“These English songs gravel me to death. I have not the command of the language that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more barren in English than in Scotch.” — Robert Burns, “the Ploughman Poet” of Scotland

robert-burns

“For my own part I never had the least thought or inclination of turning poet till I got once heartily in Love, and then Rhyme and Song were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my heart.” — Robert Burns

Robert Burns was born on this day in the middle of the 18th century. His family was a very poor farming family, and he had a lot of brothers and sisters. Yet his father decided that Robert, the eldest, should have a bit of an education. Just a bit, mind you. A tutor was hired, and Robert, in between farm chores and hard work, learned how to read and write. A whole world opened up to him through language. Writing came naturally to him. He started writing poems and songs almost immediately, some of which are still famous today (although “famous” doesn’t quite cover it). Robert Burns was a wild man who loved pleasure, loved fun, loved women. He had many illegitimate children. He eventually got married (to one of the women he knocked up).

Where did his writing bug come from?

When his poems (and songs – same difference) started being published, he became famous in Scotland. Very famous. He wrote in the voice of his countrymen/women, he wrote in their dialects, he wrote about THEM. It was a fresh vibrant voice, a truly local voice.

Like this. Pure chatty dialect. Look for one of his most famous lines embedded.

To a Mouse

Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave ‘S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss’t!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ wast,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald.
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward, tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

He was prolific. As it stands, there are over 400 Robert Burns known songs in existence. He was a celebrity in his own time. The fame he achieved in his own lifetime, however, is nothing compared to his posthumous fame.

Some of his verses are so engrained in our culture we can’t even imagine anyone wrote them at all. They seem to have just descended upon us, whole, from the heavens, the ether, Olympus. If you’re drunk on New Year’s Eve, gripping a bottle of champagne, and singing “Auld Lang Syne” at the top of your lungs, annoying people on the subway, you are quoting Robbie Burns.

He is perhaps most known for a simple little love lyric. “My Luve is Like a Red Red Rose” is so famous and anthologized that it exists in a cloud of canon-respectabiity. That’s all fine, but take a second to read it out loud: Robbie Burns should be read out loud. It’s still fresh, the emotion is on the page (and remember Burns’ words about where the poetry impulse came from). I love the poem for its simplicity, its openness, its unembarrassed joy.

My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose
O, my luve is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June.
O, my luve is like a melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi the sun!
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho it were ten thousand mile!


The glorious Medieval Babes’ version

Here’s another one. A fiery broadside, the overriding message: Women have the right to be respected and also, more importantly, they have the right to be left alone. This poem was recited by Louisa Fontanelle, an actress, at a benefit night in 1792.

The Rights of Woman

While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,
The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

First, in the Sexes’ intermix’d connection,
One sacred Right of Woman is, protection. –
The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,
Helpless, must fall before the blasts of Fate,
Sunk on the earth, defac’d its lovely form,
Unless your shelter ward th’ impending storm.

Our second Right-but needless here is caution,
To keep that right inviolate’s the fashion;
Each man of sense has it so full before him,
He’d die before he’d wrong it-’tis decorum. –
There was, indeed, in far less polish’d days,
A time, when rough rude man had naughty ways,
Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,
Nay even thus invade a Lady’s quiet.

Now, thank our stars! those Gothic times are fled;
Now, well-bred men-and you are all well-bred-
Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)
Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners.

For Right the third, our last, our best, our dearest,
That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest;
Which even the Rights of Kings, in low prostration,
Most humbly own-’tis dear, dear admiration!
In that blest sphere alone we live and move;
There taste that life of life-immortal love.
Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs;
‘Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares,
When awful Beauty joins with all her charms-
Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms?

But truce with kings, and truce with constitutions,
With bloody armaments and revolutions;
Let Majesty your first attention summon,
Ah! ca ira! The Majesty Of Woman!

Robert Burns died at the age 37. Over 10,000 people attended his funeral!

I suppose it would be highly appropriate to end this commemorative post with Robbie Burns’ own words, words we all know by heart:

Auld Lang Syne

For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne,
We’ll tak a cup of kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp,
And surely I’ll be mine,
And we’ll tak a cup o kindness yet,
For auld lang syne!

