THE TERM DAY

THE TERM DAY
A Scots Song of Parting
in the tradition of Robert Burns
Daniil Lazko
Poem · Glossary of Scots · Literary Analysis
Tuapse
7 October 2026
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THE TERM DAY
Haud up the licht, Elspet, a thocht,
Ma haunds are stiff wi cauld;
The carrier’s cursin at his beast,
An the day’s no twa hours auld.

I’ve pit three turns aboot yer kist
An drawn the tow fu ticht;
Ye lauch, an say it’s the first knot
That ever I tied richt.

Ye took the arles at the fair
Frae a Merse grieve, sour an lang;
I walked ahint ye hame that nicht
An couldna mind a sang.

I bade ye bide. Ye speired me then
Whit hearth I had tae share:
A bothy bed wi five ploughlads
An the snaw blawn up the stair.

Ye bund ahint ma scythe at Lammas,
The cauf stuck tae yer broo;
At lowsin-time I kissed it aff
An tastit hairst on yer mou.

An there ye staun in yer Sabbath shawl
Wi ilka preen in place;
I seek the lass I kissed, an find
A fee’d servant’s face.

Ye wadna let me lift ye up,
Ye clamb the wheel yersel,
Syne leaned doon frae the kist an held
Ma haund — I canna tell

Hoo lang. The carrier looked awa
An spak laich tae his mare,
An whan ye lowsed it, the cauld cam in
Like water, an lay there.

The wheels gaed crunchin doon the loan,
Ye sat as straucht’s a wand;
At the brig-end ye turned yer heid
An didna lift a haund.

The sun cam reid on the stibble-rigs
Whaur ye had bund the corn,
An the cocks were crawin roond the stack
As gin’t were ony morn.

I took yer luggie an yer stool
An sat whaur ye wad be;
The brockit coo turned roond her heid
An wadna milk for me.

