Note on the Author and Editor

ROBERT BURNS (1759–96) was the eldest son of an unsuccessful tenant farmer in Ayrshire. Growing up to a life of demanding physical work, poverty and awareness of social disadvantage, he began to write poetry in an attempt to find ‘some kind of counterpoise’ to these harsh realities. By his mid twenties, he was an accomplished poet and song-writer, especially in his native Scots. In the summer of 1786, when he was on the point of giving up farming in Scotland and emigrating to the West Indies essentially because of a broken love affair with a local girl, Burns published his first collection of poems, printed in the county town of Kilmarnock. Poems, Chiefly In The Scottish Dialect met with such acclaim in Ayrshire and among West of Scotland people in Edinburgh that he changed all his plans, and travelled to the capital, where he was welcomed by a number of leading literary figures.

Among those who saluted the new arrival was Henry Mackenzie, whose sentimental novel The Man of Feeling Burns intensely admired. Mackenzie praised the ‘power of genius’ of ‘this Heaven- taught ploughman’ in an influential essay in his periodical The Lounger, and helped Burns arrange publication of an expanded edition of his Poems in the spring of 1787.

When Burns received part of the money which the new edition earned for him, he made a number of tours, to the Borders and to the Highlands. Otherwise, apart from a return visit to Ayrshire, he was to spend the winter of 1787–8 in Edinburgh also. Later, he lived in Dumfriesshire and became an Excise Officer.

Burns’s literary work in the remaining years of his life consists of many outstanding songs, and the poem ‘Tam o’ Shanter’.

DONALD A. LOW is Professor of English Studies at the University of Stirling. His publications on Burns include Poems In Scots And English (Everyman Paperbacks, 1993) and The Songs of Robert Burns (Routledge, 1993). He studied at St Andrews and Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Chronology of Burns’s Life

Year
Life

1759
Born at Alloway, near Ayr, 25 January, first child of Agnes and William Burns, tenant farmer

1765
Taught, with his brother Gilbert, by John Murdoch, hired as their instructor by William Burns and a group of neighbours

1766
Father begins to farm Mount Oliphant, a 70-acre farm near Alloway

1768
Father continues his sons’ education himself when Murdoch leaves for a teaching appointment in Dumfries. Agnes Burns shares with Robert many songs and stories, which include legends of the supernatural

1772
Robert and Gilbert go to school in Dalrymple, four miles from Ayr

1773
Murdoch returns to teach English in Ayr. Burns studies French, English Grammar, Latin

1774
Writes his first song at harvest-time to impress a pretty girl called Nelly

1777
Family move to Lochlie, a 130-acre farm near the village of Tarbolton, where Burns attends a dancing class ‘to give my manners a brush’

1780
With six friends forms The Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club, a debating society which meets once a month

1781
Goes to Irvine to learn flax-making. He is inducted as a mason into St David’s Lodge, no. 174, Tarbolton

1782
Returns to Lochlie when the flax shop is burned to the ground owing to ‘the drunken carelessness of my Partner’s wife’

1783
Begins his first Commonplace Book. He and Gilbert secretly arrange to lease Mossgiel, a farm of 118 acres, near the village of Mauchline, to help the family’s economic circumstances and their dying father

1784
Death of William Burns in February. The next month the family move into Mossgiel

1785
Meets Jean Armour at a Mauchline dance. He begins to ‘puzzle Calvinism with heat and indiscretion’ and writes much poetry. 22 May, birth of Elizabeth, his daughter by Elizabeth Paton

1786
Relationships under much stress. April, proposals for Poems, Chiefly In The Scottish Dialect published; book itself is published at Kilmarnock on 31 July in an edition of 600 copies at a price of 3s.

1787
April, first Edinburgh edition of Poems. When he receives part of the money which the new edition earns for him, he makes a number of tours, to the Borders and repeatedly to the Highlands. Begins to contribute songs to James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum (1787–1803), virtually as the song collection’s literary editor. Meets Mrs Agnes McLehose (‘Clarinda’). 20 October, first London edition of Poems

1787–8
Much of this winter spent in Edinburgh

1788
Accepts Jean Armour as his wife (‘and so farewell Rakery!’), leases the farm of Ellisland, near Dumfries, and is commissioned as an Exciseman. From now on, writes more songs than poems

1789
Begins work in the Excise at a salary of £50 per annum

1790
Writes ‘Tam o’ Shanter’

1791
Gives up Ellisland in favour of full-time Excise work and moves to Dumfries. On a visit to Edinburgh, says farewell to Clarinda

1792
Asked to contribute songs to George Thomson’s A Select Collection of Scottish Airs (1793–1818)

1793
Second Edinburgh edition of Poems and first set of Thomson’s Select Collection

1794
Appointed Acting Supervisor of Excise

1795
Joins in organizing Dumfries Volunteers. Severely ill with rheumatic fever

1796
21 July, dies at Dumfries

Chronology of his Times

Year
Artistic Context
Historical Events

1759
Voltaire, Candide Haydn, First Symphony Johnson, ‘Rasselas’
British Museum opens

1760
Macpherson, Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Collected in The Highlands of Scotland
Death of George II; succeeded by George III, his grandson

