RBWF Burns Chronicle 1988

Robert BurnsLimited World Federation Limited www.rbwf.org.uk 1988 The digital conversion of this Burns Chronicle was sponsored by Ravenscraig Burns Club, Motherwell, to mark the 10th Anniversary of our Club beginning. The digital conversion service was provided by DDSR Document Scanning by permission of the Robert Burns World Federation Limited to whom all Copyright title belongs. www.DDSR.com BURNS CHRONICLE BURNS CHRONICLE AND CLUB DIRECTORY , Instituted 1891 WHOLE NUMBER 97 A Contents James Connor, M.B., Ch.B. 4 From the Editor 6 Book Reviews 7 Obituaries 24 The Celebration of the Bicentenary of the Kilmarnock Edition EnezLogan 25 Joe Corrie's Robert Burns 27 Mrs Win Price Anne Brown 27 James Hogg - the Two Monuments D. Wilson Ogilvie 28 The Burns Heritage Trail Isa Jones 32 A Relic Hunter Hoaxed 35 Dumfries Octocentenary Celebrations D.R. H. Crichton 36 New Song Album 38 John Lewars James L. Hempstead 39 Rags and Mags R.Peel 45 The Ronalds of the Bennals Heather B. Ronald 48 I Kenned Rab Burns Brawlies Bill Sutherland 51 Halloween A. K. Robertson 61 The Immortal Memory of Robert Burns Robert D. Ogilvie 65 Burns Lore of Dumfries and Galloway 67 The Rosebud David W. Purdie 68 A New Letter of Robert Burns David Groves 70 The Sincerest Form of Flattery 70 Airdrie Burns Club J.K. 71 Poetic Justice John M. Robertson 73 Faeries David Scott Skipper 79 Stepping into Burns's Shoes 83 Our Man in Japan 86 Long Lost Secret of Haggis Rod Sykes 86 Scotland's Burns Tradition Comes to Hertfordshire Dudley Sizeland 87 The McVitie's Price for Scottish Writer of the Year 89 Poetry 90 Statement of Accounts 94 Office Bearers of the Burns Federation 98 List of Districts 101 Reports of the 1986 Conference 107 Alphabetical List of Clubs 117 2 Numerical List of Clubs 121 Actually, the talc isn't so much lost as ::THE ·LOST TALE · misplaced. Because everyone thinks Cutty OF CUTTY. SARK .. Sark is the ship moored on the Thames at spying on her. And she pursued him and his Greenwich. grey mare with such spirit that they came But before that, it was the name of the within a hair of death. rather wooden-faced young lady shown here. Their one salvation lay in crossing a Her career as a witch was described by running stream-something no witch can do. Robert Burns in his epic poem "Tam Yet Cutty Sark still managed to o'Shantcr." Destroying crops. slaughtering pull off the horse's tail at the last instant. The famous tea clipper launched on the Clyde in 1869 was named after the witch, in hopes of emulating her awesome And also from the legend came the ritual of placing a mare's tail of rope in the figurehead's outstretched hand, after an especially fast passage. You may wonder why we chose to scantily-clad young witch. But that way we can be blazing within the, hallowed sure our customers want walls, he came forward, he saw, us for one thing only. and he was conquered by love. (Or 1 was it lust? Clue: he dubbed her Cutty Sark, the old Scots phrase for the short CUTTY SARK shirt she was almost wearing.) THE REAL MCCOY. Cutty Sark discovered Tam o'Shantcr 3 James Connor, M.B.,Ch.B. Jim Connor was born in Motherwell on 2nd July, 1918, and educated at Glencairn Public and Dalziel High schools in that town. He joined the Boys' Brigade in 1929 and eventually became an officer. In 1937 his family moved to Glasgow and the following year Jim enrolled at Anderson College of Medicine. He graduated from Glasgow University in 1943 and in the same year married Bunty. Their sons Allan and Jim junior were born in 1946 and 1952 respectively. Three years in general practice in Bridgeton were followed by a two year stint as a medical officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps. On demob, Captain Connor returned to general practice in Glasgow, in the Anderston district of the city. Twenty years later, however, the Connor family emigrated to Canada and settled in London, Ontario. Although he had been reared in a family that revered their Burns as much as the Bible, it was not until moving to Canada that Jim became involved with the Burns movement as such. Like so many other exiled Scots, however, he found the companionship of kindred spirits linked by their devotion to the Bard very congenial. Within two years of moving to Canada, therefore, he had joined the London (Ontario) Burns Clubs. Since then he has held various offices in that club, including the presidency from 1974 onwards. Somehow he has found time out of an extremely busy and demanding medical practice to work tirelessly to promote the Burns movement throughout North America. An accomplished speaker, he is much in demand for the Immortal Memory. A born organiser and absolutely dedicated