Burns – the truest and sweetest of all
who have ever sung of home and love,
and humanity.
(John Greenleaf Whittier)
The year of 1986 had been my first attempt to retire from the world of Robert Burns. The book had been written, the recordings made – ‘and all was done that I could do’ with this part of my life. I thought that was that and prepared for other things. However, I had reckoned without a certain Philip Raskin of Glasgow who was about to open a tiny restaurant called the Inn on the Green in the East End of that city, and had the idea that a Burns Supper with me would be just the thing to get him started.
Well, he talked me into it. ‘Just a wee Burns Night’, he said, and has been talking me into it ever since. As a result of his efforts the annual Burns Supper at the Inn on the Green attained almost cult proportions in Glasgow and sold out from year to year. So much so, that extra nights were put on to meet with the demand. Once again, there was no room at the Inn. Why was this so? And why did the same people come back again and again? The answer was that Philip Raskin did small for less than a hundred patrons what Joe Campbell and West Sound did big for more than a thousand. What both nights had in common, however, was style. The ambience was special, the meal was superb and the Robert Burns Story was told simply and effectively throughout the evening. At the Inn on the Green there was no top table, no speeches, no toasts – just the words of Burns in verse and song fed through a single voice engaging an audience at close quarters throughout the night. Burns was allowed to speak for himself and when he did he never failed to make his magic.
The lesson is there to learn. Burns’s own words are better than anyone else’s if it’s a Burns Night that is wanted. For thirty-seven years, his whole lifetime, as I said, this show has been my perennial homage to Burns. I have grown old in its service and will retire from it one day. Philip has now moved on to The Tavern on the Green in sylvan Strathaven but there is no reason why the Robert Burns story shouldn’t go on being told in this distinctive way throughout the meal as long as people want to hear it. After all, the material is timeless and the memory of this man Burns is forever. At least it lasted until something they called the ‘International Year of Robert Burns 1996’.
It all started off well enough. David Shankland, the Burns orator from Lochmaben, gave the toast at the West Sound Bicentenary Burns Supper, held, as usual, in the Hospitality Inn, Glasgow on Saturday, 13 January 1996.
Time; like an ever rolling stream
Bears all its sons away
They fly forgotten as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
These lines from a favourite hymn serve to remind us how transitory, is our earthly being before, all too soon, we are whisked away to join the withered leaves of time. Once in every thousand years or so, however, there flickers into flame a light that does not dim or die, is not snuffed out, but burns brightly, ever more brightly, until it fills the whole world with the brilliance of its light. Such a light was and is the sheer genius of Robert Burns, Scotland’s National Bard, whose natal day we are celebrating here in Glasgow tonight..Ladies and Gentlemen, when one considers the tremendous torrent of words that are written and spoken about the Bard at this time, is it not a tribute to his durability, his versatility, his staying power, that when the last word has been spoken, the last song sun and the last toast drunk, he emerges unscathed, his crown untarnished, his star shining more brightly than ever before? Tonight, in the presence of this distinguished company, I should like to pay my own modest tribute but rather than add materially to that mass of verbiage I have alluded to, rather would I draw upon it and try to extract from it the essential elements, the essence if you like, of the poet’s genius. How does one define ‘genius’ however? In a sense, it is indefinable, like the gem it has so many facets. All I can hope to do, therefore, is to pinpoint or pick out one or two constituents of what is a complex chemistry. Let me begin therefore by asking a fundamental question:-
What kind of a man was Robert Burns? Obviously, intellectually he was alert and intelligent. He was well-informed on what was going on in the world and was capable of hammering out abstract ideas on the intellectual anvil of debate. We are also aware that he was a master of words and these tools he used with devastating effect to immortalise a humble mouse and to deify a daisy. The thing that sets him apart in my view – and an Immortal Memory is a subjective opinion – was his tremendous emotional intensity, his sensitivity to the world about him. Here was a man of passion, a gentleman of compassion, a sensitive spirit able to feel the faintest flutterings of the human heart. These then I submit were the seeds of his genius and planted as they were by sheer chance in the barren soil of 18th century Ayrshire, they grew and flourished into the full flowering of his Muse. Our presence here in such large numbers tonight would suggest to me that the fragrance of that flower is still with us 200 years further on. Like all men, the poet felt the need to express himself and the only suitable vehicle for the imprisoned splendour of his mind could but be those poems and songs which poured forth in such profusion. His pen a brush, each poem or song a picture painted in vivid colours, he spans the whole spectrum of human experience; he runs the whole gamut of our emotions. He makes us proud and patriotic; he makes us ashamed of man’s inhumanity to man; he shows us the beauties of nature; he opens our eyes to the pathos of the human situation. Listen to these lines:-
Still thou art blest compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee;
But och! I backward cast my e’e
On prospects drear;
An forward tho’ I canna see
I guess an’ fear.
But ladies and gentlemen, when the poet’s words are added to the old tunes he picked up from round about, he achieves a new stature. Here is a marriage of Beauty and Perfection. Here, Burns is the master of our soul. Music you see expresses our innermost feelings, more eloquently than any other medium. Burns’ music does that and more; little wonder then that a Burns’ evening when properly orchestrated, is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. He writes the script, he chooses the music.
Two other aspects of Burns’ genius I must mention…
The first of these is his relevance for today. Why does this great physician of the heart, still sit eternally at the bedside of our mind, although he has been dead for exactly 200 years?! Why are we here tonight? In my opinion, the Bard is relevant for today not only for his contribution to our culture but also because of his belief in the Brotherhood of Man. Now in matters material, the world is much advanced from that which the poet inhabited. Burns lived in a rural rustic agragrian society, whereas our world is one of automation, automobiles and the hydrogen bomb. Ironically, human nature hasn’t altered since Burns’ day. We are still the same old type of people with the same faults and failings, the same vices and virtues. Because of this, there are still wars and rumours of wars. The only difference is that man has now the capacity to destroy the whole world. In our time as in Burns’ time, there is still great inequality – one half of the world has reached out for the moon while the other half reaches out in vain for a crust of bread. There is still hatred, hypocrisy, bigotry and bloody-mindedness. For all these reasons, there has never been a greater need for a belief in the brotherhood of man. It acts as a beacon to lighten our darkness.
