Last night I attended my first ever formal Burns supper event, hosted by the Cunninghame North constituency of the SNP, where I was asked to give the Immortal Memory to Robert Burns. A couple of folk have asked me to publish what I recited, as a bewildered Ulsterman taking it all in for the first time, so here goes!
Hello everyone,
For those of you who don't know me, my
name is Chris Paton, I'm a member of the Largs branch of the SNP, and
as you can probably hear I am not originally from this parish. I come
from a wee island just off Scotland – it's called Ireland,
which at its closest is about 12 miles off the coast. In fact, I'm delighted to say that I come from the same town that
God comes from in Northern Ireland, a wee place called Carrickfergus, although I might have to have a word with him about the rugby result earlier today!
Just for good measure, this is the first time I have ever attended a
formal Burns Supper, so I'm honoured to be asked to speak to the
immortal memory of Robert Burns – this is definitely one to tick
off my bucket list later!
So, after Googling “immortal memory”
and after watching a few speeches on YouTube, what can I tell you
about Robert Burns the man? As an Ulsterman, what possible interest could I have in Robert Burns? Well I have to
tell you that until a few years ago, I had none whatsoever. In fact,
I would go so far as to say I was deeply suspicious about the man,
but for all the wrong reasons. So let me tell you where I once was on
that, how I have now come to admire and respect the world's greatest
poet, and why I as a Johnny Foreigner think he should be remembered
and celebrated.
As I mentioned, I was born in, and for
most of my childhood was raised in, Northern Ireland. Now the
province of Ulster, as you may be aware, was colonised by thousands
of Presbyterian Scots some four hundred years ago, in an event known
as the Plantations. As a child though, I didn't know any of this. In
a period when we lived through the Troubles, you were either a
Catholic or a Protestant, or Irish or British, with people often
defining themselves not by who they were, but by who they weren't. As a consequence, I had no idea that I
had a deep Scottish ancestry, despite the fact that when growing up
many of the words I used were good auld fashioned Ulster Scots words
When I misbehaved as a wean and a bad word came from my bake I
was scolded for being a cheeky wee hallion, when the pokey van came
to our estate I'd buy a 99 poke, it was a place where my wee brother
used to be a clipe for squealing on me, where I could go for a walk
up the Red Brae, and where I could point to this table, that
wall and thon hill thonder. But I didn't know that
these were Scots words, I just thought that was how we spoke English.
We also had some Scottish traditions, but again, I didn't know that they
were Scottish. One New Years Eve, my dad asked me to take a lump of
coal up to my Granny Graham's house in our estate and to wish her a
happy new year. Terrified that my granny was somehow freezing to
death on her own, I ended up filling a carrier bag with coal and took
that up instead! I got a clout around the ear for that one! I had no
idea about my Scottishness – my Ulster Scottishness – because we
were never allowed to define ourselves in that way.
Even today I get wound up by what has
happened to Ulster's Scottish culture. I gave a talk in Largs a few
years ago about how to research Irish ancestry, and a wee man
approached me and told me he was setting up a local non-sectarian Ulster
Scots heritage group – would I be interested in
going along? He handed me a leaflet, at which point I had to ask him
– if this is a non-sectarian group, why have you printed your
leaflet on orange paper? I wanted nothing to do with them. My notions
of Ulster Scottishness tie into my Presbyterian ancestors from
Islandmagee and Antrim, who fought with the radical United Irishmen
in 1798. Now I'm not saying all my lot were successful. Never mind
the fact that the rebellion failed – as a fifteen year old lad my
four times great grandfather John Montgomery accidentally shot his
hand off with one of the rebels' rifles in the midst of it. My
family's been regularly winning the Darwin award on occasion ever
since.
So then there's Robert Burns himself.
As a child in Northern Ireland, all I knew about Robert Burns was he
was Scottish, and had written that Hogmanay song. Even as an
adult, I still had no idea about what half of Auld Lang Syne meant -
“we'll tak a right guid willie waught”, for example. I used to
work in television, and as a one time researcher on a BBC2 series of
short films on men's health, I could never quite understand what a
right good willy wart was – that certainly wasn't what my research
was telling me, I filmed many a grown man with tears in his eyes
complaining about how sore they were – until the time when I
twigged that it wasn't quite what it sounded like! It's actually a
hearty swig of ale or some other alcoholic drink, and I'll happily
tak one of those. Especially if it is Laphroaig, which is God's
official whisky.
