Highland Mary

Burns begins his song to “Highland Mary” or Mary Campbell by describing the setting in which they used to meet. The first stanza paints the picture of the southern Ayrshire countryside with its riverbanks, “braes” (Line 1), or hillsides, and streams, all of which surround Montgomery Castle, where Mary Campbell worked as a dairymaid. The forests are always “green,” the flowers “fair” (Line 3), and the waters clear. Here, summer “first unfald” or unfolded “her robes” (Line 5), and here it stayed the “langest” (Line 6). In recalling his blissful relationship with Mary, Burns’s nostalgia colors his memory of Ayrshire, painting it as an idyllic paradise where summer came early and stayed late and where the lovers faced no obstacles.

The second stanza continues this theme of natural beauty, with a sense-rich description of the woods where Burns and Mary came together. Burns details the “gay, green birk” trees (Line 9), or birches, and hawthorn bushes blossoming and blooming above them and notes how the trees’ “fragrant shade” (11) sheltered and covered the lovers as he “clasp’d” Mary to his “bosom” (Line 12). These lines the senses of stress sight, smell, and touch, dwelling in the physical pleasure of spending time with Mary in the beautiful countryside. Like the prolonged summer, time itself seemed to slow for Burns when he was with Mary. The “golden” (Line 13) hours spent together “flew” (Line 14) by them as softly as the wings of angels (13). In this state of peace and bliss, Burns came to regard Mary as being as “dear” to him as “light and life” (Line 15) itself.

The second stanza’s image of clasping and embracing recurs throughout the poem and hints at the hidden moments of Burns and Mary’s relationship. Burns first employs the erotic image of a feminine, personified summer disrobing to evoke the feeling of spending the season with Mary, and the description of the “shade” offered by the trees implies that the two’s activities were hidden from prying eyes. These details, coupled with Burns’ passionate language of clasping Mary to his bosom, leave little doubt about the physically nature of their relationship. Burns only furthers this sensual and suggestive language in the third stanza. He recalls the vows they shared while “lock’d” (Line 17) in an embrace and how “tender” (Line 18) their final moments were. He describes how with great reluctance and frequent promises to “meet again” (Line 19), he had to actually tear himself “asunder” from her (Line 20), prying himself away from Mary’s body. The language used is desperate, implying that Burns and Mary’s clandestine connection was a sexual and deeply emotional one.

The third stanza is also where the tone of the poem significantly shifts. After the extended description of the natural beauty and physical bliss he experienced with Mary, Burns reveals that his lover is now dead. His bliss was interrupted by an “untimely frost” (Line 21) that “nipt,” or killed, his “Flower sae early” (Line 22). His seemingly unending summer has finally ended, and winter has set in. Where Burns once delighted in the green and “gay” (Line 9) woods, now the only thing he sees is the green “sod” and cold, hard “clay” (Line 23) that Mary’s body lies buried underneath. The time of innocence with Mary is over, and, with her death, the world has lost its beauty and become a much crueler place.

In the final stanza, Burns continues his lament for Mary, focusing on the loss and deterioration of her physical body. This final stanza resembles a kind of twisted blason or contre blason. In poetry, a blason is an extended description or catalogue of the physical attributes of a typically feminine subject, often with the intention of wooing said subject. In “Highland Mary,” Burns compartmentalizes and describes Mary’s physical attributes only after she has died and her body has already decayed. He notes the “pale, pale” lips which were once “rosy” with life (Line 25), repeating the word “pale” in his dismay at the deathly change to the lips he once “kiss’d sae fondly” (Line 26). He moves from Mary’s lips to her now “clos’d” (Line 27) eyes, which he bemoans will never “kindly” (Line 28) offer him another “sparkling glance” (Line 27). Similarly, her once passionate heart that loved Burns “dearly” (Line 30) lies “mouldering now in silent dust” (Line 29), unable to offer Burns any affection. Burns juxtaposes the heart in its figurative, symbolic sense with the state of Mary’s literal decomposing heart lying in the ground. Unlike a traditional blason, Burns’ catalogue of Mary’s physical body is not intended to praise or woo her; Burns’ contre blason instead serves as an expression of what he has loved and lost.

In the final stanza’s concluding lines and final variant of the poem’s refrain, Burns swears to preserve Highland Mary’s memory within his mind and heart. Although dead, she shall live on in Burns’s “bosom’s core” (Line 31) and in his song. Despite the poem’s shift towards a more elegiac tone partway, Burns maintains the lively and spirited rhythm with which he began until his song’s conclusion (for a more thorough exploration of the rhythm and meter of “Highland Mary,” see the Literary Devices section).