The second point I should like to comment on is Burns’ universal appeal. It is not only we Scots who celebrate his birthday every January, but people of every class and creed, people of every hue and colour, people of every political persuasion. Why is this? First of all, I think the Bard speaks in a language we can all understand. Part of his genius lies in his ability to distil great thoughts into simple stanzas – we don’t need to be a genius to get the message. Likewise, we can all identify with Burns the man. He is in fact a paradox. He is a Saint because he was a ‘sinner’ – he is a success because he was a ‘failure’ – he is internationally famed because he was a patriot. In summary, he is ‘immortal’ because he was so very mortal. Burns had his faults but who are we to judge? It is difficult to carry out a full cup without spilling some…
What a beautiful metaphor that is, and a good note on which to leave Mr Shankland’s well-paced oration so apt and relevant to the splendid West Sound occasion. They always try to be the first Supper of the season but they also aspire to be the first in quality. Mr Shankland maintained that standard. Like many good speakers, he rose to the moment and we are left with the lovely taste in the mouth of that full Burns cup he conjured up, full and brimming over with all the talents but so early taken from his hand. What is nearly as tragic was the way in which all those who should have known better let the cup that was known as the International Festival of Burns 96 fall from so many hands so that what promised so much instead spilled away so disgracefully to so little effect.
Scotland has had her share of disasters, from Flodden to the Darian Scheme, but the Burns Year of 1996 would surely rank among the worst in recent years. Yet it wasn’t for the want of thinking ahead. As early as January 1993, the Burns Industry Group comprising all the interested bodies like Enterprise Ayrshire and the Scottish Enterprise office in Glasgow as well as other ancillary interests had commissioned a report from consultants in Edinburgh on how to prepare for a great European event, and in due course, this was delivered in a 50-page ring binder but with all the appropriate sales jargon. One could see the suits behind every phrase: ‘Product Enhancement’, ‘Event Matrix’, ‘Market Fatigue’ and ‘Menu of Activities’ were only some of the phrases bandied, although the eventual ‘Mission Statement’ was plain enough:
To use the bicentenary of the death of Robert Burns as a catalyst to generate additional economic activity in the South West of Scotland by organising events, helping market the area and promoting Burns.
Two ‘impact-driven’ general objectives had been recognised and these were to raise the profile of Scotland’s south-west while ‘countering any unfavourable perceptions’ and to increase visitor numbers ‘and thereby raise levels of …derived benefits’. Dumfries and Alloway were recognised as ‘core locations’ and the ‘incorporation of international activities’ would be looked for on ‘an opportunistic basis’. Then, almost as an afterthought, there was a mention of the main theme which was to provide a ‘Cultural Festival’ projecting Burns as a focal point of wider Scottish culture’ and this was aimed for the month of July. Which was exactly what the original Burns Festival had proposed in 1975. This original Festival, incidentally, was never mentioned.
A gross cost of 940,000 pounds was projected which included a Hogmanay launch, the biggest-ever Burns Supper and an International Festival of Burns and a year-long tour by the Burns Youth Theatre Company. All this was very worthy and laudable but very little of it happened in actuality even though Her Royal Highness, the Princess Royal, was appointed President and patron of the year. Other patrons were Moira Anderson, Jean Redpath, Dr James A.Mackay and the present writer, although, as I recall, none of us was asked to do anything. Princess Anne took time to come to Kilmarnock to help get things under way but, in reality, it all came to little more than a Burns Look-Alike Competition and a ploughing contest. In typically Scottish fashion, everyone went their own way and only Burns was the loser.
However, provision had been made for the appointment of a Burns Festival Director and to ‘provide a strategic plan for the appointed person’. I went to see this ‘appointed person’ at his newly-opened office in the Sandgate in Ayr to find that he had flown to London to try and engage Signor Luciano Pavarotti for the Burns Festival. Failing that, I was told, he was trying for Dame Kiri te Kanawa for a special outdoor concert by the banks o Doon. I had a scheme for the year to re-enact the Burns Border and Highland tours on horseback, with fellow actors who could ride joining me along the way. The ‘appointed person’ and I finally met to discuss the idea over a good lunch in a Glasgow hotel and he seemed most excited by the possibilities it offered on many counts. Later, we met in a theatre in Edinburgh to sort out the final small print and he went away to draw up the necessary contract. I never heard from him again.
Few did. And there were other artists and organizations left similarly high and dry. I just went ahead and did the tour anyway – by horsepower rather than on horseback but I felt an interesting project had been missed, not least its television potential as a documentary. I salvaged what I could of the idea, and while I went round the Borders and the Highlands in my car, the International Year of Robert Burns, or half-year, as it had now become, from 25 January to 21 July, seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis. Despite all the boasted high intentions, the beautiful brochures and press packs and leaflets and fliers nothing much appeared to happen on the ground and soon there were money problems. The press had a field day with each new scandal and even those respectably involved had misgivings about the whole affair.
The promise faded further with each resignation, all the big talk fell into a smaller case, and when the ‘appointed person’ absconded into that obscurity for which he had worked so hard, the public outcry brought the house of cards tumbling down and the mirage that was the Burns International Festival of 1996 faded into the empty vessel it had always been. To be fair some of the projects came off, like the exhibition, The Pride and the Passion which opened at the Royal Museum in Edinburgh and went on to Kilmarnock. This was a splendid piece of work, the brainchild of Gavin Sprott in tandem with the National Library and National Gallery of Scotland and the Museum. If everything had been of this standard, Burns, and Scotland, would have been proud.
