The first fire

THE FIRST FIRE
A Love Song in Literary Scots
Daniil Lazko
Tuapse · 24 September 2026


The poem · Glossary · Technical note · Literary analysis
Love in the poetry of Robert Burns · Style · Originality · Note on the text
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THE FIRST FIRE

The fiddler’s lowsed his bow at last,
The barn door’s steekit on the din,
The lanterns up the loan gang past
An blink, an dwine, an dwindle thin;
An she, that I was feart tae speir,
Walks at my side, wi nane tae hear.

“Ye had a tongue,” says she, “the nicht,
Ye crawed sae crouse at ilka reel;
An noo ye’re dumb ayont the licht —
Whit ails ye, then, my cantie chiel?”
“Yer mither, lass, will sit up late.”
“She’ll no,” says she — an slacks her gait.

A ribbon at her collar hings;
It stirs at ilka breath, an faws,
An whiles it lifts, an whiles it clings
Whaur white abune her kirtle shaws.
“Ye’ve glowered at yon,” says she, “a mile —
Ye micht hae telt me aw the while.”

“Me glower? At yon wee ribbon-end?”
I lauch, an kick a stane awa.
She disna answer. Roond the bend
The burn rins on, an that is aw.
An fell I rue my muckle mou —
Till, at the brig, she stops. An noo —

She tilts her heid an lifts her chin:
“Then tie it, gin ye’re sic a man.”
Her breath comes warm across my skin;
I canna mind hoo knots began.
An there, ablow my knuckle — feel —
Her pulse is birlin like the reel.

Nane speaks. The burn aneath the brig
Keeps mummlin at its ae auld word;
The hawthorn’s white on ilka twig,
Nae leaf in aw the hedge has stirred.
The knot’s a sorry knot, but tied,
An yet my fingers bide, an bide.

“I lowsed it at the barn,” says she,
“An let it flee the hale road hame,
An wondered, wad ye ever see,
Or wad I hae tae cry yer name.”
Nae crawin left in me ava:
“I loe ye, lass.” An that is aw.

She raxes up, an wi her mou
Gies back my word withoot a soond;
Syne cleeks my airm; an throu the dew
She leads me hame the langest roond.
An aye, the hale road as we gang,
She lets my crookit knot hing wrang.

