Arcadia Scotland

This January Burns' Suppers will be held by Scots around the world to celebrate the 263rd birthday of our national bard Robert Burns. America has the 4th of July, Ireland has St Patrick’s Day, but for Scotland it is Burns' Night which best encapsulates our national identity. A Burns' Supper, for the uninitiated, involves the eating of haggis (sheep's heart, liver, and lungs, minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt), followed by an evening of poetry, song, and usually, copious amounts of whisky. Despite only being 37 years old at the time of his death in 1796, Burns left a wealth of poetry and songs that have been enjoyed for generations. Burns’ poetry even provided the titles for two great American novels, The Catcher in the Rye and Of Mice and Men. When asked what lyric had the biggest influence on him, Bob Dylan cited Burns’ love song ‘A Red, Red Rose.’ 

My luve is like a red red rose

That's newly sprung in June;

O my Luve's like the melodie

That's sweetly play'd in tune;

Burns is perhaps best remembered today for his romantic works such as ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, as well as his lyrics to ‘Auld Lang Syne’ which is commonly sung at New Years. On first observation then Burns’ work may seem typical of many proto-romantic poets, given the sentimental nature and pastoral setting of many of his verses. However, the sanitised image we have of Burns is largely the result of Victorian Scotland’s reimagining of its own past. The image of a poor dewy-eyed ploughman pining over his lost love, left little room for Burns' more politically radical, bawdy, and occasionally foul-mouthed, poems.

Burns’ humble origins as the son of a poor tenant farmer made him highly sensitive to the exploitation of the Scottish working-class of his day. In 1791, Burns’ poem ‘Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation’ condemned the Scottish aristocracy for having been ‘bought and sold for English gold’ for entering the Union in 1707. In 1794, he had wrote an ode to commemorate the birthday of George Washington where he praised ‘Columbia’ (America) for casting off English rule, and suggested that ‘Caledonia’ (Scotland) should do the same. In 1795, he went further still when he wrote ‘A Man’s a Man 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, 

It's coming yet for a' that, 

That Man to Man, the world o'er, 

Shall brothers be for a' that.

Burns’ had clearly been inspired by Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man which was interpreted as an endorsement of the French Revolution. This was seen as a step too far by Burns’ wealthy patrons, and he nearly lost his job as an exciseman. Burns’ died the following year of a rheumatic heart condition aggravated by a life of hard toil, heavy drinking, and womanising. Yet some also suggested that the worry over being labelled a dangerous radical contributed towards his demise. In the immediacy of his death the Edinburgh literati would work hard to promote Burns’ as the politically naïve ‘heaven taught’ ploughman, a characterization that would survive well into the 20th century.    

Although Burns' subversiveness was often forgotten about in his own country, elsewhere he was better remembered as a radical. Burns' work was first translated into Russian during the late 19th century, but many of his more political works were unpublishable under the tsars. During the Soviet period Burns was presented as a ‘people’s poet’ driven to alcoholism by the upper-class’ exploitation of the poor. In 1956, the USSR was the first country in the world to commemorate Burns on a postage stamp, followed by Romania in 1959. In recent years Burns' politics have been reincorporated into Scottish national identity. Burns' nationalism and embryonic socialism are no longer curious footnotes, but form an integral part of our understanding of a man who for many acts as the embodiment of our nation.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us 

To see oursels as ithers see us! 

It wad frae mony a blunder free us, 

An' foolish notion: 

What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,  

An' ev'n devotion!