1764
Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

1765
Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry

1766
Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield

1769

Birth of Napoleon Bonaparte

1769-70

James Cook’s first voyage round the world; east coast of Australia discovered

1770
Goldsmith, ‘The Deserted Village’
First public restaurant opens in Paris

1773

Boston Tea Party: American protest against tea duty

1774
Goethe, Sorrows of Werther
First Congress of the 13 Colonies, except Georgia, meets at Philadelphia; Quebec Act establishes rights of French Canadians

1776
Smith, Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
American Declaration of Independence

1778
Sheridan, The School for Scandal

1781
Rousseau, Confessions Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

1783

England recognizes USA; first aerial voyages, by hot-air and hydrogen balloons, invented by the Montgolfier brothers and S. A. C. Charles

1784

Vincent Lunardi, first balloon flight over England

1787
Mozart, Don Giovanni

1788

Death of Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’)

1789
Blake, Songs of Innocence
Fall of the Bastille: French Revolution; George Washington becomes President of USA

1790
Paine, The Rights of Man
Burke, Reflections on the French Revolution

1791
Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
First ten amendments to USA Constitution;Washington, DC founded

1792

French Republic established

1793

First Coalition against France; France declares war on Britain

1794
Blake, Songs of Experience
Beginning of friendship between Goethe and Schiller

1795

Speenhamland Act (Poor Law) wages supplemented by doles

1798
Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads

Introduction

What kind of poet is Burns and what is special about him? It would no doubt be possible to repeat claims made in the past about ‘Scotland’s National Bard’ but, in the final years of the twentieth century, it is time to focus on the essential qualities of Robert Burns the writer which endure and to set aside dated notions from two hundred years ago which are now merely history.

Biographical issues have their own interest, but are secondary to his literary art. Yes, Burns had a reputation as a lover of women and as someone who liked whisky; but above all he was an exceptionally gifted poet and songwriter, one who shares with the reader honesty and humour as primary values. Scandal and sexual notoriety were present in Burns’s life, but it is his poetic art which lives on and gives his work its power. In a sense, Burns resembles the great twentieth-century painter Pablo Picasso. Neither was free from human error, but despite weaknesses the creative work of each deserves to survive. Each celebrated natural creation and enjoyed experimentation – Burns in verse form and song, Picasso in collage, ceramics and sculpture as well as painting. Irony exists in Burns’s love of the fiddle and in Picasso’s early paintings of the guitar. Picasso commented in 1949:

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

For Burns likewise, the creation of a day’s poem or song mattered like breath. Life was hard as a tenant farmer and while the writing of poetry might not succeed in bringing about a change in his personal circumstances, it was a congenial form of activity in its own right and one which gave him an outlet for his ideas to set against the drudgery of working on the land. Burns the writer is versatile, and his poetry shows that he chooses to vary his style according to the context. It is clear that, above all, Burns rhymed for his own pleasure and for fun. He explains in his epistle ‘To J. S****’:

Some rhyme a neebor’s name to lash;
Some rhyme, (vain thought!) for needfu’ cash;
Some rhyme to court the countra clash,
   An’ raise a din;
For me, an aim I never fash;
   I rhyme for fun.

More formally than in the verses to James Smith, in his Preface to Poems, Chiefly In The Scottish Dialect published at Kilmarnock in 1786, Burns gives his reasons for writing:

To amuse himself with the little creations of his own fancy, amid the toils and fatigues of a laborious life; to transcribe the various feelings, the loves, the griefs, the hopes, the fears, in his own breast; to find some kind of counterpoise to the struggles of a world, always an alien scene, a task uncouth to the poetical mind; these were his motives for courting the Muses, and in these he found Poetry to be its own reward.

Not only does Burns write for self amusement and ‘to find some kind of counterpoise’ he also writes out of a need for self-expression. His emphasis on emotion and sentiment, especially in song, anticipates Romantic literary practice, but he belongs to a mainstream eighteenth-century tradition in his devotion to accurate recording of what he sees. An example of this attention to detail comes not only in Burns’s ability to give a sense of the physical world but also in his clear-sighted observations of himself, of his friends and enemies and of the surrounding environment. An early love song in this selection, ‘Now westlin winds and slaught’ring guns’ combines outrage at the cruelty of the ‘slaught’ring guns’ directed against game birds with the love of a man for a woman. Burns was definitely not of his generation in his opposition to blood sports. Man’s abuse of power over nature’s creatures matters to him as it does to the present generation. His distress at the accidental destruction of the mouse’s home in ‘To A Mouse’ is real. In displacing the mouse he has broken the fragile bond of ‘nature’s social union’.

Two hundred years after Burns’s death he is still as topical as ever in his approach to the environment. He loved Nature and the unspoilt, wild places he saw on his tours of Scotland. Burns wrote of them in such poems as ‘Castle Gordon’:

Wildly here without control
Nature reigns and rules the whole
In that sober, pensive mood
Dearest to the feeling soul
She plants the forest, pours the flood

Burns loved running water. Consider, for instance, the song ‘Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes’, about which he comments:

There is a small river, Afton, that falls into Nith, near New Cumnock, which has some charming, wild, romantic scenery on its banks. – I have a particular pleasure in those little pieces of poetry such as our Scots songs, &c. where the names and landskip features of rivers, lakes, or woodlands, that one knows, are introduced. I attempted a compliment of that kind, to Afton as follows.

