By: centraljersey.com
Each year, on or about the 25th of January, the birthday of the National Poet of Scotland is celebrated around the world.
Robert Burns, who lived a short 37 years, was born 252 years ago and died 215 years ago. That his memory is immortalized in so many countries beyond his native land has as much to do with the universality of his message as with the language of his poetry. Burns wrote mostly in the Scots vernacular, making his poems immediately accessible to the common man.
"In tone and tenor Burns, not Shakespeare, is the representative poet of modern democratic cultures," writes biographer Robert Crawford in the introduction to a new selection of the poet’s poetry and prose, "The Best Laid Schemes," published in 2009 by Princeton University Press. Mr. Crawford’s book, written with text expert Christopher MacLachlan, is a welcome reintroduction to a poet long admired in America, where it is said that there are more statues of Burns than of any American poet.
I recommend the book for insights revealed in Burns’ letters, for selections from the poet’s own commonplace book and also for its line-by-line gloss of Scots words, indispensible to the contemporary reader, even one like myself born and bred in Scotland.
One gem from Burns’s commonplace book bears quoting. Burns describes himself as a "plough-man" and "a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but was however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded good-will to every creature."
No celebration of the plough-man poet is complete without the traditional reading of Burns’s narrative masterpiece, "Tam o’Shanter."
The poem recounts the tale of Tam’s wild ride home from the comfort and warmth of the local pub and the fellowship of his drouthy (thirsty) cronies through a dark and stormy night – a night in which "the deil (devil) had business on his hand." Passing the old ruined church, Kirk Alloway, Tam’s drunken curiosity gets the better of good sense when he sees the whole place lit up and resounding with merriment. He peeps through a window to witness a right rollicking dance of witches for which the devil himself is the piper. While the sight is enough to terrify his poor horse, Maggie, Tam’s lustful eye gets him into trouble when he spies one fine young witch, Nannie, in her "cutty sark" (short shirt). But when he calls out to her, all hell lets loose. Tam has to flee for his life, pursued by the "hellish legion," with Nannie leading the charge. Tam survives his close encounter but only just. If it hadn’t been for his trusty mare, Maggie, Tam might not have lived to tell the tale. Poor Maggie, however, pays for her master’s safety by losing her own gray tail.
Burn’s mock-heroic poem ends with a warning against the evils of drink and "cutty sarks." According to his wife, Jean Armour, the poem was the work of one November day on his farm at Ellisland in Dumfriesshire. Armour recalled going out to fetch her husband in during a rainstorm that found him sheltering under a tree, composing and laughing his head off as he loudly declaimed lines from the poem. When they got home, Burns recited the poem for his family. His children were so frightened by the story of ghosts and bogles that they hid under the table.
The phrase "cutty sark" subsequently inspired the name of a clipper ship and then a brand of Scotch Whisky. Like much of Burns’ work, the poem is best heard. Burns embraced the bardic tradition of oral poetry and inherited a treasury of ballads, songs, tales and superstitions from his mother’s family.
The story of Tam’s wild ride will feature in a gathering of Princeton poets and Burns lovers on Monday at the Princeton Public Library. It will be read by Yours Truly, the author of this article, who will introduce "sangs and clatter" from Princeton bagpiper Anne Witt and fellow members of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative, which is hosting the evening in conjunction with the library as part of its monthly U.S.1 Poets’ Invite Series.
Anne Witt is an accomplished musician who specializes in Scottish music including voice and guitar, bagpipe, and viola. Much in demand as a piper at Burns suppers and other ceremonial events, she is the author of two books of sheet music, "Scottish Fiddling for Viola" and "Scottish Airs and Dances for Viola and Cello," just published in October. The 25 pieces in the latter collection date back to the 17th and 18th centuries, when music was passed around amongst professional and amateur musicians. Written music was often hand-copied and slightly different versions were promulgated. In Burns’ time, the airs were originally sung or played on the fiddle.
Burns often wrote lyrics to popular tunes, and many of his "poems" were intended to be sung. On Monday evening, Ms. Witt will accompany herself on guitar in a performance of several songs Burns wrote from the female point of view, ranging in outlook from a lovesick teenager to an old woman gazing tenderly at her white-haired husband ("John Anderson, My Jo"). Her selection includes "Simmer’s a Pleasant Time," "Highland Harry," "Bonnie Doon," and "The Rantin’ Dog the Daddie o’ it," which conveys the feelings of an unmarried pregnant woman wondering how on earth she’s going to manage the challenges to come.
"Arguably the most important part of Burns’s vernacular Scots imaginative heritage came to him through the women of his family, and a ‘feminine’ aspect of his imagination is central to his gift, for all his schooling and indulgence in fraternal laddishness," writes Crawford in the introduction to "The Best Laid Schemes." The facility with which Burns adopts a female perspective is one which undoubtedly endeared (and endears him still) to women. That, and an undeniable joyfulness when it came to sex and matters of the heart.
Burns’s first attempts at verse were to please a girl he had fallen for. At 14, he wrote words to accompany his fancy’s favorite dance tune. The poet loved to dance and cut a dash. He was at ease with women and they with him. What woman, 18th or 21st century, could resist the man who wrote these lines from "Green Grow the Rashes O:" "The sweetest hours that e’er I spend, are spent amang the lasses O" and "Auld Nature swears the lovely dears her noblest work she classes O: Her prentice han’ she try’d on man, an’ then she made the lasses O," not to mention the, albeit tongue-in-cheek monologue he penned for actress Louisa Fontenelle, "The Rights of Women."
Women loved Burns and Burns loved them back. Even his wife, Jean Armour, for whom he composed some of his loveliest lines, had a practiced indulgence towards his roving eye. Think on it, no electricity, no computer, television, Facebook … what else was there to do? Armour is reported to have said "Oor Robin should have had twa wives."
It has also been said that while Burns could never succeed with a farm, he could never fail with a woman. With Jean Armour he had nine children, only three of whom survived into old age. Several love affairs resulted in several, five at most, illegitimate children, for whom the poet provided, following the customary manner of the day.
Also performing will be Princeton resident and member of Princeton Pro Musica Carol Boyle, who hails from Glasgow and who is continuing that city’s long tradition of stellar tearooms right here in New Jersey with Le Chardon (The Thistle), located on Broad Street in Hopewell. Le Chardon serves traditional Scottish fare, scones and teabreads, cakes and sandwiches, on Buchan stoneware made in Portobello on the east coast of Scotland. For more information and hours of operation, visit http://lechardontearoom.com/contact.html.
For Monday’s Burns celebration, Ms. Boyle will lend her native talent for recitation and song, local poets Mimi Danson and Lavinia Kumar will share their favorite Burns poems: ("Green Grow The Rashes O" and the Gowden Locks of Anna," respectively, and Winnie Hughes will read Seamus Heaney’s "A Birl for Burns."
Come savor these spirited readings along with shortbread and mulled wine on Monday, Jan. 24, from 7:30 until 9 p.m. in the Community Room on the first floor of the Princeton Public Library. The event is free and open to all.
Scots native and local poet Linda Arntzenius will read the works of Burns at the drop of a hat. She is a freelance writer whose latest project, a pictorial history of The Institute for Advanced Study, is forthcoming from Arcadia Publishing next month. As part of Princeton’s annual Pi Day celebration of Albert Einstein’s birthday on March 14, she will be signing copies of her book Images of America: Institute for Advanced Study at the Princeton Public Library.