RBWF Burns Chronicle 1991

1991 The digital conversion of this Burns Chronicle was sponsored by Studies in Scottish Literature 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 1991 BURNS CHRONICLE AND CLUB DIRECTORY Instituted 1891 WHOLE NUMBER 100 1991 PRICE: Paper £6.50, (Members £4.50). Published by the Bums Federation, Dick Institute, Kilmarnock. Contents JAMES ALEXANDER MACKAY 5 FROM THE EDITOR 6 TO ROBERT BURNS IN HEAVEN 8 THE BRIGS OF FORTH 9 BOOK REVIEWS 10 BURNS THE ENGLISH POET 16 OBITUARIES 17 A VERY HUMBLE PLACEMAN 20 THE BOWHILL PEOPLE'S BURNS CLUB 1940-1990 32 BRIDGING THE AGE GAP 34 THE FIRST TWINNING OF BURNS CLUBS 34 ROBERT BURNS AND THE BOSWELL CONNECTION 35 DR. JOHN MACKENZIE M.D. 37 THE MYSTERY SOLVED 43 THE TIMES O' BURNS 45 .JAMES HOGG ON ROBERT BURNS 51 THE WILLIAM WILL MEMORIAL LECTURE 72 FINNISH TRANSLATION OF BURNS 77 HOW OLD IS GREENOCK BURNS CLUB? 77 PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE 83 COMMITTEE GREENOCK BURNS CLUB 83 ROBERT BURNS AND THE RUTHWELL CROSS 84 WHISPERS OF GENIUS: EDGAR ALLAN POE AND ROBERT BURNS 94 TROTZ ALLEDEM UND ALLEDEM 102 AN AULD WEEOOW-WUMMAN BLETHERS 103 THE BURNS FEDERATION OFFICE BEARERS 105 LIST OF DISTRICTS 109 ANNUAL CONFERENCE REPORTS, YORK 1989 117 CLUB REPORTS 135 NUMERICAL LIST OF CLUBS ON THE ROLL 173 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF CLUBS ON THE ROLL 201 4 JAMES ALEXANDER MACKAY Although I am not a Bums enthusiast myself I can fairly claim to have introduced your Editor to the Bums Movement. Fourteen years ago he and I were in South-east Asia in pursuit of a coinage contract and just happened to find ourselves in Indonesia on Bums Night. A group of our associates decided to hold a Bums Supper and Jim, as the token Scot, was invited to propose the toast to the Immortal Memory. It was a polyglot and multiracial group, and I remember the master of ceremonies (a lieutenant-general no less) informing the gathering that the haggis would not offend Moslems, Hindus or Jews as it contained the flesh of neither pig nor cow. Then he told us that, in addition to rice and spices, it contained 'the engine room parts' of a sheep. Jim carried off his part of the proceedings with great aplomb; it was only afterwards that he confessed that, not only was this his first Immortal Memory-it was the first time he'd ever attended such a function! Well, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since 1977 and I gather he has polished up his act in such exotic places as far afield as Calgary and Melbourne since then. It doesn't need me to tell you about his activities in the Bums world; you will know' a great deal more about that than I. In fact, I was quite astonished to hear him holding forth about Bums on Radio's Today programme as I was driving in to work recently. I had no idea that he was regarded as an authority on the subject. I have known him for more than twenty years. In 1969 I produced medals for the first manned Moon landing and Jim was kind enough to single them out in one of his weekly articles in The Financial Times. We met for lunch soon afterwards, and this began a close and mutually profitable association that has endured to this day. I would go so far as to say that the Queen's Award for Export Achievement which was recently given to my company was due in no small respect to Jim's imagination and hard work in heading up the design team at the Pobjoy Mint. He has been intimately involved in devising the coinage for upwards of a score of countries, conceptualising the designs, checking detail for historical accuracy, assisting with the PR and even writing the advertising copy. He has written numerous books and articles on all aspects of numismatic& and is arguably the leading writer on this subject in Britain today, having recently been appointed to the editorship of the prestigious Seaby Monthly Bulletin. When it comes to philately, however, he is in a class of his own, having authored more than 70 books and 2,000 articles overthe past 30 years on that subject alone. He edited the New World Encyclopaedia ofStamps ( 1969-72) and wrote most of it-a staggering one and a half million words. His philatelic writings have won many international awards, notably the highly coveted veI'meil medal of the Cardinal Spellman Foundation of America which he was awarded twice. His writings on the applied and decorative arts are almost as prolific and his books on bronzes and glass paperweights are widely regarded as the standard reference works. I don't know anyone (with the possible exception of the