I like haggis; really I do. It is possible to have too much of a good thing though, that’s all I’m saying. With the Burns Supper season now drawing to a close, I’m looking forward to a more varied diet in weeks to come.
Never the less, the start of this year has been distinguished by an increased number of Burns quotations falling from the lips of politicians. I think it must be something to do with Alex Salmond and his plans to rip Scotland from the very heart of the United Kingdom.
Robert Burns was born in 1759 in the humblest of surroundings. He lived for only thirty seven years, but they were the most tumultuous of times and it is well worth taking the time to recall the state of the world into which he was born and in which he grew up.
Only 13 years had passed since the battle of Culloden, the last battle fought on British soil and one in which Scots fought bravely on both sides. Then, as now, the British Army recruited heavily in Scotland. The year of 1759 was right slap bang in the middle of the 7 years’ war, which Winston Churchill much later described as the ‘first real world war’, and which did not come to an end until 1763.
When Burns was 17, news came of the American Declaration of Independence, and by the time he was 30, the French Revolution was underway resulting in a series of conflicts with France that remained unresolved at the time of his death. So these were difficult times – full of trouble and suspicion. All through his life Burns observed conflict and instability, and whenever you live with these, you will live with a certain amount of fear, suspicion, danger and challenge.
Much of the uncertainty and challenge of those days was also reflected in the thinking and the philosophy of the time. Thomas Paine, with his Rights of Man, Rousseau, David Hume and Adam Smith and many others were all challenging the very basis of how society was ordered, and all of that was bound to have influenced the inquisitive mind of a young Robert as he sought answers to the questions that must have poured out from his fertile imagination.
Many of those questions of course had to be political, and, any writer of the day had to be wary of the political sensitivities that existed. Yet I am always fascinated by the fact that most shades of political groupings can and do claim Robert Burns as one of their own. I will not hesitate to join them.
A feminist might be drawn to ‘The rights of Women’: “Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention, The Rights of Woman merit some attention.”
A Socialist might look to ‘A Man’s a Man’: “Fer a that and a that, its comin yet fer a’ that, that man tae man the world o’er, shall brithers be fer a’ that.”
A Nationalist might quote ‘Scots wha hae’: “Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has often led, welcome to your gory bed – on to victorie. Wha for Scotland’s king and law, freedom’s sword will strongly draw. Free man stand or free man fa, let him follow me.”
William Wallace of course, had been dead for nearly five hundred years when Burns penned these lines and, some might suggest, they were written with a similar level of romantic licence to that demonstrated by Mel Gibson a few centuries later.
There was little romance to be spared in the latter years of the eighteenth century. Having at first been taken with the notion of the French Revolution, Burns quickly came to realise that what was going on across the channel posed a real threat to HIS country, Britain.
In April 1795, just over a year before his death, Robert Burns had been at a public meeting in Dumfries, where he was noticed to be significantly less joyous than usual. When he went home he wrote four verses and sent them, with his compliments, to Mr Jackson, editor of the Dumfries Journal.
Under the title, “Does haughty Gaul invasion threat”, also known as the address to the Dumfries Volunteers, he showed himself to be, in the cold light of reality, both a Unionist and a Euro-Sceptic. While the full text is available in all good book shops, as well as on the internet, these words appear in the second stanza.
Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted!