If he weren’t Scotland’s bard, Robert Burns would be welcome here.
By: Linda Arntzenius
Editor’s note: Two columns on Robert Burns within a month? The luck of the draw, one might say.
The fact that a people has a national poet in the true sense, that is, a poet whose lines define his countrymen’s sense of identity and drop from their lips at the tipping of a hat, is a fascinating phenomenon. America has Walt Whitman, of course, but when most Americans spout verse (the very idea is funny), it’s usually by that Will Shakespeare bloke or else by America’s great unsung bard, Hall Mark.
Can you imagine Americans getting together every May 31 to celebrate Walt Whitman’s birthday? Well, until that day comes, the birthday of Robert Burns, a poet who exemplifies many of America’s most cherished values, is the next best thing.
Saturday night, the 25th of January, Robert Burns will be celebrated by Scots and the poet’s admirers at Burns Suppers worldwide. From Moscow to Beijing, Glasgow to Sydney, Burns’ songs will be sung, stories will be told of his life, his loves, his paramours. What accounts for all the fuss? After all, there are no Shakespeare Suppers or Tennyson Teas.
More dross has been spouted about Robert Burns (1759-1796) than even William Wallace (c. 1270-1305). If you compare the movie Braveheart with history, you will know what I mean. The typical Burns Supper often focuses more on a romantic caricature of Burns than on the political convictions that truly account for the poet’s durability.
Burns lived in interesting times and walked a tightrope between self-expression and self-preservation. Although his views were widely known within Scotland, not all of his poems were published during his lifetime. It was not until after his death that the Burns "brotherhood of man" message spread internationally.
It is this message that accounts for all the fuss. He’s been called the people’s poet, the poet of universal brotherhood. He’s been tarred as a radical, characterized as a rural Don Juan, stereotyped as a peasant genius, minimized as a plowman-poet and puffed up into a symbol of all things Scottish. In spite of all this, the honesty of the man shines through.
Robert Burns hailed from the village of Alloway, near Ayr on the west coast of Scotland. His father was a gardener/tenant farmer, William Burnes (this spelling, pronounced Burn-iss, was later changed by the poet). The cottage he built, where Robert was born, still stands. As a child "Rabbie" worked long hours with his father. Evenings were spent round the fire listening to his father reading the Bible and to stories of his mother, Agnes Broun (pronounced Broon, Scots for Brown).
Betty Davidson, an old woman who lived with the family, filled the boy’s head with stories and songs in Lowland Scots. Burns recalled that Betty "had the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, kelpies, elf-candles, wraiths, giants, enchanted towers, dragons and other nonsense. From this grew the seeds of my poetry."
He was a bright boy who read constantly poetry, novels, Shakespeare, Alexander Pope and, of course, the Bible. By 15, he was fluent in French and Latin. He developed a devilish sense of humor, a radar for pomposity and pretension, a loathing for hypocrisy, an abiding love for ordinary folk and an ease with the fair sex that got him into trouble. One imagines this teenager as cock-of-the-walk with his long hair tied in a ponytail, sporting a colorful plaid instead of the more usual gray homespun.
In 1785 he had an illegitimate daughter with Elizabeth Paton. In the same year he began his notorious on again/off again relationship with Jean Armour. In 1786, he got Jean "in trouble." The birth of their twins (Robert and Jean) caused a scandal. In spite of her father’s rage, Jean would later become Mrs. Burns. But before that, Burns was humiliated for his sins before the entire congregation of the Kirk Session (Church Council of The Presbyterian Church of Scotland). He contemplated immigrating to the West Indies.
Instead, he wrote "Holy Willie’s Prayer," lampooning church hypocrites. Although he fathered several illegitimate children, they were neither unacknowledged nor abandoned. I’m reminded of the comment of contemporary Scottish poet Edwin Muir who quipped: "I think it possible that all Scots are illegitimate, Scotsmen being so mean and Scotswomen so generous."
In 1788, Jean gave birth to another set of twins. Both girls died within a month. In 1791, Anna Park had a daughter by Burns just nine days before Jean delivered a son. Even on the day of Burns’ death, at the age of 37 (rheumatic fever exacerbated by his doctor’s advice to bathe in the cold sea), Jean gave birth to another son.
Understandably, Jean Armour’s father had been dead-set against his daughter marrying a penniless farmer. But in 1786, Burns’ fortune improved. His first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, was published. It was a sold-out success, appealing to the educated and common man alike. He became the toast of Edinburgh society, curious to meet the "plowman poet." With his dashing good looks and flashing brown eyes, he wowed the literati.
