ROBERT BURNS - SCOTLAND’S BARD
Burns wrote in the Scots dialect - a pleasant-sounding and descriptive language spoken by the common man.
It’s difficult for “English speakers” - but Burns should be recited aloud. The secret is not to translate each word you’ll never get through a poem. Just go with the flow - read it - the language flows like music - you’ll get the gist!
A Burns Timeline
Born in Alloway, Ayrshire - eldest son of William Burness and Agnes Broun.
Burns wrote his first love song, after falling in love with his harvest partner, Nelly Kilpatrick.
Burns goes to school in Tarbolton - and falls in love with Peggy Thompson.
Burns and some friends form the Bachelor’s Club as a debating society.
Burns becomes a freemason. He goes to Irvine to learn about flax - a more reliable crop.
Burns returns to Lochlea farm after his business in Irvine burns down.
Burns begins to record and revise his earlier poems.
William Burness dies. Burns shortens his name. Robert and Gilbert Burns lease a farm at Mossgiel.
Burns meets and falls in love with Jean Armour of Mauchline.
1785 Burns fathers his first child - with his mother’s servant, Elizabeth Paton - she leaves in disgrace.
1786 Burns gets Jean Armour pregnant - she’s sent to an uncle in Paisley. Burns falls for Mary Campbell,
but she dies in Greenock. Robert resolves to go to the colonies - Jamaica. But publication of
his Kilmarnock edition makes him postpone leaving. Jean Armour gives birth to twins.
The Kilmarnock edition: “Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect” was an instant hit.
1787 The Poems are reprinted in the expanded “Edinburgh Edition”. Burns goes on tour in the lowlands.
Burns has three songs published in James Johnson’s “Scot’s Musical Museum” volume I.
Burns learns that Meg Cameron (a servant girl in Edinburgh) is pregnant by him. He tours
the Highlands and the Ochil Hills - courts Margaret Chalmers - proposes - she refuses him.
He meets Mrs. Maclehose - another affair - another rejection - so he turns to her servant girl
Jenny Clow - and gets her pregnant.
1788 Johnson’s “Scot’s Musical Museum” volume II is published - 35 more of Burns songs.
Burns marriage to Jean Armour is finally regularized by the Kirk Session in Mauchline.
After all his anti-establishment writings, he takes a job with the Excise.
1790 Volume III of “Scot’s Musical Museum” is published - including 40 more Burns songs.
Burns writes “Tam o’ Shanter” at Ellisland farm.
1791 Anna Park, barmaid at the Globe Tavern, has a daughter by Burns. Jean Armour has another son.
Burns gives up Ellisland and the family moves to Dumfries. He parts with Nancy McLehose.
He meets Maria Riddell at Friar’s Carse (a neighboring property).
1792 Volume IV of “Scot’s Musical Museum” is published - including 50 more Burns songs.
1793-95 More tours - more babies - move to a bigger house - Burns contracts rheumatic fever.
1796 Robert Burns dies on 21st July - aged 37 - Jean Armour gives birth to a son, the day of Burns funeral.
Volume V of “Scot’s Musical Museum” is published - 37 more Burns songs, including Auld Lang Syne.
< - - - - - - - - - AYRSHIRE - - - - - - - - - > EDINBURGH
1759
1774
1778
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
< - - - - - - -DUMFRIES - - - - - - - >
In 2009, Scottish Television organized Scots to vote for the Greatest Scot who had ever lived. What a task!
With warriors like William Wallace (Braveheart), Colin Campbell (the thin red line) - Royals like Robert the Bruce,
Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie - industrialists like Andrew Carnegie - inventors like James Watt
(steam engine), Dunlop (pneumatic tires), Charles MacIntosh (waterproof clothing), James Logie Baird (television),
Alexander Graham Bell (telephone), Watson-Watt (Radar) Alexander Fleming (penicillin) - writers like Burns,
Scott, R. L. Stevenson - sociologists like David Hume, Adam Smith (economics) - the list goes on and on and on.
Wasn’t it Celtic that the people of Scotland chose their poet Robert Burns as the greatest Scot of all time!
Burns was a self-taught genius: He had a good education - Scottish schools and a tutor paid for by his father.
He had to work on the family farm - he was the oldest son, and the chief laborer! Maybe the long hours of hard
work in all weathers contributed to his untimely death. But in breaks, he was able to read, and compose poetry.
He is known as Robbie or Rabbie Burns - Robden of Solway Firth - the Ploughman Poet - the Ayrshire Bard and, of course, the Bard of Scotland.
Burns wrote about many things: nature, politics and social injustice. His themes included: republicanism radicalism - patriotism - social justice - poverty - anti-clericalism - gender roles - and the worth of the common man.
He wrote for the common man. He hated false airs and graces - he loved to burst the bubbles of power and position.
He was a keen satirist. He wrote about hypocrisy with a wicked wit - and put it out there for the world to read.
He loved the common man. He had grown up as one! In his poem “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”, the scene where
the hardworking cotter comes back to his humble home could well have been taken from Burns’ own life.