And everywhere I came across Burns as a
child, it was the same image of the man on a tea towel, or a
shortbread tin, the portrait that became an icon, a bit like Bonnie
Prince Charlie. Now I was raised as a Presbyterian, and the one thing
we were taught in Ulster's Presbyterian churches was that idolatry
was a bad thing. In fact, on another TV series I once made about the
history of the Church in Scotland, I had to visit the Free Church
College on The Mound in Edinburgh, where the Scottish Parliament
first met after it was reconvened. When I got there, it amused me no
end, because when you go through the arch into its main courtyard,
the first thing you come across is a statue of John Knox on a plinth
– the very man who tore down the statues at the Reformation. I
still don't get why the Kirk doesn't see the irony of this! But the
point is I was raised not to believe in the idea of celebrity – I
can make my own mind up about whether someone should be celebrated.
So how did I first begin to develop an
understanding of Burns? Well, when I left the BBC in 2006, I started
to work professionally as a family historian. Now as a genealogical
researcher, I get a lot of folk contacting me, especially from the
States, who tell me that they are descended from William Wallace,
Robert the Bruce, the Stewarts – you name it, I've heard it,
they're usually always wrong, and they've usually bought the wrong
tartan! However, about four years ago, I had a client who claimed she
thought there was a family story of some possible connection to
Burns, could I take a look?
In fact, it transpired that she was
spot on. I discovered that her five times great grandfather was a
merchant from Kilmarnock called John AIRD, who, with his wife Anna
CAMPBELL, had a granddaughter called Jean BRECKENRIDGE, who in 1791
married a young man by the name of Gilbert BURNS – the poet's
brother. It was through this connection that I
first looked into the story of the Burns lads, and I learned that
Robert and Gilbert had together taken on the lease of Mossgiel Farm,
near Mauchline, in 1784. Three years later, Robert withdrew from the
farm, and from the sale of his second edition of poems he granted
Gilbert a loan of £180 to pay off his debts and to invest in his
business. So this was the first time I had ever come across Robert
Burns in a guise other than as this foreign icon, not as a poet, but
as a big brother looking out for his wee brother. Fair play to you
Rabbie, I thought, and all due respect – as the eldest in my family
I've helped my own siblings out from time to time in the past, this
was something I could relate to.
And then we had the referendum. At this
point there was an argument in the sainted Scottish press about
whether Burns was a unionist or a nationalist. Well as we say back in
Northern Ireland, you can't kid a kidder, and give my head peace! To
Johnny Foreigner here this was an absolute nonsense. By now I knew
that Burns was a bit of a complex man, and that in rebellious times
such as the 1790s he had to be careful how he expressed his
loyalties. But it was obvious that he had been disgusted by the
Treaty of Union in 1707, for which he condemned the Scottish
nobility:
What force or guile could not
subdue
Thro' many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward
few
For hireling traitor's wages.
The English steel we could
disdain,
Secure in valour's station:
But English gold has been
our bane
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.
His contempt for the upper class, and
his belief that all people are in fact equal very much reflected the
thinkers of the Enlightenment at that time, as expressed through
works such as The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine. Burns expressed his
belief in, and solidarity with, the common man when he penned A Man's
a Man for a' That:
Ye see yon birkie ca’d ‘a
lord’,
Wha struts an’ stares, an’ a’ that?
Tho’
hundreds worship at his word,
He’s but a cuif for a’ that.
For
a’ that, an’ a’ that,
His riband, star, an’ a’ that,
The
man o’ independent mind,
He looks an’ laughs at a’ that.
A prince can mak a belted knight,
A
marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's abon his might,
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities an' a' that;
The pith o' sense, an' pride o'
worth,
Are higher rank than a' that.
Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the
earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.
Now you're talking! This is definitely
a man I can respect. And he wasn't just drawing inspiration from the
nonsense he was encountering in Scotland, or in Britain, he knew that
education and the revolution of the mind could unlock a strength that
no imperial power could ever thwart. In his Ode to General
Washington's Birthday he stated:
Here's freedom to them that would
read.
Here's freedom to them that would write!
There's nane
ever fear'd that the truth should be heard
But they wham the truth
would indite!
A short and sweet quote there. Robert
Burns would have been great on Twitter!
So I began to pick up on a lot of this
throughout the Referendum, and in its aftermath. Now I struggle with
poetry, and am not a great one for songs and lyrics. When I sing, it
sounds like a chicken farting, and I don't do romance awfully well –
I proposed to my wife by waking up one morning and saying “should
we get married then?!” Romantic songs, and love poems – was Burns
really someone I should be trying to come to grips with? But last
year, having by now grasped that there really was something to engage
with when it came to Robert Burns, I decided to challenge my final
prejudices about him. I visited the Burns Birthplace Museum in
Alloway, thinking I was a going to be accosted by people dressed in
18th century outfits looking for wee sleekit mousies and
hunting haggis. In fact, I was – but I don't think I've ever been
to better museum in my life. It wasn't about Burns the industry, it
was about Burns the man. The excise man, the farmer, the nationalist,
the poet. The interpretative panels were all written in Scots,
written as a real living language.
