The Cotter’s Saturday Night

Summary

The Cotter's Saturday Night, inscribed to Burns's friend and patron Robert Aiken of Ayr, is a portrait of a poor Scottish farm labourer's family at the end of the working week. It opens with an epigraph from Thomas Gray's Elegy asking the great not to mock the short and simple annals of the poor. In twenty-one Spenserian stanzas Burns follows the cotter as he walks home over the moor on a cold November evening, is met by his toddling children and his thrifty wife, and is joined by the elder children who work as servants on neighbouring farms. The eldest daughter, Jenny, brings home her wages; a neighbour lad comes courting, and the mother is relieved to find he is no worthless rake. The speaker pauses to praise modest love and to curse any seducer who would betray such a girl. After a supper of porridge and cheese, the family gathers round the fire for worship. The father lays aside his bonnet, opens the family Bible, and says Let us worship God. They sing psalm tunes named Dundee, Martyrs and Elgin; he reads from the patriarchs, Moses, David, Job and Isaiah, or from the Gospels and Revelation; and then he kneels to pray that they will all meet in heaven. Burns contrasts this heartfelt worship with the pomp of religious display. The poem ends in patriotic praise: from scenes like these old Scotland's grandeur springs, the cottage leaves the palace behind on virtue's road, and the poet prays that God will keep Scotland's rustic people from luxury. Modelled partly on Robert Fergusson's The Farmer's Ingle, the poem was for the nineteenth century the classic picture of Scottish piety and family life, and it remains the best introduction to the Presbyterian household that formed Burns.

Plot or Argument

• Dedication and epigraph

  Burns addresses Robert Aiken and takes his text from Gray's Elegy on the simple annals of the poor.

• The homecoming

  The cotter walks home from his week's labour; small children, wife and the elder working children gather at the fire.

• Jenny's suitor

  A neighbour lad calls for the eldest daughter; the parents welcome him, and the poet praises chaste love and condemns seduction.

• Supper

  The family eats porridge and a treasured cheese, and the mother talks proudly of her housekeeping.

• Family worship

  The father reads Scripture, the family sings psalm tunes, and he prays for their eternal reunion; Burns contrasts sincere devotion with showy religion.

• Patriotic close

  The poet finds Scotland's greatness in such homes, prays for her humble people, and calls on the God of Wallace to raise patriots and patriot-bards.

Characters

• The cotter, father

  A toil-worn labourer who leads his family in Scripture, song and prayer.

• The mother, wife

  A thrifty housewife who mends clothes and watches over her daughter's courtship.

• Jenny, eldest daughter

  A young woman in service who brings her wages home and is courted by a neighbour lad.

• The neighbour lad, suitor

  A bashful young man welcomed by the family.

Lessons

• Family worship

  The centre of the poem is the father leading his household in Scripture, singing and prayer. Burns presents it as the source of a people's strength and as worship God accepts because it comes from the heart.

  • What does the father read, and why these passages?
  • Why does Burns say heaven may desert the pompous strain but hear the cottage?
  • What does Deuteronomy 6:6-7 ask of parents?

• Dignity of labour and the poor

  The poem refuses to despise poor people. Their homes, work and faith are worthy of poetry and honour.

  • How does the Gray epigraph set the tone?
  • What makes the cottage superior to the palace in stanza 19?
  • Is the poem idealised?

• Chaste love

  The courtship scene praises modest love and condemns seduction in strong language.

  • What relieves the mother about the suitor?
  • Why does the poet break into a curse on the betrayer?
  • How does this scene connect to the worship that follows?

Context

The cotters were the poorest class of Scottish rural labourers, holding a cottage and a scrap of land in return for work. Burns's own father, William Burnes, led family worship in just this way, and the poem drew on the Presbyterian practice of the household as a little church.

Composition

Written in the winter of 1785-86 and printed in the Kilmarnock edition of 1786. Burns borrowed the frame of Robert Fergusson's The Farmer's Ingle and the dignity of the poor from Gray's Elegy.

