University of South Carolina - Columbia

From the SelectedWorks of Patrick Scott

October 15, 2018

ROBERT BURNS: A DOCUMENTARY VOLUME Patrick Scott, University of South Carolina - Columbia

Available at: https://works.bepress.com/patrick_scott/352/ Preface

The Scottish poet and song-writer In the same way, many “know” Burns’s biog- (1759–1796) is recognized worldwide as a poet of endur- raphy. He was arguably the first literary celebrity, ing popular appeal, as a pioneer voice in the Romantic marketed by Edinburgh’s leading literary critic with movement, as an icon of Scottish identity, and as a mod- a compelling life-story as an outsider, born in a hum- el and inspiration in the emergence of literary national- ble cottage, writing in colloquial Scots, an uneducat- ism worldwide. Perspectives on each of these aspects of ed genius, the “heaven-taught plowman.” Round this Burns have changed or developed in recent years, and core, aided by a single instantly recognizable portrait each has attracted significant scholarly discussion and re-engraved repeatedly, time added a reputation as reappraisal. It is this renewed consciousness of Burns’s an irresistible lover, sexual prodigy, great drinker, poetic quality and increased openness to reinterpreting and brave opponent of any status quo. his achievement that justify this new collection from the Almost everything that “everyone knows” about varied source-documents on his life. Burns is wrong. The familiar quotations come from a In his own lifetime (he died at thirty-seven) tiny sliver of his work: the standard edition includes Burns was already an international literary celebrity— more than six hundred poems and songs. While and immediately, like any celebrity, pirated, imitated, Burns himself sometimes presented himself as the ro- translated, idolized, gossiped about, and resented. His mantic outsider with little education, more than eight first slim book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, pub- hundred Burns letters survive to show an extraordi- lished in a west of market town on 31 July nary range of social connections, a breadth of literary 1786, sold out immediately, as did his second much allusion, and a skilled flexibility of style. From William expanded collection, published in Edinburgh on 17 Shakespeare alone, he quotes or alludes to passages April 1787, which was followed that same year by edi- from nineteen different plays, significantly more than tions carrying imprints from London, Belfast, and will have been read by the average twenty-first-century Dublin and in the following year by editions printed in literature student. Much in the thumbnail life story Philadelphia and New York. Within twenty years, more has been overturned or significantly qualified by suc- than fifty editions of his work were produced. The cessive generations of biographers. Decade by decade, nineteenth-century printing revolution, with cheap for two hundred years, more manuscript evidence has books and long print-runs, made Burns ubiquitous. been found, and more facts have become available. Burns’s longstanding popularity raises difficulties As well as the formal Burns biographies and editions, for Burns biography, as for Burns scholarship generally. for over 125 years now, the annual Burns Chronicle has Phrases from Burns’s poems, often slightly Anglicized published new documents and articles on every aspect outside Scotland, are widely known and used without of Burns’s life. In 1992, the late James Mackay esti- the speakers always realizing they have descended to mated that there had been more than nine hundred us from or via Burns: “the best-laid plans of mice and Burns biographies, not counting the lives and intro- men,” “a cup of kindness,” “to see ourselves as others ductions prefacing editions of Burns’s poetry. Which see us,” “a child’s among you taking notes,” “man’s in- features of the popular portrait get corrected and humanity to man,” “my heart’s in the Highlands,” “till which aspects of Burns’s life get primary biographi- all the seas gang dry,” “the sands of life,” “I will walk ten cal attention has differed over the years, but year after thousand miles,” “the man of independent mind,” “let year, new biographers promise to dispel the errors of us do or die,” “the rank is but the guinea stamp,” and their predecessors and to show the “real Burns.” Some “should auld acquaintance be forgot.” Many people can are very good. hum along and know at least some of the words to such This volume approaches Burns’s life differ- songs as “My Love Is like a Red, Red Rose,” “Flow Gently, ently, providing a variety of documentary sources for ,” “The Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon,” each phase of Burns’s extraordinary life. The chap- “Scots Wha Hae,” and, of course, “.” ter arrangement is straightforward enough, with five

