Robert BURNS speaks to America!

‘HAPPY BURNS DAY!’
Lincoln carried a book of Robert Burns poems and during the civil war he read Burns aloud. He was a great fan of ‘Scots Wa Hae’ and had one of his sons named William Wallace. There are more statues, fifteen in all, to the great poet Robert Burns in America than to any other writer or musician! In the 19th century he was as big as Elvis. Many of America's greatest poets and writers were greatly influence by Burns - Woodie Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Steinbeck (Of Miss and Men), JD Salinger (Catcher in the Rye). 

Burns was too afraid to publish his poem, A Mans a Man for A That, in his name at this time – the punishment then for speaking up against the union was hanging or deportation to Australia. It was only two years after his death this was acknowledged as his song.

Enjoying Burns is NOT parochial – Burns wrote of everyman and not about local issues. He was the first great romantic poet and influenced others. More than ever his words on equality, protecting nature, our being at one with nature and against greed, oppression and ignorance matter.

The Brig O Doon near Alloway Ayrshire

A few months back I wrote a blog on the statues in Scotland. I was reading Burns Wikipedia page when I realised the statue I passed at the bottom of Leith walk near the River Forth each day on my way to school, was actually the ignored poet (then anyway) Robert Burns. I studied both English (note not Scots) and history to higher level and each subject focused on English history and culture. Any Scottish culture was not only a side show, but ignored. Yet every day I passed the cobble streets of Edinburgh’s royal mile and wondered about all the stories and history here that I was not being told. Why was I being taught about far away kings in far away places and not my own history? There is no statue to Scotland's greatest poet in the centre of Edinburgh, oddly. 

This was of course a deliberate suppression last century of Scottish history ad culture by Anglicised Scots – just as Anglicised Irish tried to do the same in Ireland. 

‘Lay the proud Usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty ’s in every blow! Let us Do—or Die!!!’

For all this I don’t believe Scotland will ever be only a region and north Britain as some might wish. If we follow this path – we ignore our history at our peril I fear. We will end up as a forgotten and ignored retirement and tourist place on the fringes of Europe. Not a great future for our young people!? 

For all this, the time is not right for Indyref2 - people are tired of these ridiculous referendum displays. I know we have to choose, but its best to wait for the foolish Brexit to fail, as fail it surely must. In fact I have grave doubts about these Referendums at all and how democratic they really are - without a free press or media. In our age of Fake News, Post Truth and online Echo Chambers are we loosing the art of Great Debate and real argument?

Burns grew up on the Ayrshire coast, where he looked out to sea and saw all the ships in the large busy ports of Irvine and Ayr. He used to dream of travelling to distant shores. He never did, but his words and poems did.

http://www.robertburnsspeakstoamerica.com

Scotlands Many Voices

Thinking this over – it seems England views Scotland as a north region, like Yorkshire say – rather than a separate country that has centuries old entirely separate history, many ancient traditions and old Celtic ballads and a distinct culture. Before James VI left to become King of England, Scotland had its line of Scottish Kings, from King David and later the Stuart kings. It's really a question of - does Scotland's separate identity matter for the success of the country and for the UK too?

Scotland is one of the oldest countries in Europe. Scotland is also a land of many huge contrasts from the great imposing drama of the highlands; the misty heathers and fast running streams; the green and cultivated lands of the north east; the quiet beauties of St Andrews and Fife and the coastal walks; and the charm of the borders.  

Alasdair Moffat and Alan Raich in their book, Arts of Resistance write of the destruction of Scottish culture. 
“The wholesale reduction of a culture to tartan tourist clichés. Ian Crichton Smith evoked images of the white streams screaming through the moonlight of the Cullen’s – a permanent scream of protest against all the trivialization of our history that has been foisted upon us.”  

Keeping Scots Alive!; culture, words, art and Music

In the 18^th century after union of Parliament – many poets and others worked diligently to keep Scots and what the Scots believe in, alive...such as Allan Ramsay, Fergusson and Robert Burns.

They felt it was vitally important.

In the 17^th century after Union of the Crowns, the Scottish royal court left Holyrood for London. This was good! It meant all the hangers on left too -  and meant the Thinkers and the Philosophers, were free to voice opinions! The Scottish Enlightenment led Europe. Many great Scottish thinkers left a huge mark on the world.

The poet Hugh MacDiarmid said in his Lost Interview, ""Lord [Harold] Acton, the historian, has said that no small nation in the history of the world has had a greater impact on mankind at large than the Scots have had. That influence flowed from the national character which is utterly different from the English. To analyze that national character is to discover the factors comprising our Scottish culture."

