Text: The Life and Death of the Piper of Kilbarchan

Text Note: For such a minor local poem, this elegy on the C17th town-piper, Habbie Simpson, had a surprisingly-major impact on the history of Scots verse. First published in cheap broadsides, then in Watson's Choice Collection (1706), its rhythmically-off-kilter rime couée form was designated the "Standart Habby" by Allan Ramsay (1719). After Fergusson and Burns, the form indeed became an elegaic standard, although soon degenerated into a folksy Kailyaird cliche. But the roots of the "Standard Habbie" form are, in fact, aristocratic and Continental. This ScotMus.com "edition of editions" attempts to waft some of the legendary mist off auld Habbie's tomb.

Notes on this 2010 Edition: This "edition of editions" is, no doubt, complete editorial overkill for such a minor, local poem by such a minor, local poet (assuming it was indeed written by Robert Sempill of Beltrees, Renfrewshire, as local tradition claims — which it probably was). By way of apology to the reader for what follows, I should explain that my obsession partly comes from having lived out in rural Renfrewshire a few years back, and apparently having had way too much time on my hands when I wasn't getting equally-obsessed with Robert Tannahill or the Paisley Radicals (a fair number of the latter actually hailing from Habbie's home-town of Kilbarchan, coincidentally). My only excuse (which is probably also the poem's only excuse) is that, following Ramsay's interest in the characteristic form of its stanzas, which he called "Standart Habby", it went on to head almost a national (Lowland) genre in the wake of his influence. Its impact on Burns even led the Victorians to erroneously re-name the form "the Burns stanza", and finally even "the Scottish stanza" per se.

However... the textual heritage of the poem is more complex than the "rustic" simplicity of the poem itself might suggest, and so this also partly explains my decision to go for editorial overkill. In this, I've done my best to retain the original orthographic idiosyncracies of each version, including original errors (not least in Watson's title). My sources for the two main versions given above are as follows —

(1) James Watson, A Choice Collection of Comic & Serious Scots Poems (Edinburgh: James Watson, 1706 I:32-35);

(2) "Habbie Simpson" by "Q" in The Visitor, Or, Literary Miscellany (Greenock: John Turner, 1818 II.ix:144-150).

Watson's 1706 edition is the 1st major print edition and includes neither an attribution of authorship nor an assignation of compositional date. However, its language is contemporary, falling into the "literary" category of modern Scots that's best described as "Anglo-Scots" — a hybrid dialect commonly deployed in print (from Ramsay through Burns and beyond) that makes often extensive use of English rather than Scots written forms, despite the fact that Scots pronunciations are often implicitly indicated and even required in recital in order to make some (or most) of even the rhyming schemes actually work. In Watson's edition of the Habbie poem, this is apparent from the very first line (where English "alas" clearly has to rhyme with "grace", "trace" and "place": as alace) right through to the very last line (where "dead" clearly has to rhyme with "greed": as deid). Watson's sources seem to have been those from the cheap broadside publishing tradition, and happily, two such copies of the Habbie poem have survived, which I've reprinted below as an Appendix, in parallel text along with Watson's edition to demonstrate their close textual relations. Both are now held at the NLS, and facsimiles are available from the library's excellent broadside ballads digitisation project: The Word on the Street. Like Watson's version, both broadsides are in anglicised Scots, and are printed without attribution of authorship or assignation of date. The only significant difference between them and Watson's is that his includes an extra penultimate stanza (Ay whan he play'd, the Gaitlings gedder'd — see Appendix, below). From this, it seems at least possible that this extra stanza was penned by Watson himself, although in the absence of a larger number of surviving previous editions to compare, we cannot actually be as certain of this as some commentators have assumed we should be. However, it is perhaps significant that the first half-line of Watson's extra stanza is also the only one in any of these three versions that is a repetition of the preceeding stanza's equivalent (Ay whan he play'd, the Lasses Leugh) — this in itself could be an indication of Watson making an addition based on the extant material common to all three of the earliest-known versions. So let's keep this question open for a while, at least.

