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A Toast to the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns

Burns Supper 1997

Clans of Scotland, USA

delivered by
Jim MacGregor
The Capital Scot

Introduction

Mr.  President, Officers and Committee Chairs of the Clans of Scotland, USA, Ladies and Gentlemen.  Please bear with me, for this is the first time that I have attempted to toast the memory of Scotland's National Poet and the person whose life and accomplishments we celebrate tonight.

Many thousands of Scots around the world celebrate Burns night on his birthday, January 25th.  It is perhaps extraordinary that there is a Burns Supper at all.  Why do Scots the world over participate in a "Burns Nicht" or "Burns Supper" to perpetuate the memory of their National Poet?  Why do not other groups gather annually to celebrate the memory of the famous writers of their nations?  Why for example is there no Dickens Dinner, Tolstoy Tea, Shakespeare Roast, or Balzac Barbecue -- or some other such event?  It would be presumptuous to assert the answers to these questions.  But, perhaps by reflecting on Robert Burns and his life we can discover some of our reasons for celebrating his memory tonight.

Had Robert Burns lived today, his earnings from one song alone -- Auld Lang Syne -- would have made him a multi-millionaire on a par with writers as Irving Berlin and George Gershwin and performers such as Elvis Presley and Paul McCartney.  Yet, when he died in 1796, aged thirty-seven, he was poor and asking financial help of acquaintances.  So what was it then about the life of this fellow, born into a poor farming family and departed in poverty that brings Scots together each year to celebrate his memory?

Perhaps he was a Scottish "Everyman." Perhaps his writing spoke to the basic emotions, thoughts, desires and fears of every person regardless of nation or rank.  People frequently attribute certain traits to the Scottish character.  Primary among them are a down-to-earthness, a plain-ness, a directness, a fierecely independent spirit, and a common touch.  Perhaps these traits have more universal appeal than is often appreciated.  It is not possible to do justice to Robert Burns character in the time allotted.  Perhaps a few examples of his character, as seen in his poetry, will do.

Burns loved people despite their weaknesses, but hated hypocrisy.

One biographer stated that the Reformer, John Knox, had more in common with Burns than with the stereotype we have of Knox today.  He stated that Burns and Knox were desperate men of crisis who played their parts in opposition to false or abused authority.  Burns' biographer wrote that had Knox seen the abuses of the Church at the time of Burns, he would have allied himself with Burns against the established Church and many of its pillars of the community.

In the poem, Holy Willie's Prayer, Burns pointed his barbed wit at a self-righteous, member of the congregation as an example of the kind of hypocrisy that can poison any institution.  Holy Willie, by his own complaints and by church standards, is shown to be an example of what to avoid.  He enumerates his own misdeeds, mentioning some of them by their first names and frequency in the week.  According to Holy Willie:

"Yet I am here a chosen sample
To show Thy grace is great and ample
I'm here a pillar o' Thy temple strong as a rock
A guide, a buckler, and example to Thy flock!

"O Lord! Yestreen, Thou kens, wi' Meg -
Thy pardon I sincerely beg
.....
An' I'll ne'er lift a lawless leg again upon her

Besides, I farther maun avow -
Wi' Leezie's lass, three times, I trow -
But, Lord, that Friday I was fou when I cam near her

"Lord, hear my earnest cry and prayer
Against that Prebyt'ry of Ayr!
Thy strong right hand, Lord, make it bare upo' their heads!
Lord, visit them, an dinna spare for their misdeeds."

Have we ever met anyone like Holy Willie in the Clans of Scotland or elesewhere?  Naaaaaw!

Burns was opposed to anyone being treated in a servile manner.

Robert Burns addressed his hatred of slavery in a poem, The Slave's Lament:

"It was in sweet Senegal
That my foes did me enthral
For the lands of Virginia, 'ginia, O!
Torn from that lovely shore
And must never see it more
and alas! I am weary, weary, O!

"The burden I must bear,
While the cruel scourge I fear,
In the lands of Virginia, Ôginia, O!
With the bitter, bitter tear,
And alas! I am weary, weary, O!"

While writing this verse, Burns must surely have been as sensitive to the importation into the Americas of African slaves as well as the selling of Scots into literal slavery in America - not just indentureship - at the time of the Highland Clearances.  His attitude toward the Church may also have been colored by the knowledge of the acceptance by the Church of substantial contributions from slave-holding colonies at the time of the Clearances.

Burns loved Liberty.

Robert Burns wrote of himself: "The first two books I ever read in private, and which gave me more pleasure than any two books I ever read again, were The Life of Hannibal and the History of Sir William Wallace.  Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough that I might be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins which will boil along there Ôtill the floodgates of life shut in eternal rest."

Burns' poems about caste circumstances in Scotland are much read.  However, he also wrote of America's struggle for independence.  He wrote to a friend in June 1794 that: "I am going to trouble your critical patience with the first sketch of a stanza I have been framing as I paced along the road.  The subject is Liberty.  You know, my time-honored friend, how dear the theme is to me.  I design it as an irregular ode for General Washington's birthday." The first stanza goes like this:

"..........
'Tis Liberty's bold note I swell:
Thy harp, Columbia, let me take!
See gathering thousands while I sing
A broken chain, exulting bring
And dash it in a tyrant's face,
And dare him to his very beard
And tell him he no more is feared
No more the despot of Columbia's race!
A tyrant's proudest insults brav'd
They shout a People freed! They hail an Empire sav'd!"