*Some Forgotten Scots Heroes – Thomas Muir, George Hamilton, James Clerk Maxwell, (Maxwell is the greatest physicist ever – and yet it was only in 2008 that a statue of him was unnveiled in Edinburgh. Odd really considering)

James Clerk Maxwell

*Scottish Artists – Arthur Melville, Rennie Mackintosh, Margaret MacDonald, Glasgow Boys, Henry Raeburn, 

*Great Scottish Poets – Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, James MacPherson, Robert Burns, Hugh MacDiarmid,

*Scottish Writers – Walter Scott, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Iain Banks,

Alasdair Gray, Irvine Welsh, Janice Gallowy, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Nan Sheperd, George MacDonald,

*Scottish Scientists  - James Watt, Alexander Graham Bell, James Chrichton, Alexander Fleming, John Napier, John Leslie, Joseph Black, James Hutton, John Leslie, James Clerk Maxwell.

(I'm ashamed and saddened that growing up in Edinburgh I learned practically nothing of Scottish history, culture and the arts. I used to walk down the Royal Mile and wonder about all the history here... I am now teaching myself.

‘To be truly internationalism, we must first be nationalists.’ Hugh MacDiarmid.

The sky in Scotland changes with often rapid speed – when the wind gets up one moment and is suddenly still and clear the next. Then a sharp wind catches us as the skies darken and heavy clouds roll over and there will be a sudden heavy shower as we hurry for cover and wait for the weather to shift and for some warm rays to descend and we are grateful.

The dark and light of our weather.

 

*The Unionist Scotland & Free Scotia!

Back in the 18^th century there were TWO SCOTLAND’S then too

After Scotland lost its political government in 1707, there was TWO Scotland’s too – the one that was wealthy and supported the new Union – the other of the ordinary folk who protested on the streets then as now and who remembered when Scotland was free. 

(1) The first was the Scotland of the people which was expressed by poets such as Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and of course Robert or Robbie Burns.  At Ellisland, in 1794 when he was 35, an after he had travelled across Scotland, Burns wrote a song,  “which was based on “an old song and tune which has often thrilled thro’ my soul. I may have felt Revolution-mad – instead I turned to an old song ‘Auld Lang Syne.’  ‘Light be the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired Poet who composed this glorious Fragment! There is more of the fire of nature genius in it, than in half a dozen of modern English Bacchanalians.”

He took his own writings and wove them into the old ballads and felt it was very important task to collect and re-work all these traditional old songs.  On his travels over Scotland when he first heard an old man sing this song and was moved to tears by it. 

This song spoke to Burns -  “of the old days – before the Union of Parliament – celebrating an older, politically independent Stuart Scotland. It also spoke of the of old friendships I had lost.  The ancient Scottish nation was ‘bold, independent, unconquered and free, Caledonia is ‘immortal”  

  

(2) The second was the Scottish Wealthy Elite, who were given a New Town of Georgian homes. 

There was a female poet Lady Anne Bernard.  She was from a noble family of Fife Scotland, born 1750 and wrote the well known ballad ‘Auld Robin Gray’. She lived in Georgian society during the Scottish enlightenment. To reward the nobility of Edinburgh a grand new town was built.

The Scottish aristocracy sold out. Her family were the Lindsay’s of Balcarres and these families carried the Union flag around the globe and helped to shape Britain’s empire. Her father said, “You were born after the Union, Scotland is no more and never likely to revive.”   Was it so great though? Of her eight brothers, four entered the army and two went to sea and one joined the East India co. Three died in different corners of the world and a fourth spent years in a Mysore dungeon. Eventually Lady Anne moved to London, married at 42 and went to live in the Cape of Good Hope.

Unionists and Royalists have tried to take over the legacy of Burns.

Professor Robert Crawford in his Robert Burns biography entitled The Bard sought to rescue ‘Burns and radicalism from the many monarchists, imperialists and staunch British unionist supporters and others over the centuries have controlled – and sometimes still seek to control - his posthumous reputation.” Crawford based his eminently readable biography of our national poet on ‘The Poems and Songs of Robert Buns’’ by James Kinsley (1968 Clarendon Press Oxford). There is great deal of lore, legend and misinformation around Burns’ legacy.  He writes that when he thought to start his biography in 2006, he found none in Scottish book shops strangely.

Later Burns would also write a song about how Scotland was bought and sold for English gold, in the song 

‘Parcel of Rogues to the Nation.’

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,

Fareweel our ancient glory;

Fareweel ev'n to the Scottish name,

Sae fam'd in martial story.

Now Sark rins over Solway sands,

An' Tweed rins to the ocean,

To mark where England's province stands-

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Is there A NEW Scottish Writers Museum

I saunter through the energy of the Fringe performers on the High Street. I walk along George street, on up the Mound and on down the high street.  I eat at  Bilbos on the corner of Chambers St.

