Tak’n guid tent o’ Mr Hyde....

Gurly thistle—hic—you canna Daunton me wi’ your shaggy mien, I’m sair—hic—needin’ a shave, That’s plainly to be seen.

But what aboot it—hic—aboot it? Mony a man’s been that afore. It’s no’ a fact that in his lugs A wund like this need roar!...

[2]_I hae forekent ye! O I hae forekent. The years forecast your face afore they went. A licht I canna thole is in the lift. I bide in silence your slow-comin’ pace. The ends o’ space are bricht: at last—oh swift! While terror clings to me—an unkent face!_

_Ill-faith stirs in me as she comes at last, The features lang forekent ... are unforecast. O it gangs hard wi’me, I am forspent. Deid dreams ha’e beaten me and a face unkent And generations that I thocht unborn Hail the strange Goddess frae my hert’s-hert torn!_...

Or dost thou mak’ a thistle o’ me, wumman? But for thee I were as happy as the munelicht, withoot care, But thocht o’ thee—o’ thy contempt and ire— Turns hauf the warld into the youky thistle there,

Feedin’ on the munelicht and transformin’ it To this wanrestfu’ growth that winna let me be. The munelicht is the freedom that I’d ha’e But for this cursèd Conscience thou hast set in me.

It is morality, the knowledge o’ Guid and Ill, Fear, shame, pity, like a will and wilyart growth, That kills a’ else wi’in its reach and craves Nae less at last than a’ the warld to gi’e it scouth.

The need to wark, the need to think, the need to be, And a’ thing that twists Life into a certain shape And interferes wi’ perfect liberty— These feed this Frankenstein that nae man can escape.

For ilka thing a man can be or think or dae Aye leaves a million mair unbeen, unthocht, undune, Till his puir warped performance is, To a’ that micht ha’ been, a thistle to the mune.

It is Mortality itsel’—the mortal coil, Mockin’ Perfection, Man afore the Throne o’ God. He yet has bigged himsel’, Man torn in twa And glorious in the lift and grisly on the sod!...

There’s nocht sae sober as a man blin’ drunk. I maun ha’e got an unco bellyfu’ To jaw like this—and yet what I am sayin’ Is a’ the apter, aiblins, to be true.

This munelicht’s fell like whisky noo I see’t. —Am I a thingum mebbe that is kept Preserved in spirits in a muckle bottle Lang centuries efter sin’ wi’ Jean I slept?

—Mounted on a hillside, wi’ the thistles And bracken for verisimilitude, Like a stuffed bird on metal like a brainch, Or a seal on a stump o’ rock-like wood?

Or am I juist a figure in a scene O’ Scottish life A.D. one-nine-two-five? The haill thing kelters like a theatre claith Till I micht fancy that I was alive!

I dinna ken and nae man ever can. I micht be in my ain bed efter a’. The haill damned thing’s a dream for ocht we ken, —The Warld and Life and Daith, Heaven, Hell ana’.

We maun juist tak’ things as we find them then, And mak’ a kirk or mill o’ them as we can, —And yet I feel this muckle thistle’s staun’in’ Atween me and the mune as pairt o’ a Plan.

It isna there—nor me—by accident. We’re brocht thegither for a certain reason, Ev’n gin it’s naething mair than juist to gi’e My jaded soul a necessary _frisson_.

I never saw afore a thistle quite Sae intimately, or at sic an ’oor. There’s something in the fickle licht that gi’es A different life to’t and an unco poo’er.

[3]“_Rootit on gressless peaks, whaur its erect And jaggy leafs, austerely cauld and dumb, Haud the slow scaly serpent in respect, The Gothic thistle, whaur the insect’s hum Soon’s fer aff, lifts abune the rock it scorns Its rigid virtue for the Heavens to see. The too’ering boulders gaird it. And the bee Mak’s honey frae the roses on its thorns._”

But that’s a Belgian refugee, of coorse. _This_ Freudian complex has somehoo slunken Frae Scotland’s soul—the Scots aboulia— Whilst a’ its _terra nullius_ is _betrunken_.

And a’ the country roon’ aboot it noo Lies clapt and shrunken syne like somebody wha Has lang o’ seven devils been possessed; Then when he turns a corner tines them a’,

Or like a body that has tint its soul. Perched like a monkey on its heedless kist, Or like a sea that peacefu’ fa’s again When frae its deeps an octopus is fished.

I canna feel it has to dae wi’ me Mair than a composite diagram o’ Cross-sections o’ my forbears’ organs —And mine—’ud bring a kind o’ freen’ly glow.

And yet like bindweed through my clay it’s run, And a’ my folks’—it’s queer to see’t unroll. My ain soul looks me in the face, as ’twere, And mair than my ain soul—my nation’s soul!

And sall a Belgian pit it into words And sing a sang to’t syne, and no’ a Scot? Oors is a wilder thistle, and Ramaekers Canna bear aff the gree—avaunt the thocht!

To meddle wi’ the thistle and to pluck The figs frae’t is _my_ metier, I think. Awak’, my muse, and gin you’re in puir fettle, We aye can blame it on th’ inferior drink.

T. S. Eliot—it’s a Scottish name— Afore he wrote ‘The Waste Land’ s’ud ha’e come To Scotland here. He wad ha’e written A better poem syne—like this, by gum!