Instead, there was no great performance to remember, no new play, no new opera, no great speeches, no acts of daring, no ingenuity, no imagination, no FUN. In short it was no use, and everyone was glad to sweep the dirt under the carpet and shut the door on a large waste of time and money. Every District Council in the South-West had put in a stake, all the enterprise boards, the Arts Council et al, but the only one to show a return was the ‘appointed person’.
It was almost a relief to get out of Scotland for a while. In that other Scotland, Eastern Canada, the metropolitan city of Toronto, Ontario, got itself a new subway station. For a week at least, the Old Mill Station will be known as Dufftown Scotland. The temporary change of name for the Bloor Street West station comes in honour of Robbie Burns Week, which was held in honour of the poet. For the renaming ceremony, pipers from the 48th Highlanders ascended the station stairs, coming to attention and flanking Metro Chairman, Alan Tonks, as he read the official decree giving it its Scottish designation. Everyone was invited to be there – even non-Scots.
Still in Ontario, in Alliston, George Douglas of Orangeville, gave the Immortal Memory. Despite a stormy night, more than 200 people turned up to hear George and enjoy this Supper. The following good point was made in his conclusion:
One special note for those of us who are Scots. From the time of the Union of the Crowns with England in 1603 and still more from the time of the legislative union in 1703, Scotland had lapsed into obscurity. The Scottish dialect was in danger of perishing. Burns seemed, at this juncture, to start to his feet and reassert Scotland’s claim to national existence. Mankind will never allow to die the eternal language in which his songs and poems are enshrined. That is a part of Scotland’s debt to Burns and which we are dealing with at this very moment, by our presence here. Friends, I propose a toast to the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns.
I must explain in this Canadian context that I knew John Maxwell McCuaig. I knew him as an ex-Scots guardsman, ex-Glasgow policeman and excellent contact man and broker for visiting theatricals across Canada. I also knew that he knew his Burns, having received his book, The Return of Robert Burns on one of my Burns tours, but what I didn’t know was that he was such an accomplished public speaker as he showed when he addressed the 9th Annual Banquet of the Burns Club of Vancouver, extracts from which are now given. John was introduced by the Chairman, Fraser Lawrie.
Thank you Fraser for your kind, generous and altogether accurate introduction. I wish now I had written more.
Mr President, Mr Chairman, Honoured Guests, Fellow members of the Vancouver Burns Club. Gentleman all.
Recently I had the privilege of delivering this address to the inmates of one of British Columbia’s finest Law Enforcement and Corrections Establishments, so if any of you gentlemen present here tonight are listening to it for the second time, please accept my apologies.
Now I’d like to take a moment to offer my sincere thanks to this year’s Burns Supper Committee. Gentlemen, I am grateful for the honour you have accorded me by inviting me to address this distinguished assembly on such an auspicious occasion. It is my wish, and I can only hope, that fifteen minutes from now you will feel that your choice was not imprudent and that your confidence was well placed.
Tonight is of particular significance to all Burns lovers in that, not only are we celebrating the anniversary of the birth of Burns, which as most of you are aware, occurred on this night 237 years ago, but we must also remember that this year marks the 200th anniversary of his death. Robert Burns died on the 21 July 1796, aged 37.
Thirty seven years from the cradle to the grave.
Thirty seven years to Immortality.
The story of Robert Burns is the story of one man’s struggle to overcome extreme poverty and adversity, rampaging personal emotions and frustrated ambition. It is also the story of a poor Scottish farmer’s meteoric rise from total obscurity to recognition, during his own lifetime, as a world class poet. Despite the rigours and hardship of farm labour for fourteen hours everyday, Burns was busy writing literally hundreds of songs and poems, the vast majority of which not only survived but have flourished to this very day…
It has often been said that one of Burn’s many attributes was charisma…charisma is rare and few of us have it…it is difficult to describe or explain, but here is a little story which might illustrate how it worked for Burns.
One late summer afternoon, Burns was walking along a country road leading a goat on a string, and he had pig under one arm, a hen under the other. He also had a bucket under his chin. As he walked along he met a rather prim young lady coming towards him. As she approached Burns called out asking if it were far to the village. She replied that it was long way off but if he was in a hurry there was a short cut through the woods. He then said that he was indeed in a hurry and could she show him the short cut. She was alarmed that
he should think she would go through the woods with a strange man.
‘Why not?’ asked Burns.
‘You might take advantage of me?’
‘What? Look, lassie, I’ve got a goat on the lead, a bucket round my neck, a hen under one arm and a pig under the other – how could I possibly do anything?’
The girls looked at him for minute then said quietly;
‘Well – you could tie the goat to a tree, put the hen under the bucket, and I’ll hold the pig.’
Now, that’s charisma!
Burns was a man of many and complex dimensions. He was proud, passionate, charismatic and romantic. He was also driven and flawed. To say that he loved wine, women and song is simply to say that he loved life. Unfortunately, he was restricted by the father, the church and its elders and any effort on his part to display or express his feelings on the subject of personal freedom, or for that matter, freedom of any kind, met with resistance and disapproval. Considering the hardships and frustration he endured, one can well understand why, on occasion, Burns sought solace and comfort wherever it was to be found; whether it was in the arms of a woman or at the bottom of a glass…
There is no doubt that Burns enjoyed a drink, he also enjoyed the company and merriment that went with it, something he saw very little of during his lifetime…but much of what he saw and heard provided inspiration for the songs and poems he would write later. His genius expressed itself in his poetry. Poetry was his raison d’etre and where poetry was concerned he was triumphantly articulate. There isn’t anything in Burns’s poetry that cannot be universally applied or appreciated and it is sadly all too true that Burns’s observations on the human condition are more relevant to today’s world than they were to his. Man was made to Mourn is a classic example, wherein Burns observes that ‘Man’s inhumanity to man makes thousands mourn’. This was never more true than it is today.