I stopped in at the very small Scottish writers museum up a small winding stair in a hidden close at the top of the High street. There are exhibits to Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Walter Scott. Apart from a few Burns paintings and a display of the  Kilmarnock first Edition of his Poems - there is not a lot here.

I asked the lady there about a possible new museum. I said I had visited the Irish Writers museum which is housed in an impressive Georgian mansion and is 50 times bigger

There was talk of putting a decent size Scottish Writers museum beside the National library.

There are no modern authors or women writers or any of Scotland’s great philosophers of the enlightenment; Where is Robert Fergusson who wrote of Edinburgh and inspired Burns to write in Scots? Where is Adam Smith, David Hume, Allan Ramsay, Arthur Conan Doyle, Hugh MacDiarmid, James MacPherson or JM Barrie?

At an Irish concert at Celtic Connections I mentioned to an Irish lady beside me about the interesting Irish Writers Museum – she said perhaps there weren’t enough good Scottish writers!  I hope one day she might be proved wrong and we might have as Scottish Writers Museum that truly reflects not only this great city of Literature and  also the MANY great Scottish writers and artists.

In 1786 Scotland’s greatest poet – and one of the world’s greatest poets – made his way on a borrowed pony across the lowlands from Ayr and on into Edinburgh. At the time they were building the Georgian new town. He came in order to try to get the second edition of his poems published. He went to find the grave of the poet Robert Fergusson, who also wrote in both Scots and English. He stayed in a close near the castle and met many of the great and good of the capital – it was all a New World for him.

And where is any Edinburgh statue to Burns?

There is no a statue to Robert Burns, one of the greatest poets and songssmiths who ever lived in the centre of Edinburgh. I learnt recently there is a statue to Burns at the bottom of Leith walk, I used to pass every day only way to secondary school in Newhaven, near the Forth river. It really is a shocking state of affairs which makes me think Burns (while he tried) wasn’t considered unionist enough by the powers that be – not compared to the tall Gothic spire to Walter Scott in Princes street anyway. And A Mans a Man for A That as too egalitarian and feared by upper classes….. (votes for all was not until after WW1).

Our Statues of Hanoverian Kings in Scotland

Along Edinburgh's George street are the statues – King George IV, William Pitt the Younger and Prince Albert astride his horse in Charlotte Square. At the far end of George street there is a new (2008) statue to the forgotten and now remembered scientist James Clerk Maxwell. In Edinburgh’s new town the streets are named after the German Hanoverian Kings – streets Frederick, Anne, Hanover, George. I noticed on my walk there last summer for my visit to its major festival.

While on Princes street there is a tall black Gothic monument to the writer Walter Scott - some believe was a unionist but was actually, as are most of Scotland's writers and poets - a nationalist. 

I discovered recently there is a statue to our national bard, Robert Burns, at the bottom of Leith walk that I used to pass every day on my bus to secondary school at Granton. 

David Hume

Does all this matter? In some respects yes. All these labels are significantly unionist and royalist .How would it be if the streets were named after the Stewart kings and a statue of Robert the Bruce, a statue of hero William Wallace or John Knox dominated James or Stewart street instead!

Over in Glasgow's George Square there is a more relevant, if slightly strange, mixture of statues of the Victorian era and the time when Glasgow’s Tobacco Lords did well out of the Empire and union – statues of Walter Scott, James Watt, Robert Burns, chemist Thomas Graham, Prince Albert, Robert Peel, Gladstone, Queen Victoria, Jimmy Oswald, Lord Clyde, Tam Campbell, John Moore, some soldiers and those lions.  

There are also no statues to women (as if all great women are air brushed out).  There has been a campaign recently for a statue to the great female reformer Mary Barbour in Glasgow.

 

Prince Albert

And surely to have the statue to our great Robert Burns hidden down Leith is truly shocking. So my first thought is a statue to Burns at the Mound! I might wish. Or a statue to the great democracy reformer Thomas Muir.

 

George IV

In Edinburgh there are two statues of dogs and two of Queen Victoria and 200 statues of men. Up near St Giles on the Royal Mile are more statues to great men – David Hume (philosopher and economist), Duke of Buccleuch, Adam Smith, James Braidwood, Charles II.  

Burns in George Square Glasgow

Yes I know we have mostly lived in a patriarchal society, where women’s roles have been swept aside – as mothers, supporters, carers. The more I read though, the more I discover that women have been essential to many great men and also for society in general – and sadly their input has mostly been forgotten and air brushed out.

Of course its not long ago that women were given the vote (and non-land owning men) and given entry to university education - so I guess it takes time for change to happen!  I just read that there will be a statue to singer Cilla Black in Liverpool.

BLOG to follow on Great Scottish Women