Robert Burns and Walter Scott
comprise the heart of a creative article I
recently received from Gerry Carruthers. The “chat” article is thought
provoking and will raise your awareness of Scotland’s two greatest
writers. I have requested additional information on the subject of this
article which, when received, will be added to these pages. In the
meantime, enjoy this rare piece of writing about Burns and Scott.
This is exciting reading for me. I
was a Scott enthusiast long before I became deeply involved with Burns.
I have written and spoken about the two “side by side” from their births
until their deaths. I look forward to the works being published by the
various parties involved in this study.
In addition, you will have the opportunity to
purchase a new book on Burns entitled
Robert Burns, The Fornicator’s Court.
Please see the information at the end of this article. (FRS: 12.10.09)
Robert Burns,
The Fornicators Court
a limited edition publication for 2009 published
by the Abbotsford Library Project Trust and the Faculty of Advocates,
Edinburgh
An interview with editors, Gerry Carruthers (GC) & Pauline Gray (PG),
Honorary Librarian at Abbotsford, Professor Douglas Gifford (DG) and
Senior Librarian, Faculty of Advocates, Andrea Longson (AL).
What is the background to Burns’s
poem, ‘The Fornicators Court?’
PG: ‘The Fornicators
Court’ is believed to have been written in 1786, although it was never
published in Robert Burns’s lifetime. The only dated version of the poem
is included in the Hastie Manuscript (held by the British Library) and
is dated 4 June 1786. This is also the only version in Burns’s hand that
bears a title. The title that Burns employs is ‘Libel Summons’, but the
poem has since been published under the titles ‘The Court of Equity’ and
‘The Fornicators Court’.
Burns uses ecclesiastical and legal language for parodic effect. The
poem imagines an official club of virile young men meeting to discuss
their conquests and with the presiding idea that none of these young
bucks should be shy about their exertions. It imagines punishment for
those who try and hide their illicit sexual unions. ‘The Fornicators
Court’ is a poem that cheekily vaunts the pleasures of the flesh
Burns’s poem is clearly informed by
experiences, perhaps his own and perhaps those of others, of the
eighteenth century Kirk and its chastisement of sex out with marriage.
By June 1786, Burns had fathered an illegitimate child with Elizabeth
Paton (‘Dear bought Bess’ born on the 22nd
May 1785), and also impregnated Jean Armour who would eventually give
birth to twins on the 3rd
of September. The session records for Tarbolton parish for the time of
Burns’s residence there are unfortunately no longer extant. So although
it is likely, there is no concrete evidence that Burns and Elizabeth
Paton were publicly disciplined for fornication. However, it is recorded
that in July and August of 1786 Burns and Jean Armour were publicly
rebuked on three consecutive Sundays at Mauchline parish. It may well be
then that ‘The Fornicators Court’ can be read as among his most joyously
defiant texts.
What about this particular version and what is Scott’s connection?
GC: Scott’s copy is
one of only ten of a book printing that would have been illegal until
well into the twentieth century, in fact only really publishable as
literature after the Lady Chatterley’s
Lover Court case in the late
nineteen-fifties. So Scott’s copy is from a “privately printed” rather
than a “published” text.
Scott’s possession of ‘The Fornicators Court’ in book form demonstrates
an increasingly clearer picture of his tastes. He was a man more open to
diverse kinds of expression than is sometimes thought. We see this
diversity in his huge collection of broadsides, chapbooks and ballads;
in other words, what we would call today “popular culture” to which ‘The
Fornicators Court’, to some extent, might be seen to belong.
Some people will not naturally see a connection between Robert Burns and
Walter Scott?