Burns was many things other than a poor farmer. As I said earlier, he was a romantic, and as such, he bequeathed to the world some of the greatest love songs ever written… but in 1788, he gave to the world the song which is unquestionably the universal anthem of friendship and remembrance of bygone days. I refer of course, to Auld Lang Syne. There are those who believe that Burns would have achieved immortality had he written nothing else. It is a song which is sung by all races in every corner of the globe and will no doubt be sung by generations as yet unborn…
Burns embraced all humanity: humanity in turn has embraced him. Once each year, on the anniversary of his birth, Scots the world over foregather, just as we are doing here tonight, to mark and celebrate the memory of Robert Burns. However, we are not alone. Burns’s unique universality is confirmed in similar celebrations by Americans, Germans, French, Italians, Russians and Chinese – to name but a few.
The years pass. His name has long been numbered among the great Immortals and gilded in the light of beloved memory that will never fade in the hearts of Scotland’s worthy sons and daughters. The star that rose over the banks of Ayr on that cold January night 337 years ago is still rising and grows stronger yet with each passing year.
Gentlemen, I ask you to rise, raise your glasses, and join me in a toast to Scotland’s most illustrious son:
To the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns.
On the other side of the world, Mrs Nancy Norman of Masterton, New Zealand, an individual member of the Burns Federation, entertained a few friends in her own home to remember the bicentenary of Robert Burns. Being winter down under at that time, they gathered round the fire, and quite spontaneously, Mrs Norman spoke about Burns to the little gathering. Without knowing it, she delivered a completely natural Immortal Memory. As far as she can remember, this is the gist of what she said:
Robert Burns experienced all the emotions that we’re all aware of – sadness, joy, depression, grief, frustration, failure and genuine love. His poetry and songs testify to this. He knew the sadness of losing a beloved father, the joy of meeting his Jean, the depression of headaches and sickness, the grief over a dead daughter, the frustration of farming, the failure of Ellisland, and the real love he knew for all animals and everything in nature…
Two hundred years ago on the 21 July, a few hours from now, Robert Burns died at 37 from the illness that had troubled him all his life. And he died worrying about his wee ones and about a bill he had to pay for a militia uniform
I don’t think he’d ever worn. But think of the goodness of
the young girl, Jessie Lewars, who nursed him during his last days while Jean was lying-in with another child, a son who was to be born as Robert was being laid into the grave in St Michael’s Kirkyard.
Robert Burns loved life and the company of good friends… but being a wife and mother, I can only imagine how Jean must have felt through all their ups and downs and to lose him so young on that last sad day… leaving her with four boys to bring up…
Mrs Norman doesn’t remember making any great toast or anything. She said that a hush just came down on the room so she stopped. It was just past midnight and someone started to sing Auld Lang Syne.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind,
Should auld acqaintance be forgot
And auld lang syne?
For auld lang, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne…
‘And that was my first ever public venture,’ said Nancy, but she can be assured that many an experienced Burns orator would have been proud to create such a hush in the room. And we remember that Burns himself said:
My Muse, tho hamely in attire,
May touch the heart..
A further reminder that ‘guid gear’ gaes in ‘sma buik’ came in a letter from France. In the audience for The Robert Burns Story at the Bellisle Hotel in Ayr was Mary Wigley who was celebrating her 50th birthday by touring all the Burns places in the south-west of Scotland before attending a summer school at Auchencairnie. The difference was that she came from France to do so. She now lives in Lyon with her husband Mike and together they run the only Burns club in the mainland of Europe. Numbered 1120 on the Federation Roll, its membership includes no less than four nationalities. In 1996 it was only two years old, but growing. A very small bud, it deserves to flower. Coincidentally, it was another Lyon that featured in the next Burns excerpt. This time, not the place but the person. no less than the President of a far older Burns Club, Kilmarnock No 0, R. Stuart Lyon.
Towards the end of 1997, the Balvenie Distillery in Banff, one of the last traditional whisky-makers in Scotland, growing its own barley and boasting its own coopers and coppersmiths, sponsored a competition organised by the Burns Federation. Club members were asked to submit an Immortal Memory lasting no longer that 7.5 minutes on tape for adjudication by judges from the Speakers’ Panel of Glasgow to determine who would be the first Balvenie Master of Burns. The presentation was held in the Burns Room of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow on 22 January 1998 and from more than 70 entrants the winner was declared to be R. Stuart Lyon of Newmilns in Ayrshire, who received a cash prize for his club, a magnificent quaich – and a bottle of Balvenie’s finest Single Barrel Whisky – which he assures me is still unopened at the time of this writing. This is part of his winning entry:
Today, ladies and gentlemen, mankind is very much aware and indeed concerned about the environment we live in. Our generation is aware more than any other that this planet earth holds the memories of our past history, that it struggles with the present demands of an ambitious and often uncaring society and yet it continues to nurture and caress our dreams and our desires for a brighter and a happier future. Such were the desires of Robert Burns over 200 years ago. A burning desire to enrich and dignify the life of the common man, the merry friendly country folk, the poor oppressed honest man, the toil worn cotter, all the ordinary every day folk upon whose toils obscure that a man’s a man for a that.
He wrote in the Doric the language of the common folks of Scotland but he wrote for all mankind irrespective of race or creed and he delighted in putting down those who thought themselves to be high and mighty. He hated long faces, smug professions and pious posturing – people like Holy Willie who claimed the whole breadth of life’s highway and the whole harvest of life’s fields.
