Burns Night celebrations in Scotland are a national institution and our local pub The Oystercatcher was putting on a night. Nigel, John's colleague, and his wife, Jo, joined us for the weekend so after a good walk the topmost viewpoints at Benmore gardens we joined a few others for the night of Burn's poetry, bagpipes and traditional food - cullen skink, haggis and lamb pie and cranachan. Sue and Colin were there, leading part of the ceremony - the toasts to the lads and the lassies. Sue did a great job of introducing us to most people there, nearly all of whom were English, which does make me laugh. The meal and the evening in general was excellent and we thoroughly enjoyed the 'toast to the haggis' - a ceremonial reading of Burn's poem about haggis accompanied by a procession around the table and (quite a violent) slicing open before the haggis was processioned back to the kitchen.
Burns Night is traditionally celebrated on Burns' birthday, 25 January, and is apparently more widely observed in Scotland than the official national day, St. Andrew's Day. The first Burns supper in The Mother Club in Greenock was held on 25 January 1759 and the format of has changed little since. After a general welcome and announcements, follows the Selkirk Grace, followed by the piping and cutting of the haggis, when Burns's famous "Address to a Haggis" is read and the haggis is cut open. Then the feast begins. At the end of the meal, a series of toasts, often including a 'Toast to the Lassies', and replies are made. This is when the toast to "the immortal memory", a summary of Burns's life and work, is given. The event usually concludes with the singing of "Auld Lang Syne".
The Selkirk Grace
Some hae meat an canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.
Burns was born in Alloway in 1759, in a cottage that his father built. He was the eldest son of tenant farmers William Burnes and Agnes Broun, but despite their modest status Robert’s parents insisted he was educated. He was encouraged to read from an early age, and even attended one year of mathematics schooling.
The young Burns was more interested in things that gave him pleasure – poetry, nature, women, drink – than he was in farm work. When his father died in 1784, Robert and his brother Gilbert took over the farm, but within a few years they were in financial trouble. To make matters worse, Burns was already the father of an illegitimate child – the first of his 13 children.
Burns pursued love as energetically as he did poetry, and his passion for women defined his life and work in equal measure. He engaged in many illicit relationships, sometimes overlapping with each other. However, there was one woman, Jean Armour, who he would go on to spend most of his life with but when they first tried to marry, Armour’s family tore up the contract. Outraged, Burns supposedly tried to flee to the Caribbean with another woman called Mary Campbell (also known as ‘Highland Mary’), but was eventually convinced to stay in Scotland as by then his poems were beginning to attract plenty of attention.
Burns published his first collection in the summer of 1786 – it made him a literary superstar at the tender age of 27. Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was made up of all manner of works, including poems like ‘To a Mouse’ and ‘Address to the Deil’, that reflected Burns’s upbringing, his connection to rural life and above all his interest in the human condition.
After the success of this first collection, Burns spent some time in Edinburgh before officially marrying Jean Armour in 1788 and moving to Dumfries.
Burns’s passion for Scotland and its cultural traditions came to the fore during the last decade of his life, when he worked on The Scots Musical Museum and A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs. Putting words to traditional folk songs as well as composing his own tunes, Burns contributed hundreds of songs and lyrical poems to these volumes, including ‘Auld Lang Syne’, ‘A Red, Red Rose’ and ‘A Man’s a Man for A’ That’.
Robert Burns died aged 37, in 1796, from a rheumatic heart condition. Jean Armour gave birth to their last son, Maxwell, on the day of her husband’s funeral. But his legacy lives on across Scotland and around the world and has seen him celebrated in songs, paintings and even stamps.
A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my luve,
Though it were ten thousand mile.
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