Saturday, January 27, 2007
The Lassies
The traditional "Toast to the Lassies" at a Burns Supper is designed to be a little cheeky about women; abuse stereotypes; but close with a cheery wish that they are God's gift and man couldn't live without them. Moments later, they deliver "The Reply" and treat the laddies similarly. This is from the South Queensferry Rotary Club's Burns Supper at the Priory Church, in January 2007
Distinguished guests; fellow Rotarians; lassies and laddies; and the wee church moose … guid evening
The impact you lassies have on us mere laddies begins when we’re just bairns
There we are gurgling as we lie back in our Silver Cross Perambulators … and what do we recall from that time? Sunny days? Bird song?
Well we remember one bird; and it’s our granny spitting on her hankie to wipe our face
And that’s where our relationship with the lassies gets its starting point
And even into adulthood, they treat us with contempt
I asked a bonnie wee Glasgow lassie the other day what she liked best about me. Was it my firm, trim body or my intellect? She said: "Naw, no’ that. Your sense of humour."
But do we laddies feel usurped by the fairer sex?
Aye, we do. Oh and, it’s safer to agree. We’re surrounded by them
I often worry about the different cultures when I’m travelling overseas, but find many similarities with home.
The most obvious one being that in most of the places I travel, the lassies are in charge. It’s just that the men don’t know
In some of the countries I go to, if you commit adultery you get stoned. It made me think of the Ferry where you get stoned before committing adultery
Talking of which: Robert Burns
This prolific writer lived his life bouncing between desire and genius. Love and lust fuelled his poetry
He first discovered girls when he was 15: and she was Handsome Nell; “a delicious passion”
Likewise, there has been a delicious passion to laddies across all of Scotland for more than 50 years
She’s as bonnie now as she was then, it’s true. But ye see, it’s all a plot to try to weaken us. They get together in covens to snarl at us from early age to middle age and seek to chase us into the grave
I’ll you a true story. As it unfolds, ye’ll realise it is pretty sad – sad in the modern sense of the word, not the greetin’ sense
I was looking at a picture of this lovely quinie, when one of the managers at Tesco leant over, looked at it, pointed to her, then looked up and said: “She’s fit, eh?”
Step forward: Maggie Broon
This sultry sex symbol has probably done more to break laddies’ hearts than any wee lassie has ever done
Her brother Joe once said: "You're the apple of a’body’s eye, Maggie ... aye, and Daphne's the core."
Oor Joe would have done well to have at least tried to learn the lassie lingo. You know what that is: it’s their own special vocabulary
Sometimes it’s words; sometimes it’s expressions; it’s also been known to resemble groans, but it’s been a while, so I’m no’ up to speed on that part of the dictionary
We need to understand, lads, this is simply a lassie-led conspiracy. They’re even doing it now as I speak, right here, right now
Look carefully and you’ll see a little turning of the foot under the table. Perfectly poised and with remarkable lines. In line with your shin
Learn the signs and words
When a woman says “fine” – you need to know that it’s not fine at all. In fact it’s far from “fine”
But you’ll no’ find out what it is that isn’t fine, because when you ask her what’s wrong, she’ll say “nothin’!”
Rabbie Burns was a great believer in the rights of women and held them
He held them socially and intellectually as equals
We also believe in wimmins rights
We laddies get home after a hard day at work and find the wee woman in the kitchen, wearing her pinny and cooking our tea
It’s at this moment, I feel she looks serene. Could it be she just looks comfortable in her traditional surroundings?
A match made in heaven: a lassie and a cooker
Anyway, we begin our little exchange
We tell her about our day; we don’t need any immediate response because we’ve so much to say…
Then we announce we’ve had a fantastic idea!
Listen carefully, laddies: when she replies “if that’s what you want”, then you must understand you’re in trouble
Puir Rabbie. All he wanted was to write the lassies some songs and poetry and have a little Mahatma Ghandi. But his treasured works have only helped set up their code!
He himself admitted as such: "For my part, I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet until I got heartily in love and then rhyme and song were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my heart."