He used nature to highlight the concerns he held for his fellow man and wrote The Twa Dogs to show man’s inhumanity to man. Two dogs from very different backgrounds but who cherished their commonality of spirit and their friendship. The first was called Caesar –
His locked, letter’d braw brass collar
Shewd him a gentleman and scholar,
But though he wis o high degree
The fient a pride, nae pride had he
But wad hae spent an hour caressin
Ev’n wae a tinkler-gypsy’s messin –’
The second dog was his bosum buddy Luath –
‘He was a gash an faithfu tyke
As ever lapt a sheugh or dyke,
His honest sonsie baws’nt face
Ay gat him friends in ilka place
Nae doubt but they were fain o ither
And unco pack an thick the gither –
The dogs discuss their respective masters and the societies they lived in. They decry mans materialistic ways, his life of drunkenness and debauchery and their lady’s backstabbing tittle tattle. Burns sweeps us along in this humorous and thought-provoking work then brings us down to earth when the dogs are parting:
And up they gat and shook their lugs
Rejoiced they were na men but dogs.
In To A Louse Burns criticises that loathsome creature but again at the end of the poem he stops us in our tracks – he ask us to stand back and take a good look at ourselves – to look behind the painted faces and the fancy clothes:
O wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us;
It wad frae monie a blunder free us
And foolish notion…
How Burns must have loved writing… His works are full of humour – sometimes light hearted, some times base, and often satirical – how sad it is that such humour was written during brief fitful joys snatched from a life of poverty and ill health.
He also used nature as a backdrop to some of the most beautiful love songs ever written – ‘How can ye chant ye little birds and I sae weary fu o care’ – My love is like a red, red rose. And where in all of literature can we find words more likely to tear at the heart strings of even the most hardened of men than –
Had we never loved sae kindly,
had we never loved sae blindly
never met or never parted
we had ne’er been broken hearted.’
Some of his most poignant lines however were reserved as thanks to Jessie Lewars for nursing him during his final illness–
O were I monarch o the globe
Wi’ thee to reign wi thee to reign
The brightest jewel in my crown
Would be my queen, would be my queen.
Words like these are not conjured from the conscious mind of a literary genius but are straight from the heart. The fact that as a poet he has been hailed as one of the greatest by all the great poets who came after him – is not enough. Greater and more everlasting and meaningful than that, he has been hailed by the common man as the poet of humanity…
Ladies and gentleman I would ask you to charge your glasses, be upstanding and drink with me a toast to the immortal memory of Robert Burns.
Since the Balvenie Distillers have not seen fit to sponsor a second Burns Master competition, Mr Stuart Lyon retains his undisputed title.
Professor R. J. S. Grant is Professor Emeritus of Theology in the Department of English at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Raymond Grant is not your usual ‘gentleman in black’ as Burns described men of the cloth, nor is he your usual academic. Now retired, he travels extensively, and, at the time of writing, holds the position of Literary Advisor to the Burns Chronicle. His book on Burns in 1986 was appropriately entitled The Laughter of Love. He also spent some time in Prague during his career and will frequently open his peroration in Czech as he did at the University of Alberta’s Faculty Club on 26 January 1998.
Vazeni hoste, Damy a Panove, dobry vecer!
Honoured guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, good evening!
It is again my pleasure and privilege to bid you welcome to Burns Night at the Faculty Club as we carry out our pleasant duty of honouring the immortal memory of the great poet of the human heart, Robert Burns!
The following is an edited extract:
There are those who for prurience’ sake concentrate on the legend of Robert Burns the fervent nationalist, the hard drinker, the ardent wencher, the rabid revolutionary, and set him along side our patron saint Andrew to be Scotland’s patron sinner. But Burns himself gives the lie to such exaggeration of the laughter of love as he smiles down on us in benediction in the east room of the Burns Museum at Alloway from the two stained glass windows made by Cottier & Co. of London. No, the key to Burns is his combination of laughter and love. How Burns would like to be of our number this evening to share our laughter–
In Scotland, I heard a variant of the sheep’s head joke. It concerned the English lady who insisted that everything English was superior to every Scottish equivalent. Entering
an Edinburgh butcher’s shop, she said, ‘Give me a sheep’s head – and be sure it’s from an English sheep.’ The butcher shouted to his assistant, ‘Jock, bring ben a sheep’s heid,
but first tak oot the brains!’ Then he confided to his astonished customer ‘We’ll leave in the eyes, so that’ll see you through the week.’ Any Scottish housewife would have appreciated that.
An expatriate couple had just celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. A friend asked the husband, ‘What did you do to celebrate?’ ‘Oh, I took the wife to Scotland.’ ‘What will you do to celebrate your golden wedding, then?’ ‘I’ll maybe go and fetch her back!’
Grampian television sent a reporter to interview the oldest inhabitant of a Donside village. ‘Have you lived here all your life?’ ‘Weel, nae yet.’
‘How far back can you remember?’ ‘I canna min’ bein’ born, but ah div min’ the dogs barkin’ as the midwife gaed awa!’
The owner of an Aberdeen pub reported that the glass coin jar for charitable donations had been stolen from the end of the bar. Police say that they are confident of making an early arrest, as both coins had been clearly marked.
While I was in the North-East, I saw a fellow on one bank of the River Dee call to a chap on the opposite bank, ‘How do I get to the other side?’ ‘You’re on the other side!’ he shouted back. Come to think of it, he was right enough.
When I was in London, I met a fellow Scot, who complained that the natives are not very friendly ‘At three o’ clock every morning,’ he told me, ‘they hammer on my bedroom door, on the walls, even on the ceiling. Sometimes they hammer so loudly I canna hear myself playing the pipes.’
I overheard three wee boys talking about their fathers. The first one said, ‘My Dad’s an awful coward – when he sees a fight going on, he hides in the kitchen.’ The second said, ‘My Dad’s a worse coward – when it’s thunder and lightning, he hides in the basement.’ And the third said, ‘My Dad’s even worse – when my Mum was in the hospital having her appendix out, he had to sleep with the woman next door!’