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine,
But we’ve wander’d monie a weary fit,
Sin auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn
Frae morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand my trusty fiere,
And gie’s a hand o thine,
And we’ll tak a right guid-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

QUOTES:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

Nature’s own beloved bard.

Edward Thomas:

It is as near to the music as nonsense could be, and yet it is perfect sense… Spirit and body are one in it – so sweet and free is the body and so well satisfied is the spirit to inhabit it… [The poems] seem almost always to be the immediate fruit of a definite and particular occasion.

Hugh MacDiarmid:

The highest flights of [Burns] – from any high European standard of poetry – may seem like the lamentable efforts of a hen at soaring; no great name in literature holds its place so completely from extra-literary causes as does that of Robert Burns.

Kenneth Buthlay, on the Scottish language, in an essay for the Dictionary of Literary Biography:

It fragmented into regional dialects and was subjected to social prejudices; its prose development was aborted; and its poetic revival in the eighteenth century, culminating in the work of Burns, was inevitably restricted in range.

Robert Lowell, letter to Elizabeth Bishop, July 2, 1948:

Read a good essay on Burns in an anthology of essays gotten together by F.R. Leavis. I guess he’s really quite first-rate, and I’ve followed fashion in ignoring him. It’s funny, because his rhymes and stanzas are technical fire-works just on the surface. Then so much experience or observation, I don’t know which, for I’ve never soaked in him and have trouble with Scots–more verbs I have to look up than a French poet.

Robert Burns:

I am groaning under the miseries of a diseased nervous System; a System of all others the most essential to our happiness–or the most productive of our Misery … Lord, what is Man! Today, in the luxuriance of health, exulting in the enjoyment of existence. In a few days, perhaps in a few hours, loaded with conscious painful being, counting the tardy pace of the lingering moments, by the repercussions of anguish, & refusing or denied a Comforter.– Day follows night, and night comes after day, only to curse him with life which gives him no pleasure.

Sounds very familiar, those cycles.

On Visiting the Tomb of Burns
By John Keats

The town, the churchyard, and the setting sun,
The clouds, the trees, the rounded hills all seem,
Though beautiful, cold — strange — as in a dream
I dreamed long ago, now new begun.
The short-liv’d, paly summer is but won
From winter’s ague for one hour’s gleam;
Through sapphire warm their stars do never beam:
All is cold Beauty; pain is never done.
For who has mind to relish, Minos-wise,
The real of Beauty, free from that dead hue
Sickly imagination and sick pride
Cast wan upon it? Burns! with honour due
I oft have honour’d thee. Great shadow, hide
Thy face; I sin against thy native skies.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, letter to Bridges, October 25, 1879:

In Burns there is generally recognized on the other hand a richness and beauty of manly character which lends worth to some of his smaller fragments, but there is a great want in his utterance; it is never really beautiful, he had no eye for pure beauty, he gets no nearer than the fresh picturesque expressed in fervent and flowing language (the most strictly beautiful lines of his that I remember are those in Tam o’ Shanter: ‘But pleasures are like poppies spread’ sqq. and those are not). Between a fineness of nature which wd. put him in the first rank of writers and a poverty of language which puts him in the lowest rank of poets, he takes to my mind, when all is balanced and cast up, about a middle place.

Making a pilgrimage to Robert Burns’ grave was a required rite of passage for poets, and probably still is. And, of course, being poets, they all wrote about the experience (see John Keats above). And here’s a part of Wordsworth’s much longer poem:

from “At the Grave of Burns”
By William Wordsworth
July 21, 1803, seven years after Burns’ death.

Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius “glinted” forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,
Doth glorify its humble birth
With matchless beams.

The piercing eye, the thoughtful brow,
The struggling heart, where be they now?—
Full soon the Aspirant of the plough,
The prompt, the brave,
Slept, with the obscurest, in the low
And silent grave.

I mourned with thousands, but as one
More deeply grieved, for He was gone
Whose light I hailed when first it shone,
And showed my youth
How Verse may build a princely throne
On humble truth.

Lord Byron:

What an antithetical mind!– tenderness, roughness — delicacy, coarseness– sentiment, sensuality– soaring and grovelling, dirt and deity — all mixed up in one compound of inspired clay!

