Granny

My Granny smoked a cutty pipe
And lit it at a fire of peat;
Her face was like a pippin ripe,
Framed by her mutch and sagely sweet.
She sat upon a three-legged stool,
With by her side a cat apurr,
And talked of when she went to school,
And Grandfather came courting her.

They married in their teens, I guess,
And of braw bairnies she had seven;
'Twas counted shame to mother less,
Though four preceded her to Heaven;
She never had a kitched help,
She did her housework all alone:
With seven little daups to skelp,
She worked her fingers to the bone.

And now I sit before a fire
in sculped Carrara marble set;
I've luxury to heart's desire,
And I am old as Granny - yet
I have not in my eyes the joy
Of hers beneath that cottage Thatch,
As when she hailed a tiny boy
Who had to reach to lift the latch.

No urchin by the olive glow
Waits wistfully beside my knee;
Her youth, a hundred years ago
How happily she told to me!
Her "but and ben" had scarce a clout,
But Oh! How she was gay and glad!
Alas, my fire is dying out . . .
And I - I have no little lad!