Daniil Lazko
Tuapse, 24 September 2026
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Glossary: Scots to English
Words are given in their base form where the poem uses an inflected one (faw for faws, lowse for lowsed). Only words and senses that may be unfamiliar to a reader of English are included.
Scots English Scots English
abune above lauch laugh
ablow below, beneath licht light
ae one, a single loan lane, rural track
airm arm loe love
an and lowse loosen, untie
aneath beneath micht might
auld old mind remember
aw all mither mother
awa away mou mouth
ava at all muckle big, great
aye always, continually nae no, not any
ayont beyond no not (She’ll no: she won’t)
bide stay, remain, linger mummle mumble, murmur
birl whirl, spin nane none, no one
blink glimmer, gleam briefly the nicht tonight
brig bridge noo now
burn stream, brook rax stretch, reach up
canna cannot reel lively Scottish dance
cantie cheerful, lively (here ironic) rin run
chiel fellow, young man roond round; the langest roond: the longest way round
cleek hook, link (an arm) rue regret
craw crow; boast sae so
crookit crooked, awry shaw show
crouse bold, cocksure sic such
cry call (out) sit up stay awake waiting (for someone)
disna does not slack slow, ease
dwine fade, waste away soond sound
faw fall speir ask
feart afraid stane stone
fell very, keenly steek shut
flee fly syne then, next
gang go, walk tae to
gie give telt told
gin if throu through
hae have wad would
glower stare hard wee small, little
hale whole whaur where
hame home whiles at times
heid head whit what
hing hang wi with
hoo how withoot without
ilka every, each wrang wrong, awry
kirtle gown, dress ye, yer you, your
lass girl, young woman yon that (over there)
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Technical Note
Genre Courtship song; literary Scots love lyric
Primary theme Love and desire
Secondary themes Young love, first desire, courtship, tenderness
Form Eight six-line song stanzas; 48 lines
Metre Four-beat song metre on an iambic base; every line octosyllabic, with occasional initial inversion and speech stress
Rhyme scheme ABABCC: a cross-rhymed quatrain closed by a couplet
Scots register Literary Scots in modern apostrophe-free spelling (an, aw, faws, wi, roond, soond), used consistently throughout
Traditional basis Scottish rural courtship song: a village dance, the road home, a burn, a brig, a hawthorn hedge; the scene itself is original
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Literary Analysis
1. The Situation
The poem begins at the moment a gathering ends. The fiddler loosens the hair of his bow, the barn door shuts on the noise, and the lanterns of the other dancers blink out one by one up the lane. The first stanza stages an ending that is also a beginning: the public world of the dance withdraws, and two young people are left on the road “wi nane tae hear”. Everything that follows takes place in the short distance between the barn and the girl’s home, and the poem never leaves that road.
2. Dramatic Structure
The eight stanzas trace a complete dramatic arc: departure (1), provocation (2), exposure (3), retreat (4), challenge and touch (5), silence (6), revelation and confession (7), acceptance and after-image (8). The six-line stanza is built for this movement. The cross-rhymed quatrain opens a scene; the closing couplet turns it. Read in sequence, the couplets form a condensed plot of the whole poem: she slackens her pace; she names his staring; she stops at the bridge; her pulse races under his hand; his fingers linger; he says the plain words; she leaves his crooked knot as it is. The couplet works here as the cadence of a tune does, and at the same time as the hinge of a small play.
3. The Two Lovers
The young man is drawn through behaviour rather than description. At the reel he crowed; alone in the dark he is dumb. He offers an excuse (her mother waiting up), denies that he has been staring, kicks a stone, regrets his “muckle mou”, and at the decisive moment cannot remember how a knot begins. The comedy is at his expense, but it is affectionate: his bluster is plainly the other face of fear, and when sincerity finally comes it is four words long.
The young woman controls the pace of the evening from the first stanza to the last. She mocks his silence, slows her walk when he tries to hurry, names his gaze aloud, and challenges him to tie the ribbon “gin ye’re sic a man”, turning his own boasting against him. In the seventh stanza she discloses that the ribbon was loosed on purpose at the barn door. The poem’s central reversal lies here: he believed he was courting her, and he discovers she has been courting him the whole way home. Her boldness does not cancel his. She arranges the occasion, but leaves the words to him (“Or wad I hae tae cry yer name”), so that the confession requires two kinds of courage, hers and his.
4. The Ribbon
The ribbon first appears literally, as a loose end at a girl’s collar stirring in the evening air. It then becomes, in turn, the object of his gaze, the pretext for touch, the evidence of her design, and finally the sign of the new relation between them. The poem never states what the ribbon means. In the last line his clumsy knot is left “hing wrang”. She could mend it and does not. The crooked knot carries his inexperience, her tenderness towards it, the continuation of their play, and the keeping of the evening visible on her own body. The poem ends on an imperfection deliberately preserved.
5. Sensuality
Physical desire is present throughout but is carried by a small number of exact details: the white of her skin above the neckline of her dress, her breath on his skin, the pulse under his knuckle. There is one bodily image, not a catalogue of charms. The pulse line is the poem’s sensual climax:
Her pulse is birlin like the reel.
The dance the lovers have left behind continues inside her, and the image also answers the question the whole poem asks: her heart is racing as his is, so the desire is mutual. The kiss that follows is presented as a reply rather than an event: she “gies back my word withoot a soond”.
6. Landscape
The rural setting participates in the courtship rather than decorating it. In the fourth stanza, during his embarrassment, the burn simply “rins on, an that is aw”, indifferent to him. In the sixth, during the silence at the bridge, it “keeps mummlin at its ae auld word”, as if speaking the word he has not yet said, while the unmoving hawthorn hedge, white with late-spring blossom, measures the stillness. In the last stanza the dew on the grass tells us that the evening has been drawn out, and that she is leading him home “the langest roond”.
7. Verbal Motifs
A network of returning words binds the poem together. The reel of the barn becomes the reel of her pulse. His crowing (“Ye crawed sae crouse”) is answered by “Nae crawin left in me ava”. “Lass” first appears in his excuse and returns in his confession. The phrase “an that is aw” first expresses the indifference of the burn and later the sufficiency of four plain words. His “muckle mou” of boasting is answered by her mouth in the kiss. The ribbon that “hings” in the third stanza is left to “hing wrang” in the last line, closing the poem in a ring.
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Love in the Poetry of Robert Burns