So it turned out from this exhibition
that Burns was a great poet, but rather endearingly, he wasn't a
perfect man – who amongst us is? He loved his words, and he also
loved his women. My God, did Burns love his women! My wee brother,
who was actually born in Scotland and now lives in Dubai, is now with his third wife, but I haven't the heart to tell him
about Burns' tally with women, in case he gets competitive. As a
genealogist, one of the things I regularly come across in old kirk
session records are cases of what was referred to as 'antenuptial
fornication', basically doing the dirty deed before a wedding ring was put on – well I think in the 18th century the Kirk
must have had an entire department working on Robert Burns. I can
imagine all these ministers of the cloth having minor heart
palpitations every time he walked into a room which had a woman
someone near within a five mile radius! One article I read noted that
Burns was a 'philanderer, fornicator and a father of bastart bairns'. Actually, it could be argued
that if he wasn't, he might not have written so many of his great
love songs. But Burns also believed in the equality of women,
and in 1792 wrote:
While Europe's eye is fix'd on
mighty things,
The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
While
quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children
lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me
mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
Even with the things he didn't agree
with, he did try to see the opposing view and to understand why
others held their views, for example, with religion. Now again, being
Irish and being raised on an island that makes religion still seem
like a growth industry, the one thing I can tell you for a fact that
is that I am not in anyway religious, because whilst Northern Ireland tried to knock religion into me, it also knocked it right back out of me. But I will absolutely to my dying
breath defend the right of folk to have religious beliefs, and to
continue to argue that we need to keep fighting against the likes of Donald Trump and his disgusting Muslim ban. Well Burns held very
similar views. In a letter to a Mrs Dunlop in December 1794, just
eighteen months before he died, he commented on the delight that he
gained from seeing people gain comfort from something he himself
could not be reconciled to. This is what he wrote:
What a transient business is life!
Very lately I was a boy; but t'other day I was a young man; and I
already begin to feel the rigid fibre and stiffening joints of Old
Age coming fast o'er my frame. With all my follies of youth, and I
fear, a few vices of manhood, still I congratulate myself on having
had in early days religion strongly impressed on my mind. I have
nothing to say to any body, as, to which Sect they belong, or what
Creed they believe; but I look on the Man who is firmly persuaded of
Infinite Wisdom and Goodness superintending and directing every
circumstance that can happen in his lot - I felicitate such a man as
having a solid foundation for his mental enjoyment; a firm prop and
sure stay, in the hour of difficulty, trouble and distress: and a
never-failing anchor of hope, when he looks beyond the grave.
Unlike most of you in this room, Robert
Burns to me has become an acquired taste worth acquiring. I was not
raised to revere the man, I did not take to him because I was taught
about him at school, I wasn't raised to eat haggis, neeps and tatties
on Burns nights, I instead took the scenic route to come to terms
with the Bard. When I read Burns now – and believe me, I am reading
Burns now – I see a reflection in many of the things that he
writes that I believe in, and that I have believed in my whole life.
His words on equality, on national identity, on internationalism, on
all the things he has celebrated and railed against, these are words
that are easily understood - whether written in Scots or in English -
because at their heart lies a truth about who we are and what we
aspire to be. They are the same things that Burns believed over two
hundred years ago, they are the wisdom of ages immortalised in verse.
When we gather and quote his thoughts and share his stories, we
celebrate the fact that we remain wed to those words and that
ideology. On a personal level,
whilst I have spent years trying to uncover and reclaim my Ulster
Scottishness, through the words of one
man here in Scotland I have been able to find the words that help
to define my values as a civic Scot. They are the values I share with
each and every one of you here tonight.
Ladies and
gentlemen, you'll be delighted to know that I have come to the end,
but that also, when it comes to appreciating Robert Burns, I finally
got there in the end! So I'd like you all, if you would be so good,
to stand now as I raise a glass - a right guid willie waught - to the immortal memory of the one and
only Robert Burns.
COMMENT: I should add that it was a great event, at which the guest speaker was Joanna Cherry QC MP who gave the toast to Scotland, and with many other great speakers and entertainment. I'll definitely be going to another Burns supper at some point!
Chris
