Rabbie Burns - not just for Burns Night!
Burns Night is upon us again. We’ll celebrate the bard’s birth at the weekend (January 25th) with haggis, bashed neeps and tatties, minus the dram. Burns suppers will be celebrated across Scotland and also various countries around the world - Burns Night has gone global.
The Scottish national bard is widely respected for his ballads, poetry and humorous satires, but I’m not sure how widely read is he is outside of his native land. The Scots which he elevates to poetry, can be difficult to grasp, but if you’re interested in history, poetry, social structure, and most importantly for me, language itself, then it’s worth getting to grips with.
Some of the best writers wrote hundreds of years ago in language which is very strange to our modern ears, but we don’t, or shouldn’t, dismiss Shakespeare or Chaucer because they seem ‘difficult’.
If you don’t have a tame Scotsman (or woman) to hand, the BBC audio archive has Burns complete works available, read by some of Scotland’s biggest names. The
poems are meant to be read, or sung, out loud, and a Scottish accent of whatever persuasion, certainly makes the lyrics flow, and the meaning easier to grasp when they’re performed in their original tongue. Theresa are also plenty of on-line and published translations available.
Burns wrote over 600 songs and poems that we know of, and it’s worth having a browse at a few more than the ‘Ode to a Haggis’ and ‘A Red Red Rose’ with which we’re all familiar. ‘To a Mouse’ is a great example of everyday poetry. Burns, a ploughman by trade, would have disrupted many a field mouse from their home and this poignant poem is full of observation, humour and a prescient knowledge that we need to share the earth’s resources. He is also a keen observer of the social
order and the hypocrisies of the ‘kirk’, as well as a drinker and womaniser, so it is little wonder thathe had popular support. His first collection of poems, published when he was 27, made him famous across the country.
Scots, in which he wrote, is not a dead language - there’s been effort in the last 10 years to encourage new writing in Scots and Northwords Now, Push the Boat Out and Paperboat publications, among others, all include work in Scots. Many words have crept into common usage, some of which you’ll be familiar with dreich, wee, coorie, haver, for example) so it’s worth a delve to see what words and phrases have survived.
Burns was not the only poet to write in Scots; Robert Louis Stevenson also wrote in Scots, and Robert Tannahill, known as the 'Weaver Poet', is contemporaneous with Robert Burns. There have been other makar’s throughout the centuries. Not only dead people write in Scots! Some writing friends of mine, Lynn Valentine, Elaine Morrison and John Mackintosh, all write in Scots. Lynn has had two volumes of poetry published and Elaine has been published extensively in publications and on line. They’re certainly worth looking up. Check out the Scottish Poetry Library for more Scottish poets writing in Scots, Gaelic, Shetlandic and English.
Whether you’re Scottish, English, or from another corner of the English speaking world, I would urge you to take a new look at Rabbie Burns, and some of the other poets writing in Scots - you may be pleasantly surprised at what you find.
Burns poetry
http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/robertburns/
Listen to Kathleen Jamie, Scotlands previous Makar, read Burns and her own work here
Lyn Valentine
https://lynnvalentinecom.wordpress.com
I ‘did’ Tam o Shanter for O level in England many years ago….loved it, and agree as you say, no harder than Chaucer and Shakespeare who also read and enjoy!
Love my books of Burns poems I bought as a little girl from the Burns museum in Ayrshire. Although my Scots relations spoke standard English (with a smattering of Scots words to convey a meaning better), they could all explain the poems, and my English father encouraged a fascination with language anyway. My favourite is still ‘To a Louse’ though ‘Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie’ is a perfect line of description.