Reception

For a century it was the most quoted of Burns's poems and was printed in countless readers; Victorian critics sometimes found its English stanzas stiff, but the worship scene has kept its power.

Comparisons

• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

  Burns takes his epigraph and his reverence for the poor from Gray's Elegy.

• Psalm 23

  One of the metrical psalms Scottish families sang at worship like the cotter's.

• The Pilgrim's Progress

  Another picture of plain Protestant piety, from the English Puritan tradition.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The Gray epigraph and how the whole poem answers it.
• The shift from Scots in the homecoming stanzas to formal English in the worship stanzas.
• The psalm tunes Dundee, Martyrs and Elgin, real tunes sung in Scottish churches.
• The list of Bible stories and the turn to the Christian volume.
• The patriotic ending and its prayer for Scotland.

Key terms and names

Cotter

A cottager: a farm labourer who held a cottage and a little land in return for work.

Spenserian stanza

Nine lines, eight pentameter and a final hexameter (alexandrine), rhymed ababbcbcc, borrowed from Spenser's Faerie Queene.

Ingle

Scots for a fireside or hearth.

Ha'-Bible

The big hall Bible kept for family worship.

Kebbuck

A whole cheese, here saved to honour the guest.

Scots

Burns mixes formal English Spenserian stanzas with Scots for the cottage itself: the 'ingle' (fireside), 'halesome parritch' (wholesome porridge), the 'hawkie' (cow), the 'weel-hain'd kebbuck' (well-saved cheese) and the father's 'lyart haffets' (grey temples) give the household its homely texture.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What season and day of the week is it, and where is the cotter coming from?
2. Comprehension What Bible passages does the father read?
3. Comprehension What is the mother relieved to learn about Jenny's suitor?
4. Interpretation Why does Burns move from Scots into English for the worship scene?
5. Interpretation What does the poem contrast with the cottage's worship in stanza 17?
6. Interpretation How does the ending connect family piety to national greatness?
7. Big Question Does the strength of a nation depend on the faith of its homes?

Faith Connections

• Deuteronomy 6:6-7 (Scripture)

  Parents are told to teach God's words diligently to their children at home; the cotter's evening is this command in practice.

• Joshua 24:15 (Scripture)

  As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord: the father leads his whole household in worship.

• Matthew 6:5-6 (Scripture)

  Jesus warns against praying to be seen; Burns contrasts showy religion with the cottage prayer heard in secret.

• Westminster Directory for Family Worship (1647) (Great Conversation)

  The Church of Scotland directed heads of households to lead daily reading, psalm-singing and prayer, the practice Burns describes.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: The poor are not to be despised; a cotter's family, united in honest work, chaste love and sincere worship, shows true dignity; such sincere piety is what God accepts; therefore Scotland's real greatness lies in such homes, and the poet prays they be kept from luxury.

Rhetorical device: catalogue. Stanzas 14-15 list Abraham, Moses, David, Job, Isaiah, the Gospels and Revelation in a rapid survey of the whole Bible.

Debate: Resolved: that The Cotter's Saturday Night is a true picture rather than an idealised one.

Memory Work

And “Let us worship God!” he says with solemn air

From scenes like these, old Scotia’s grandeur springs, That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how the family's day builds toward the worship scene, and why Burns ends a poem about one family with a prayer for the nation.

Comparison with Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: Compare how Gray and Burns honour the poor: Gray among the dead in a churchyard, Burns among the living at a fireside.

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Chart the evening in order: homecoming, courtship, supper, worship, bedtime. What does each scene show about the family?

• Essay

  Burns says Scotland's grandeur springs from scenes like these. Defend or challenge the claim with evidence from history and Scripture.

• Poetry

  Write one Spenserian stanza describing your own family at the end of a week.

Further Reading

• Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, Robert Burns

• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray

  Source of the epigraph.

• Essay on Burns, Thomas Carlyle

  In this library.