In Tam O’Shanter Burns ponders the tendency of men to ignore the advice of their sensible wives. Thanks, mate
Less famous, but much more overtly humorous, is the poem Willie Wastle
It’s an hilarious account of a man (said to have been an acquaintance of the poet … but names were changed to protect the guilty!) who had the misfortune to be married to the ugliest woman in the world
In each new verse Burns catalogues the poor woman’s glaring imperfections in grotesque comic detail:
- A whiskin beard about her mou, her nose and chin they threaten ither (a whiskery beard about her mouth, her nose and chin threaten each other)
Then he concludes with the words:
- Sic a wife as Wullie had, I wad nae gie a button for her! (such a wife as Wullie had, I would not give a button for her!)
If he’d been around today, he’d have had to think of more than buttons … especially when dragged down to Top Shop on a Saturday
The laddies are directed to and left sitting on a hard, wooden chair with the command: “stay there!”
There are many laddies on many hard, wooden chairs, under the same orders from these power-crazy lassies
And we’re all under the same fear of God – another lassie – for that moment the curtain slides back from the dressing room and the bird asks: “Whit dae ye think?”
Learn now: you should have had the courage to run away when she was in there. But ya big feartie, now you’ve got tae answer
“Ahm waitin!”
And what do you say?
You could try this: “Lovely, hen, but och! Ahm only a man, ken, ah cannae really tell. All I care about is if you’re happy.”
That tells her she looks a richt sicht, and it’s two sizes too small. You daren’t say it in those words...
But she’ll know…
Maybe try this instead: “Oh, it’s, great. I mean, tae me it is, but, I mean, ye ken mah taste is hellish.”
The gaggle of laddies perched on their seats let oot a collective gasp. Ain o’ their ain wiz aboot tae go doon
He didnae really say that, did he? Aye, he did
It helpfully brings an opporchancity to observe the raising of the right eyebrow by said wummin; the pursing of her lips getting tighter and tighter; and the eyes, oh my God those mean eyes, bulging oot their sockets like a fish on the slab at Alex Young’s
“Aye! You’re right,” she’ll say as she heads back for the changing room. “An’ so’s mah taste in men!”
“Whit’s wrong, Sadie?”
“Nothin!”
Oh clearly, the lassies can be a parcel o’ rogues and have mastered – or is it mistressed? – the art of sonic sound signalling
It’s a speciality. They’re like dolphins in stilettos
They emit audio waves that to the untrained male ear are perfectly safe. They’re laced with danger
There’s “the sigh”. Usually short and delivered to the side as they casually turn away from you. It means she’s bored but hasn’t the energy to spell it out
Then there’s “the long sigh”. This is, as the name might suggest, rather lengthy, and usually delivered straight to your face
There’s that little high-pitched noise that comes when she parts her lips whilst grinding her teeth together – you cannae hear it lads, it’s their code
It is swiftly followed by a very, very big intake of air. The mooth remains firmly shut; they widen their nostrils and inhale
This can oft be accompanied by both hands going on hips, arms bent at the elbow
This means you’re in deep trouble
Once this is indicated to you, the sonic signal may sound like: “Zattafact?”
At this moment, be very careful what you pray for
Don’t wish for a lassie with the Midas touch – because everything she touches will turn into an exhaust
Burns was not a conventional lover by our standards. He stated the limits of his fidelity:
“Let not Woman o’er complain
Fickel Man is apt to rove
We’ll be constant while we can-
We can be no more, you know”
As you know, he had numerous affairs throughout his lifetime, lucky bugger, and admitted to the feeling that:
“The sweetest hours that e'er I spent
Are spent amang the lasses, O”
Gentlemen, You should think to pledge to pay more attention to that wee cherub of your own. And given half the chance also to the lassie next door
We’d all do well perhaps to remember, as the Bard should have put it himself, in Green Grow The Rushes:
“Auld Nature swears the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O;
With apprentice hand she tried on man;
And then she made the lassies, O.”
And so together we toast the daughters of the Celts, and all the members of the fairer sex who inherit the spirit of the Celts
This be done as celebrated by Burns: “in all their beauty, dignity, strength, and, yes, in their ferocity”
Gentlemen! Be on your feet, and join me in a Toast to the Lassies!
The lassies!
© Charles Fletcher 2007
