ROBERT BURNS: SCOTLAND'S TREASURE

Robert (“Rabbie”) Burns (1759-96) was an excellent lyric poet and a writer of greatly cherished songs. He may hold only a middling position in the crowded Pantheon of British poets but in Scotland his place is supreme and his works conjure up powerful feelings of kinship, national pride and solidarity. He epitomises many aspects of the turbulent Scottish character – reverence for Education, obsession with Sex, fascination with Religion, fondness for Drink and radicalism in Politics.  He is truly “Scotland’s Treasure”.

Rabbie Burns in 1787 by Nasmyth

His life story is quickly told. Born the eldest of 7 children of William Burns, a tenant farmer in Alloway, just south of Ayr, Burns was educated by his father and fitfully by a succession of local tutors. By age 15 Burns was the principal labourer on his father’s farm at Mount Oliphant. Father was an unsuccessful farmer and the poverty-stricken family moved to other small-holdings in Tarbolton and after father died in 1784, in Mauchline. Burns almost emigrated to a clerical job in the West Indies until he was encouraged to publish his poems (the Kilmarnock Edition) in 1786 which were an instant success. An enlarged edition Poems; Chiefly in the Scottish dialect was published in 1787 in Edinburgh, where Burns met and impressed many Scottish luminaries. In 1788 he married Jean Armour who bore him 9 children, sadly only 3 survived infancy. Burns had many other liaisons.

He returned to Ayrshire in 1788 and resumed farming but as a precaution trained as an exciseman. His farming did not prosper and he duly took up his duties as an exciseman in Dumfries. He finally gave up his farm in 1791. He had met in Edinburgh two collectors of old songs, James Johnson and George Thomson, and contributed over 300 new, many now famous, songs to their separate publications.. He drank too much and became soured by his fate. He offended some by being an enthusiast for the French Revolution and felt it necessary to join the militia in Dumfries to display his loyalty to the Crown. He died there at the early age of 37 in 1796 and by the early 19^th century had become an iconic figure in Scottish literature, a position he has retained ever since.

Burns was a prolific poet and many of his works in their directness and lyrical cadences are eminently quotable. It is true that his extensive use of Lowland Scots (“Lallans”) is an obstacle to some readers, but surely only a minor one. I leave it to linguists to establish whether Lallans is a language or a dialect, but it gives Burns’ poetry extra colour and vitality. 

I wrote earlier of the Scots reverence for Education. The Edinburgh literati sentimentalised Burns as an unlettered ploughman but that missed the mark. William Burns was a father of character and principle: he himself largely tutored his children in a wide variety of subjects; he even wrote for his children “A Manual of Christian Belief”. There were books in the Alloway cottage and William would take special care of his eldest son. A local teacher, James Murdoch, was also a positive influence. Not that Rabbie was an admirer of academic learning:

A set o' dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
They gang in stirks, and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak;
An' syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint o' Greek!

Burns may have had a poor background materially, but his poetic diction is that of an educated man.

Rabbie was a good-looking fellow, with ruddy cheeks and melting eyes, as the Nasmyth portrait shows. He had a notably lascivious character, that obsession with Sex so typical of Scots. He had the agreeable habit of writing a poem or song to commemorate many of his lady targets and often conquests. Thus a procession of young ladies can be traced from 1774 onwards – Nelly Kirkpatrick (Once I loved a bonnie Lass), Peggy Thompson (I dreamed I lay), Alison Begbie, The Belles of Mauchline four girls including Jean Armour, whom he married in 1778, Elizabeth Paton (who bore his first child), Mary Campbell (Highland Mary) with whom he had an intense relationship, Nancy McLehose (Ae fond Kiss), Jenny Clow (mother of his child) and Mary Cameron. Burns was by no means saintly but he had a delightful lyric gift.  While my favourite is The Lass of Ballochmyle, perhaps his most famous love song is the soaringly romantic My Love is like a Red, Red Rose.

O my Love's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Love's like the melody
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only Love
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Love,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile.