I read in the paper about three Irishmen counting – one could count and the other couldn’t.
An Irishman, a Welshman, an Englishman and a Scot were sharing the same compartment on a train. After a while, the Irishman started to pull potatoes from his bag and began to throw them out the window. The Welshman turned to him and asked, ‘What are you doing?’ The Irishman said, ‘We have so many potatoes in Ireland – I’m sick and tired of looking at them!’ Shortly after, the Welshman began pulling leeks from his bag and throwing them out the window. The Irishman asked, ‘And what are you doing then?’ The Welshman replied, ‘We have so many of these damned things in Wales – I’m sick and tired of looking at them!’ Inspired by the others, the Scotsman opened the train compartment door and pushed out the Englishman.
Finally, a Scottish bus driver was giving a tour of Scotland to a group of tourists. As the tour went through the countryside and the driver would point out sights of interest. He drove by one area and said, ‘Over there is where the Scottish PULVERISED the English.’ They drove on a little further and the driver pointed to another site by the roadway and said, ‘This is the place where the Scottish MASSACRED the English.’ Not much further down the road the driver told his passengers that on the right was the great battlefield where the Scottish again WHIPPED the English. At this a stiff English accent protested ‘My good man, didn’t the English ever win?’ ‘Not when I’m driving,’ was the response.
If the purpose of tonight’s festivities is to share jokes old and new, be to enjoy haggis, neeps, tatties, and whisky, and to throw our essential Scottishness in the teeth of the world, it is also to celebrate the Immortal Memory of the Ploughman poet who is at one and the same time quintessentially Scottish and, at the same time, of universal appeal. It is the heavy responsibility of the Burns Night orator to attempt to resolve this enigma, and it is to honour this unique poet of the human heart that we gather together tonight. In him is that mixture of love and laughter that now, as always, is the vital antidote to oppression, terrorism, uncharity, hypocrisy, pomposity, the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune. Burns’s poetry puts down the mighty from their seats and exalts those of low degree as he sings the great anthems of the infinite worth of the individual human spirit:
He’ll hae misfortunes great and sma’,
But ay a heart aboon them a’;
He’ll be a credit ‘till us a’,
We’ll a’ be proud o’ Robin
We will always have Burns with us to teach us common humanity, charity, pride and worth, in poetry whose appeal is not just Scottish but also universal. It is almost two and a half centuries since the birth of Burns, and over two centuries since his passing. We do not have the man, we no longer have the life, but we do have the poetry without which the world and the hearts of its people would be immeasurably the poorer, the poetry of the human heart and its essential liberty.
For the future be prepar’d,
Guard, wherever thou canst guard,
But thy utmost duly done,
Welcome what thou can’st not shun:-
Follies past, give thou to air;
Make their consequence thy care:
Keep the name of MAN in mind,
And dishonour not thy kind.-
Reverence with lowly heart
Him whose wondrous work thou art;
Keep his goodness still in view,
Thy trust – and thy example too.
Who made the heart,’tis He alone
Decidedly can try us:
He knows each chord, its various tone,
Each spring, its various bias:
.
Then at the balance let’s be mute,
We never can adjust it;
What’s done we partly may compute,
But know not what’s resisted.
In the heart that is true, there is no room for man’s inhumanity to man, only room for love, love for the ladies, one’s friends, one’s fellow human beings, a wee, homeless field mouse, an auld mare, a crushed daisy, a wounded hare, the disadvantaged in this life, liberty, dignity, love for the eternal and infinite value of every human spirit. And we will continue to turn to Burns for the laughter of love:
We’ve faults and failins – granted clearly!
We’re frail, backsliding mortals merely;
Eve’s bonie squad, priests wyte them sheerly
For our grand fa’;
But still, but still, I like them dearly –
God bless them a’!
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An foolish notion:
What airs in dress an gait wad lea’e us,
An ev’n devotion!
The laughter of love is Burns’s independent guess at the secrets of the universe. Learn first to laugh at yourself, then to laugh at life, and the corollary love will fill the heart and ward off the world’s blows and buffets from the invincible spirit which is within. Given this impregnable laughter of love, Burns could survive onslaughts that would have broken a lesser man, could survive poverty, could withstand ingratitude and envy while he sang as the lark in the clear Ayrshire sky of the dignity and destiny of mice and men.
When I insisted so strongly upon returning from Prague to Edmonton in time for 25 January, my colleagues in the Protestant Theological Faculty thought immediately of the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, and could not quite understand why I was so fixated on the Conversion of Svati Pavel. Bringing light to these gentiles, I told them of the true significance of 25 January, the celebration of the 239th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. ‘Ah! Robert Burns,’ they said reverently, and asked their inevitable question, ‘Was Robert Burns a Christian?’ To which I gave them a direct, authoritative and unequivocal answer ‘Yes – and no. Burns had a firm faith in the divine creator whose love pervades and permeates the universe, but his expression of that faith was not so much Christian as Pauline.’ And they did question me further, saying unto me, ‘Is Robert Burns, then, Scotland’s patron saint?’ To which I did make reply, saying unto them, ‘No – much more important than that, he is the whole world’s patron sinner.’
The title of Bozena Köllnová’s translation, Darebné Verse Roberta Burnse turned out to mean ‘Wicked or Scurrilous Verses of Robert Burns,’ a somewhat strange title, as the volume contained alongside Holy Willie’s Prayer and Tam o Shanter translations of such poems as Auld Lang Syne and Is there for honest poverty, that great anthem to independence of spirit and the indomitable courage of those who resist oppression. I shall try to get my tongue round the final stanza in Czech:
Toz modli se, at skonci se
Odvcka nase pre,
Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a’ that,
At poctivost a moudra ctnost
Jsou postaveny vse!
