Robert Burns – It’s supper time

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Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796) (also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland’s favorite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard, was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a “light” Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these pieces, his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt.

He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism. A cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish Diaspora around the world, celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was voted by the Scottish public as being the Greatest Scot, through a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.

As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) Auld Lang Syne is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year, or, as we know it, New Years Eve), and Scots Wha Hae served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well-known across the world today include A Red, Red Rose; A Man’s A Man for A’ That; To a Louse; To a Mouse; The Battle of Sherramuir; Tam o’ Shanter, and Ae Fond Kiss.

He is generally classified as a proto-Romantic poet, and he influenced William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley greatly. His direct literary influences in the use of Scots in poetry were Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) and Robert Fergusson. The Edinburgh literati worked to sentimentalize Burns during his life and after his death, dismissing his lack of education by calling him a “heaven-taught ploughman”. Burns would influence later Scottish writers, especially Hugh MacDiarmid, who fought to dismantle what he felt had become a sentimental cult that dominated Scottish literature.

An example of the Burns literary influence in the U.S. is the novelist John Steinbeck, who took the title of his 1937 novel Of Mice and Men from a line contained in the second-to-last stanza of ‘To a Mouse’: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley”. Burns’ influence on American vernacular poets such as James Whitcomb Riley and Frank Lebby Stanton has been acknowledged by their biographers. When asked for the source of his greatest creative inspiration, singer songwriter Bob Dylan selected Burns’s 1794 song ‘A Red, Red Rose’, as the lyric that had the biggest effect on his life. The recently deceased author J. D. Salinger used protagonist Holden Caulfield’s misinterpretation of Burns’ poem ‘Comin’ Through the Rye’ as his title and a main interpretation of Holden’s grasping to his childhood in his 1951 novel ‘Catcher in the Rye.’ The poem, actually about a rendezvous, is thought by Holden to be about saving people from falling out of childhood.

Burns became the “people’s poet” of Russia. In Imperial times, the Russian aristocracy were so out of touch with the peasantry that Burns, translated into Russian, became a symbol for the ordinary Russian people. In Soviet Russia, Burns was elevated as the archetypal poet of the people. A new translation of Burns, begun in 1924 by Samuil Marshak, proved enormously popular, selling over 600,000 copies.

The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to honor Burns with a commemorative stamp in 1956. The poetry of Burns is taught in Russian schools alongside their own national poets. Burns was a great admirer of the egalitarian ethos behind the French Revolution, and that was an additional reason for the Communist regime to endorse him as a “progressive” artist. However, he has remained popular in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union as well.

BURNS SUPPER
Burns Night, effectively a second national day, is celebrated on 25 January with Burns suppers around the world, and is still more widely observed than the official national day, Saint Andrew’s Day. The first Burns supper in The Mother Club in Greenock was held on what they thought was his birthday on 29 January 1802, but in 1803 they discovered from the Ayr parish records that the correct date was 25 January 1759. The format of Burns suppers has not changed since. The basic format starts with a general welcome and announcements, followed with the Selkirk Grace. After the grace, comes the piping and cutting of the haggis, where Burns’ famous Address To a Haggis is read and the haggis is cut open. Toasts are made and at most suppers Scotch is the only drink available. The event usually allows for people to start eating just after the haggis is presented. This is when the reading called the “immortal memory”, an overview of Burns’ life and work, is given; the event usually concludes with the singing of Auld Lang Syne.

After ‘Auld Lang Syne’, Burns most famous song may be ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’ written in 1794.

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Holte Ender

Holte Ender will always try to see your point of view, but sometimes it is hard to stick his head that far up his @$$.
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13 years ago

Ya great lump of craven sassenachs.
Haggis is a food for real men.
Seeing it lying after it’s been slashed open, fragrant and savoury steam rising from the exposed contents makes my mouth water.
I will add to Holte’s very erudite article, that in Glasgow, it is acceptable to drink slightly chilled Irn Bru as an accompaniment instead of whisky.

Jess: It’s not mystery meat, it’s lungs, spleen, heart and grommach

BTW Try listening to the original music to Auld Lang Syne, another Burns classic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U3w_zpiWSE

Jess
Reply to  Robert Douglas
13 years ago

Oooh, I’ve had that Irn Bru drink. That’s the orange one right, that tastes like baby aspirin? It’s really good for hangovers or so I’ve heard ;). Well that mystery meat thing has really been solved for me, thanks Robert. How was/is your trip, nice time I hope.

Reply to  Jess
13 years ago

Hi Jess,
Yes, the Irn Bru is a bright orange “fruit” flavoured carbonated beverage, containing ferric ammonium sulphate, and it is very good for hangovers. It’s kind of a fluorescent Mountain Dew.
it’s nice to be back. Great trip thanks, very restfull.

Jess
13 years ago

Ewww, that haggis is only for the strong of stomach. I have a girlfriend does these suppers every year and I get physically ill when I see that haggis on the table. I don’t mind the turnip or the potatoes or any of the other stuff, just that mystery meat in a stomach lining. Just ewwww, really ewww.

13 years ago

[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Michael Scott, Holte Ender. Holte Ender said: RT @madmike1 Robert Burns – It's supper time http://bit.ly/e3KnYE […]

Admin
13 years ago

I had no idea that the Soviets were the first to honor Burns. Great read and I’m with the Hen on the haggis.

13 years ago

I’m still cringing at the “cutting of the haggis”….Ew.

13 years ago

One of my favorite poems, To a Louse:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!

http://www.robertburns.org/works/97.shtml

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