Robert Burns

Robert Burns (1759–1796), popularly known as Robbie or sometimes Rabbie Burns, was a poet who wrote largely in Scots and Scottish dialect. Born in Alloway, Ayrshire, 25 January 1759, he died 37 years later in Dumfries, Dumfriesshire. He has come to be regarded as Scotland's national poet, with his birth observed worldwide on "Robbie Burns Day" and celebrated with Burns Suppers. Often sentimentalized, his life was one of contradictions. An ardent nationalist, he worked for a time as an excise collector for the British Government; a champion of freedom, he almost emigrated to Jamaica to work as the bookkeeper on a friend's estate, one built on the labour of slaves.

Influences

Burns had access to some of the English poets from an early age, and continued to read them in later life. He quoted Addison 20 times in his writings, and used his pocket Milton so much that it fell apart. But it was his discovery of Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson that made him realise that great verse could be written in Scots. He acknowledged both of them as influences, made great use of Fergusson's favourite stanza form, and provided Fergusson's grave with a proper headstone.

Poems

The first publication of Burns, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (the Kilmarnock edition) excluded some of the most contentious poems, such as Holy Willie's Prayer, by which he had already made his name locally. Nevertheless it did give a prominent position to social and religious satire, including The Holy Fair. Poems glorifying Scottish peasant life were literally central to the volume. These included The Cotter's Saturday Night, the work which his more conservative admirers found easiest to praise. Subsequent poems included a similar mix of the playful, the radically political, the amorous, the anti-Kirk (but not anti-religious) and the patriotic (e g Address to a Haggis, included in the Edinburgh edition). There was a narrative element in many of Burns's poems, and this came out fully in Tam o' Shanter.

Examples

And Man, whose heav'n-erected face

The smiles of love adorn,--

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!

(From "Man Was Made To Mourn" Burns' dirge on the plight of the working man)

Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames,

Tied up in godly laces,

Before ye gie poor Frailty names,

Suppose a change o' cases;

A dear-lov'd lad, convenience snug,

A treach'rous inclination-

But let me whisper i' your lug,

Ye're aiblins nae temptation

(From "Address to the Unco Guid,

Or the Rigidly Righteous." A caustic attack on the judgemental attitudes of the comfortably off. "Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman;" -Don't judge others lightly. "To step aside is human"; and while we may see a wrong, we can only guess at the reasons for it, and know nothing of what temptations were resisted. And judgements do not come well from smug and pious dames who are maybe no temptation themselves, or are better at hiding their own transgressions.)

Songs

Burns wrote a great many songs set to traditional airs. Some of these, such as Auld lang syne, were improvements to existing songs. Others were totally original, and yet others somewhere in between. In John Anderson, my jo, for example, he took the title of a bawdy song and created a poem about love in old age. As in the poems, there is considerable variety: drinking songs, love songs, and political songs. These last include Bruce's Address to his Army at Bannockburn and Is there for honest poverty (A man's a man for a' that).

A prince can mak a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an' a' that;

But an honest man's abon his might,

Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!

For a' that, an' a' that,

Their dignities an' a' that;

The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,

Are higher rank than a' that

(From "Is There For Honest Poverty." These lines are thought to have been inspired by the trial of William Brodie, showing Burns' contempt for the judicial view that accepting a reward for turning King's evidence somehow made a burglar an honest man, while the one he gave evidence against was condemned to hang.)

My luve is like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June.

My luve is like the melodie,

That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

So deep in luve am I,

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry.

(First verse of his best known love song)

Reputation

In the early 19th century, among the writers associated with Blackwood's Magazine, it was taken for granted that Burns was a very great poet. It suited these Tory writers to ignore Burns's radical bent. Later in the same century, others misread, ignored or tried to suppress his radical values. Some critics spent most of their time on his morals rather than his verse, these detractors of the late 18th and early 19th centuries being scandalised by his love life, uncomfortable with his politics, and wary of his gift for self promotion.

"He is... only one of a thousand instances which incontestibly prove the inutility of genius, either to produce much happiness to the possessor, or to produce much good to society" (Elizabeth Hamilton 1801)

Even Robert Louis Stevenson took this line:

"Indeed, Burns was so full of his identity that it breaks forth on every page; and there is scarce an appropriate remark either in praise or blame of his own conduct but he has put it himself into verse. Alas for the tenor of these remarks! They are, indeed, his own pitiful apology for such a marred existence and talents so misused and stunted; and they seem to prove for ever how small a part is played by reason in the conduct of man’s affairs.2 Robert Louis Stevenson

The myth of Burns as the half-educated ploughman, rhyming by inspiration rather than skill, goes back to his own preface to the Kilmarnock edition of his poems. More recently there has been greater recognition of his literary skill and of his defence of liberty in a time of repression. But for many readers, his poems and songs are simply to be enjoyed.