Daniil Lazko
Tuapse, 7 October 2026
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NOTE ON THE TEXT
GENRE Scots farewell song; lyrical narrative with ballad elements
PRIMARY THEME Parting lovers: desire, fidelity, absence
SECONDARY THEME Memory, place and the working life of the farm
FORM Eleven ballad quatrains, with one deliberate run-on between stanzas 7 and 8
METRE Common (ballad) metre, 4–3–4–3 stresses; stress-based, with folk-song freedom in unstressed syllables
RHYME SCHEME ABCB
SCOTS REGISTER Lowland literary Scots of the Lothian and Border type
HISTORICAL BASIS Hiring fairs and arles, the term day flitting with a kist, the bothy system of the Lothians; characters and events invented
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GLOSSARY OF SCOTS
Scots words and forms used in the poem, with their English meanings, together with a few English words used in their older rural sense.
Scots English
a thocht a little, the least bit (lit. “a thought”)
aboot about, around
aff off
ahint behind
an and
arles earnest money: a small sum paid by an employer to a farm servant at hiring, sealing the engagement
as gin’t were as if it were
auld old
awa away
bade asked, urged (past tense of bid)
bide stay, remain
blawn blown
bothy a rough outbuilding where unmarried farm servants lodged together
brig-end the end of the bridge
brockit having a white-streaked or piebald face (of cattle)
broo brow, forehead
bund bound; here, bound sheaves of cut grain
cam came
canna cannot
carrier a carter who carried goods and luggage between farms and towns
cauf chaff
cauld cold
clamb climbed
coo cow
couldna mind could not remember
day, the today (Scots the day = today; the morn = tomorrow)
didna did not
doon down
fee’d hired for a term of service at an agreed wage (fee)
frae from
fu full, very
gaed went
grieve farm overseer, steward
hairst harvest
hame home
haud hold
haund, haunds hand, hands
heid head
hoo how
ilka every, each
kist chest; a farm servant’s wooden box holding all his or her belongings
laich low, quietly
Lammas 1 August, a Scottish quarter day, traditionally the beginning of harvest
lang long; tall
lauch laugh
licht light; here, a lantern
loan lane, track leading to a farm
lowsed loosened, released
lowsin-time the hour when work stops and the horses are unyoked
luggie a small wooden pail with a handle, used for milking
ma my
Merse, the the lowland plain of Berwickshire, in the south-east of Scotland
mou mouth
nicht night
no not
ony any
pit put
ploughlads young ploughmen
preen pin
reid red
richt right, properly
roond round, around
sang song
snaw snow
spak spoke
speired asked
stack stack of corn or hay in the stackyard
staun stand
stibble-rigs stubble fields; the ridges of a reaped field
straucht straight, upright
syne then, next
tae to
tastit tasted
ticht tight
tow rope
twa two
wad would (here habitual: “where you used to be”)
wadna would not
wand a slender, straight rod
whan when
whaur where
whit what
wi with
ye, yer, yersel you, your, yourself
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LITERARY ANALYSIS
1. The Situation
The Term Day is spoken by a young ploughman to the woman he loves, Elspet, in the last minutes before she leaves him. Nothing in their parting is exceptional. There is no war, no shipwreck, no rival lover and no cruel father. Elspet has been hired at the autumn fair to work on a farm in the Merse, and on the term day, when farm servants changed places, a carrier has come to take her and her kist away. The cause of the separation is economic and entirely ordinary, and the poem takes its force from exactly that ordinariness.
The lovers are given just enough history to be real. She has accepted the arles from a grieve the speaker dislikes on sight. He asked her to stay, and she answered with a question about where they would live, to which his only reply was a bed in a bothy shared with five other ploughmen. The disagreement is never resolved; it is simply overtaken by the morning. Her pride shows in small refusals: she will not be lifted onto the cart, and at the bridge she turns her head but will not wave. His pride shows in the jokes he still makes about knots and lodgings. Neither of them says the word love, and the poem never uses it.
The poem moves through a single day, but it remembers a season. It opens before dawn by lantern light and closes in the byre at milking time. Between those two points the speaker recalls the season of Lammas, the August term traditionally linked with harvest, when Elspet bound the sheaves behind his scythe. The arc from Lammas to the term day spans the three or four months of a farm servant’s autumn: from the season of shared work to the day the work divides them.

2. Structure and Movement
The eleven stanzas fall into four movements. The first two stanzas are present action: the lantern, the cold, the rope being tightened round the kist. Stanzas three to six turn to the recent past and to the present seen through it: the fair, the refused proposal, the harvest, and Elspet now standing in her Sabbath shawl. Stanzas seven to nine stage the parting itself: the climb onto the cart, the held hand, the carrier looking away, the turn of the head at the bridge. Stanzas ten and eleven are the aftermath, and here the poem goes quiet. The sun rises, the cocks crow, and the speaker goes to do her work in the byre.
The single moment where the stanza form breaks is the poem’s emotional centre. Stanza seven ends mid-sentence, and stanza eight begins with two words that complete it:
Syne leaned doon frae the kist an held
Ma haund — I canna tell

Hoo lang. The carrier looked awa
Everywhere else the quatrain closes cleanly. Here the sentence spills across the gap between stanzas, and the reader experiences the same suspension of time the speaker describes. When the sentence ends, it ends with a full stop after Hoo lang, the shortest sentence in the poem.
Beneath the narrative runs a second structure made of verbs of binding and loosing. The speaker ties the rope round her kist; Elspet bund the sheaves at harvest and bund the corn on the stubble-rigs; at lowsin-time, when work stopped, he kissed the chaff from her brow; and at the parting she lowsed her grip on his hand. The same Scots verb, lowse, names both the end of a working day and the end of a life together. The joke of the second stanza, that this is the first knot he has ever tied properly, reads differently once the reader has followed this thread: the one bond he finally makes secure is the one that sends her away. The poem never points this out.