He respected the lowly man - and often compared him favorably with the titled nobility.
In “the Cotter’s Saturday Night” the cotter comes home from a hard week’s work to his family, who gather round:
“From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs,
That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad:
Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,
An honest man’s the noble work of God!”
One of his best-known poems, “A Man’s A Man For A’ That”, epitomizes these social values:
“What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear Hoddin grey, an a’ that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,
A man’s a man for a’ that!”
And that rousing final verse: “Then let us pray that come it may As come it will for a’ that That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
May bear the gree, and a’ that.
For a’ that, and a’ that,
It’s coming yet for a’ that,
That man to man, the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that!”
“gree” is “prize”
With such socialist sentiments, its small wonder that Burns has been embraced by liberals and socialists alike.
They have all drawn inspiration from his works. He was influenced by the Germanic royal family in London,
the French Revolution in Europe, and the overthrow of colonialism in America. What a time to be alive!
A hundred years later, he became “the people’s poet” in Imperial Russia - and in the Cold War, when writings in the
English language were not welcomed in the USSR, one book alone, after the Bible, was translated into Russian Burns Poems! In fact, Russia has Robert Burns on a postage stamp! He remains popular in Russia to this day.
Incidentally, Burns anti-Hanoverian sentiments also made him pro-American in the lead up to Independence.
He wrote an “Ode For General Washington’s Birthday”:
“But come, ye sons of Liberty
Columbia’s offspring, brave as free,
In danger’s hour still flaming in the van,
Ye know, and dare maintain, the Royalty of Man!”
Burns other great love was nature. He wrote on things he saw every day: “To a Mouse” - “To a Blackbird” “To a Louse” - “The Wounded Hare” - “The Banks of Nith” - “To a Mountain Daisy” - “Song composed in Spring”
- “Song composed in Autumn” - “Winter” and many more.
He loved nature - loved being outside - loved Scotland’s hills and rivers - loved being a farmer, though he was never
very good at it, it gave him a chance to read and to write poetry. “To a Mouse” was composed when he was
ploughing for winter and turned over a mouse’s nest. His famous lines include a note of envy, as he reflected on the
human condition of looking back in regret and forward in fear, when only the present affected the mouse:
“But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
Still thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me;
In proving foresight may be vain;
The present only toucheth thee;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
But, Och! I backward cast my e’e,
Gang aft agley,
On prospects drear!
An’ Leave us nought but grief an’ pain,
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
For promis’d joy!
I guess an’ fear”
Burns was a true romantic - he wrote many love poems: “My Luv is like a Red Red Rose”
“Til all the seas gang dry my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun
I will love thee still, my dear
While the sands o’ life shall run”
When the Kilmarnock Edition was published, Burns abandoned plans to go to Jamaica to work on a slave plantation.
He borrowed a pony and went to Edinburgh. He’d sold the rights to the Kilmarnock edition for £100 ($7000 today)
and publishers in Edinburgh quickly organized a new edition, which netted Burns £400 - it doesn’t sound much, but
his pay as an exciseman was £35 a year!
In Edinburgh, Burns was the talk of the town! He was the center of attraction at high society events, where he
conducted himself with a natural dignity. He was certainly noticed - and made a significant impression on a teenage
Sir Walter Scott, who described his manners as “dignified plainness and simplicity”. He’d had his portrait painted
by Alexander Naismyth for the front page of the Edinburgh edition of his poems, but Walter Scott noticed his eyes!
“the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and
literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have
seen the most distinguished men of my time.”
Sir Walter Scott, whose style was more classical, continued to be impressed and influenced by Burns.
He wrote that Burns captured the essence of a thousand love stories in just a few of lines of his “Ae Fond Kiss”
“Had we never lov’d sae kindly,
Had we never lov’d sae blindly,
Never met - or never pairted,
We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”
Burns was fiercely patriotic. His father William Burness lost his livelihood as an estate gardener after the Scottish
uprising of 1745-46. With many Highland estates dispossessed, William Burns had to move south to Ayr, where
Robert Burns was born 13 years later. William Burness raised his sons to be proud of their country. Burns poem
“Bruce’s Address To His army At Bannockburn” has become a Scottish anthem.
“Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to Victorie!”
Burns patriotism and national pride, along with a sense of injustice at the hands of those Hanoverian rulers,
encouraged him to write:
“The injured Stuart line is gone,
A race outlandish fills the throne;
An idiot race, to honour lost;
Know them best despise them most.”
Did I say Burns was a spontaneous writer? He scratched these lines on a window in an inn in Stirling, where he was
having a drink and looking at the castle that had cradled the Stewart kings.
Burns could capture a truth in a few words. In that respect, he was like Benjamin Franklin of the same period.
He had a whimsical way of capturing the essence of an idea. Like Franklin, he usually hit the nail on the head.
Unlike Franklin, Burns’ “one-liners” were jewels embedded in wonderfully fluent poetry. Here are a few gems:
“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft agley”
“O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us, tae see oursel’s as ithers see us”
“Nae man can tether time or tide”
“There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.”
