Jamaica bodies, use him weel,
An' hap him in a cozie biel; [cover, shelter]
Ye'll find him aye a dainty chiel, [fellow]
And fu' o' glee;
He wad na wrang'd the vera deil,
That's owre the sea.

Fareweel, my rhyme-composing billie!
Your native soil was right ill-willie; [unkind]
But may ye flourish like a lily,
Now bonnilie!
I'll toast ye in my hindmost gillie, [last gill]
Tho' owre the sea!


3. Edinburgh

On the twenty-seventh of November, 1786, mounted on a borrowed pony,
Burns set out for Edinburgh. He seems to have arrived there without
definite plans, for, after having found lodging with his old friend
Richmond, he spent the first few days strolling about the city. At
home Burns had been an enthusiastic freemason, and it was through a
masonic friend, Mr. James Dalrymple of Orangefield, near Ayr, that he
was introduced to Edinburgh society. A decade or two earlier, that
society, under the leadership of men like Adam Smith and David Hume
had reached a high degree of intellectual distinction. A decade or two
later, under Sir Walter Scott and the Reviewers it was again to be in
some measure, if for the last time, a rival to London as a literary
center. But when Burns visited it there was a kind of interregnum,
and, little though he or they guessed it, none of the celebrities he