Robert BurnsLimited World Federation Limited www.rbwf.org.uk 1981 The digital conversion of this Burns Chronicle was sponsored in recognition of the Centenary of The Balerno Burns Club - "Let it Blaw" In Memory of our Founder Members James Pearson Snr. James Fairbairn Snr. James Craik George Henderson William Garlick James Wales Alex Henderson 25th January 1881 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 1981 j BURNS CHRONICLE AND CLUB DIRECTORY INSTITUTED 1891 FOURTH SERIES: VOLUME VI PRICE: Paper £3.00, Cloth £3.75; (Members £2.00 and £2.50 respectively). j CONTENTS Samuel K. Gaw 4 From the Editor 6 O' Canada George Anderson 8 The Canadian Conference Edward R. Evans 14 Obituaries 16 The State that Kept on the Move 22 Reader's Digest 23 The Songs of Robert Burns Yvonne Stevenson 24 A Rare Burns Souvenir at Auction 27 The dark, dreary Winter, and wild-driving Snaw J.A.Weir 28 Kilmarnock & Loudoun Burns Day 33 John Cairney's Swan Song 34 Newdecadensia Bob Pirie 36 Honour the Piper Janet M. Cutting 37 Reader's Letters 39 Burns the Farmer Goes on Show 40 Robert Burns; Song's Immortal Flower Johnstone G. Patrick 42 Sex Equality Roy Solomon 43 The Year of the Scot, 1981 44 Robert Burns Day in Maryland, U.S.A. 45 St. Giles-Robert Burns Memorial 46 A Quote for Every Occasion 47 A Personal Reminiscence of Jean Armour Burns Brown Irving Miller 48 Canadian Conference Reunion 50 The United States, 1980 J. F. W. Thomson 52 A Greeting- Harken Whyles T.G.11 53 Burns Club Competition a resounding Success 54 Towards a New Life of Robert Burns Robert D. Thornton 56 Heanor Caledonian Society Silver Jubilee J. A. Irvine 62 Burns Festival, 1980 63 Burns and the Canadian Connection Elizabeth Waterston 64 Burns Federation Art Competition James Glass 67 Man of the People Rev. Alexander J. Farquhar 69 72 Saunders Tait J. L. Hempstead The Link with Loudoun John Strawhorn 78 Book Reviews 84 A Toast to the London (Ontario) Burns Club J. Hanley 90 91 Gie her a Haggis! David McGregor Fair fa' your honest, sonsie Face The Editor 93 Cunninghame Gets Provost's Medal 94 Tam o' Shanter Burns Club Schoolchildren's Competition, 1979-80 95 The Burns Federation Office Bearers 96 List of Districts 101 Annual Conference Reports, 1979 107 Club Notes 122 Numerical List of Clubs on the Roll 176 Alphabetical List of Clubs on the Roll 217, 219, 221 The title photograph is from the Nasmyth portrait of Burns and is reproduced by courtesy of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery Published by the Burns Federation, Kilmarnock. Printed by Wm. Hodge & Co. Ltd, Glasgow. ISBN 0307 8957 I .J 4 SAMUEL KNOX GAW, F.S.A. Scot. By profession a plant engineeer and draughtsman with IBM at Greenock, Sam Gaw hails from Irvine. His wife, Anne, is also well known in Burns' circles and they have two of a family, a daughter Jean (who has two children of her own) and a son Alasdair, currently wrestling with 'O' levels. At the age of 47, Sam has had the distinction of being the youngest President of the Federation since its inception. As a local politician he was the youngest ever Bailie and Treasurer of Irvine, and more recently was a Councillor for Cunninghame District. As Chairman of the Leisure and Recreation Committee he was largely responsible for negotiating the amalgamation of the National Trust, the Countryside Commission and Cunninghame District Council to set up the Arran Country Park which came into being in April 1980. He has had a life-long interest in the Arts. He managed a group of young Ayrshire professional singers and musicians known as the Ayrshire Aye! Players, and wrote and produced 'That Rebellious Scot' and 'A Man's a Man', musical revues based on the works of Burns and the traditional music of 18th century Scotland, which were staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1976 and 1977. Sam is also currently Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Borderline Theatre Company whose successes included the late Roddy McMillan's 'The Bevellers'. For the past 25 years Sam has been a noted Burns reader and some of his recitations have been recorded by Scotsoun. He has been president of the Irvine Burns Club and it was during his term of office (1966) that the Museum was established. He has also been a President of the Ayrshire Association of Burns Clubs. He became an executive member of the Federation in 1968 and in recent years has been Convener of the Monuments Com­ mittee, seeing the role of this body as a ginger group for prodding local and national authorities into awareness of what is really important, e.g. restoring