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chapters built around the places Burns lived: (1) his chapters with the perspective offered by his wife, early life in Ayrshire, at , and on his father’s Burns, as recorded by John M‘Diarmid, farms at Mount Oliphant and then Lochlea, near Tar- the newspaper editor in Dumfries. bolton (1759–1783); (2) the years at Mossgiel, near Second, it selects, not only documents about Mauchline, culminating in the first publication of his Burns, but relevant non-Burnsian documents from poems (1784–1786); (3) his two winters as a literary the same time and place. Victorian biographers, all celebrity, in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, with the Scots writing in Scotland, could probably assume summer between exploring Scotland (1786–1788); that readers knew Burns’s cultural context. This is no (4) the three years he spent at Ellisland, in Dum- longer true. Several chapters include contemporary friesshire, farming and then also as an excise officer information about the locality, from the Statistical (1788–1791); and (5) his last years, fully committed Account of Scotland, or from Hugo Arnot’s History of to an excise career, in the county town of Dumfries Edinburgh, or from Robert Heron’s account of Dum- itself (1791–1796). A short final chapter (6), titled fries in his Observations Made in a Journey through the “Aftermath,” documents the process through which Western Counties of Scotland. Early chapters include the first posthumous biographers, editors, and pub- contemporary sources on agricultural change in lishers of Burns’s work shaped the image of Burns Ayrshire, on tenants’ resistance to change, and con- and his achievement. trasted views of the effectiveness of the traditional The idea of telling Burns’s life through docu- Scots plough. Burns’s early reading is documented ments is certainly not new. In 1797, the historian not only from what he later said about it, but also by William Roscoe had advised his Liverpool friend Dr. extracts from the books he read, including Masson’s James Currie to build his planned Burns biography Collection of Prose and Verse. Burns’s social connections from “his own detached memoirs, letters, observa- at Lochlea and Mossgiel are documented not only tions, poems, &c., as illustrating the progress of his through the Rules of the Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club, mind, the state of his opinions, moral, political, and but also from a contemporary manual for his initia- religious, &c.” (Memoir of James Currie, pp. 273–274). tion as a Freemason. His conflict with the Mauchline Currie was more interested in a short essay-like life kirk session is represented not only by letters, his paired with a critical appreciation of the work, but at song “The Fornicator,” and his verse account of his least two of the great Victorian Burns editor-biogra- interrogation in his “Address to a Tailor,” but also phers, Robert Chambers and William Scott Douglas, by the records of kirk session itself, and the word- intercut their biographical narrative with the full text ing of the Reverend William Auld’s public admonish- of Burns’s letters, and even, in Chambers’s later edi- ment when he did penance in church. Set alongside tions, with the full text of the poems. some of his own songs and comments on songs, and This volume draws on this tradition and texts the prefaces to Johnson’s , are written by Burns himself. James Currie commented extracts from William Tytler’s “Dissertation on the that “Burns having pourtrayed himself in such vivid Scottish Music.” In chapter 4, his work for the excise colours, is a decisive proof of his superior genius” is explained by extracts from Leadbetter’s The Royal (Memoir of James Currie, p. 253). From Currie on- Gauger, or Gauging Made Perfectly Easy. In Dumfries, wards, every biographer has been irresistibly drawn a different light is cast on political conflicts at the to Burns’s “autobiographical letter,” written to Dr. theatre by a contemporary summary of Oscar and John Moore in August–September 1787 (Letters, I: Malvina, the play that got the Dumfries actors jailed 133–146). Currie, Chambers, and Scott Douglas all when they performed it just across the Solway Firth print it in its entirety as the opening chapter of their in England. Burns’s own panic when his political biography. Burns’s letters in themselves constitute a behavior was investigated can be better understood very full narrative of his life, and even with due recog- when set against the Sedition Proclamation of May nition that Burns’s poems are not necessarily directly 1792 or the transcript of Thomas Muir’s sedition trial autobiographical, or even in his own voice, it would in August the following year. Burns’s enlistment in be perverse to exclude him from his own biography. the Dumfries Volunteers can be understood differ- But this volume differs in four ways from most ently through the Rules and Regulations the volun- other treatments of Burns’s life. First, as far as pos- teers themselves drew up. Documents of this kind sible it juxtaposes Burns’s voice with others’ voices: in were often in the past thought of only as fodder for the opening chapters with the accounts of their early footnotes or annotations to Burns’s text. They are life left by his brother Gilbert, and the reminiscences presented here both as interesting in themselves and of the men who worked with him or for him on the as intertexts, through which Burns’s writings can be farms at Lochlea, Mossgiel, and Ellisland; in later better understood.

