Lassie's Response to the Laddies:
We have been asked to take up the challenge of replying to the Toast to the Lassies. And what a great toast it was, so we thank you for being so lovely about us lassies. So good of you to charmingly and delicately bring to light the many aspects of a woman’s character. Not many men have the courage and ability to be so forthcoming and tactful at the same time.
Yes, men do try to please us women. Yes, they try . . . but most men do not know what women want. Some of them get very strange ideas indeed, including Robert Burns. He wrote a poem called “Nine Inch will Please a Lady” – we can’t imagine what that’s about! Then there is the other lot, with less inches, who think they can compensate by driving a really big car.
Well, men are great at other things. We would never go on a road trip without a man in the party. We had to say it ladies, but men really are better map readers. Only the male mind could conceive of one inch equaling a hundred miles. But women and men can be equally good at the same things. Multi-tasking for example. Men can’t multi-task so they say. But Robert Burns has an impressive record of 11 children by 5 women in 13 years which shows that men can certainly multitask, especially if it is something important to them. Burn’s wife, Jean, however wins the multitasking prize in that family for going to Burn’s funeral and giving birth to his last child on the same day.
But we won’t mock Burns because he is a wonderful example, even 261 years after his birth, of what women want in a man. Burns not only wrote wonderful poetry but he was honest with it too – we women know our faults, and don’t mind having them pointed out to us with good humour. He might have been monogamously challenged but he looked after all his women and provided for his family.
All joking aside, for all their shortcomings, we women couldn’t get along without men, if nothing else we need someone to boss around. And your little foibles are usually why we like you so much – as Burns himself said “A Man’s a Man for A’that”. So even though it pains us, we are going to give the last word to a man – the man of the hour – Robert Burns. It is Burns who gives the best picture of the perfect harmony of men and women getting along, through his poem
“We will big a wee, wee house,
And we will live like king and queen;
Sae blythe and merry’s we will be,
When ye set by the wheel at e’en.
A man may drink, and no be drunk;
A man may fight, and no be slain;
A man may kiss a bonnie lass,
And aye be welcome back again!
So, we would rather live with men than without them, especially the ones in this room. “To the Lads” [toast]
