Home | Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search
SAN FRANCISCO LETTER [dated February 3]
Also included:
PERSONAL - text not available
MORE CEMETERIAL GHASTLINESS
REV. CHARLES ELLIS - text not available
TAKE THE STAND, FITZ SMYTHE
MORE OUTCROPPINGS II.
Ward, the shirt man, has issued a pamphlet of poems -- burlesques of some of the poems in "Outcroppings," and purporting to be a second edition of that work, I suppose, as it bears the same title. It is simply an advertising affair, of course. It was written by "Trem." The burlesque of James Linen's "I Feel I'm Growing Auld," is the most outlandish combination of untranslatable Scotch phraseology I ever saw. I think it is a pretty good take-off on the fashion some folks have of humbugging Americans with poetry that defies criticism because its extravagant Scotchiness defies comprehension. We have come to think, in our day and generation, that every piece of Scotch verse which we cannot understand is necessarily pure, sweet poetry, and that all prose which is spelled atrociously is necessarily humorous and intensely funny. Perhaps you can dig some meaning out of --
I FEEL I'M GROWING MIRK
by Jean Lining
I feel I'm growing mirk, gude wife,
I feel I'm growing mirk,
Unsicker girns the graith an' doup,
An' aye, the stound is birk.
I've fash 'd mysel' wi' creeshie rax
O'er jouk an' hallan braw,
An' now I'll stowlins pit my duds
An' gar sark white as snaw.
I feel I'm growing mirk, gude wife,
I feel I'm growing mirk,
An' wae an' wae the giglet jinks,
Tis wheep-ed wi' my dirk.
My claes are mirk wi' howdie whangs,
But still my heart is fair,
Though sconnered yowics loup an' blink,
I'm nae so puir in gear.
I feel I'm growing mirk, gude wife,
I feel I'm growing mirk,
The howdie bicker skeeps my een --
Na mair the coof I'll shirk.
I'll get a Ward's Neat Fitting Shirt --
They'll glint wi' pawky een,
There's sax score Ward's Shirts sold, gude wife,
Since I called in yestreen.
[reprinted in Mark Twain's San Francisco, edited by Bernard Taper, (McGraw Hill, 1963), pp. 202-03.]
