Country Courting

. . . mightily in love, yet half afraid
He first attempts the gentle dairymaid.

Then she went up to his bedside
Saying, 'Davie, are ye sleeping?
I'm wearied of my maidenhead
I have so long a-keeping.'

There were scores of 'garlands' and ballads on these lines, many of them too ripe to quote. If they are any guide to bucolic mores in the eighteenth century, love in a barn was uninhibited-yet uncorrupt.

In Scotland, in particular, a bold and bawdy strain can be detected in the wooing of this century despite the still repressive influence of the Kirk. Neil MacCallum in It's An Old Scottish Custom tells how Scotland's one-tune Rabelaisian tradition was temporarily replaced by the pastoral convention; 'then came Robert Burns, who took the pastoral lassie and tumbled her in the hay, and turned her once again into a recognizable wench.... She was passionate, bonny, sometimes crude but wonderfully human.' The notion that a betrothal was sufficient sanction for full intimacies was widely established, though the Kirk did its utmost to frighten young couples into preserving their chastity. Some notoriety was achieved by a crudely humorous work published in 1775 entitled A Dialogue of Courtship between Jockey and Maggy as they were Coming from the Market, giving Excellent Instructions How to Court a Young Girl. It has the authentic earthy atmosphere of Scots rural courtship. Jockey opens by saying:

'O Maggy, Maggy! Dost thou mind since I came to thy father's bull with my mother's cow, ye ken she wadnae stand and ye helped me to haud her; aye after that they scorned me that I wad be married on you.'

Maggy, blushing, recalls the occasion; whereupon Jockey makes an improper proposal. When she demurs, he says that the suggestion was that of his mother, whose rule is: 'Fouk should aye try gin their house will haud its plenishen.'
The conversation continues:

Maggy: Ay, but Jockey, a wife is ae thing and a house anither. A man that's a mind to marry a woman he'll no make her a whore.
Johnny: It's a' true, Maggy, but fouks may do it yence ere they be married and no hae nae ill in their minds.
Maggy: Aha, Jockey, mony a ane has been beguil'd with yence, and do it yence ye rnay do it aye, what an' we get a bastard and hae to suffer for the foul act of fornication?
Johnny: Ay, but ma mither says, if I dinna get thee wi' bairn I'll no get thee; so it's die surest way of wooing.

Maggy concedes an affection for Jockey and talks about marrying him 'aence my father's muck were out'. He enumerates the gifts he will bring her, then hints regretfully, 'it's an unco thing to marry a naked woman and get naithing but twa bair legs'. Thereupon Maggy lists the gifts she will bring Jockey and the conversation ends rather more crudely than it began.
There are many contemporary dialogues and ballads in the same earthy strain. Robert Burns caught the prevailing note of honest bawdiness in poems which have not yet found their way into popular anthologies. According to Hilton Brown, in There was a Lad, the number of love affairs in Burns's life was probably below the ordinary male average, rather than above it. Unfortunately, the poet had an 'embarrassing gift for fertilization', which could not be overlooked in a public figure. Burns first fell in love at fifteen when working beside a bewitching young farm girl (it was the custom for men and women to be paired off to work in the harvest-fields). He soon forgot her for others, among them Jean Armour. He caught his first glimpse of Mary Campbell, the Gaelic innocent, where so many men first glimpsed their sweethearts-in church. She stood there, shy and pious, following the Bible text with her finger-a very endearing figure to the over-susceptible poet. After much appealing she agreed to meet him, and it was not long before she found herself 'in trouble'. To justify her conduct to herself, and to her parents, Mary made her lover swear betrothal on the Bible, and further persuaded him to repeat his vows across running water, a local custom designed in some way to propitiate Nature. The two knelt on a rock in the Mauchh'ne burn and joined hands under the chill water, while they solemnly exchanged vows. Mary died, unmarried, in childbirth, which did Burns no good in the eyes of the Kirk.

The Kirk's observators still showed their genius for tracking down couples who had been incautious in their courting. Five months before the birth of the poet's twins, when Jean Armour was living away from her native village, the Mauchline session clerk recorded a rumour that 'Jean Armour, an unmarried woman, is said to be with child', along with a session direction to appoint two members to speak to her parents. One day in August 1786 the minutes of Mauchline Kirk Session contained the following:

Robert Burns, John Smith, Mary Lindsay, Jean Armour and Agnes Auld appeared before the congregation professing their repentance for the sin of fornication, and they, having each appeared two several Sabbaths formerly, were this day rebuked and absolved from the scandal.

So Robert Bums, that defiant writer of ribald lyrics, the mocker of Holy Willies, was sufficiently meek to stand in the pew of his kirk and be publicly reproved by his minister.

Finally, Bums made an honest woman of Jean Armour-a distracting piece of news for Mrs Agnes McLehose, of Edinburgh, whom he had been courting by correspondence under cover of Arcadian names (she was Clarinda, he Sylvander). Clarinda's husband, incidentally, deserves honourable mention for his own enterprise in courtship. Shortly after he first cast eyes on Clarinda, then seventeen, he learned that she was about to journey alone from Glasgow to Edinburgh, and promptly booked the entire coach for the pair of them. On the way he wooed confidently, skilfully-and successfully.

In some rural districts of Scotland it was the custom for a suitor, having screwed up the courage to propose, to summon the girl to attend the village ale-house on a given night, first telling the landlady of his intention. The bride-to-be arrived in her finery and was plied with ale. Eventually the suitor made the proposal, which was no surprise to the girl, since she well knew why she had been summoned. The two then licked their thumbs and pressed them together, vowing fidelity. Violation of this compact was equivalent to perjury.

Not every humble pair of lovers were free to wed without their master's authority. Lord Lovat (who was executed in 1747) is said to have sharply disciplined two servants who had wed without his permission. Saying 'You shall have enough of each other') he shut them in a former well for three weeks.