V.
Reading edition
ON WEE JOHNNY.
HIC JACET WEE JOHNNY.
[Wee Johnny was John Wilson, printer of the Kilmarnock edition of Burns’s Poems: he doubted the success of the speculation, and the poet punished him in these lines, which he printed unaware of their meaning.]
Whoe’er thou art, O reader, know, That death has murder’d Johnny! An’ here his body lies fu’ low— For saul he ne’er had ony.