Harold Bloom, Best Poems in the English Language, on “Jubilate Ago”:

Popular as he is (all over the world), Burns is a subtle ironist, who cultivates a mask of the natural man even as he writes poems of high sophistication.

John Keats:

One song of Burns is of more worth to you than all I could think of for a whole year in his native country. His Misery is a dead weight on the nimbleness of one’s quill … he talked with Bitches – he drank with blackguards, he was miserable. We can see horribly clear in the works of such a Man his whole life, as if we were God’s spies.

Sir Walter Scott:

The eye alone indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling and interest.

Thomas Carlyle, in his famous essay on Burns:

Granted the ship comes into harbour with shrouds and tackle damaged, the pilot is blameworthy … but to know how blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been round the globe or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs.

Basically he’s saying: Burns was an alcoholic, and his life could be seen as a sad – and even tragic – one. So he may have ended his life (“come into harbor”) a wreck, and of course he – the captain of the ship of his own life – is to blame. But how far the ship went is what matters. Carlyle is a twisty-turny writer who couldn’t “speak plain” if you paid him a million dollars. And for that I am grateful.

Matthew Arnold:

Wordsworth owed much to Burns, relying for effect solely on the weight and force of that which with entire fidelity he utters. Burns could show him.

Robert Burns on his melancholy:

…that most dreadful distemper…a confirmed melancholy; in this wretched state, the recollection of which makes me yet shudder, I hung my harp on the willow trees, except in some lucid intervals.

Ugh. Very well said.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, letter to Robert Bridges, August 14, 1879:

Burns loses prodigiously by translation. I have never however read them since my undergraduate days except the one quoted in Gosse’s paper, the beauty of which you must allow. I think the use of dialect a sort of unfair play, giving, as you say, “a peculiar but shortlived charm,” setting off for instance a Scotch or Lancashire joke which in standard English comes to nothing. But its lawful charm and use I take to be this, that it sort of guarantees the spontaneousness of the thought and puts you in the position to appraise it on its merits as coming from nature and not books and education. It heightens one’s admiration for a phrase just as in architecture it heightens one’s admiration of a design to know that it is old work, not new: in itself the design is the same but as taken together with the designer and his merit this circumstance makes a world of difference.

Matthew Arnold:

Of life and the world, as they came before him, his view is large, free, shrewd, benignant – truly poetic, therefore; and his manner of rendering what he sees is to match.

Robert Burns:

The fates and character of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts when I am disposed to be melancholy. There is not, among all the martyrologies that ever were penned, so rueful a narrative as the lives of the poets.

Elizabeth Bishop, letter to Robert Lowell, May 30, 1948:

Oh–Marianne [Moore] has a very nice, old-fashioned steel-engraving of Burns in the front hall. I admired it; said I hoped sometime to write something about him, & didn’t he look nice. She replied, “But he couldn’t have looked that nice, really, of course.”

Matthew Arnold on Burns’ “The Jolly Beggars”:

The piece is a superb poetic success. It has a breadth, truth, and power which are only matched by Shakespeare and Aristophanes.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, letter to Bridges, August 14, 1879:

Now Burns loses prodigiously by trnaslation. I have never however read them since my undergraduate days except the one quoted in Gosse’s paper, the beauty of which you must allow. I think the use of dialect a sort of unfair play, giving as you say, ‘a peculiar but shortlived charm,’ setting off for instance a Scotch or Lancashire joke which in standard English comes to nothing. But its lawful charm and use I take to be this, that it sort of guarantees the spontaneousness of the thought and puts you in the position to appraise it on its merits as coming from nature and not books and education. It heightens one’s admiration for a phrase just as in architecture it heightens one’s admiration of a design to know that it is old work, not new: in itself the design is the same but as taken together with the designer and his merit this circumstance makes a world of difference. Now the use of dialect to a man like Burns is to tie him down to the things that he or another Dorset man has said or might say, which though it narrows his field heightens his effects. His poems use to charm me also by their Westcountry ‘instress’, a most peculiar product of England, which I associate with airs like Weeping Winefred, Polly Oliver, or Poor Mary Ann, with Herrick and Herbert, with the Worcestershire, Herefordshire, and Welsh landscape, and above all with the smell of oxeyes and applelofts: this instress is helped by particular rhythms and these Barnes employs; as I remember, in ‘Linden Ore’ and a thing with a refrain like ‘Alive in the Spring.’