worker, Jim was the moving force behind the idea of holding the Burns conference outwith Britain for the first time. To most people, on both sides of the Atlantic, the notion of holding the Conference in Canada seemed plain daft arid quite unworkable. It says much for the genius and persistence of Dr Jim that the notion was not only accepted, but became an accomplished fact. Thus it was that in 1979 he became Chairman of the 92nd Annual Burns Conference, held that summer on the campus of London University. He was deeply involved in the organisation and hosting of several other conferences ofBurnsians in North America, and out of this came the decision in 1980 to form the North American Association of Federated Burnsians, of which he was President in 1982-84. In 1982-83 he was Chairman of the three-day Scottish Kavalkade, a multi-cultural event sponsored by the London (Ontario) Folk Arts Council. In 1982 he was appointed Canadian representative to the Burns Federation and in his capacity as a member of the Executive he has travelled widely, not only all over Canada and the United States, but back and forth across the Atlantic. In 1984 he was elected Junior Vice President of the Burns Federation and became President for 1986-87. His quiet, affable manner conceals a very profound and far-ranging knowledge of Burns and his works. Few people alive today possess such an intimate knowledge ofBurns's songs and poetry, backed up by an extensive private collection of Burns literature. Dr Connor, surrounded by some of his Burns mementoes. 5 overshadow everything else - Bums From the Editor Nicht included. Considering that Bums had quite a bit to say about the 'buckskins' and their successful bid for independence, There is a story, probably quite and even composed a fine ode in apocryphal, of a passenger, newly celebration of General Washington's arrived on a Jumbo at Sydney's birthday, he had remarkably little to Tullamarine Airport, being asked by say about Australia and its grim an Immigration officer: 'Any previous beginnings. But whatever his feelings convictions'? and making the riposte, on the matter, he kept them to himself 'Oh! I didn't realise that that was still in view of the manner in which he a requirement for entry to Australia'. came perilously close to a firsthand Corny jokes about convicts die hard, experience of the rigours of the law. even though it is estimated that only a Bums made no secret of his sym ninth of Australia's population of pathies with the French Revolution sixteen million can boast the blood of and not only alienated many of his transported felons in their veins. patrons but ran the risk of losing his I am reminded of this because, as I Excise appointment on that score. pen these lines, there are great celeb In particular he espoused the senti rations in Plymouth to mark the ments expressed by the Societies of bicentenary of the sailing of the First the Friends of the People which began Fleet, the motley armada of convict to demand universal suffrage and transports, Royal Navy vessels and annual parliaments. A convention of supply ships which left Britain on 13th delegates from these societies met in May 1787 bound for the strange Edinburgh in December 1792, but this southern land surveyed by Captain panicked the Government, alarmed Cook almost twenty years earlier. The by the violent tum of the Revolution Joss of the American colonies meant in France, and poor Thomas Muir that Britain had nowhere to dump her ended up in the dock on a charge of convicts. The alternative to hanging sedition. Muir's trial before the people even for quite trivial offences notorious Lord Braxfield and his was incarceration in the prison ships subsequent sentence to fourteen moored in the Thames - 'the Wool years' transportation remain black wich hulks' Bums mentions in 'From blots on Scottish justice to this day. Esopus to Maria' - but then someone Thomas Palmer, William Skirving and had the bright idea of shipping off all Joseph Gerald were also convicted in these undesirables to the other side of the treason trials of 1793-4 and given the world. No other colony - far less harsh sentences that brought them to the mighty nation that Australia is Botany Bay. That reference to Wool today - ever had such a bizarre wich hulks was followed by the lines: beginning. Though there, his heresies in The First Fleet was eight months at Church and State sea, and the conditions endured by the Might well award him Muir and convicts, both men and women, on Palmer's fate: that terrible voyage can scarcely be Bums must have been acutely imagined.· The arrival of the first aware of what was going on.

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