Love is arguably the largest single subject of Robert Burns’s poetry (1759–1796), and above all of his songs. By his own account, love and poetry began for him together: his first song was written in his mid-teens for a girl who worked beside him in the harvest field. From that point to the last year of his life, courtship, desire, fidelity, parting and married affection remained his most constant themes.
Most of Burns’s love poetry was written as song. He composed words for existing Scottish tunes, often reshaping older fragments and bawdy originals into new lyrics, and in his final decade he devoted himself largely to this work. His principal outlets were James Johnson’s The Scots Musical Museum (1787–1803) and George Thomson’s Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, to which he contributed several hundred songs. This explains the qualities that define his love lyrics: brevity, singability, clear stanza shapes, frequent refrains, and diction that fits the natural stresses of speech set to melody.
The range of the love songs is wide. There is joyous rural courtship with frank sensuality, as in “The Rigs o’ Barley” and “Green Grow the Rashes, O”. There is devoted praise, as in “Mary Morison” and “A Red, Red Rose”. There are songs of parting and grief, as in “Ae Fond Kiss” and “Highland Mary”, and a song of long married love, “John Anderson, my Jo”. Comic courtship appears in “Duncan Gray”. Songs such as “Tam Glen” and “O Whistle an’ I’ll Come to Ye, My Lad” are sung in a woman’s voice, and her wishes are stated as plainly as any man’s. Beyond the published songs lies a body of bawdy verse, collected and printed after his death as The Merry Muses of Caledonia.
Several qualities unite this varied body of work. Burns treats physical love honestly and without prudery, but his best songs are sensual rather than explicit. He is unusually sympathetic to women’s desire and choice. He places love among ordinary work, fields, weather and village life, not in a courtly or pastoral never-land. His emotional statements are direct, often disarmingly simple, and he balances tenderness with humour. His language is the Scots of his own Ayrshire, heightened for art but never severed from speech. These are the qualities The First Fire takes as its model. It borrows no single song.
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The Style of the Poem
Language. The poem is written in literary Scots with an Ayrshire colouring, the variety associated with Burns. It is a coherent literary idiom, not a transcription of dialect. The spelling is modern and free of apostrophes of omission: an, aw, faws, wi rather than an’, a’, fa’s, wi’. This presents Scots as a language in its own right rather than as English with letters missing. Forms are kept consistent throughout (noo, roond, soond, withoot, throu).
Vocabulary and syntax. The lexicon rests on the common core of Scots (lass, burn, brig, hame, ilka, muckle) and is enlivened by precise verbs of action: lowse, steek, cleek, rax, birl, dwine, glower. Scots syntax and idiom are used naturally: “the nicht” for tonight, “fell I rue”, “She’ll no”, “wad I hae tae”, “gin ye’re sic a man”. Dialogue is framed with the ballad and song formula “says she / says I”, which gives the poem its oral quality.
Metre and stanza. All forty-eight lines are octosyllabic, in a four-beat song metre on an iambic base. Initial inversions (“Walks at my side”) and the stresses of speech keep the rhythm alive rather than mechanical. The stanza, ABABCC, pairs a cross-rhymed quatrain with a closing couplet. It is deliberately neither the Standard Habbie stanza nor the common ballad quatrain, so that the form does not echo any particular Burns poem, while remaining firmly within the tradition of the Scots song stanza. The rhymes are native to Scots pronunciation (hame / name, mou / noo / dew, gang / wrang).
Economy. The poem contains one precise bodily detail, one central object and a handful of landscape elements, each of which does narrative work. Meaning is carried by gesture and object rather than by declaration. The only explicit statement of feeling in the whole poem is the four-word confession itself.
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The Originality of The First Fire
A drama with a hidden mechanism. Walking home after a dance is a familiar situation in Scottish song. Here it acquires its own dramatic identity through a test: the girl has loosened her ribbon on purpose to see whether the young man will notice and dare to act. Most of Burns’s love lyrics sing a state of feeling or recall an encounter. The First Fire is a small play with concealed motivation, which is disclosed only in the seventh stanza and changes how everything before it reads.
A shared desire in one song. Burns gave women their own voices in separate songs. This poem places both desires inside a single song. The narrator is a young man, but the author of the plot is the young woman, and he discovers this only near the end. The balance of agency, with her boldness in design and his courage in speech, belongs specifically to this poem.
Burnsian qualities without Burnsian borrowings. The poem avoids the signatures of Burns’s love songs. There is no rose, no field of barley, no Lammas moon, no refrain, and no conventional epithet of the beloved; the word “bonnie” never appears. Its kinship with Burns lies in qualities rather than material: vernacular authority, emotional directness, humour within romance, sensuality without vulgarity, and ordinary people treated with dignity and warmth.
An ending in a gesture. The poem does not end on the kiss, and it contains no statement about love. Its last image is an imperfection left intact: the crooked knot she chooses not to mend. Tenderness is shown as the acceptance of clumsiness, and the change in the lovers’ relation is visible on the ribbon itself. The final image could belong to no other poem.
Modern psychology in traditional form. The characters have an interior life: his bluster is fear, and her irony is courage. The poem stays entirely within the conventions of the Scots courtship song while giving it a contemporary psychological precision. The formal design supports this. Each couplet turns the drama, the verbal motifs close into rings, and the object that opens the action also closes it.
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Note on the Text
The poem was composed and revised in Tuapse on 24 September 2026. After the first draft, six lines in five stanzas were revised to remove specific defects: a conventional simile, one English-sounding line, two strained idioms and a loose syntactic construction. Every other line stands as first written. The table below gives each revision with its reason.
Line Draft Final Reason
1.4 Like sparks that dwine an dwindle thin An blink, an dwine, an dwindle thin Removes a conventional simile; a verbal triad enacts the fading of the lanterns.
2.5 “The hour,” says I, “is gettin late.” “Yer mither, lass, will sit up late.” Replaces the most English-sounding line with a concrete domestic idiom; introduces lass, answered in 7.6.
2.6 “It’s no,” says she “She’ll no,” says she Follows from 2.5: she dismisses the excuse on her mother’s behalf.
5.2 “Then tie it, sin ye’re sic a han.” “Then tie it, gin ye’re sic a man.” Clarifies an elliptical idiom; the taunt now answers his crowing in stanza 2.
7.3 An wondered, wad ye hae the ee, An wondered, wad ye ever see, Removes a strained idiom; adds her impatience.
8.3 Then cleeks my airm, an, wat wi dew, Syne cleeks my airm; an throu the dew Repairs a dangling phrase; keeps her gesture of taking his arm.