The Belles of Mauchline
In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles,The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a’;Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess,In Lon’on or Paris, they’d gotten it a’.
Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland’s divine,Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw:There’s beauty and fortune to get wi’ Miss Morton,But Armour’s the jewel for me o’ them a’.
Words in this poem
- betty n.
- Etym: [Supposed to be a cant word, from Betty, for Elizabeth, as such an instrument is also called Bess (i. e., Elizabeth) in the Canting Dictionary of 1725, and Jenny (i. e., Jane).]
- braw a.
- Well-dressed; handsome; smart; brave; -- used of persons or their clothing, etc.; as, a braw lad.
- armour n.
- Defensive arms for the body; any clothing or covering worn to protect one's person in battle. [OE. armure, fr. F. armure, OF. armeure, fr. L. armatura. See Armature.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Belles of Mauchline is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, Project Gutenberg ebook #1279; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Burns, The Belles of Mauchline, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/the-belles-of-mauchline.html, id L02960.
Form and metre
The Belles of Mauchline is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 77% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.6 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in anapaestic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A-A belles · aA · guess · aA
- 2 A-A- divineA · braw · mortonA · a
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against anapaestic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles, | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a’; | 11 | ··········· |
| Their carriage and dress, a stranger would guess, | 10 | ·/˘···/˘·· |
| In Lon’on or Paris, they’d gotten it a’. | 11 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| Miss Miller is fine, Miss Markland’s divine, | 10 | ·/˘···/˘˘/ |
| Miss Smith she has wit, and Miss Betty is braw: | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| There’s beauty and fortune to get wi’ Miss Morton, | 12 | ·/˘·/˘····/˘ |
| But Armour’s the jewel for me o’ them a’. | 10 | ·/˘·/····· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.