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Happy New Year to all visitors to the Scottish Independence Convention website. It should be a special one with the Homecoming celebrations sponsored by the Scottish Government. They say there are five, even ten times, as many Scots or people with strong Scots roots around the world as there are in Scotland. So perhaps, warmly welcome as you are, you should not all come at once!
How fitting that Robert Burns, our national bard, has been “volunteered” as the personification of Scotland. I think he would have been happy to front the celebrations if he had been around to be asked.
Burns was born 250 years ago in Alloway, in Ayrshire, and was dead at 37. But in that short and extraordinary life he inspired Scotland and the world. What makes Burns great – in my view the greatest Scot of all time - is that he did it with a pen, not a sword. He wrote the world’s most famous song, Auld Lang Syne, and some of the most beautiful, witty and passionate poetry in the English and Scots languages. Two and a half centuries later Burns remains a hero not just in his native Scotland but everywhere. His unparalleled achievement is to be the world’s poet, toasted and commemorated everywhere. And he’s ours.
There are always the naysayers who want to knock Burns because, of course, he was a patriotic Scot who bemoaned the loss of our independence through the abandonment of our national sovereignty by a “parcel o’ rogues”, those parliamentarians who were “bought and sold for English gold” in 1707 when they supported the Treaty of Union with England.
Being an internationalist Burns foresaw the day when “man to man the world o’er, shall brithers be for a’ that”. He would have approved of a strong and amicable relationship between Scotland and England but never the effective takeover by the English parliament which is what we got. Which is why he railed against the loss of Scotland’s independence with such bitter eloquence.
When the Establishment threatened him for his views – he was also a republican – with the oppressive power it held over ordinary citizens in 19th century Scotland, and in return for a few much needed pounds when he was starving, he penned a few lines which have been held up by Unionists as evidence that he supported the Union. “Be Britain still to Britain true, amang ourselves united,” he wrote. Well, it was either that or lose his job.
But this is the same Burns who supported the French revolution and who denounced the power of kings:
Come rouse to arms! 'Tis now the time
To punish past transgressions.
'Tis said that Kings can do no wrong -
Their murderous deeds deny it,
And, since from us their power is sprung,
We have a right to try it.
There are those, almost always Unionists, who denounce Burns as a menace to women and a drunk and even a racist. Yet Burns wrote with astonishing beauty about women, whom he undoubtedly adored while pursuing them to excess. He was, of course, just a man of his time – as were his women who did not exactly make him and his charms unwelcome.
The charge of being a drunk is ridiculous. Burns left an enormous canon which could never have been put together in such a short lifespan and with such genius if he had been permanently sozzled.
As for being racist, there is evidence only to the contrary. Desperate for work, Burns did what many Scots were forced to do for centuries. He pondered emigrating for a better life, toying with the idea of going to Jamaica to work as an overseer on a plantation worked by slaves. But he did not go. Not only did he reject the idea but he denounced slavery in The Slave’s Lament” with the line: The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear…
Latter day Unionists who fear Burns and the power of his poetry should relax. Burns is for everyone, even those with whom he would disagree nowadays. The Homecoming was invented by the previous Labour/Liberal Democrat administration in Edinburgh, proud Unionists all, and has been adopted with enthusiasm by the SNP government.
Burns would be amused and delighted. Being such a strong and independent spirit he would probably belong to no political party nowadays. Whatever government was in power he would probably be agin.
I think he would approve of his immortal memory being invoked and celebrated by all as a welcome to his native land, much changed since his day, but still not the independent nation he yearned for. But he would note with satisfaction that we’re getting there. Not long now.
Comments
John McCallum 18/01/08 |
Rabbie, Rabbie, on yer 2-5-0,
Yon pulling power puts ye centre show,
Nae debates o’er that make sense,
Yer one for all,
Confirmed the span that prize yer mind,
An’ stock yer stall.
Rabbie, Rabbie, you’re the pride o’ mice,
For wha has famed the moose like thee?
Tae admit yersel tae talkin’ terms,
An’ straight confide,
Yer genius streetched to perfect bait,
Chance an’ change collide.
Rabbie, Rabbie, I’m sure you’d say,
Yon drinkin’ caper had pairt tae play,
Wi wonderous thochts – too many to hold,
Best pen gave time,
An’ naeb’die since has pleasured more,
In rantin’ rhyme.
Rabbie, Rabbie, inflator o’ hearts,
Composer level in the charmin’ arts,
Like busy bee that brushes many,
Ye shared aboot it,
For loving mortals toast ye rare,
Eternal lit.
Rabbie, Rabbie, we’re nearly there,
Parading pipes an’ events tae share,
To global folks that Scotland care,
His home is yours,
Come gather – enjoy wi the Scots,
Homecoming. |
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