Only a few times a year, a parish in Scotland would hold a several day communion service. Burns immortalizes such an event in The Holy Fair. It’s too long to read the whole thing, but I’ll share a few verses that show his eye for hypocrisy. Near the start of the poem, he describes seeing three women on their way to the fair.
“My name is Fun-your cronie dear,
The nearest friend ye hae;
An’ this is Superstitution here,
An’ that’s Hypocrisy.
I’m gaun to Mauchline Holy Fair,
To spend an hour in daffin:
Gin ye’ll go there, yon runkl’d pair,
We will get famous laughin
At them this day.”
Quoth I, “Wi’ a’ my heart, I’ll do’t;
I’ll get my Sunday’s sark on,
An’ meet you on the holy spot;
Faith, we’se hae fine remarkin!”
Then I gaed hame at crowdie-time,
An’ soon I made me ready;
For roads were clad, frae side to side,
Wi’ mony a weary body
In droves that day.
For him, watching humanity in all it’s varied ups and downs and goods and bads was fun. He didn’t like hypocrisy, but he enjoyed his craft as a poet to write about it. Hear how he describes the crowd:
Here, some are thinkin on their sins,
An’ some upo’ their claes;
Ane curses feet that fyl’d his shins,
Anither sighs an’ prays:
On this hand sits a chosen swatch,
Wi’ screwed-up, grace-proud faces;
On that a set o’ chaps, at watch,
Thrang winkin on the lasses
To chairs that day.
Burns, in the poem, covers more issues. For now, it’s enough to see how he ended it:
How mony hearts this day converts
O’ sinners and o’ lasses!
Their hearts o’ stane, gin night, are gane
As saft as ony flesh is:
There’s some are fou o’ love divine;
There’s some are fou o’ brandy;
An’ mony jobs that day begin,
May end in houghmagandie
Some ither day.
Houghmagandie was his word for fornication in the technical sense of the word. This poem shines the light not just on hypocrisy among leaders but really anybody at all, or high or low station. A person is a person is a person, Burns believed, and so act like who you are. And, may you are be good and kind and charitable.