As Arthur Herman, author of How the Scots Invented the Modern World (a serious history despite its title) puts it, "Burns arrived in Edinburgh in 1787 with a reputation as a boy genius. His literary mentors had encouraged him to write verse in the standard high-brow classical vein, which Burns could do perfectly well. But he sensed that his true talent lay in turning the everyday speech, songs, and stories of the people he had grown up with into poetry, and communicating to readers the latent power, eloquence, and nobility of the ordinary man and woman. It made Burns Scotland’s most beloved poet, even today. But it disappointed his mentors, sank his career, and eventually drove him out of Edinburgh. His failure also drove him to drink, cutting his life short … "
According to one interpretation, Burns’ life is a tragic symbol of his country’s history of lost causes, dashed hopes, an incompetent bonnie prince the disparity between dream and reality.
According to another, it’s a right rollicking romp filled with merry muses and houghmagandie (ahem, genteelly translated as love-making). Indeed, some of Rantin’ Rovin’ Robbie’s lyrics are sexually explicit, not to say downright ribald. It is this aspect of the man that oft times draws most unsubtle attention.
But with Martin Luther King commemorations still ringing in our ears, it is fitting to remember works such as "I Murder Hate," with its make-love-not-war sentiment. Burns aficionado David Sibbald of the Glasgow & District Burns Association spoke to me of the poet’s "concern for human rights, his dislike of cant and hypocrisy, his love of friendship and his championing of oppressed people. To Burns lovers across the world, he stands for honesty, integrity and trustworthiness, qualities lacking in the world today."
Rena Shields, a Glaswegian transplant to the Princeton area, holds a Burns Supper every year with the Princeton Scottish Dancers in attendance. She attributes Burns’ appeal to the fact that "he was an ordinary man writing about everyday things. He was not an aristocrat, had neither financial nor intellectual advantage by birth but was self-made and self-taught. If he was around today, he’d write in praise of pizza."
With a glossary of terms, Burns’ work is accessible to modern readers. He wrote for his fellow countrymen, not for scholars, composing hundreds of original songs, poems and letters over a 22-year period. Scotland has Burns to thank for renewed interest in Scottish language, literature, folk traditions and antiquities, not to mention original works such as "Tam O’Shanter," the hilarious warning against drunkenness.
"A Man’s a Man for a’ That," one of the most poignant of Burns’ songs, compares the lot of rich and poor. "O My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose" is one of the world’s most tender love songs. While plowing, Burns destroyed the nest of a fieldmouse. "To a Mouse" ponders the fate of mice and men with deep and genuine feeling. "Man was Made to Mourn" was inspired by "man’s inhumanity to man," the fate of an 80-year-old man reduced to beggary despite a lifetime in service to the aristocracy.
To some it may appear puzzling that the church-going, upright, hard-working, dour, tough, no-nonsense Scots should choose as their poet a church-scorning, hard-loving, sentimental, fanciful womanizer. But the former is as much a caricature as the latter.
Burns must be understood in the context of his time: an age of revolution, enlightenment, religious freedom and religious bigotry; an age of empire-building, penal colonies, slavery and war. A difficult, contradictory, dangerous age.
The decade of his birth saw the birth of the British Empire. He was 10 when Captain Cook reached New Zealand, the year Napoleon Bonaparte was born. He was 14 when the Boston Tea Party took place. He grew to manhood as the American colonies fought and won independence. The people’s poet cheered the successes of Washington’s people’s army. His "Scots Wha Hae wi’ Wallace Bled" (ostensibly Bruce’s address to his army at Bannockburn in 1314) champions the cause of freedom a call for the rising of all oppressed peoples against tyranny in the guise of a celebration of Scotland’s victory against a stronger enemy, England.
Burns believed that inequality and poverty destroyed personal liberty, without which national independence and international security are impossible. His values lie at the heart of American democracy. Would he were here to make them sing once more.
Here’s freedom to them that wad read.
Here’s freedom to them that wad write.
There’s none ever fear’d that the truth should be heard
But they whom the truth wad indite.
Sources:
"The Scottish Quotation Book," edited by Joyce and Maurice Lindsay; "Dirt and Deity: A life of Robert Burns," Ian McIntyre, Harper Collins, 1995; "Bloody Scotland," Terry Deary, Scholastic; "Robert Burns: Poems and Songs," J.M. Dent, 1958.
A resident of Princeton, Linda Arntzenius is a native of Mossend, Lanarkshire, Scotland, close by Glasgow. The writer was born Linda McArdle and descends from Clan MacGregor.