DG: At first sight
there would seem to be little common ground between Burns and Scott,
other than that of nationality and literature in general. Yet in another
light, one which casts itself over Scotland entire, and they can be seen
as opposite ends of the spectrum of Scottish history and culture. Burns
identifies with Ayrshire, its people, its landscape, its creatures, farm
and wild. With his astonishing humanity he moves out from his native
territory to engage through passion and devastating satire with
political and religious issues of Britain and the world – and in a sense
this is the mirror image of Scott, identified so strongly with his
beloved Edinburgh and Borders, but seen through the Waverley novels as
very much the Man of the World, engaging with the wars of the Crusades,
France, and indeed all Europe. His bringing of George IV to Edinburgh in
1822 can in the light be seen as an attempt to forgive the past, by
bringing a British monarch back to the country which monarchy had failed
to visit for well over a hundred years. His motives were mixed, but
understandable – and we remember that Burns could contradict his image
so often also – as when he attacks the idea of ordinary people choosing
their own ministers in ‘The Ordination’ as giving the brutes the power
to elect their herd, or when in danger of losing his excise job he
alters his tone to that of Establishment supporter in ‘Does Haughty Gaul
Invasion threat’. So often we forget the complexities of Burns for
convenient mythology like that of ‘The Heaven-Taught Ploughman’, when
Burns and his brother had in reality a private tutor who went on to
teach in Ayr academy. Burns had in a sense to unlearn his polite English
education to rediscover his native Scots traditions.
In the end both writers were of their confused and
difficult times, and very different West – East, rural – urban
backgrounds. Yet both deeply valued the traditions and continuity of
Scottish culture – Burns as pioneer collector for Johnson’s
Musical Museum, Scott
as collector of The Minstrelsy of The
Scottish Borders, arguably our two greatest
song collections. It is time to strip away so much of cliché and
misrepresentation of both these writers so that their different, yet
complementary achievements can be clearly seen.
Tell us about the Abbotsford Library Project.
DG: To
claim that Walter Scott’s huge Library at Abbotsford may be the
outstanding library in the world of an individual author is bold – but
valid. Add the location for the Library, the magnificent mock-baronial
‘Conundrum Castle’, with its priceless artefacts (paintings, armour,
historical memorabilia) which Scott created and collected as the heart
of his dream to be a Border Laird, and the claim becomes even more
tenable. Abbotsford Library is certainly extremely rare, and probably
unique, in being the personal library of such a well known figure yet
still intact and in situ
and arranged exactly as it was when he was alive. And since the Library
has never been open to casual research, since it is first and foremost a
conservation Library, being available for external viewing only as part
of a more general ‘big house’ experience, its riches are now being
re-discovered.
This is
where The Abbotsford library Project, a recent joint venture between The
Advocates library and the universities of Glasgow, Aberdeen and
Edinburgh, came in some 12 years ago. When Scott died in 1832 his
estate, the Library and the Collections passed to his son, Major Sir
Walter Scott. In 1839 Major Scott executed an Entail of the Heritage and
a Trust Assignation of the Library and various Collection items.
Residuary Trustees were the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates in
Edinburgh and his Council; in the event of the Entail coming to an end,
the books and articles were to vest in the Dean and Faculty. The Entail
was broken just after the death of Major-General Sir Maxwell-Scott in
1954, and Scott’s Library, virtually as he had left it, came into the
care of The Faculty of Advocates.
The
Project aims to make the Library and information about it more
accessible to scholars and students. The 1837 catalogue, while useful
and extensive, is rare, and badly in need of updating. With the support
of The Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh (who have inherited the
custodianship of the Library collection), a new on-line Catalogue is
presently being undertaken by Lindsay Levy and her team. Already,
several research discoveries of international importance indicate that
the Project will make major contribution to literary research nationally
and internationally. The Project has already published the two last
substantial unpublished Scott manuscripts, the
Reliquiae Trotcosienses
and Sylva Abbotfordiensis,
and is now making a database of the most important of Scott’s own
manuscript annotations to his books, with the intention of reducing
physical consultation of what is essentially a conservation library.
The
library is far more than a reference collection of the history and folk
lore Scott used as subject matter in his novels. There are officially
9000 volumes in Scott’s library, but from a cataloguing perspective this
number is meaningless as so many volumes contain multiple items. His
collection is so broad that it is almost easier to list the subject
areas Scott did not cover rather than those that he did – for example,
one of the small shelves which surround the lintels of the door contains
only 3 books - the works of Confucius, with original Chinese text; an
illustrated account of the fish of the Ganges; and a dissertation on ear
wax!
What makes
this library special is, of course, the fact that, having been preserved
exactly as it was in Scott’s day, down to its curious classifications
systems and its homely wooden cases, it contributes enormously to
Abbotsford’s evocation of a sense of being in Scott’s own time, with
Scott the nostalgic, trying to recreate the library of tales he
remembered reading as a child, or searching for one particular item for
over 10 years. Scott’s presence fills Abbotsford, even in matters such
as his frequent and fascinating annotations to his books.
