Robert Burns | Autograph manuscript verse epitaph on "Grizzel Grim", with accompanying note of provenance

Property from Craufurdland Castle, Kilmarnock

Robert Burns

Autograph manuscript poem, entitled "Epitaph"

on "Grizzel Grim", a quatrain, with a brief explanatory note written underneath in a later hand ("The hand writing of Burns – on Mrs Young of Youngfield"), written on the verso of a letter by John Hutton addressed to Burns, noting that he had "Bottled yesterday 32 Gall[on]s More White wine", Dumfries, 26 June 1792, with a simple calculation underneath in Burns's hand deducting these 32 gallons from a previous total, integral address leaf ("Mr Robt Burns | Officer of Excise | Dumfries"), light staining, tears at folds

[with:] a note by Janet Ester Houison Craufurd on the subject of Burns's poem ("Mrs Young of Youngfield I know well - her son Gilbert married a daughter of Ramsay Maule (Lord Panmore) by the pretty Miss Gordon of Haleaths near Dumfries [...] Mrs Young was certes very ugly - and the heroine of many singular anecdotes - many of which I was witness of in my childhood near Lincluden"), 2 pages, 8vo, early 19th century

Here lyes withe Dethe, aulde Grizzel Grim,

Lincluden's uggely witche

O Dethe & whatt a taist haste thou

Canst lye withe suche a bitche!

A NEWLY DISCOVERED MANUSCRIPT COPY OF A MOCK EPITAPH, written by Burns on a reused piece of excise correspondence. These verses are a companion piece to Burns's bawdy ballad ''Grim Grizzel is a mighty dame", in which the "mighty dame" finds the limits to her power when she vainly attempts to force her cattle to defecate at her bidding ("Your kye will at nae bidding sh*** | Of onie earthly man").

Neither epitaph nor ballad were printed in Burns's lifetime but are found together in another manuscript copy. That manuscript has an accompanying note by the poet in which he claims, somewhat implausibly, that the epitaph was "pickt up from an old tombstone among the ruins of the ancient Abbey". Kinsley used this disclaimer of authorship to justify omitting the epitaph from his edition of Burns, but there are other examples of Burns playfully evading authorial responsibility, especially for more scurrilous work, and the existence of this second autograph manuscript also supports Burns's authorship of the epitaph.

Alexander Young of Harborne asserted that the epitaph was written by Burns about Mrs Grizzel Young, née Craik, of Lincluden just outside Dumfries (see The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ed. Kinsley, p.1493). Grizzel Young of Youngfield House, Lincluden, is also named in the accompanying note to this manuscript, which is in the hand of Janet Ester Houison Crauford, who knew her and the Young family.

See also lots 108 and 109.

LITERATURE

Henderson, Mckay and McIntyre, "'Epitaph' on Grizzel Grim: A Newly-Discovered Manuscript in the Hand of Robert Burns", Studies in Scottish Literature, vol. 41 (2015), 253-58

PROVENANCE

Janet Ester Houison Crauford of Craufordland and Braehead; thence by descent to the present owner