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Third, this volume responds to the growing in- singing of Auld Lang Syne, but in 1998, a fifth-gen- terest in book history by including time lines on the eration Chinese-Canadian successfully launched a production and reception of each of Burns’s books, multicultural New Year celebration, Gung Haggis Fat with contracts or accounts when available, and repro- Choy. In 2015, four hundred attendees enjoyed hag- ductions of subscription proposals, title-pages, and gis wontons and a rap version of Burns’s “Address.” advertisements. A volume of this kind asserts, perhaps indirectly, Fourth, and perhaps most controversially, it tries that the poetry itself deserves attention. The lasting to recreate the layered nature of knowledge about Burns popularity of “Robert Burns” is an indication that his by printing Burns’s writings, not in a uniform newly- works speak, at some level, to people of many ages and edited text, but from the first printed source in which cultures. But a better test is the continuing power, in each poem or item appeared. The intended result is changing times and contexts, of individual passages that those who read, or use, this volume, will sense, as to move and to surprise. People of all ages and with most Burns researchers soon recognize, that the avail- widely differing cultural background or political be- able materials on Burns’s life are not a hotline to the lief were moved, even stunned, when, at the world- “real Burns,” but are themselves shaped by their own televised reopening ceremonies of Scotland’s parlia- history, and that some sources are more reliable than ment in Edinburgh in 1999, all the worthy speeches, others, even though all make up the mosaic through “God save the Queen,” even the Queen herself, were which we know Burns. This content is supported by a definitively upstaged by a lone figure singing, unac- range of illustrations, including Burns autograph manu- companied, Burns’s great anthem: scripts (chiefly from the Roy Collection, University of South Carolina), maps for each of the areas Burns lived Then let us pray that come it may, and where he traveled, and contemporary or significant As come it will for a’ that, early illustrations of people and places he knew. That Sense and Worth, o’er all the earth, While the final chapter includes a sidebar with Shall bear the gree, and a’ that, the first published record of the first , For a’ that, and a’ that, and a coda recording the experience of three early It’s coming yet for a’ that, pilgrims to the Land of Burns, this volume is about That Man to Man the warld o’er, Burns in his time, not about the later Burns phe- Shall brothers be for a’ that.— nomenon. Some of the scholarship on Burns’s later —Patrick Scott reception is noted in the introduction to chapter 6, and the modern breadth of Burns scholarship is shown in the concluding checklist of further read- ing. The quickening of both popular and scholarly interest in Burns since the celebrations in 2009 for Acknowledgments the 250th anniversary of Burns’s birth has been re- This book was produced by Bruccoli Clark Layman, markable. In Scotland, Burns has twice been chosen Inc. George Parker Anderson was the in-house editor. He by popular vote as the Greatest Scot of all time. A was assisted by Catherine Ann Allen, Michele Patterson, new museum and research center at his birthplace and Sydni Hawes Wilson. in Alloway opened in 2010. Interest in Burns and Layout/Project Management: Tim Belshaw is no longer limited to Scotland or Copyeditors: Rebecca Mayo, Eileen Ross to the traditional areas of Scots overseas settlement Newman, and Stephanie L. Sarkany (Canada, the American south, New Zealand), or to Production Manager: Janet E. Hill other communities of expatriate Scots; the top twelve Office Manager: Giesela F. Lubecke countries using the on-line version of Studies in Scot- Pipeline Manager: James F. Tidd Jr. tish Literature now include Spain, Brazil, Turkey and Systems Manager: Gergely Uszkay Russia. The great Burns songs have always crossed Library research was facilitated by staff at the Thomas cultural boundaries: in February 2018, for instance, Cooper Library of the University of South Carolina, with the instantly recognizable portrait of Burns adver- special thanks to Elizabeth Sudduth and the rare-book de- tised the “2nd Annual Reggae Burns Dance” at a Ca- partment and Tucker Taylor, circulation department head. ribbean bar in . Increasingly, other aspects of the Burns legacy are making similar cultural bridges: My work on Robert Burns has been helped by millions of non-Scots now join in the annual ritual many people in many ways. This book owes a major of a Burns Supper, with, at the least, an address to debt to the late G. Ross Roy (1924 -2013), whom I knew the haggis, a toast to the Immortal Memory, and the for nearly forty years. Both text and illustrations draw

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heavily from the G. Ross Roy Collection of Robert Burns following editors: Bill Dawson (Burns Chronicle), Gerard & Scottish Literature, in the Ernest F. Hollings Special Carruthers (Scottish Literary Review and Editing Burns for Collections Library, University of South Carolina. My the 21st Century), and Frank Shaw (Robert Burns Lives!). work there has been greatly helped by Elizabeth Sud- Too many Burnsians have encouraged my work and an- duth, Associate Dean, and others in the Irvin Depart- swered my emails to name them individually, but I espe- ment of Rare Books & Special Collections, particularly cially value friendships made through the Burns Club of Matt Hodge, who scanned many of the images. My Atlanta. The dedication is literally true: I first encoun- work has benefitted also by affiliation with the Centre tered the range of Burns’s poetry in Mary Jane’s one- for Robert Burns Studies, University of Glasgow, and it draws on earlier research in the National Library of volume paperback Kinsley edition, and the fascination Scotland, Edinburgh; the Mitchell Library, Glasgow; the of his life from her remainder copy of the Snyder biog- Carnegie Library, Ayr; the Ewart Library, Dumfries; the raphy, when she was teaching for the School of Scottish Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, Alloway; and other Studies in Edinburgh. collections. I want to acknowledge the generosity of the —Patrick Scott

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