Robert Burns
Since it’s the birthday of our national bard, Robert Burns, I thought I’d do a wee post about this fascinating man and his legacy. Burns Night is celebrated on the 25th of January both in Scotland and by members of the Scottish diaspora around the world, and traditionally it involves eating some haggis, reciting some Burns poetry and general Scottish merriment (read: drinking). But Robert Burns himself died in 1796, so what made him such an enduring figure in Scottish culture that we still celebrate his birthday over 200 years later?
Robert Burns was born in Alloway in Ayrshire in 1759. He came from humble beginnings: his father William was a tenant farmer who had mostly educated himself, and Robert similarly had most of his schooling informally at home. He took over the family farm after his father died in 1784, but he never made a success of it. By 1786, in poor financial straits and embroiled in local scandal surrounding his love affairs, he was on the cusp of taking a job working on a slave plantation in Jamaica.
This has been discussed more as Scotland has begun trying to come to terms with its imperial past. Scots were intimately involved with the expansion and administration of the British Empire, and with the operation of sugar and tobacco plantations using the labour of enslaved African people. In fact, Scots were over-represented in many of the British colonies – around a third of the white population of Jamaica at this time were Scottish. Streets in our cities still bear the names of plantation owners and merchants who profited from slavery, and it’s only recently that these parts of our history – and Robert Burns’ story – have started to become part of the public discussion. This article takes a more in-depth look at this part of Burns’ life if you’d like to find out more.
Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, painted while Burns was in Edinburgh
In fact, Burns initially published his poetry to earn money for his passage to the West Indies. It was only when an Edinburgh poet wrote to him saying that his poetry was good and there was an appetite for more in the city that Burns abandoned his plans to go to Jamaica. Instead he rode to Edinburgh to publish a second edition of his poetry. He was received into the city’s burgeoning intellectual scene, admired by the learned people who attended Edinburgh’s salons, and earnt some good money from his poems.
He left Edinburgh again in 1788, heading southwest and taking out a lease on a farm in Dumfriesshire. He took up his relationship with Jean Armour – whom he had nearly married a couple of years back, and who had already given birth to his twin children – and the couple were formally married (and went on to have a total of nine children, although most didn’t survive infancy). Robert continued to write poetry and lyrics for traditional songs, including his masterpiece Tam O’Shanter in 1790 (see the video at the end for a reading by me and some colleagues!), and began working as an exciseman. Eventually he and Jean gave up the farm and moved to the town of Dumfries.
Jean Armour by John Alexander Gilfillan in 1822
Sadly, Robert died in 1796 at the age of just 37 and left Jean an impoverished widow. His early death has often been attributed to his love of a drink, but he had been ill for some years and historians now think he had some sort of chronic illness, perhaps rheumatic fever. By the end of his life, Burns had fallen out with many of his former friends over his increasingly radical political views, and some were keen to smear him as a man who had drunk himself to death. He did very much like a party and a drink, but it seems as if it wasn’t what killed him.
His death might have initially left Jean in poverty, but she outlived him by 34 years and got to see the success and admiration of his work worldwide. Something in his poetry spoke to people not just in Scotland, but everywhere. He wrote many a beautiful love poem (for if Rabbie Burns liked a drink, he liked a love affair even more!) and sweeping ode to nature, but he also wrote poems and lyrics that spoke of a coming, more equal, world that was barely out of the realm of imagination in Burns’ own lifetime. In the 18th century, democracy as we understand it did not exist. Almost no one could vote. No one had workers’ rights. A class system was rigidly enforced. Internationally, Britain was stealing people’s land all over the world – and stealing people from their land and selling them into slavery.
Despite Robert Burns’ apparent willingness to take a job on a plantation in 1786, by a few years later he was clearly involved with radical politics, including abolition (the slave trade would not be abolished in British law until 1807, and the system of slavery itself continued legally across the Empire until 1833). In 1792 he wrote The Slave’s Lament, which attempts to empathise with the plight of a person kidnapped from Senegal and enslaved in Virginia:
It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral,
For the lands of Virginia, - ginia, O:
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more;
And alas! I am weary, weary O:
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more;
And alas! I am weary, weary O
Other poems, like his famous A Man’s a Man for a’ That, speak to ideas of class equality:
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:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.
Burns had supported the French and American revolutions, as well as political reform at home. He held views that were considered extremely radical in his day – radical enough to break friendships and cause scandal. Perhaps this is one reason that his poetry and songs became so admired around the world: he wrote for the underdog. Although he sometimes moved in privileged circles, Burns himself was from a working-class life and sided with working folk. His poems speak to – and maybe even influence – Scotland’s view of itself as a country that fundamentally wants things to be fair (however often we might fall short of that goal).
Burns didn’t live to see slavery abolished, or the slow expansion of voting rights. He didn’t live to see the growth of a labour movement that secured workers’ rights in law. He didn’t live to see social welfare systems and the foundation of the National Health Service. But all of these advances feel like things Burns would have fought for, and his poetry was there to stand by people’s sides. All of these struggles were (and are) fought all over the world, not just in Scotland or in Britain, and Burns’ desire to stick up for ordinary people has made his poetry relevant everywhere.
So tonight, while you’re addressing your haggis and lifting a dram to Robert Burns, know that you’re amongst folk who’ve been inspired in some small way by Scotland’s national poet to make the world a better place.
For a reading of his narrative masterpiece Tam O’Shanter by me and some other Blue Badge Guides, check out the video below!
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