Further stanzas address the dignity of man and eulogize King Alfred of England whose country is described as having fallen from its earlier dignity.  Burns then deplores Scotland's lack of sense of greatness:

"Thee, Caledonia, thy wild heaths among
Fam'd for the martial deed, the heaven-taught song,
To thee I turn with swimming eyes!
Where is that soul of freedom fled?
Immingled with the mighty dead
Beneath that hallowed turf where Wallace lies!
Hear it not, Wallace, in thy bed of death!
Ye babbling winds in silence sweep!
Disturb ye not the hero's sleep,
Nor give the coward secret breath!
Is this the ancient Caledonian form
Firm as her rock, resistless as her storm?
Show me that eye which shot immortal hate
Blasting the Despot's proudest bearing!
Show me that arm which nerv'd with thundering fate
Crush'd Usurpation's boldest daring!
Dark-quench'd as yonder sinking star
No more that glance lightens afar
That palsied arm no more whirls on the waste of war."

Burns disliked superstition as a means by which people enslave themselves.  However, he drew upon the rich lore of Scotland and its legends and fairly tales to produce symbolism in his poetry.

Burns once wrote in a letter that "In my infant and boyish days ...  I owed much to an old maid of my mother's, remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition ...  [who had] ...  I suppose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, death-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery.  This cultivated the latent seeds of [my] poesy."
[Ed.  spunkie = will-o'-the-wisp,  kelpie = river demon,  cantraip = magic]

Burns had despairing moods during which he was accustomed to feign the strongest admiration for Milton's arch-enemy and his dauntless superiority to his desperate circumstances.  In his satire of popularly held traditions about Satan, Burns draws upon the tales he heard from his mother's maid when he writes in his Address to The Deil:

"O thou! Whatever title suit thee -
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie -
Wha in yon cavern grim an' sootie clos'd under hatches,
Spairges about the brunstane cootie to scaud poor wretches!
[Ed.  spairge = splash,  brunstane = brimstone,  cootie = a wooden dish]

"Hear me, Auld Hangie, for a wee,
An' let poor damned bodies be;
I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie' ev'n to a deil,
To skelp an' scaud poor dogs like me an' hear us squeel.
[Ed.  skelp = slap]

"An' now, Auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin,
A certain Bardie's rantin, drinkin,
Some luckless hour will send him linkin to your black Pit;
But, faith! He'll turn a corner jinkin an' cheat you yet.
[Ed.  jink = frisk (as a verb)]

"But fare-you-weel, Auld Nickie-Ben!
O, wad ye tak a thought an' men!
Ye aiblins might - I dinna ken - still hae a stake:
I'm wae to think upo' yon den ev'n for your sake!"
[Ed.  aiblens = perhaps,  wae = woe/sorrowful]

Sometimes Burns' view of the other side could also take a serious turn -- but still with an ironic turn of the phrase, as in On a Suicide:

"Here lies in earth a root of Hell
Set by the Deils ain dibble;
This worthless body damn'd himsel
To save the Lord the trouble."

Burns loved learning.

Burns' parents were dedicated to learning as the means for themselves and their children to improve themselves both spiritually and materially.  According to a Burns biographer , his father, William, "in times of storm, ...  would seek out and stay with his daughter, where she was herding in the fields, because he knew that she was afraid of lightning; or in fair weather, to teach her the names of the plants and flowers.  He wrote a little theological treatise for his children's guidance too, and was ...  an exemplary father ...  and husband.  Four neighbors shared William Burness's (Burns later changed the spelling and pronunciation of his name) enthusiasm for the education of their own children as well.  Robert's mother read to the children daily.  His father, and four neighbors pooled their money to hire a tutor for their children.  The tutor, a lad of eighteen, stayed and tutored the children for a few years.  A Burns biographer once wrote that it "was parish gossip that, if you called on William Burness at meal-time, you found the whole family with a book in one hand and a horn spoon in the other."

Burns inherited his parents love of learning, a yearning that helped him to keep an open mind about himself, his Maker, acquaintances, and his surroundings.

The traits that seem to mark Burns' character all point back to the inescapable fact that he was a Scot.

The stereotype of the Scotsman, thanks largely to Sir Walter Scott and Sir Harry Lauder, is a fellow wearing highland attire.  In his life, Burns certainly did not fit that stereotype at all.  From reading his poems we gain the picture of a lowland Scot who dressed "English" according to the style of a farmer.  The book which contained most of Burns' poems, titled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, made a favorable impression on the literati of Edinburgh.  I suppose we would call the literary critics of the time "Liberals" today.  They found their theories about the sensitivity of the common man confirmed by what they called this "ploughman poet." Burns spent the winters of 1786-87 and 1787-88 in Edinburgh as a national celebrity, but he disliked the condescension with which he was treated and so returned to farming.

No, Burns did not fit the stereotype of the Highlander in his own life or in the image he projected to literary society.  However, it is interesting to note that he penned at least one poem to sing of a displaced Scot:

"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer,
A-chasing the wild deer and following the roe -
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go!

"Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birthplace of valour, the country of worth!
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands forever I love."

We now toast Robert Burns!

Burns himself would probably toast his own memory in the same light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek way that he wrote in a thanksgiving to our Maker for a fine meal.  The following verse is a fitting conclusion to the immortal memory if we think of it, not as a grace after meals, but as thanking our Maker for having blessed Scotland with its National Poet:

"O Lord, we do humbly thank
For that we little merit:
Now Jean may tak the flesh away,
And Will bring in the spirit."

I propose a toast to Robert Burns: lover of people, lover of freedom and liberty, lover of truth, lover of learning, a lowland farmer, a Highlander at heart, a Scot.  A toast!

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