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About this work

This is a poem by Robert Burns. It was written in 1784 and is read here by Robert Carlyle.

More about this poem

These playful song lyrics warn the 'Mauchline belles' not to read novels as the sexuality implicit in Fielding's Tom Jones, and Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison would fire them up and make them 'prey for Rob Mossgiel' - Burns himself!

Burns plays on his reputation as a womaniser and fornicator in these lyrics so that the whole piece becomes a masterwork of self-parody.

Themes for this poem

seduction humour

Locations for this poem

Mauchline

Selected for 26 March

Outliving her husband by 40 years but weakened by a succession of strokes, Jean Armour died on March 26, 1834. She had been a good mother to Burns's children, some not her own, and had been remarkably tolerant of his philandering. Although he came dearly to love Jean, early in their life together Burns wrote some woundingly ungallant and faithless letters about the woman with whom he only reluctantly settled down. No-one else seems to have had a bad word to say about the poet's loyal and long-suffering wife. The seductive 'Rob Mossgeil' had made few bones about the proclivities of 'rakish rooks'. This Mauchline belle did not 'beware a tongue that's smoothly hung'. Today's poem suggests she knew what she was taking on,'for better and for worse'.