Pope) who has such an astonishing command of so many different languages, and hi.s fluency in Demotic Greek and Japanese has got me out of a few scrapes, I can tell you! Funnily enough, he made his literary debut in 1959 with an article in Gairm about St. Kilda where he was then Officer Commanding the Guided Weapons unit, but he quickly realised that there was no money to be made by writing in Gaelic and has stuck to English ever since. If may come as a surprise to his Bums colleagues to know that he once wrote a book in Irish, and has also translated. books from French, German and Dutch. His own books have appeared in over a dozen languages, from Finnish to Italian-still a long way to go before he equals Bums in that respect. Considering how far he travels and how much he enjoys even the most primitive journeys (he has been to every state in the USA and every province in Canada by bus) it surprises me that he has never written a travel book. Perhaps some day he will do for Greyhound what Paul Theroux has done for the Old Patagonian Express. He has a flair for witty and amusing verse which he can produce straight off the cuff, but he is very dismissive ~bout his poetic talents. I've been nagging him for years to write an Arthur Hailey type novel exposing the shenanigans in the coin business; I've even supplied the title-The Money Makers -and I'm thoroughly disappointed thathe hasn'tmade time to realise this project. I see that a recent review of his monumental history of Scottish post offices alluded to his 'hyperactive word-processor', but the plain truth is that Jim and his wife Joyce are a right pair of workaholics; and it's only fair to say that without her considerable organisational ability and capacity for hard work Jim would not have achieved a tithe of his prodigious output. Derek Pobjoy FROM THE EDITOR It was on 4th September 1891 that The Burns Chronicle was instituted, so the actual cemenary will not be celebrated until the 1991 Conference. The inaugural number, in fact, did not see the light of day until February 1892. Nevertheless, although we are only in our 99th year we have arrived at the 'llagic number 100 and that in itself is cause for celebration. By 1891 the infant Burns Federation was running out of steam and it was felt that something was needed to m'aintain communications between the affiliated clubs as well as stimulate fresh interest in the Burns movement. Colin Rae Brown proposed that the Federation should publish a yearly Chronicle, and this was seconded by Peter Sturrock. The aim was to publish the inaugural number in time for Burns Night, 1892 but due to the very short notice given it was not actually issued till the following month and therefore lost the opportunity to pick up impulse sales at Bums dinners. As a result, the Federation incurred a loss of£ 100 on the first issue. John Muir resigned from the editorship and The Chronicle might have died there and then; but the job fell to Duncan McNaught ( 1844-1925), a Kilmaurs schoolmaster and one of the great stalwarts of the Federation in its early years. He held this position for 33 years (and for thirteen of these he was also the Federation's President). Under his vigorous editorship The Chronicle was transformed from its shaky beginnings and went from strength to strength. Remarkably it continued to appear at annual ·intervals throughout the First World War, even though the activities of many clubs, and indeed the Federation itself, had to be severely curtailed. His services to Scottish literary scholarship were recognised in 1921 when the University of Glasgow conferred on him an honorary doctorate. Following Dr. McNaught's death in 1925, the editorship passed to James C. Ewing of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Concerned that he would soon run out of material about Burns, he began widening the scope of The Chronicle. The Twenties were a period of national rebirth all over Europe, from Ireland to the Baltic, and Scotland itself was swept up in the enthusiasm for a revival of the vernacular. This was reflected in many of the articles which appeared in The Chronicle at this time and, of course, in the Fe·;eration's preoccupation with the survival of the Scottish language. Ewing's fears that material directly relevant to Burns would soon run out proved to be unfounded; if anything, the range and quality of Burns scholarship improved under Ewing's editorship, and both he and his wife Elizabeth contributed many excellent articles in their own right.

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