166. Epitaph for William Nicol, High School, Edinburgh — Summary

Imagine the most backhanded tombstone inscription you can think of. Robert Burns wrote this one for William Nicol, a notoriously harsh schoolteacher he couldn’t stand. Instead of mourning, the speaker practically cheers the maggots on: “Go on, feast on his brain—you won’t get a meal like this very often.” That’s a jab at Nicol’s supposed stupidity. Then the tone gets even nastier. The maggots are told to sink their claws into his heart, because there’s not a single bit of it that’s rotten. The twist is brutal: his heart was already so morally rotten that it’s spoiled even for worms. The whole thing crackles with scorn. The speaker isn’t just angry; he’s relishing the idea of Nicol’s corpse being as worthless in death as his character was in life. It’s a dark, gleeful revenge fantasy, dressed up as a mock epitaph.