ADDRESS

TO AN

ILLEGITIMATE CHILD.

[This hasty and not very decorous effusion, was originally entitled
"The Poet's Welcome; or, Rab the Rhymer's Address to his Bastard
Child." A copy, with the more softened, but less expressive title, was
published by Stewart, in 1801, and is alluded to by Burns himself, in
his biographical letter to Moore. "Bonnie Betty," the mother of the
"sonsie-smirking, dear-bought Bess," of the Inventory, lived in
Largieside: to support this daughter the poet made over the copyright
of his works when he proposed to go to the West Indies. She lived to
be a woman, and to marry one John Bishop, overseer at Polkemmet, where
she died in 1817. It is said she resembled Burns quite as much as any
of the rest of his children.]


Thou's welcome, wean, mischanter fa' me,
If ought of thee, or of thy mammy,
Shall ever daunton me, or awe me,
My sweet wee lady,
Or if I blush when thou shalt ca' me
Tit-ta or daddy.

Wee image of my bonny Betty,
I, fatherly, will kiss and daut thee,
As dear and near my heart I set thee