Robert Burns:

Here I sit, altogether Novemberish, a damn’d melange of Fretfulness & melancholy, not enough of the one to rouse me to passion; nor of the other to repose me in torpor; my soul flouncing & fluttering round her tenement, like a wild Finch caught amid the horrors of winter newly thrust into a cage.

Sorry to end on such a melancholy note, especially since he – as a poet – was so gifted at expressing joy and pleasure. But it’s worth remembering that the highs are made possible by the lows. And, unfortunately, vice versa.

 
 
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10 Responses to “These English songs gravel me to death. I have not the command of the language that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more barren in English than in Scotch.” — Robert Burns, “the Ploughman Poet” of Scotland

  1. Ha! As a fellow Scotsman, (albeit one whose people had the good sense to get to America a few centuries back!) I remember feeling exceedingly proud when I learned that “the best laid plans, etc” had come not from Shakespeare or the Bible but from one of our own. We don’t get to brag as much as you Irish (except when it comes to philosophers and preachers) but Happy Birthday indeed!

    • sheila says:

      NJ – Ha!!

      Yes – it’s amazing how much he has written that has passed into common everyday usage. Best laid plans, yes!!

      I love what a big deal he is to Scots. I love that kind of national pride in an artist.

  2. Jessie says:

    This is a great post — yes, so much of his writing is just “in” the language now. While I am not so familiar with Burns AS Burns, his impact on folk music is huge (NJ, he was actually very popular in Ulster apparently (not too far over the sea!) and a lot of Irish folk musos make his stuff their own!) and I grew up listening to his sharp and damning nationalist verses in Parcel of Rogues — and then there’s the country poetry you get in stuff like Now Westlin Winds — Scots and Scots-English is just so gorgeous and evocative (and can cut like a knife)!

    • sheila says:

      Oh, Now Westlin Winds … Heart-crack.

      And yes: the fact that folk singers in the 1960s were inspired by Robert Burns … I mean, it blows the mind. Who else has that kind of staying power?

      Even Shakespeare’s various beautiful song-lyrics from his plays don’t have the eternal quality of Burns’ stuff.

      Irish/Scots-Irish/Scots-English/Celtic/Gaelic – and all the rest of those hybrids oppressed by British rule: Oppression can create very fertile ground – James Joyce’s entire “thing” was trying to re-find his way back to the original Irish language/sensibility – after it had been stomped out by the British. Or the work of Derek Walcott, too. Or Seamus Heaney!

      Not that oppression is good. But it has its uses.

      I have never gone to one of those Robert Burns Happy Birthday celebrations with its well-known rituals involving haggis and kilts and … bagpipes? I’m not sure – but I’ve always wanted to. The Bloomsday celebration I attend every year has a similar ridiculous sentimental-yet-totally-ribald atmosphere. The Joycean academics who show up often don’t quite know how to participate in the Guinness-swinging group-singing. They’re once removed somehow.

      I imagine the same is true for Burns … although I’m not familiar with academic studies of the guy – and his impact on language as a whole.

      • Jessie says:

        I LOVE the picture you draw of all those Joycean academics not really knowing how to Joyce!

        No doubt the fact that he wrote in Scots kept much of his verse alive and everyday, allowed it to slip into “Traditional.” Language is so important — a tool, as you indicate, of resistance and control. I find it so hilarious and, I don’t know, natural that during George I’s reign there were like these platinum-selling singles about Geordie Whelps riding a goosie (aka George I and his mistress boning). So cool.

        • sheila says:

          // there were like these platinum-selling singles about Geordie Whelps riding a goosie (aka George I and his mistress boning) //

          Okay, I did not know that, and it is hilarious.

  3. wozyhamish says:

    for a’that an’ a’ that,
    It’s coming yet for a’ that,
    That man to man, the world o’re,
    Shall brothers be for a’ that.

  4. Desirae says:

    Every time I see someone tweeting in Scots I think of Robbie Burns and I don’t mean that facetiously. He played a huge part in the recognition of its relevance not just as a spoken dialect but a written one.

    • sheila says:

      It really is amazing – he forged new ground. Speak in your own tongue. There’s poetry everywhere (if you’re a genius, that is).

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