3. Language and Prosody
The poem is written in common metre, the four-and-three-stress quatrain of the ballad and the psalm, rhymed ABCB. The metre is stress-based rather than strictly syllabic, as in Scottish song generally: lines such as An the snaw blawn up the stair or An whan ye lowsed it, the cauld cam in carry extra unstressed syllables while keeping their beat. The rhymes are plain and mostly monosyllabic (cauld / auld, ticht / richt, place / face, be / me), so that the music never draws attention to itself.
The Scots is a consistent Lowland literary register of the Lothian and Border type. It avoids apostrophe-heavy spelling and keeps to forms that a reader of Burns or of modern literary Scots will recognise. Most of the vocabulary is the working vocabulary of a farm: kist, tow, arles, grieve, bothy, cauf, hairst, stibble-rigs, luggie, coo. The Scots is the medium of the speaker’s whole world, not a decoration laid over English. Grammar follows Scots usage as well: the day for “today”, habitual wad in whaur ye wad be, and the idiom a thocht for “a little”, which in a poem about memory carries a faint second meaning.

4. The Style of Burns in the Poem
Burns is the governing model of The Term Day, but the poem draws on his method rather than on any of his poems. Several features of that method are central here.
The first is the speaking voice. Burns’s love songs are often addressed directly to the beloved or overheard as if spoken aloud, and they sound like a person rather than a poet. The Term Day is a dramatic monologue of this kind: it begins with an instruction (Haud up the licht), as speech does, and never leaves the speaker’s voice.
The second is the union of love and labour. Burns was himself a tenant farmer’s son who worked the plough and the harvest, and his songs put courtship in the fields, the barley rigs and the harvest. His own song beginning “It was upon a Lammas night” sets a night of love among the barley rigs; The Term Day shares that seasonal ground but turns it the other way, recalling a harvest intimacy only at the moment it ends. Here the lovers’ desire is inseparable from their work: she binds behind his scythe, he kisses chaff from her brow, and what he tastes on her mouth is the harvest itself.
The third is social conscience. Burns repeatedly measured love against money and rank, and wrote with sympathy for hired servants and the rural poor. In this poem the economy of the hiring fair is the true antagonist. The line I seek the lass I kissed, an find / A fee’d servant’s face registers, without any argument, what it means for a person to be engaged by contract to another man’s farm: before the road separates the lovers, the hiring has already changed her.
The fourth is the mixture of tenderness and wit. Burns’s love poetry is rarely solemn for long; humour and feeling sit side by side. The speaker’s jokes about the knot and about the crowded bothy belong to this tradition, and, as in Burns, the joking stops as the cart begins to move.
Where the poem departs from Burns is in its reticence. Burns’s great parting songs tend to declare their grief outright, in the first person and at full voice. The Term Day withholds every declaration and trusts objects and gestures to carry the feeling: the rope, the shawl, the unlifted hand, the stool, the cow. In this respect it leans towards the older anonymous ballad, which reports and does not explain, while keeping the intimacy of Burns’s direct address.

5. Love in the Poetry of Burns
Love is the largest single subject of Burns’s work, and most of his love poetry was written as song. From 1787 he supplied around two hundred songs, original and reworked, to James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum, and later many more to George Thomson’s Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs. He wrote words to existing tunes, so his love poetry is shaped by melody: short lines, strong stresses, repetition and refrain.
His range is wide. There are songs of praise and courtship, such as Mary Morison and A Red, Red Rose; songs of physical frankness, from Corn Rigs to the bawdy pieces gathered after his death in The Merry Muses of Caledonia; songs of married love that has lasted into old age, of which John Anderson, my Jo is the best known; and songs written in a woman’s voice, such as The Banks o’ Doon, which give the abandoned or waiting lover her own speech. He wrote with equal seriousness about desire, loyalty, betrayal and grief.
Parting occupies a special place in this range. Burns lived through several separations, real and threatened, and wrote some of his most lasting songs about them. Ae Fond Kiss (1791), written after his final parting from Agnes McLehose, is the most famous; the songs associated with Mary Campbell, the “Highland Mary” of his poems, are another group. In these songs love is defined by its loss: the beloved is most present at the moment of going.
What unites Burns’s love poetry is the dignity he gives to ordinary affection. His lovers are ploughmen, servants and country girls, and their feelings are treated as fully as any courtly passion. Love in Burns is embodied, local and mortal. It happens among real fields and real work, and it is threatened by poverty, distance and time rather than by allegorical enemies. The Term Day places itself inside this tradition: its lovers are farm servants, its setting is a working farm, and its threat is the most ordinary event of their year.

