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Edited
by Frank R. Shaw, FSA Scot, Dawsonville, GA, USA
Email:
jurascot@earthlink.net
Here we go
again! What is it about some English people and would-be Scots who cannot
help shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to Robert Burns and
Scotland? Now comes the next in line, David Starkey, pronouncing Scotland as
a “feeble little nation” with “a romantic 19th-century style of
nationalism” and Burns as “a deeply boring provincial poet” and, for
whatever the reason, evidently does not like bagpipes either. What’s with
these people? What did Scotland, Robert Burns or the bagpipe ever do to
them? Seems this historian had ugly things to say about all three on BBC’s
“Famous Question Time”.
Let me digress
for a moment. I grew up in a small South Carolina town where you were looked
down on if you came from a certain part of town or if your dad did not own a
store, a business, was not a doctor or a lawyer, or your family did not have
money - make that old money. I know what it is like to live so close to a
railroad track that the only thing separating one corner of our house and
the track was a ditch. And, even though this was a spur track, you always
knew when the train came by. Since my father hauled wood with a mule and
wagon, and we were the only family in my grammar school classes not to own a
car, I am used to people who like say catty things, think they are better
than you, or who look down on you. Like I said, you always know when the
train or a condescending bully comes by.
And, as you can
see below, that is exactly what the good doctor is – a bully! Mom always
tried to teach my nine siblings and me to say only good things about people.
However, Mom never met Starkey! He tries to beat you up with words, not
fists. He gets off on putting you down with his intellect. He may know his
history, but he is rude. I had my share of run-ins with fisticuff bullies as
a boy and won about as many as I lost. As an adult, I’ve had my run-ins with
bullies like Starkey who want to assault you with words. I have found that
most of them, sooner or later, get around to opening their mouth only to
change their feet. Usually, as in this case, it is sooner.
Some say people
like Starkey should be ignored and go unchallenged since they have a right
to their opinion. I agree with the latter part, but I also have a right to
my own opinion. Robert Burns does not need me or anyone else to defend him
and neither does the Auld Country or the bagpipe, but letting those like
Starkey know my feelings makes me feel a lot better. It comes down to one of
those scenarios where you do it your way and I’ll do it my way.
But I get ahead
of myself and am happy to bring you a rebuttal to Dr. David Starkey by Clark
McGinn who has appeared in these pages before. The Scotsman
asked Clark to respond to the professor, and McGinn’s op-ed piece appeared
in the newspaper Monday, April 27, 2009. Welcome, Clark, you are welcome
anytime! (Check out this site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8016440.stm) (FRS: 5.10.09)
Starkey
Staring Mad
By Clark McGinn
Dr David
Starkey had made his name (and a good deal of money) by being the face of
the great English dynasty, the Tudors. So when on last week’s Question Time,
he railed against ‘that feeble nation’ Scotland, we should be grateful he
visited only insults on our heads, unlike his current TV subject Henry VIII
whose ‘rough wooing’ devastated the Borders centuries ago. Times change – no
longer does the chief man of England look to come North of the Border to
joust with the Leader of Scotland (or maybe seeing Brown vs. Salmond, maybe
it still does!) so I am relieved that Starkey’s fiery words will burn no
abbeys while his sharp tongue will fell no flowers in our forest.
There’s always
a gleeful irony hearing someone whose trade is in the precision of words
speak glibly and to watch an historian who tries to teach an understanding
of Henry VIII without the clichés resort to playground insult. Perhaps he
regrets the passing of the Tudor throne into Scottish hands, or carries some
Cumbrian border feud deep in his psyche, but calling Scotland a feeble
country? To reply to Macduff’s s question ‘Stands Scotland where it did?’ we
Scots, like all nations large and small have our challenges – the arc of
prosperity has been replaced by the lifeboat for our once proud banks – but
there’s a great deal of honest pride in our country and its people and the
growth of that consciousness over the last decade is far from feeble.
Just as I think
of Fat King Henry in cartoon terms of porcine greed for wives and chicken
legs (both carelessly tossed over his shoulder when done with), Dr Starkey
sees us as boorish Burnsian bagpipers, no doubt clinging for life on the top
of a craggy ben with nothing but a few yards of tartan round our blue
painted bums to keep the rain off. By that intellectual standard, all
England would be as polite as London cabbies, as gentle as Met policemen,
with the Sassenach populace enjoying warm beer as John Major cycles between
Morris dancers on his way to Evensong. You’d think that a Cambridge man
would be clever enough to come up with some new stereotype to bash us about
with. And for a Tudor historian to mock us using the word ‘feeble’ we should
cast back at him Good Queen Bess’s vaunted words – you may think us
‘feeble’ but it’s not your prejudices that define us – it’s the heart we
carry that makes our character.
Scotland is
wider and deeper that his imaginings (or his easy pot shots) – but that’s
not to say that we shouldn’t be proud of the facets he criticises.
What about the
bagpipes? Not everyone is Scotland is a fan (certainly many find the music
retreating into the distance as more enjoyable than standing up beside them)
so it’s an easy assault but they’re certainly hardly a ‘feeble’ image. In
the mopping up after Culloden the English judges (in a harsher judgement
than Starkey’s) famously ruled that the pipes were an instrument of war as
much as the broadsword (thus literally cutting short a few piping careers)
and we remember that thousands of brave men have offered their lives for
freedom while marching behind their piper. What of Pipers Findlater,
Laidlaw and Richardson each a VC winner, or the evocative music of the Royal
Scots Greys CD ‘Spirit of the Glen’ recorded while on service in Helmand?
Call that ‘feeble’ Dr Starkey?
And calling
Burns ‘provincial’ is about as intellectual as describing Wordsworth as the
PR man for the florists’ trade. Starkey believes that Burns is ‘boring’ –
everyone is entitled to an opinion – I suppose after decades of poring over
Tudor documents the vitality of Tam o’Shanter or the Jolly Beggars
leaves him cold, but it excites and stimulates many folk which is why these
‘boring’ poems have been continuously in print since July 1786. But who can
you define Burns as ‘provincial’ – how ill informed in his 250th
anniversary year when over nine million people joined in Burns Supper
celebrations from Dumfries, Galloway to Dumfries, Maryland; from
Kirkintilloch to Kolkata; from Edinburgh to Dunedin, from Ayr it seems to
eternity. I don’t want to sound like the triumphalist Scot who after the
opening night of the (now forgotten) tragedy ‘Douglas’ written by one
of our countrymen called out ‘an’ whaur’s yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?’ but
there is nothing ‘provincial’ in the way that the poetry of Robert Burns
reaches out to such a range of people of ages, colours, religions and
nationalities. Stand in Tokyo listening to the department stores playing
Auld Lang Syne to flag the end of the shopping day, or watch the Chinese
dragons dance to bagpipe music at Gung Haggis Fat Choy in Vancouver and tell
me that this was inspired by a boring provincial poetaster from Scotland.
Like
Shakespeare, Burns is the essence of his homeland but the property of the
world.
‘A King can mak
a belted knight’ said Burns and writing about a Tudor king can make you a
celebrity. But it obviously doesn’t open your mind. Now that, Dr Starkey, is
what I call feeble and provincial.
[Clark
McGinn writes on Scottish subjects and speaks across the world at Burns
Suppers. His latest book is ‘The Ultimate Guide to Being Scottish’ (Luath
Press £8.99) |
