With the ready trick and fable,
Round we wander all the day;
And at night, in barn or stable,
Hug our doxies on the hay. [mistresses]

Does the train-attended carriage
Thro' the country lighter rove?
Does the sober bed of marriage
Witness brighter scenes of love?

Life is all a variorum,
We regard not how it goes;
Let them cant about decorum
Who have characters to lose.

Here's to budgets, bags, and wallets!
Here's to all the wandering train!
Here's our ragged brats and callets! [wenches]
One and all cry out _Amen!_

The materials for rebuilding Burns's world are not confined to his
explicitly descriptive poems. Much can be gathered from the songs and
satires, and there are important contributions in his too scanty
essays in narrative. Of these last by far the most valuable is _Tam o'
Shanter_. The poem originated accidentally in the request of a certain
Captain Grose for local legends to enrich a descriptive work which he
was compiling. In Burns's correspondence will be found a prose
account of the tradition on which the poem is founded, and he is
supposed to have derived hints for the relations of Tam and his spouse