Many treasures
have been uncovered, including a long lost 15th
century Middle English manuscript (described as ‘the most important find
in medieval studies since the 1930s’), the visually spectacular examples
of early printing from Holland, with a 15th
century history of the world from Adam and Eve to 1474 with hand
coloured woodcuts (recycled!). There are the poems and songs described
above, handwritten by Burns, a copy of Tam o’ Shanter sent to Scott, and
annotated by Burns, and innumerable rare tracts and pamphlets from the
time of the Jacobites and Covenanters.
Examples of Scott’s own manuscripts are to be found in the library in
the Reliquiae Trotcosienses
and Sylva Abbotsfordiensis,
lengthy manuscripts on the making of the library and the estates and
woods of Abbotsford, both of which have now been published for the first
time by The Library Project. Unpublished as yet are Scott’s translations
of two German dramas, his notebooks of collected mythology and ballads,
and his charming Commonplace Book, containing some translations,
cartoons and newspaper cuttings – and countless other materials which
library research will uncover.
And in another
area which shows how Scott enthusiastically shares with Burns a deep
interest in the cultures of ordinary people, Scott’s Library has one of
the largest known collections of tracts, broadsheets and chapbooks,
popular publications on sensational subjects that were sold door to door
in the 19th
century. Add Scott’s unique collection of writings and pamphlets on folk
tradition and the supernatural, and preliminary assessment suggest that
once research has fully explored his library we will have to reconsider
Scott as a pioneer in his interest and collection of popular culture –
yet another example of how we need to completely revalue his unmatched
contribution to and enduring influence on Scotland.
Abbotsford
and the Future
AL:
There are broadly three lines of
development, working in tandem, for Abbotsford and its Library. The
first is the obvious and major development of the house and grounds as a
heritage site and outstanding visitor location. This is the business of
the current Abbotsford Trust, based in Abbotsford itself, and made up of
representative interests including The Faculty of Advocates. Jacquie
Wright is Chief Executive, and the trustees have been successful in
gaining lottery approval to complete their substantial bid for lottery
funding to re-develop the house with a new visitor centre, so that
visitors will be able to appreciate much more the wealth of Abbotsford’s
contents, and to find out so much more through seminars and school
visits. Abbotsford is a huge building, and there are exciting
possibilities for exhibition and activities, not just of Scott’s legacy,
but using Abbotsford as a centre for Border and Scottish culture
generally, with the great Scottish Border Ballads and writers like James
Hogg featuring, as well as regular visitors from The Lake School of
Poets, such as Wordsworth and Southey. Exhibitions on Scott and his
place in Scottish culture and history, Scott, Europe, and America,
Scott’s Contemporaries – all these make
fascinating stories, since hardly a nation in the nineteenth century was
unaffected in its politics, its literature, its art and music (there are
over seventy-five international operas on Scott’s novels).
And an intriguing last pairing, which would draw out the remarkable
contrasts between them, both as men and writers -
Scott and Burns –
could explore the issues which are raised here all too briefly, as to
the very genuine bonds between these two greatest of Scottish writers.
The University of Glasgow has established its Centre for Burns Studies,
which is set to become the world leader in its area; a team of its
academics have also pioneered work on the Library over the last decade
as part of the Faculty of Advocates Executive Committee for the Library
Project, and would enthusiastically collaborate here. The future is
exciting!
How can a copy of this new publication be obtained?
Each copy, individually numbered, of Robert Burns,
The Fornicators Court
introduced by Gerard Carruthers & Pauline Gray
(ISBN 978-0-9561291-0-9) can be obtained from:
Andrea
Longson
Senior Librarian
Advocates Library
Parliament House
Edinburgh
EH1 1RF
Email:
libraryadmin@advocates.org.uk
Tel: 0131 260
5637
Cheques
should be made payable to: Abbotsford Library Project
Price:
United Kingdom £20 + £1.50
P&P
Euro €25 + £3.00 or €4 P&P
United States $30 + £6.00 or $9 P&P
Canada $40 + £6.00 or $12 P&P
Australia $45 + £6.00 or $15 P&P