Type o’ the wissenschaftsfeindlichkeit, Begriffsmüdigkeit that has gar’t Men try Morphologies der Weltgeschichte, And mad Expressionismus syne in Art.

[4]_A shameless thing, for ilka vileness able, It is deid grey as dust, the dust o’ a man. I perish o’ a nearness I canna win awa’ frae, Its deidly coils aboot my buik are thrawn._

_A shaggy poulp, embracin’ me and stingin’, And as a serpent cauld agen’ my hert. Its scales are poisoned shafts that jag me to the quick —And waur than them’s my scunner’s fearfu’ smert!_

_O that its prickles were a knife indeed, But it is thowless, flabby, dowf, and numb. Sae sluggishly it drains my benmaist life A dozent dragon, dreidfu’, deef, and dumb._

_In mum obscurity it twines its obstinate rings And hings caressin’ly, its purpose whole; And this deid thing, whale-white obscenity, This horror that I writhe in—is my soul!_

Is it the munelicht or a leprosy That spreids aboot me; and a thistle Or my ain skeleton through wha’s bare banes A fiendish wund’s begood to whistle?

The devil’s lauchter has a _hwll_ like this. My face has flown open like a lid —And gibberin’ on the hillside there Is a’ humanity sae lang has hid!...

My harns are seaweed—when the tide is in They swall like blethers and in comfort float, But when the tide is oot they lie like gealed And runkled auld bluid-vessels in a knot!

The munelicht ebbs and flows and wi’t my thocht, Noo’ movin’ mellow and noo lourd and rough. I ken what I am like in Life and Daith, But Life and Daith for nae man are enough....

And O! to think that there are members o’ St Andrew’s Societies sleepin’ soon’, Wha to the papers wrote afore they bedded On regimental buttons or buckled shoon,

Or use o’ England whaur the U.K.’s meent, Or this or that anent the Blue Saltire, Recruitin’, pedigrees, and Gude kens what, Filled wi’ a proper patriotic fire!

Wad I were them—they’ve chosen a better pairt, The couthie craturs, than the ane I’ve ta’en, Tyauvin’ wi’ this root-hewn Scottis soul; A fer, fer better pairt—except for men.

Nae doot they’re sober, as a Scot ne’er was, Each tethered to a punctual-snorin’ missus, Whilst I, puir fule, owre continents unkent And wine-dark oceans waunder like Ulysses....

[5]_The Mune sits on my bed the nicht unsocht, And mak’s my soul obedient to her will; And in the dumb-deid, still as dreams are still, Her pupils narrow to bricht threids that thrill Aboot the sensuous windin’s o’ her thocht._

_But ilka windin’ has its coonter-pairt —The opposite ’thoot which it couldna be— In some wild kink or queer perversity O’ this great thistle, green wi’ jealousy, That breenges ’twixt the munelicht and my hert._...

Plant, what are you then? Your leafs Mind me o’ the pipes’ lood drone —And a’ your purple tops Are the pirly-wirly notes That gang staggerin’ owre them as they groan.

Or your leafs are alligators That ha’e gobbled owre a haill Company o’ Heilant sodgers, And left naethin’ but the toories O’ their Balmoral bonnets to tell the tale.

Or a muckle bellows blawin’ Wi’ the sperks a’ whizzin’ oot; Or green tides sweeshin’ ’Neth heich-skeich stars, Or centuries fleein’ doun a water-chute.

Grinnin’ gargoyle by a saint, Mephistopheles in Heaven, Skeleton at a tea-meetin’, Missin’ link—or creakin’ Hinge atween the deid and livin’....

(I kent a Terrier in a sham fecht aince, Wha louped a dyke and landed on a thistle. He’d naething on ava aneth his kilt. Schönberg has nae notation for his whistle.)...

(Gin you’re surprised a village drunk Foreign references s’ud fool in, You ha’ena the respect you s’ud For oor guid Scottish schoolin’.

For we’ve the maist unlikely folk Aye braggin’ o’ oor lear, And, tho’ I’m drunk, for Scotland’s sake I tak’ my barrowsteel here!

Yet Europe’s faur eneuch for me, Puir fule, when bairns ken mair O’ th’ ither warld than I o’ this —But that’s no’ here nor there!)...

Guid sakes, I’m in a dreidfu’ state. I’ll ha’e nae inklin’ sune Gin I’m the drinker or the drink, The thistle or the mune.

I’m geylies feart I couldna tell Gin I su’d lay me doon The difference betwixt the warld And my ain heid gaen’ roon’!...

Drums in the Walligate, pipes in the air, Come and hear the cryin’ o’ the Fair.

A’ as it used to be, when I was a loon On Common-Ridin’ Day in the Muckle Toon.

The bearer twirls the Bannock-and-Saut-Herrin’, The Croon o’ Roses through the lift is farin’,

The aucht-fit thistle wallops on hie; In heather besoms a’ the hills gang by.

But noo it’s a’ the fish o’ the sea Nailed on the roond o’ the Earth to me.

Beauty and Love that are bobbin’ there; Syne the breengin’ growth that alane I bear;

And Scotland followin’ on ahint For threepenny bits spleet-new frae the mint.

Drums in the Walligate, pipes in the air, The wallopin’ thistle is ill to bear.