Let's turn now to the curious version that was anonymously-published in a minor local magazine a century or so later — the version sent in to The Visitor by "Q" in 1818 (II.ix:144-150). Here, our mysterious "Q" attributes the poem to "the pen of Robert Semple, Laird of Beltrees, and was wrote about the year 1600" (II.ix:144). That date was soon rejected by other commentators as being around half a century too early. But, certainly, the version given by "Q" is ostensibly written in Middle Scots, the Renaissance form of the language that was still widely used c.1600 but was rapidly vanishing by the time of the two surviving broadsides and Watson's edition a mere century later, c.1700. The tacit implication is that "Q" has transcribed the text directly from an original, but unspecified manuscript source, presumably one in the hand of Sempill himself. But historians of Scots will soon start spotting a fair few orthographically and idiomatically-suspect moments in "Q's" edition. For one thing, it makes several uses of the notorious abbreviating apostrophes of allegedly-"folksy" Scots forms that we only really start to find from the time of Watson and Ramsay onwards, but not much before. Beyond this, several of the words are given in more consistent forms than we'd normally expect from the average manuscript from c.1600 (in any language). And some of them look rather "correctly-modern" in their standardisation, as if dictionaries had existed in 1600. Some others are pretty unique forms that look suspiciously like modern fabrications, designed to give the impression of an "Olde Worlde" weirdness (although some that I've checked do appear as very rare instances in scholarly editions of Scots texts published not long before 1818 — if "Q" is fabricating here, it's done with some, but not perfect, specialist knowledge). However, all of these things could be no more than fashionable editorial tweaks, or even simple transcriptional errors on "Q's" part, and are not necessarily in themselves absolute signs of fabrication. On the other hand, the "Q" edition includes an "Aulde Warlde" version of Watson's extra stanza, which, as I've noted above, appears in no known edition prior to Watson. So, if that stanza was indeed of Watson's own composition, then the "Q" text is clearly a Romantic fabrication based entirely on a time-warping rewrite of Watson. Problem is, we can't be absolutely certain that Watson did indeed write that stanza. One way or another, the "Q" version seems to remain a big question-mark hanging over the genesis of the Habbie text.

But regardless of "Q's" authenticity or otherwise, its Romantic appeal was instant. In the very next year, William Motherwell clearly accepted it as authentic by reprinting it (with an acknowledgement to "Q's" article) in his definitive local poetry collection, The Harp of Renfrewshire (1819: lix-lxi). Significantly, Motherwell complains about the lack of surviving Sempill family literary manuscripts, but, unfortunately, says nothing specific about any possible surviving manuscripts of the Habbie poem itself (1819: xx). Perhaps Motherwell was "Q", making up for the annoying lack of manuscript sources? One way or another, his acceptance of the "Q" text might have led to it becoming the canonic version by default. But not quite. Because three decades later, James Paterson tacitly rejected it in favour of the Watson/broadside version in his equally-definitive collection, The Poems of the Sempills of Beltrees (Edinburgh: Stevenson, 1849: 41-44). Paterson also notes the absence of early Sempill literary manuscripts, although gives a few modernised transcriptions of late-C17th copies. But none of these include the Habbie poem, and Paterson specifically says of its attributed author, Robert Sempill, that "It is to be regretted that so few of his productions have been preserved." (1849: l) He goes on to say that, aside from using Watson for his own edition, he consulted two broadside copies then in the possession of the famous literary antiquarian, David Laing, which he dates to "before 1700" and 1698 respectively (1849: 87) — these are probably the two broadsides now held at the NLS that I've reprinted below. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that if Paterson (the Sempill expert of his day, with access to the family archives), wasn't obviously aware of a pre-print manuscript copy of the Habbie poem, then the curious "Q" edition is a wee scholarly joke that didn't totally catch on beyond Motherwell's circle.

It's also worth pointing out that, in the mid-C17th, Robert Sempill was himself (probably) directly involved in the publication of small-scale editions of his family's literary works. Indeed, the very first item in Paterson's collection is "A Pick-Tooth for the Pope: Or The Pack-Mans Pater Noster", a sectarian poem by Sir James Sempill, "Newly Augmented and Enlarged by his son, R.S. [...] EDINBURGH, Printed by Andrew Anderson, Anno 1669." Both the poem and Robert's opening address "To the Reader" are, as was the aristocratic Scottish fashion of the day, printed in politely-punning Jacobean English rather than Scots of any kind — "My Parents Poëme only to expresse, / I presse, of new, to put into the Presse." Throughout, of course, there is also a scattering of cross-Border rhyming-schemes lurking below the overall southern linguistic gloss (eg.: "they said" in a Scots accent actually rhyming with "they pray'd" at ll.680-681; and "ready" transforming "Lady" into Leddy at ll.712-713). This, of course, is the same conventional cross-linguistic method we find in the Anglo-Scots orthography of the earliest-printed copies of the Habbie poem itself, just with the polarity of linguistic emphasis reversed. Overall, it seems likely that the two early broadside versions are indeed authentically-plagiarised directly from broadside editions published by Robert Sempill himself and that they (with Watson) best represent the author's own text. Probably.