“But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed”
“ Liberty's in every blow! Let us do or die!”
“Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn!”
“And let us mind, faint heart ne'er wan a lady fair.”
"Suspense is worse than disappointment."
“Hope Springs Exulting on Triumphant Wing.”
“Morality, thou deadly bane, Thy tens o' thousands thou has slain!”
“While quacks of State must each produce his plan, And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention.”
Burns Role in Preserving the songs of his heritage - He loved old Scots traditions, classic legends and stories.
Many old Scots stories and poems were handed down by word of mouth - and were being lost as the old folk died.
Wherever he went, he tried to capture and record those legends, poems and songs. In addition to his original works,
many of those songs he “saved” were recorded in James Johnson’s “Scot’s Musical Museum”. While in Dumfries,
he also contributed to George Thomson’s “A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice”.
His method of composing songs required him first to learn to sing the tune of the song. He described it this way:
“I consider the poetic sentiment, then chuse my theme, begin one stanza, and when that is composed - which is
generally the most difficult part of the business - I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in nature
around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming
every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. When I feel my Muse beginning to jade, I retire to the
solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper, swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of
my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my pen goes.”
Burns style was spontaneous. Like Mozart, he just wrote it down. Once he had the thought, it just flowed.
He wrote the epic “Tam O’ Shanter” in one day, on the banks of the river Nith.
He composed his “Address To A Haggis”, which is recited at Burns dinners worldwide, on the spur of the moment.
In the Scottish enlightenment period (late 18th century) intellectuals would meet to discuss ideas - often over wine.
They would challenge each other to propose a toast on the spot. Burns challenge was to propose a toast a haggis
(that sausage a poor man might carry in his pocket for lunch). Burns was up to the challenge - and gave the first
address to a haggis at a party that evening in Edinburgh in 1786! A few days later, the friends he’d so impressed
encouraged him to put it down on paper.
Scotland has always valued literacy. It’s no accident so many great writers come from Scotland. It’s partly the
great education system, partly the love of language and the written word. Just look at the Declaration of Arbroath,
written in 1320! As the poorest country in Europe, Scotland had the highest literacy rate - 75% in the Middle Ages!
In the 1400s, Scotland had 3 universities! In 1496, about the time of Columbus, Scotland passed an Education Act
requiring compulsory education! Scottish writers you’ll find in the library include: J. M. Barrie (“Peter Pan”) Sir Walter Scott (“Ivanhoe” and “The Waverly Novels”) - Tobias George Smollett was founder of the modern novel
- Robert Louis Stevenson (“Treasure Island” and “Kidnapped” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”) - John Buchan
(“The Thirty-nine steps”) - Compton MacKenzie (“Whisky Galore”) - Alistair Maclean (“The Guns of Navarone”) and more recently, J. K. Rowling (“Harry Potter”). But above them all was Robert Burns, Scotland’s Bard.
In his short life, Burns wrote 559 poems along with many letters, and contributed 368 songs to various publications.
His works have inspired and influenced many writers. John Steinbeck’s famous “Of Mice And Men” was inspired
by Burns’ “To A Mouse”. Author J. D. Salinger used Burns' poem "Comin' Through the Rye" as his title and an
interpretation of his novel “The Catcher in the Rye”. When Bob Dylan was asked for the source of his greatest
creative inspiration, he selected Burns' song "A Red, Red Rose" as the lyric that had the biggest effect on his life.
The Scottish Diaspora - Scots have always been adventurers, soldiers, explorers, missionaries, and they’ve taken
their culture with them wherever they go - Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, India, China and Japan.
Today there are 5 million Scots in Scotland and maybe 40 million people of Scottish descent throughout the world!
While Burns was writing in Scotland, the Scottish diaspora had already started. Following Culloden, Scots were
moving to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US colonies. Nine of the thirteen original American colonies had
Scottish governors. The Burns tradition is particularly strong in New Zealand, where his nephew Thomas Burns was
a founding father of the town of Dunedin in the South Island.
Scots were Governors General of Canada, of Australia and of India. Scots played a major role in exploring and
developing Africa - and it was a Scot who developed modern Japan. Wherever Scots go, they take their heritage
with them - bannocks, bagpipes and Burns! So it’s no surprise Robert Burn’s birthday - January 25th - is celebrated
throughout the world - including here in Pittsburgh, with our Scottish history. General Forbes named Pittsburgh and
Andrew Carnegie developed it. Both were Scots from the same little town - Dunfermline - about the size of Altoona.
Burns celebrations began soon after his death - within a year or two, Ayrshire had annual memorial celebrations.
The first Burns Club was founded in Greenock in 1801, by merchants born in Ayr. They celebrated on January 29th
- but by 1803 they realized they’d misread the church records - he was born on January 25th!
Robert Burns is unlike any other poet in the world. His birth is celebrated everywhere. A few years ago, on January
25th, a haggis was cooked and piped in on top of Mount Kilimanjaro! It’s not for his efforts to populate the world
(although he does have more than 600 direct descendants), it’s for his wonderful poetry!
He truly was a poet for all mankind.