Love and Liberty: A Cantata (The Jolly Beggars)

Robert Burns · 1785 CE · Poem · English · Romantic

In Poosie Nansie's howff in Mauchline a company of vagrants drink up whatever they have between them: a maimed soldier and his doxy, the widow of a Highland caterán, a fiddler, a tinker and a ballad-singer, each taking a song in turn. Between the recitativos they swap partners, settle a quarrel over a woman, and pawn the fiddler's instrument for another round. Burns kept it out of the Kilmarnock volume and never printed it whole; Scott thought it the best thing he ever wrote.

Open Love and Liberty: A Cantata (The Jolly Beggars) in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Closest analogues

• Bartholomew Fair
  Ben Jonson · 1614 CE · Play

  69% · 14 shared
  SatireComedyClass & InequalityIndividual vs SocietyRebel / OutlawWise FoolEverymanEpisodicThe Feastvs SocietyComicSatiricalRealistEnglish
• The History of Mr Polly
  H. G. Wells · 1910 CE · Novel

  68% · 13 shared
  SatireComedyFreedom vs FateClass & InequalityIndividual vs SocietyWise FoolEverymanEpisodicFreedomvs SocietyComicRealistEnglish
• The Scholars
  Wu Jingzi · 1750 CE · Novel

  58% · 11 shared
  SatireComedyClass & InequalityIndividual vs SocietyWise FoolEverymanEpisodicThe Feastvs SocietySatiricalRealist
• The Canterbury Tales
  Chaucer · c. 1400 CE · Poem

  56% · 13 shared
  PoemSatireComedyClass & InequalityWise FoolEverymanEpisodicFrame Narrativevs SocietyComicSatiricalRealistEnglish
• Jacques the Fatalist
  Denis Diderot · 1796 CE · Novel

  56% · 10 shared
  SatireComedyFreedom vs FateClass & InequalityWise FoolEverymanEpisodicFrame NarrativeComicSatirical
• Woe from Wit
  Alexander Griboyedov · 1825 CE · Play

  54% · 11 shared
  SatireComedyClass & InequalityIndividual vs SocietyRomanticRebel / OutlawWise FoolThe Dancevs SocietyComicSatirical