Fascination with religion is my third Scottish attribute. Burns was brought up in the Calvinist Presbyterian Church of Scotland tradition but he soon rebelled against it. He was initiated into the Freemasons Lodge in Tarbolton in 1781, aged 22. The Freemasons were notably anti-clerical at this time and this was a community gathering and also a conscious act of defiance.

 Burns’ most memorable poem on a religious subject was his richly comic Holy Willie’s Prayer lampooning the dogma of predestination and having the self-Chosen hypocrite Willie trying to bargain with God.

O Thou, that in the heavens does dwell,
Wha, as it pleases best Thysel',
Sends ane to heaven an' ten to hell,
A' for Thy glory,
And no for onie guid or ill
They've done afore Thee!

I bless and praise Thy matchless might,
When thousands Thou hast left in night,
That I am here afore Thy sight,
For gifts an' grace
A burning and a shining light
To a' this place………………..

But yet, O Lord! confess I must,
At times I'm fash'd wi' fleshly lust:
An' sometimes, too, in warldly trust,
Vile self gets in;
But Thou remembers we are dust,
Defil'd wi' sin.

O Lord! yestreen, Thou kens, wi' Meg -
Thy pardon I sincerely beg;
O! may't ne'er be a livin plague
To my dishonour,
An' I'll ne'er lift a lawless leg
Again upon her……………………..

But, Lord, remember me an' mine
Wi' mercies temporal and divine,
That I for grace an' gear may shine,
Excell'd by nane,
And a' the glory shall be thine,
Amen, Amen!

Burns’ good humour suffuses his writing about Drink, the downfall and ruin of many Scots and certainly a contributory cause of Burns’ own early death. His comic epic poem Tam o’Shanter tells the tale of Tam, drinking too much at the weekly market, and riding home in a storm past a churchyard occupied by witches who pursue him and almost catch him until he manages to cross the River Doon (witches supposedly cannot cross water), but not before they have pulled off the tail of his faithful horse, Meg. The poem’s opening lines are memorable:

When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neighbours neighbours meet;
As market days are wearing late,
And folk begin to tak the gate,
While we sit boozing at the nappy,
An' getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

Tam relaxes with his cronies and a bottle

                      

Tam and Meg pursued by the Witches

                         

                            

Tam o’Shanter is a comic triumph and underlines the convivial side of the Scots. I recall attending a Burns Supper in London hosted by Glasgow Corporation at which various councillors, who knew their Burns backwards, recited word-perfectly Tam o’Shanter and Holy Willie’s Prayer with suitable histrionics. There were many other recitations – Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin Race from the Address to the Haggis, Wee sleekit, cowering, timorous Beastie, whose Best-laid Schemes of Mice and Men gang aft agley and Wee modest crimson tipped flow’r from To a Mountain Daisy. The food and drink flowed, friendships were deepened and it was a splendid occasion. Such Scottish gatherings occur the world over and Burns’ songs and poems are the cement binding it all together. For many Scots, the works of Burns are the only poetry they know, so completely has he become the national bard. This elevation has sometimes been twisted by hyperbole and inappropriate hero-worship but he does occupy a unique place in the hearts of Scotsmen.

On a wider stage, Burns encourages the Scottish taste for radicalism in Politics. His Scots Wha hae beats the nationalistic drum while he was ahead of many of his contemporaries in welcoming the French Revolution and calling for Reform at home. To many populist commentators Burns personifies the merits of the ordinary working man. The Russians adopted him as a working-class hero, as depicted in The Cotter’s Saturday Night. His famous poem A Man’s a Man for a’That speaks of human equality and to the yearning for universal goodwill:

…………The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd for a' that…………..

Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that.

This is a very powerful message and moves Burns into the fulcrum of political controversy, which is probably just what he intended!

The universal appeal of Burns is experienced globally every New Year when the world sings his anthem to past pleasures and enduring friendship Auld Lang Syne:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

Chorus - For auld land syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

We willingly share “Scotland’s Treasure” with the rest of Humanity.

SMD

10.10.13

Text Copyright ©Sidney Donald 2013