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Edited by Frank R. Shaw, FSA Scot, Greater Atlanta, GA, USA
Email: jurascot@earthlink.net
I came across this article and thought it
would make a good contribution to this section of Frank's Robert Burns
Lives! as it takes us into the modern Scotland.
Alastair McIntyre
Professor Chris Whatley is a Scottish
historian who has worked at the Universities of Dundee and St Andrews.
Best known for his work on Scottish economic and social history, more
recently Chris has broadened his interests to include political and
cultural history. His most recent book is Immortal Memory: Burns and the
Scottish People (2016).
Professor Chris Whatley
Robert Burns: 'Man O' Independent Mind'
by Professor Chris Whatley
Across Scotland, as well as at numerous
venues elsewhere in the UK and around the globe as far distant as China,
Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns will this week be toasted at
thousands of dinners and suppers held in his name. Burns’s association
with Scotland, haggis, whisky and social congeniality is long-
established.
What though of the significance and meaningfulness today of this
Burns-inspired merriment?
In Scotland nationalists will claim him as their own, as the writer of
the stirring patriotic song best known as ‘Scots Wha Hae’, with its
evocation of ‘Freedom’s sword’ countering the ‘Chains and slaverie’
associated with England’s King Edward I. They will celebrate him too as
the Scottish poet who captured in verse – much of it written in the
Scots dialect – the essence of old Scotia. He will be saluted as the
articulator of values sometimes assumed to be intrinsically Scottish –
radical, democratic and humanitarian.
But the other main political parties along with interest groups,
community associations, masonic clubs, Burns and Rotary Clubs and many
more besides, will also join the festivities. One way or other, mainly
by judicious selection from his works (and in some cases much stretching
of credibility), speakers will demonstrate that Burns was one of them
too.
This is perfectly legitimate, and nothing new. From the time of his
death in Dumfries in 1796 the bones of Burns’ poetic legacy have been
fought over. The first bite was taken by the Tories, keen to promote
Burns’s poem ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night’, a paean of praise for the
humble lifestyle of the rural poor, their stoicism, and a model for
others of similar rank to abide by.
Alarmed at the prospect of revolutions of the kind that had rocked the
ancient regime in France and elsewhere on mainland Europe, Burns’s first
editors elided poems and sections of them that from an establishment
perspective were toxic in their assertion of human dignity regardless of
rank, title or wealth. They were unable however to hold back the tide
and by the middle of the nineteenth century Burns’s song, ‘Is There for
Honest Poverty’, better known as ‘A Man’s a Man’, had become a Radical
anthem. It is difficult for us nowadays to appreciate the impact for
labouring people, small shopkeepers and the like of lines such as ‘For
a’ that, an’ a’ that,/Our toils obscure, an’ a’ that,/The rank is but
the guinea’s stamp,/The man’s the gowd1 for a’ that.’ Burns gave to
people of this description a standing in the social order that even
fifty years earlier would have been unthinkable. It was his distaste for
monarchy, courts and governments that goes a long way in accounting for
the early and enduring popularity of this song – and Burns – in the
United States.
At home Burns was also adopted by the manufacturing and commercial
classes. He was heralded as an exemplar of how with hard work and the
grace of God (the ‘heaven taught ploughman’) success and fame could be
achieved. His proud independence further endeared him to Victorian
liberals with their dislike of the state and the corrupt politics of the
pre-democratic age. Heroic statues of Burns mushroomed not only in
Scotland but also in the British empire and dominions, designed to
convey just these messages. By the later Victorian era socialists had
joined the ranks of Burns admirers, leading the way for the communists
to commandeer Burns in the twentieth century.
About one matter however there was no contest. One of the most
extraordinary days in Scotland’s history was 25 January 1859, the
centenary of Burns’ birth. Unprecedentedly, in virtually every city,
town, village and hamlet work ceased and countless celebrations were
held. As ever there were disputes, mainly over what Burns should be
commemorated. However, as The Scotsman reminded its readers, the ‘chief
characteristic of Burns was his Nationality...he was utterly and
intensely, before and beyond everything, a Scotchman.’ Many believed
that Burns had rescued Scotland from oblivion – above all through his
work as a collector, adaptor and writer of Scottish song, the nation’s
genetic code.
Patriotic pride at this time was as intense as it has ever been. Yet for
most Scots this sat entirely comfortably with their acceptance of the
British Union. Burns himself could see some benefits in being British,
and not just because in his later years he was employed as an agent of
the British state as an exciseman. Nowhere did Burns call for an end to
the Union even if he was contemptuous of the ‘parcel of rogues’ who had
brought it about and could rage against Westminster’s disdain for the
country he loved with a passion. Yet as the Revolution in France turned
outwards, and the threat of an invasion of Britain mounted, Burns
disavowed his earlier Jacobinism, and joined the loyalists - although
with what degree of sincerity remains a matter of debate.
While Burns was authentically Scottish and nourished through his verse
and sentiments the Scots’ sense of distinctiveness as a nation, he was
never a narrow nationalist. The values he represented, and through his
verse espoused, transcended party, class and nationality. Above all –
and this goes a long way towards explaining his world-wide appeal, he is
a poet of humane-ness, who observed the failings of his fellow human
beings. For these, usually gently, often humorously, he chastised. He
rarely condemns.
Just over a century ago – in the decades that preceded the First World
War, as the nations of Europe became increasingly belligerent – Burns
was marshalled in the cause of world peace. For Dunfermline-born Andrew
Carnegie, the US steel and railroad baron, philanthropist and ardent
peace campaigner, Burns was nothing less than a prophet of global
harmony. Carnegie thought – hoped – that humankind, inspired by the
final stanza of Burns’s ‘A Man’s a Man’, with its stirring climax, ‘For
a’ that, and ‘a that,/It’s comin yet for a’ that,/’That man to man the
world o’er,/Shall brothers be for a’ that.’, would turn its back on war.
He was to be bitterly disappointed.
Even so, there is still merit in Burns’s vision of a world without
boundaries. Britain is deeply fissured over Brexit. Scotland is divided
over independence. In the campaigns to break with the respective unions
there is a xenophobic dimension, albeit at the margins. Much uglier
chauvinism is emerging in other parts of Europe where right wing
nationalist parties are gaining influence.
Farther afield, not least in the USA there are distressing signs that
outlooks are narrowing, with walls both material and virtual being
erected, whether over trade or to stem migrant flows.
Certain of the world’s political leaders (along with the rest of us)
could gainfully read on the anniversary of Burns’s birthday this 25th of
January just a single Burns poem, ‘To
a Louse’, and take a few moments to reflect on its content. The
final stanza reads:
O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!
This article came from
These Islands |
