Saturday is Jan. 25, known as Burns Day in Scotland, a holiday
celebrated in honor of its most famous poet, Robert Burns.
Saturday is Jan. 25, known as Burns Day in Scotland, a holiday celebrated in honor of its most famous poet, Robert Burns, or Robbie Burns, as many Scots call him.
Burns was born on that day in 1759 and died in 1796. Although his poetry became quite well known while he was still a young man, he did not make much money at it and was a farmer for a good part of his relatively short life. He had a great deal of charm and practiced it among the young women, which resulted in several illegitimate children; hence one of his titles, “The lustful plowboy.”
Burns was esteemed as much for bringing the good Scottish dialect to his works as for meter and power. He also was democratic in nature and wrote feelingly of the artificial class system that dominated the world of his era.
Among his poems that many people quote more than two centuries after he wrote them is, “The best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley,” or more often misquote as “the best-laid plans….” He also penned the poem whose lines we sing every New Year’s Eve, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot….”
His fellow Scots (it is Scots or Scottish, but not Scotch; that’s one of the best-known products of Scotland) established his birthday as a day of national pride along with St. Andrew’s Day on Nov. 30 for the patron saint of that country.
Burns Day is celebrated with bagpipes and serving of the haggis, a national dish consisting of a sheep’s stomach steamed with its organs, onions, oatmeal and assorted spices. Many Scots and their descendants in other countries also recite a number of his poems and have a drop or two of Scotch to fortify themselves.
Scots have an undeserved reputation as being frugal or even miserly that arose from making use of everything that could be used in a land where much of the soil and terrain made farming difficult and a climate that is cold and/or wet and foggy much of the year. But people who have lived among them maintain there are no more generous-minded people than are found there.
Scotland has given us golf, argyle socks and Sean Connery. Many Americans, including Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Buchanan, boasted descent from that land.
My mother’s sister, one-thirty-second Scottish, belonged to an organization of people descended from Scots. They celebrated Burns Day in the traditional way and staged skits to honor their heritage. One January in the long ago she approached my mother and asked if she could borrow me to recite at the ceremony.
I was flattered and dutifully learned my few lines in broad Scottish. It was only just before I was to deliver them that I was told that an appropriate costume was to be worn. No matter how proud a tradition the kilt, to a 4-year-old boy it is a dress, something girls wear. I stammered out my lines with a blushing face and fled to change into my knickers as soon as possible.
Aunt Bessie pressed me into service again the following Burns Day, but I adamantly refused to comply at the one after that. It was not that I disdained my heritage (after all, I’m one-sixty-fourth Scottish) but I was in the first grade by then and had my reputation to consider.
I no longer have a reputation but still have never worn a kilt since. However, in the meantime I did acquire much Scottish lore and came to admire a lot of Scottish literature. I am not quite sure how I will observe Burns Day Saturday but you are welcome to join me. We can always simulate bagpipes while alternating at the Burns poetry recital.
As for dinner – haggis, anyone?