6. Meaning
The poem asks what remains of love when the beloved is no longer present, and it answers through the ending rather than in any statement. After the cart has gone, the speaker does not lament. He takes up her task, sitting on her stool with her milking pail, in the place where she used to be. The cow turns her head, looks for the familiar hands, and will not let down her milk for him.
The image is exact as farming fact: a cow accustomed to one milker will often withhold her milk from a stranger. As poetry it says several things at once. Elspet’s absence is real enough to be felt even by an animal. Love here lives not only in feeling but in habit, in the body, in the routines of work two people shared. And the man who stays behind is now a stranger in his own world, the one place where he had expected to be at home. The final line refuses consolation: An wadna milk for me.
The poem also leaves its second question unanswered: whether fidelity will survive the distance. There is no promise in the poem, no talk of letters or of return at the next term. Elspet’s turned head at the bridge suggests that she feels what he feels; her unlifted hand suggests that she will not let herself say so. The reader is left, as the speaker is, without certainty.
The tenth stanza sets the indifference of the world against the scale of the loss. The sun rises red on the stubble fields where she bound the corn, and the cocks crow as gin’t were ony morn. For the farm nothing has changed. For the speaker everything has, and the poem lets that contrast speak without comment.

7. What Is Distinctive in the Poem
Several features set The Term Day apart within the tradition it belongs to.
Its occasion is unusual. The hiring fair and the term day were central facts of rural Scottish life, yet they rarely stand at the centre of a love song. Here a date in the agricultural calendar becomes the title and the whole subject: a fixed, impersonal day that ends a private life.
Its witnesses are minor and silent. The carrier who looks away and speaks low to his mare is a stranger who understands the scene and grants the lovers privacy; the cow in the byre is the last and most eloquent mourner. The emotion of the poem is registered by others before it is admitted by the speaker.
Its feeling is entirely indirect. The poem never names love, never says farewell and never describes a tear. The highest emotional pitch is reached in a sentence that breaks off (I canna tell / Hoo lang) and in a simile of cold coming into an empty hand like water. Restraint is not a limit on the feeling here; it is the form the feeling takes.
Its central images are original to it. The rope tied round a servant’s kist, the chaff kissed from a forehead, the taste of harvest on a mouth, the cow that will not milk: none of these is borrowed from Burns or from the ballad stock, though all of them could only have come from the world those songs describe. The poem aims to stand on its own as a modern poem written in the Scots tradition, with Burns as its principal ancestor.

8. Historical Note
The social framework of the poem is documented history. Lowland farm servants were commonly engaged at hiring fairs held around the term days, and an employer sealed the bargain by paying arles, a small earnest sum. Unmarried servants were usually hired for six months, married men for a year. On the term day servants moved, often with all they owned in a single wooden kist. In the Lothians and neighbouring counties unmarried ploughmen were frequently lodged together in bothies. The traditional autumn term was Martinmas, 11 November; the Removal Terms (Scotland) Act 1886 moved the statutory removal terms to 28 May and 28 November. Lammas, 1 August, was one of the old Scottish term days and was traditionally associated with the coming of harvest.
Everything else is poetic invention: Elspet and the speaker, the farm and the grieve from the Merse, the carrier and the cow. The poem does not fix a precise year and should be read as set in the nineteenth-century world of Lowland farm service, not as the record of a historical event.