More about this epigram
All of these epigrams survive in the transcript of John Syme of Ryedale, a distributor of stamps, and one of Burns’s friends.
The third and seventh epigrams can be dated to 1794, and the sixth is most likely from the same year.
The subject of the first piece is not known, although it could be William Copland of Collieston, who was mentioned in the second Election Ballad.
The description of Miss E. I – best fits Elizabeth Inglis the daughter of a local minister William Inglis, whose sermons Burns enjoyed hearing.
The loyal Natives were formed in January 1793 and were among the more reactionary of the Dumfries citizenry. They unwisely produced verses lampooning Burns and other radicals, which provoked a stinging attack from the Bard.
The identity of Billy remains a mystery, but it is most likely to refer to one of two men: either Captain William Roddick whom Burns had already satirized in Epitaph on a noted Coxcomb, or William Graham of Mossknowe.
As the President of the Loyal Natives, Commissary Goldie provoked a heightened level of animosity from Burns.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a prominent eighteenth-century politician, and Warren Hastings (1732-1818) was the governor of India who was tried, but acquitted, for maladministration in the country in 1795.
The final epigram refers to James Swan (b. 1751) who was elected a Baillie in Dumfries in 1794, and again in 1795. However, by October 1796 he ceased to be a magistrate and was voted off the council in 1797, thus proving Burns’s prophecy true.
Ralph McLean