Similarly, he is inspired to create ‘Bonie lassie, will ye go, will ye go, will ye go?’ under the birks or birches of Aberfeldy, at or near Moness, in Perthshire. Best known of all, probably, is his way of referring in his songs to the river he knew first in childhood, the Doon. In contrast, he refers to the sea less often than might seem likely today, considering its relative nearness to places in Ayrshire where he lived, beginning with Alloway. This has to do with the fact that the sea was not yet thought of by someone of Burns’s social background in terms of attractive views or holidays. Despite this, Burns finds words which refer to the ocean, swearing loyalty in love for instance ‘Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear’.

Burns is the outstanding song-writing poet of the western world. Song-writing was his lifelong pursuit and passion. Such popular love-songs as ‘O, My love’s like a red, red rose’ ensure that his fame extends far beyond his native Scotland. ‘A man’s a man for a’ that’ boldly expresses global democratic ideals, while the Olympic Games and New Year remind us that ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is accepted universally as a song in celebration of friendship. Such individual songs belong to a total of 373 songs, an unsurpassed achievement. The chronological arrangement of the songs offers indisputable evidence of the range and quality of Burns’s lyric inspiration. This extends from the early years in Ayrshire which produced such excellent songs as ‘Corn Rigs’ and ‘Mary Morrison’, and a masterpiece in the cantata ‘Love And Liberty’, to the later years of song-writing for James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum. Burns’s skill and dedication made the Museum into Scotland’s greatest song collection, studded with examples of his mature art, like ‘It was a’ for our rightfu’ king’, recalling the final Jacobite Rising, and, in quite different mood, ‘Willie brew’d a peck o’ maut’, a drinking- song set to a tune by Burns’s friend Alan Masterton. The songs were invariably conceived with particular tunes in mind, rather than as mere words on the page requiring melodies to express their full meaning. As this transforms possibilities for understanding, Burns emerges in his true light after two hundred years as a creative artist in more than one medium, the originator of a major aesthetic achievement. An interesting point about Burns as a creator of songs is that while on the one hand he is a master of words which achieve beautiful or comic simplicity, many of his modern admirers are far from confident about how to supply the music on which his songs depend. If music is different today, so also is understanding of Burns’s words. Textual authority belongs to the written words as transmitted to us through manuscripts, The Scots Musical Museum, and other early collections of sources.

Key ideas for understanding Burns the writer are Song, Senti- ment, Satire and Scotland. Of these four, song and satire can be thought of as natural opposites, the first usually expressing praise, the second attack or criticism of ideas and attitudes Burns disliked. Tunes which the poet enjoyed and positive feelings – very often concerning ‘love’ or ardent affection – helped to inspire many of his songs. Strongly critical moods, on the other hand, led him to write scathing satires, like ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ and a number of sardonically phrased songs as well. The basis of much of Burns’s satiric writing is personal. He wrote, as he spoke, about individuals, whether or not he took the trouble to disguise their identity. This applies to ‘Death And Doctor Hornbook’, which is on one level a personal satire or lampoon on the character of ‘Jock Hornbook’, the apothecary and schoolmaster John Wilson, yet is also a poem mocking the idea of Death by robbing it of terror and solemnity.

He makes much use of Sentiment, especially in his songs, as the language of feeling valued in his time. But Sentiment does not always rule as an unloving song about the Act of Union of 1707, ‘Fareweel to a’ our Scottish Fame’, shows. It expresses a sense of contempt for politicians who are portrayed as having let Scotland down.

Burns had command of different verse forms as early as 1786. This includes from the specifically Lowland Scottish verse tradition what became his best known metre, ‘Standart Habbie’, or the Burns stanza as it came to be called after his death. It takes its name from a comic elegy by the seventeenth-century Scottish poet Robert Sempill, ‘The Life and Death of Habbie Simson, the Piper of Kilbarchan’. Burns widened the use of the six-line stanza beyond comic elegy and satire to include more serious poems such as ‘The Vision’, or to convey genuine grief as in his ‘Elegy on Capt M— H—’. It is no accident that he mocks the Devil in his ‘Address to the Deil’ in this metre, nor that he should choose it for a virtuoso display of spoken Scots in ‘The Auld Farmer’s New-Year-Morning Salutation to his Auld Mare, Maggie’.

A love of his native land is clear in all his works, including his own favourite, ‘Tam o’ Shanter’, a poem inspired near the River Nith a few miles from Dumfries by an exile’s thoughts of Alloway and Ayrshire. Burns turns to advantage in his writings his journeys within Ayrshire and elsewhere in Scotland. He undertook tours to the Highlands and to the Borders which inspired him to write many fine poems and songs, including ‘Blythe, blythe, and merry was she’ and ‘Killiecrankie’. In his last years in Dumfries in the Southwest of Scotland, he continued to praise the beauty and splendour of all Scotland.

DONALD A. LOW