That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth
Shall bear the gree, and a’ that.
Tak je to psano od veku
Pres tovse a pres to vse
For a’ that, and a’ that,
It’s comin’ yet for a’ that,
Stane se clovck clovku
Na zemi bratrem pres to vse.
That Man to Man the warld o’er
Shall brothers be for a’ that.
I realise now that we Scots and Scots-Canadians must share our national bard with other nations when they are in dire need of the great poet of the human heart. In his verse he has bequeathed to all nations on the earth a resource of love and strength from which both individuals and peoples draw what they need to go on living, to hold their heads high as part of the brotherhood and sisterhood of mankind. Robert Burns was not just the national poet of Scotland; he was also the patron sinner of all people, everywhere and everywhen.
Wherever Deity hath set
Her signet on our human clay;
Wherever honour, truth, and love
Shall hold united sway:
Wherever Independence stern
The spangled minion spurns,
There find embalmed in every breast
The name of ROBERT BURNS!
With these words of James Macfarlan I come to the end of my contribution to the evening. I say again that it is a pleasure and my privilege to be here with you at the Faculty Club and to join with you in your celebration of the great poet of the human heart. Let us therefore honour his memory after our usual manner. Please charge your glasses, be upstanding, and join me in a toast to the Immortal Memory of ROBERT BURNS!
Dr Ian D. Duncan is a respected consultant and Reader at Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee, and lives in a thatched replica (c.1745) of Burns Cottage in Glamis not too far from the Queen Mother’s Scottish Castle. I had the chance to see this charming dwelling for myself when I was touring in Scotland during 2001. It is indeed like the Alloway Cottage, only richer. I couldn’t resist knocking at the door and asking Mrs Duncan if her husband were at home. Unfortunately, he wasn’t. Dr Duncan is also a ‘Colonel’ in the 2nd Battalion of the Crochallan Fencibles, in which he outranks his good friend and fellow-physician, David Purdie, who features in the following chapter. It is not known whether Ian speaks as a doctor or a colonel – or both – but he is a noted Burnsian, as was shown when he was invited to propose the final toast of the 20th-century to the Immortal Memory at the Globe Inn, Dumfries. However, he prefers to offer this compilation the version he gave of this same speech at the Burns Club of Atlanta and the Heather and Thistle Society of Houston in the following year – ‘it’s slightly different with its American twist’.
Mr Chairman, Chieftain, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you very much indeed for your most generous invitation to join you in your homeland, America, in celebrating your connections with my homeland, Scotland and the life and works of Robert Burns.
Our story begins in the Mearns in North East Scotland in the middle of the 18th-century when two brothers set out from Clochnahill to make their fortunes. At the end of the farm road they shook hands wishing one another well. Robert turned North and William headed in the opposite direction perhaps passing my recently erected cottage en route to Edinburgh where he helped lay out The Meadows, a public park. The advice has always been ‘Go West, young man’, so when the work ran out that is exactly what he did and found employment as head gardener to the wealthy Dr William Ferguson, a retired London-Scottish doctor and Provost of Ayr. Driven on by ambition he leased 7 acres for a market garden in Alloway where he married a local lass. With his own two hands he built a simple cottage of clay and thatch and there on 25 January 1759 Agnes Burnes nee Broun gave birth to her first child, Robert. He was only just over a week old when the gable end of the cottage was blown in by a storm.
Twas then a blast o Janwar win’
Blew hansel in on Robin…
That was the first but not the last time that his world crashed around him and after only 37 short years full of sound and fury Robert Burns died of rheumatic heart disease.
He’ll hae misfortunes great and sma
But ay a heart aboon them a’,
He’ll be a credit till us a’:
We’ll a’ be proud o Robin!
He said it, but he was absolutely right, and a credit not only to his native Ayrshire, not only to Scotland, but to the world in general where, at this time of year, millions of men and women are meeting like us to celebrate his immortal memory. What is so memorable, so immortal about this self-styled simple, ploughman poet? A POET – most certainly – a PLOUGHMAN – temporarily – but SIMPLE – NEVER.
Though the family were poor, William Burnes set a great store by a sound education. Robert was gifted with innate intelligence and a retentive memory. He had no distractions. – no radio, no television, no surfing the net. He loved books and read assiduously about geography, theology, biblical history, philosophy, political economy. He studied a wide range of subjects as different as surveying and botany, anthropology and physics, heraldry and music. Above all he loved contemporary novels and volumes of poetry. No, this was no simple heaven taught ploughman but a polymath in the best Renaissance tradition more than capable of holding his own in any company. A winner without doubt had he appeared on the television quiz game, ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ He was convivial, interesting, witty, amusing. He would never bore the pants off you, although in the case of the ladies he might well charm them off!
He became reasonably fluent in French and had a smattering of Latin. He could and did write in formal English – Anglicisation had been progressing since the Union of Parliaments in 1707 – Burns reacted by writing in the guid Scots tongue. Reading The Life of Wallace had an even more profound effect on the young poet than seeing the film Braveheart has had on today’s youth. In his own words ‘the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins which will boil along there until the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.’ Bonnie Prince Charlie’s ’45 rising had ended in rout and disarray on Culloden’s bloody field a mere 13 years before the poet’s birth and he liked to believe that his paternal grandfather had been out in the ’15 in support of the Old Pretender. He collected, revised and reworked Jacobite songs. Romantically, sentimentally, Burns was a supporter of the Stuarts and no great lover of the Hanoverians who occupied the throne.