the townscapes of Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire and not just the memorials erected after the Poet's death. The Burns movement has no more fervent propagandist than Saw Gaw in recent years. He has been indefatigable in promoting the true Burns spirit on both sides of the Atlantic. His main ambition is to see the various organisations working together in harmony towards the same end-bringing Robert Burns, the man and his works, to a much larger audience. The highlights of his term as President were his installation in London, On­ tario-a city which owed so much to a fellow townsman of Irvine, John Galt-and the opening of the new Ellisland Museum near Dumfries. 5 j FROM THE EDITOR ~WN was breaking over the bus depot in Springfield, Massachusetts: a light mist and just a nip in the air of the early fall. Furry-tongued and fuzzy-eyed, I felt some sympathy for the early morning meeting of the DDA (Downtown Derelicts Association) sprawled informally on the sidewalk nearby. Jet-lag, not John Barleycorn was my undoing-plus an overnight bus ride from New York, en route to Vermont and Montreal. The only other passenger off the New York bus, waiting for an onward connection to some remote part of northern New England, was a young Marine(' Just mustered out ofthe Service yesterday, Sir') in a check shirt and blue jeans but still bearing the closely-cropped hallmarks of his recent vocation. We talked of this and that, in a this-and-that sort of way. After a bit he paused, regarded me quizzically, and said, 'Say, are you Irish?' I thought for only a second. If I answer in the negative I am committing myself to a long, and probably tortuous explanation, and the kid may never have heard of Scotland anyway and cares even less. So I took the easy road. 'Yes. lam.' 'I knew it', he cried triumphantly. 'I could tell by your brogue!' Just then my bus arrived, but as I boarded it I am sure I distinctly heard a cock crowing somewhere in the background. Three times .... Later in the day I sat next to an elderly French Canadian lady who had been visiting her daughter in 'Nee Amshy' (New Hampshire) and had no word of English. She came from a small farming community in the Gasp{: Peninsula and from her conversation I imagined that it had changed little since Montcalm surrendered to Wolfe. Bowling across the prairies lchatted with a bus driver whose grandfather was Louis Riel, the Metis (half-breed) leader, hanged as a rebel but now revered as a folk hero. In Alberta I met another driver whose grandfather was one ofthe first ofthe Mounties andhad played a part in arresting Riel. I met Finns and Italians, Ukrainians and Baits. In Strasbourg, north of Regina, I met the curatrix of the local farming museum and found that she hailed from the Sorbisch (Slav) enclave in East Germany. Though I passed through towns and villages with such homely names as Biggar, Govan and Carstairs it was not until we were hurtling down that terrifying road that hangs above Hells Gate on the run into V ancouverthat I encountered my first fellow Scot. He was a reliefdriver and as he sat beside me and chatted to the driver in front I felt a tingle of recognition. Up to that point I had remained silent, but then I turned to him and said, 'You're a Doonhamer, aren't you?' To which he replied with some asperity, 'Ah'm no' frae Dumfries! Ah'm frae Crocketford.' I am no dialectologist in the calibre of Henry Higgins, but you don't come right across Canada without feeling a sense of achievement in being only nine miles out in your guess. And he had to admit that he'd been living in Canada for nigh on 35 years, so perhaps the quality of his accent was not quite as pure as it might have been. Over the ensuing weeks I saw a fair amount of North America from the front seat of a Greyhound bus, without any doubt the fmest way of seeing the continent, and met many interesting people (from a brain surgeon to an Apache lady and a Mexican Jehovah's Witness), not a few of whom claimed to have Scottish blood somewhere in their veins. A mite diluted perhaps, but the Scottish influence on North America is subtle and all-pervasive. I have seen various figures quoted for the estimates of Canadians and Americans of Scottish descent and they may be as high as ten per cent of the total population. This puts us on the same level as blacks, lower than women, but higher than homosexuals, so perhaps we too should be demanding our fair quota of Scottish cops in the San Francisco Police Department! For me personally, the most Scottish part of my trip was in Virginia.