However, the most popular myth surrounding Robert Sempill's elegy on Habbie Simpson is that its characteristic stanza structure is somehow original or historically-unique to either the poem itself or the Scottish tradition in which it exists. No doubt, the myth results from how Ramsay's designation of the form as "Standart Habby" was later (mis-)understood. Following Ramsay, Burns made particularly famous use of it (for example, in his "Address to the Deil"), which led to it being re-dubbed "the Burns Stanza". And following Burns's example, practically every Lowland poet for the next hundred years and more tried their hand at it, which even led to it being re-re-dubbed "the Scottish Stanza" per se. By this time, though, it was degenerating into one of the worst Kailyaird cliches of all — dip into practically any obscure Victorian vanity-published "dialect" poet's droppings, and you'll almost certainly find several totally mingin' lumps of "Standard Habbie" floating at the top of the rustic bucket. But let's go back to the rather more refined Rococo root of this fertile tradition (and then dig a little further down).

In Ramsay's Poems (1721), we find the famous series of "Familiar Epistles Between Lieutenant William Hamilton and Allan Ramsay", and it's in Ramsay's "Answer 1" to Hamilton (dated "July 10th, 1719") that, while praising Hamilton's poetry, Ramsay makes his celebrated allusion to the Habbie elegy and its form, in both the main body of the text and in his own footnote (the line-numbering is Ramsay's, too) —

When I begoud first to cun Verse,
And cou'd your Ardry Whins rehearse,
Where Bonny Heck ran fast and fierce,
It warm'd my Breast;
Then emulation did me pierce, 20
Whilk since ne'er ceast.

May I be licket wi' a Bittle,
Gin of your Numbers I think little;
Ye're never rugget, shan, nor kittle,
But blyth and gabby,
And hit the Spirit to a Title, 24
Of Standart Habby.

18. Ardry Whins ] The last Words of Bonny Heck, of which he [Ramsay means Hamilton] was Author.
24. Standart Habby ] The Elegy on Habby Simpson Piper of Kilbarchan, a finish'd Piece of its Kind.

— Allan Ramsay, Poems by Allan Ramsay (Edinburgh: Ramsay, 1721: 190)

It's important to note that Ramsay doesn't in fact claim that Sempill's elegy is the first of its kind, but simply "a finish'd Piece of its Kind". One way of reading this is that Ramsay is actually saying that it belongs to an already-extant kind that he is fully aware of. Regardless, while utilising the form of Sempill's poem in his own, Ramsay dubs that form "Standart Habby". Here, Ramsay's line-numbering is important. Because while many later writers say that "Standard Habbie" consists of 6 lines, Ramsay consistently numbers it here (and elsewhere) as 4. Of course, the metrical reality is half-way between the two. What we really have is a kind of syncopated 6-in-4 (or 4-in-6) structure, with 3 full lines "tailed" by 1 half-line, plus 1 full line also "tailed" by 1 half-line — mirrored in the overall rhyming scheme of aaa(+b)a(+b), where each a is a full line (tetrameter: 4 beats), and each b is a half-line (dimeter: 2 beats) "tailing" the preceding full line. Indeed, in poetic theory, forms with such "tailing" half-lines are known generically in Latin as rhythmus caudatus ("tailed rhythm") and in French as rime couée ("tailed rhyme"). And while many metrical variations on this basic concept are possible, the existence of these two venerable non-Scots terms already indicates that the "Standard Habbie" form is not as uniquely-Scottish as many since the days of Ramsay and Burns have claimed.

