The Twa Dogs

A tenant farmer appears before his landlord, scratching his chin as the rent is counted on the table in this engraving from a collection of poetry by Robert Burns. The illustration is for “The Twa Dogs,” a poem using the differences between two dogs, a purebred named Caesar and a ploughman's collie named Luath, to describe the class and personality differences between landlords and tenants. The caption of the illustration uses two lines from the poem: “Poor tenant bodies, scant o’cash, How they maun thole a factor’s snash.” Translated from Scots, this says that poor tenants who cannot afford their rent must put up with abuse from their landlords' agents.