University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Robert Burns and Friends Robert Burns Collections 1-1-2012 ROBERT BURNS AND FRIENDS essays by W. Ormiston Roy Fellows presented to G. Ross Roy Patrick G. Scott University of South Carolina - Columbia, [email protected] Kenneth Simpson See next page for additional authors Publication Info 2012, pages 1-192. © The onC tributors, 2012 All rights reserved Printed and distributed by CreateSpace https://www.createspace.com/900002089 Editorial contact address: Patrick Scott, c/o Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries, 1322 Greene Street, Columbia, SC 29208, U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4392-7097-4 Scott, P., Simpson, K., eds. (2012). Robert Burns & Friends essays by W. Ormiston Roy Fellows presented to G. Ross Roy. P. Scott & K. Simpson (Eds.). Columbia, SC: Scottish Literature Series, 2012. This Book - Full Text is brought to you by the Robert Burns Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Robert Burns and Friends by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Author(s) Patrick G. Scott, Kenneth Simpson, Carol Mcguirk, Corey E. Andrews, R. D. S. Jack, Gerard Carruthers, Kirsteen McCue, Fred Freeman, Valentina Bold, David Robb, Douglas S. Mack, Edward J. Cowan, Marco Fazzini, Thomas Keith, and Justin Mellette This book - full text is available at Scholar Commons: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/burns_friends/1 ROBERT BURNS AND FRIENDS essays by W. Ormiston Roy Fellows presented to G. Ross Roy G. Ross Roy as Doctor of Letters, honoris causa June 17, 2009 “The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, The Man’s the gowd for a’ that._” ROBERT BURNS AND FRIENDS essays by W. Ormiston Roy Fellows presented to G. Ross Roy edited by Patrick Scott and Kenneth Simpson 2012 Publication of this volume has been made possible by the gift of generous friends for that purpose through the University of South Carolina Libraries Fund. © The Contributors, 2012 All rights reserved Printed and distributed by CreateSpace https://www.createspace.com/900002089 Editorial contact address: Patrick Scott, c/o Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, University of South Carolina Libraries, 1322 Greene Street, Columbia, SC 29208, U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4392-7097-4 To Ross and Lucie Roy with gratitude and affection Preface This volume pays tribute to the Burns scholar and editor G. Ross Roy, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English & Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina, and friend and mentor to successive generations of Burnsians and Burns scholars. For more than fifty years, Ross Roy has been one of the most active and respected scholars in Scottish literary studies, both for his own research on Burns and other writers, and for the pioneering and influential journal he founded and edited, Studies in Scottish Literature. Arguably it is that journal, as much as any other factor, that first brought the scholarly study of Scottish literature its now-established academic credibility and recognition. The volume departs from the conventions of the festschrift in several ways: its contributors are neither the honoree’s distinguished contemporaries nor his former students, the topics of the essays in no way represent the full range of the honoree’s scholarly research and interests, and the volume champions no single methodology or perspective. In planning the volume, we were aware that many of the contributions to the splendid double-volume of Studies in Scottish Literature (2008) with which Dr. Roy concluded his editorship had already pre-empted a festschrift on traditional lines. Instead, this volume focuses on a single author and theme (broadly interpreted, it is true), and the contributors represent a special subset of the many scholars who would wish to honour Ross Roy. The central thread through Dr. Roy’s own work has been Robert Burns, and the volume’s title also celebrates his own gift for friendship. The participants are scholars from both sides of the Atlantic who viii have visited the University of South Carolina as W. Ormiston Roy Fellows to conduct research in the G. Ross Collection of Robert Burns & Scottish Poetry. Their essays explore aspects of Burns’s relationships with his poetic predecessors and the cultural community of his youth, with his contemporaries, and with correspondents; his songs and song-editing; and his remarkable and very personal impact on subsequent generations. Three essays, still Burns-related, tie in with other threads in Ross Roy’s career: his interest in the literature of his native Canada, in literary translation, and in book collecting. Beginning with a biographical tribute to Ross Roy by one editor, the volume concludes with a checklist of Ross Roy’s published work by the other. Thanks are due in the first instance to the contributors. Patrick Scott owes