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).