‘Is it not remarkable,’ he wrote to his friend Mrs Dunlop in 1788, ‘odiously remarkable that – in this very reign of heavenly Hanoverianism – an empire beyond the Atlantic has had its Revolution too, and for the same maladministration and legislative misdemeanors in the illustrious and sapienipotent Family of Hanover as was complained of in the “tyrannical and bloody house of Stuart”?’ The last phrase is in inverted commas and I rather think his tongue was very firmly in his cheek when he wrote that. He was certainly being careful but his sentimental Jacobitism, and guarded support for the American Revolution led to fervent Jacobinism and expressed support for the French Revolutionaries which almost cost him his job as an Exciseman. What is revealed is his strongly held belief in basic human rights, liberty, equality and the importance of fraternity.
It’s hardly in a body’s pow’r,
To keep, at times, frae being sour,
To see how things are shar’d;
How best o’ chiels are whyles in want,
While Coofs on countless thousands rant,
And ken na how to wair’t.
Writing in the guid Scots tongue, he was following in the footsteps of his role models, Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, especially the latter, who sadly died in impoverished circumstances in Edinburgh at an even earlier age than Burns. He was only 24.
O Fergusson, thy glorious parts
Ill suited law’s dry, musty arts!
My curse upon your whunstane hearts,
Ye En’brugh Gentry!
The tythe o’ what ye waste at cartes
Wad stow’d his pantry.
While Fergusson wrote about city matters, Burns wrote about country matters. On turning up a mouse’s nest with his plough he observed:
Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An naething, now, to big a new ane,
O foggage green!
An bleak December’s win’s ensuin,
Baith snell an keen.
But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best-laid schemes o mice and men
Gang aft agley,
An lea’e us nought but grief and pain,
For promis’d joy!
That last was from the heart. It was November 1785. He had become a father for the first time six months earlier and he had not planned that.
Welcome my bonie, sweet, wee dochter!
Tho ye come here a wee unsought for…
Burns tells his friend, John Rankine how the ‘poacher-court’ got to hear of the ‘paitrick hen’ he had brought down with his ‘gun’, so he had to ‘thole the blethers’ and pay the fee but promises that as soon as the ‘clockin-time is by’ and the child is born, he plans to go ‘sportin by and by’ to get value for his guinea. He was as good as his word but it was not the same ‘paitrick hen’ that he brought down this time. This time it was one of the Belles of Mauchline, Bonnie Jean Armour.
As far as the lasses went Burns had a ‘tinder heart’ and although Jean eventually married him and bore him nine children further amorous adventures produced even more ‘fruit o’ monie a merry dint’. ‘Our Rab should have had twa wives,’ was Jean’s comment when she found that Anna Park, Anna of the gowden locks, was expecting Rabbie’s child at the same time as she was. The children were born nine days apart and Jean looked after both.
All professions employ their own technical vocabulary, their jargon which leaves outsiders bewildered and mine is no exception. However, his many encounters with the midwives of the day afforded Robert Burns an unusual familiarity with obstetric and gynaecological terminology.
First you, John Brown, there’s witness borne,
And affidavit made and sworn
That ye ae bred a hurly-burly
’Bout Jeany Mitchell’s tirlie-whirlie,
And blooster’d at her regulator,
Till a’ her wheels gang clitter-clatter.
.
Next, Sandy Dow, you’re here indicted
To have, as publickly you’re wyted,
Been clandestinely upward whirlin
The petticoats o Maggie Borelan,
And giein her canister a rattle,
That months to come it winna settle.
As I went round the wards in Ninewells Hospital, Dundee shortly before my departure I saw one girl suffering from the effects of severe canister rattling and another whose regulator was irrevocably blooster’d!
Robert Burns’ love for women spawned more than children. Coupled with sensitivity it gave birth to a whole generation of love songs whose beauty and pathos still bring a tear to the e’e, a tingle to the spine and a lump to the throat more than 200 years later.
Yestreen, when to the trembling string
The dance gaed thro’ the lighted ha’,
To thee my fancy took its wing,
I sat, but neither heard nor saw:
Tho this was fair, and that was braw,
And yon the toast of a’ the town,
I sigh’d, and said amang them a’-
‘Ye are na Mary Morison!’
Burns described this as one of his juvenile works and we are not sure which lass he had in mind. We do know, however, that while he was building his farm house at Ellisland in preparation for his wife joining him he penned this one for her:-
Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw
I dearly like the west,
For there the bonie lassie lives,
The lassie I lo’e best.
There wild woods grow, and rivers row
And mony a hill between,
But day and night my fancy’s flight
Is ever wi’ my Jean.
I see her in the dewy flowers –
I see her sweet and fair.
I hear her in the tunefu birds –
I hear her charm the air.
There’s not a bonie flower that springs
By fountain, shaw, or green,
There’s not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o my Jean.
This softness, this gentleness, this affection for womankind lasted until the bitter end and as he lay dying in his house in the Mill Vennel in Dumfries that summer of 1796, he penned these words for Jessie Lewars the lassie across the road who was helping Jean to nurse him.
O, wert thou in the cauld blast
on yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt
I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee.
I find it very moving that on the 25 July 1796 as the body of Robert Burns was being laid to rest in the nearby St Michael’s churchyard his widow, Jean was giving birth to Maxwell. And so in a very tangible way his memory lived on.
Rabbie was no transcendental poet. He did not have to look beyond his surroundings for inspiration. He wrote about what he saw, what he experienced, people he knew, people he met, people at work, at play, at home, in the country, in love, in the grip of passion. He has painted a picture of the times so clearly it is almost as if we have seen it for ourselves.
He has left us a treasury of Scottish literature, of Scottish songs but the sentiments and the appeal are universal.
After his death, monuments and statues were erected all over the world to commemorate Robert Burns but the greatest monument is the fact that we are here this evening…
Ladies and Gentlemen, will you please charge your glasses and rise with me and toast THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF ROBERT BURNS.
It was also time to toast the new Millennium.
Who would wish for many years?
(Letter to Mrs Dunlop)