thanks to Tom McNally, Dean of Libraries at the University of South Carolina, and to his colleagues in Rare Books, for freeing time to work on the volume, and to the South Carolina Honors College for supporting Justin Mellette’s and Mark Taylor’s assistance with this and other Burns projects. Ken Simpson acknowledges with gratitude the help of Ronnie Young and David Simpson with some technical issues. Thanks are also due to the good friends who funded publication of the volume through a donation to the Library Fund. The frontispiece portrait has been kindly shared by the University of Glasgow. But above all, the volume owes its existence to the respect and affection, reflected in the dedication, that so many of us have for Ross Roy and Lucie Roy, true friends. Patrick Scott & Kenneth Simpson Contents Preface vii Patrick Scott & Kenneth Simpson “G. Ross Roy: A Tribute” 1 Kenneth Simpson “Burns’s Two Memorials to Fergusson” 5 Carol McGuirk “Footnoted Folklore: Robert Burns’s ‘Halloween’” 24 Corey E. Andrews “Robert Burns as Dramatic Poet” 38 R. D. S. Jack “‘Tongues Turn’d Inside Out’: The Reception of ‘Tam o’ Shanter’” 47 Gerard Carruthers “‘Epistolary Performances’: Burns and the Arts of the Letter” 58 Kenneth Simpson “‘O My Luve’s like a Red, Red rose’: Does Burns’s Melody Really Matter?” 68 Kirsteen McCue “Back to Burns” 83 Fred Freeman “On Editing The Merry Muses” 95 Valentina Bold x “‘The Poor Man’s Friend in Need’: George Baird, Burns, and Hugh Miller” 108 David Robb “James Hogg’s First Encounter with Burns’s Poetry” 122 Douglas S. Mack “Alexander McLachlan: The ‘Robert Burns’ of Canada” 131 Edward J. Cowan “On Translating Burns: A Heavenly Paradise and Two Versions of ‘A Red, Red rose’” 150 Marco Fazzini “A Passion for Scholarship and Collecting: The G. Ross Roy Collection of Robert Burns & Scottish Literature” Thomas Keith 155 “G. Ross Roy: a Checklist, 1954-2011” 163 Patrick Scott, with Justin Mellette Notes on Contributors and on the W. Ormiston Roy Memorial Fellowship 181 Index 186 ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations are used throughout the volume, for parenthetical references given in the text: Kinsley, with volume and page number: James Kinsley, ed. The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968. Roy, with volume and page number: G. Ross Roy, and J. De Lancey Ferguson, eds. The Letters of Robert Burns. 2nd ed. revised. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985. G. Ross Roy: A Tribute Kenneth Simpson Spanning six decades, Ross Roy’s career is suffused with a love of Scotland which has its roots in his ancestry and a visit to the country at the age of eight with his grandfather, W. Ormiston Roy. As scholar, editor, teacher, and collector, Ross Roy has long been recognised as one of the foremost authorities on Scotland’s literary culture. His generosity in sharing this knowledge and inspiring others is legendary. Born and educated in Montreal, Ross Roy is of Scots- Canadian heritage, with family roots in Quebec stretching back to the British conquest in the mid-eighteenth century, and with an ancestor who fought both on the losing side at Culloden and on the winning side on the Heights of Abraham. He graduated B.A. from Concordia University and M.A. from the University of Montreal, followed by the maîtrise from the University of Strasbourg and doctorates from the Universities of Paris and Montreal. In 2002 he received an honorary D.Litt. from the University of Edinburgh, and in 2009 the University of Glasgow conferred a similar honour. Like many of his contemporaries, Ross Roy had his studies interrupted. Four years as a navigator in the Royal Canadian Air Force and with the R.A.F. honed precision skills that would serve him well as a textual editor. The values which Ross and his generation had then defended, they later brought with them into academe – intellectual freedom, responsibility, dedication, fairness, and a very real esprit de corps. To enter the profession in the next generation was a privilege: the collegial spirit and work-ethic then prevalent surely owed much to the shared endeavours and hardships of those who had seen war service. 2 Kenneth Simpson Professor Roy’s teaching career has taken him to Strasbourg, the Canadian Royal Military College in Quebec, Montreal, Alabama, Texas Technological College at Lubbock, and as visiting professor to the University of Metz. For twenty-five years, from 1965, he taught at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, serving for many years as chair of the Comparative Literature Program, winning the University’s Research Award, and retiring in 1990 as Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Many are the testimonies to his inspirational teaching. As we know, Burns could be sceptical about the benefits of higher education, but his line in “Epistle to John Lapraik, an Old Scotch Bard” requires this qualification: “They gang in stirks and come out asses,/ But no frae G.