Wha the Deil Can Hinder the Wind to Blaw?
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Wha the Deil Can Hinder the Wind to Blaw? - meaning Summary
Bawdy Domestic Comic Exchange
This short comic Scots poem stages a frosty New Year night where an old woman (carlin) and a lively young man (birkie) engage in a bawdy, transactional encounter. The speaker reports their haggling—the woman demanding payment, the man warning temperance—while the exchange is undercut by earthy humor and a shrugging refrain that frames desire and mischief as natural and unstoppable. The poem treats sexual commerce and social roles with rough wit, using dialect and brisk narrative to make a humorous, unsentimental observation about appetite and human impulse.
Read Complete AnalysesIt fell about the blythe new-year, When days are short and nights are lang, Ae bonie night, the starns were clear, An' frost beneath my fit-stead rang; I heard a carlin cry, "relief!" Atweesh her trams a birkie lay; But he wan a quarter in her beef, For a' the jirts the carlin gae. She heav'd to; and he strak frae, As he wad nail'd the carlin thro'; An' ilka fart the carlin gae, It wad hae fill'd a pockie fou; Temper your tail, the young man cried, Temper your tail by Venus' Law! Double your dunts, the dame replied, Wha the deil can hinder the wind to blaw?
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