Robert Burns is considered Scotland’s greatest poet. Well, some would say Sir Walter Scott, but I can guarantee you every English-speaker over the age of 9 knows at least one line of a Rabbie Burns poem, and quotes it at least annually. Not sure Scott can lay that same claim. (The line is, of course, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot . . .”)
We know many more of his lines, but may not always know the source: “man’s inhumanity to man” and “my love is like a red, red rose” are a couple of examples.
His poems had some interesting titles: Address To A Haggis, which is read aloud each January 25th at Robbie Burns suppers, refers to haggis as “the Great Cheiftain o’ the Puddin race” – seriously, how can you not love a poem praising oats, pepper, and sheep innards? There was To A Mouse – an ode to a – yes, really – to a mouse. That’s where the phrase “The best laid plans of mice and men aft gang a’gley” comes from. And honest to God, he actually wrote a poem called To A Louse. Yup. A Louse. Remarkable.
Which brings me to today’s aggravation: I have lice. Well, no, wait, that sounds wrong. My house has lice. Wood lice to be specific. In the winter I might see one or two of these tiny brown trilobite-like bugs a month. As the weather warmed up, more and more were showing up. Now, I dispatch about a half dozen a day, either squished in a kleenex in the garbage bin, flushed in loo roll (toilet paper) down the toilet, or hoovered up with the vacuum. I was a tad freaked out about this: was it a reflection on my house-keeping? Was it all the fault of not having window screens? Did I have to move all my non-canned food into the fridge? But I have since asked around and done some research: they are wood lice and to be found in wet wood. Like in the foundations and walls of Scottish houses; every house has them. And it seems they don’t really like being ‘above ground’ as it were, as they dry up and die quite quickly in the open air, so my foodstuffs are fine.
So, much like high winds and strong accents, the wood louse is something I have to learn to live with here in Orkney. But I still don’t think it deserves its own poem.