One of the earliest notes of caution was sounded by Robert Chambers in his short appendix essay on "The Metres of Burns" (The Life & Work of Robert Burns; Edinburgh: Chambers, 1851: 345-349). But one of the most thundering Victorian blasts came in Henley & Henderson's notes to Burns's "Address to the Deil" in their "Centenary Edition" of The Poetry of Robert Burns (Edinburgh: Jack, 1896 I:335-345). Here, Henley & Henderson provide a copious litany of concrete historical examples, the first of which is neither as recent as Sempill's C17th, nor even Scottish. It's a Medieval example of rime couée in surprisingly-straight "Standard Habbie" from the reputed first French troubadour, the C11th/C12th Crusading aristocrat, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine & Gascony, Count of Poitou, writing in the Provençal/Occitan dialect —

Farai un vers de dreit nen,
Non er de mi ni d'autra gen,
Non er d'amor ni de joven,
Ni de ren au,
Qu'enans fo trobatz en durmen
Sobre chevau.

— in Henley & Henderson, The Poetry of Robert Burns (Edinburgh: Jack, 1896 I:336)

After a couple of other French troubadour examples of rime couée (one from Portugal), Henley & Henderson continue with a Latin example of rhythmus caudatus in equally-straight "Standard Habbie" on the Biblical theme of Daniel by the C12th Parisian monk, Hilary —

Danielem no vidimus
Pronum suis numinibus.
Esca detur leonibus
Quia sprevit
Quod Babilonis Darius
Rex decrevit.

— in Henley & Henderson, The Poetry of Robert Burns (Edinburgh: Jack, 1896 I:337)

Henley & Henderson provide several other Medieval examples from the Continent, but also refer in passing to Northern Middle English examples throughout no less than four of the York Mystery Plays (1896 I:338) — at which point, we're coming very directly into the cultural orbit of the Lowland Inglis (Older Scots) tradition. Indeed, their earliest Scottish example is equally-theatrical, a kind of pseudo-stanza embedded within Part 1 of Sir David Lindsay's The Thrie Estaitis (1552) —

Thare is ane thing that I wald speir,
Quhat sall I do quhen scho cums heir?
For I knaw nocht the craft perqueir
Of lufferis gyn;
Thairfoir, at lenth, ye mon me leir
How to begin.

— in Henley & Henderson, The Poetry of Robert Burns (Edinburgh: Jack, 1896 I:338)
    NB.: in Lyall's excellent edition these are ll.483-488 using the 6-line numbering system (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1989: 16-17)

Further Renaissance Scots examples follow in various "tailed rhyme" metres (including straight "Standard Habbie") from the Bannatyne MS. and several Court poets/song-writers such as Alexander Montgomerie, Alexander Scott and the super-aristocratic Sir Richard Maitland (1896 I:338-340). But, of course, Sempill's elegy on Habbie Simpson is far from a Court poem — it has a distinctly "rustic" whiff of "folksy" comedy. Intriguingly, one of its closest precursors mentioned by Henley & Henderson is a specifically-popular example from the often-comic (and occasionally downright bawdy) corpus of shamelessly-sectarian Reformation songs known as The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, which they give the title of "Ane Ballat of the Scripture", from the 1578 edition —

Richt sairly musing in my mynde,
For pity soir my heart is pynde,
When I remember on Christ so kynde
That sauit me:
Nane could me saif from thyne till Ynde
Bot only he.

— in Henley & Henderson, The Poetry of Robert Burns (Edinburgh: Jack, 1896 I:340)

So, from Henley & Henderson's evidence alone (which builds on the examples given by Chambers), it's perfectly obvious that Sempill is neither the originator of "Standard Habbie", nor even the first to use it in a popular mode. Equally, the form is far from Scots or even Scottish in origin, and can be traced back as far as the C11th or C12th on the Continent (and the chances are that William The Troubadour wasn't the first to use it, either — after all, his chivalric minstrelsy actually has Moorish roots, courtesy of his Crusading connections to Islamic Spain). To call "Standard Habbie" the "Burns Stanza" is self-evidently misleading when everyone knows that Burns's interest in it derived from Ramsay's interest in Sempill's elegy. But to call it the "Scottish Stanza" is nothing short of nationalistic mythologisation of the very worst kind. And here's another thing — its heritage is deeply aristocratic, including Sempill of Beltrees' fashionably-"Folksy" elegy on his famous town-piper. Nonetheless, after Ramsay and Burns, the form was indeed developed, throughout the Victorian era, into an absolute stock-in-trade standard of early modern Scots poetry and song. But then bagpipes, tartan, haggis and porridge aren't Scottish in the first place, either. ;-)

The NLS Broadside Precursors to Watson
(Overkill-Appendix for Bibliomaniacs)