It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care to act,
it starts when you do it again after they said no,
it starts when you say we and know who you mean,
and each day you mean one more.Marge Piercy
This tongue-in-cheek rant poem was written by multi-layering different voices and arguments from twitter content. This is a mirror of a cacophony of feminist debate.
Em’tiness. Them factree sheds.
The las shift leaves
an ev’ry machine stops.
We ewsed t be Ooverville,
ower washin-machines
sent all over
like rails an cannons
from them ol ironworks.
We could even afford t larf
bout Sinclair an is C5,
puttin it in-a window
as a crazee failure.
Now, we drive away
f’r the las time
with nowhere t go :
the toy factree’s gone
an we ardly make nothin.
It’s all retail an ousin
in this once great town :
but oo cun spend
an nobuddy’s buildin.
All them yers, all them skills
wasted like my son
with his degree, signin on.
Em’tiness. Rot an rats move in
an on’y the diggers o Ffos-y-fran
never stoppin like the lines
we left be’ind: the memrees
o frens stay welded,
as joints break an roof’s collapsin.
Below is the text of Chris Bartter's address to the Socialist Correspondent Burns Supper held in the UNISON, Glasgow City branch office, February 2015. It was on the theme of What Makes Robert Burns Immortal?
Invention or Necessity?
Of course we are all products of our background – and to deny one’s upbringing seems to me to be not only a futile exercise but also a self-damaging one. In these days of avatars and false identities it may be sometimes tempting like Jeffrey Archer to invent a beneficial back story, but, I suggest, would probably have as much long term success to ones reputation as his had! Of course literature has more than its fair share of invention – indeed it is an essential part of the genre – and I’ll deal with that later.
One of the myths generally noised abroad – particularly current in Scotland for some reason - is that the English do not know about Burns. If that was once true – and I don’t think it was, I remember learning Burns’ songs at school, at least as much, and probably more than I learnt Shakespeare’s – it certainly has changed and continues to change. Due to the influence of Burns within politics – especially socialist politics, the advocacy of expatriate Scots and literary studies, a basic knowledge of Burns’ life and works in England is at least equivalent to that of Shakespeare, certainly outwith the academic industry that surrounds Shakespeare.
It is, of course, a false comparison on merit, in any case. A comparison between a sixteenth century dramatist and poet and an eighteenth century poet and songwriter is probably as valuable as comparing, say, Oscar Wilde and Adrian Mitchell. But there are now many Burns studies, Burns suppers, Burns admirers and even Burns marketing opportunities – there is even a specially brewed Burns Ale that is made by Shepherd Neame, brewers from Faversham in Kent!
Who was Burns?
So who was Robert Burns? And what makes his legacy immortal? A poet, songwriter and a young man who had an impact both during his short life, and subsequently. He was no ‘heaven-taught ploughman’ – in fact he was taught by both his own father, and by university graduate, John Murdoch. His parents attached great importance to their sons’ education. However he was no stranger to following the plough, and was born and brought up in poverty. This had a significant impact on his life, both in his search for a career that gave him the financial stability to write, and in the empathy he always had with his fellow workers.
It's hardly in a body's pow'r
To keep, at times, frae being sour,
To see how things are shar'd;
How best o' chiels are whiles in want,
While coofs on countless thousands rant,
And ken na how to wair't;
- Robert Burns: Epistle to Davie, a Brother Poet.
The ‘heaven-taught ploughman’ myth, of course is one that was invented by the Edinburgh literary (and indeed political) establishment of the time, so they could create a Scottish Bard who was acceptable to them. Burns, of course went along with this myth in public, creating almost a dual personality, while he was in Edinburgh anyway. Not that this kind of duality is unusual in the literary and artistic world. One of the main influences on Burns, James MacPherson, purported to act as an amanuensis for the Gaelic Bard ‘Ossian’ of whom there is no evidence for his existence. And one can give other examples of the creation of characters, and names to cloak actors, writers and musicians throughout history – from Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell, Mary Ann Evans, Eric Arthur Blair, through to Jimmy Miller and Richard Starkey. (A special prize for anyone who gets all of the better known names for these!)
International impact
Burns was and is hugely important in the international literary canon, influencing, apart from Scottish writers as diverse as Scott and MacDiarmid, writers the world over. American Poet John Greenleaf Whittier was reputed to carry a book of Burns in his pocket and wrote these lines about Burns’ verses.
No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
- John Greenleaf Whittier, On Receiving a Sprig of Heather in Blossom
This particular reference to song is one I intend to return to. His influence continued in the US – John Steinbeck quotes him in the title of his book Of Mice and Men and JD Salinger deliberately makes Holden Caulfield misquote Burns in The Catcher in the Rye. Burns’ impact is also particularly strong in Russia and especially the Soviet Union, where he was dubbed the ‘People’s Poet’ and where the first ever Burns commemorative stamp was issued in 1956 –the 160th Anniversary of his death. A Russian translation of his work by Samuel Marshak sold over 600,000 copies. And who of that generation will forget the astounding Scotland/GDR Friendship Society Burns Suppers, organized by the late Peter Smith!
Even in China Burns was celebrated – apparently the marching song of the Chinese resistance in WW2 was a translation of My Heart’s in the Highlands
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
- Robert Burns, My Heart’s in the Highlands
You can hear the Chinese Resistance in these lines, can’t you! Interestingly this was also an indication that Burns was quite prepared to write in standard English as well as Scots, when he thought the need arose.
The struggle against oppression
Possibly as pertinent, although less politically charged is the influence of Burns on English writers. He is an important (if not the main) forerunner of the romantic movement – Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, all acknowledged their debt to Burns. Well I said ‘less politically charged’, but maybe that isn’t so true. Both Wordsworth and his contemporary, Southey were strong early supporters of the French Revolution as was Burns.
When Brunswick’s great Prince cam a cruisin’ to France
Republican billies to cowe,
Bauld Brunswick’s great Prince wad hae shawn better sense,At hame wi his Princess to mowe.
- Robert Burns: When Princes an Prelates
And if anyone is wondering over a translation of the word ‘mowe’ in the above quote, let us just say, that it is taken from the Merry Muses of Caledonia – the verses of Burns that polite society tend to gloss over! Of course both Southey and Wordsworth changed their views latterly – Southey dramatically so. No-one can of course say what Burns’ subsequent view of the French Revolution was, as he died in 1796, after the period known as The Terror, but before Napoleon had proclaimed himself Emperor. One might as well claim to know how he would have voted in the recent referendum!
Personally I’m with the 20th Century Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai, who when asked what he thought about the French Revolution is reputed to have replied “It’s too early to say.”!
But support for uprising and ordinary working people is a clear Burns trait. His political writings show his sympathies with people struggling against oppression – the French revolution, The American War of independence, and here, from The Slave’s Lament.
It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral,
For the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O:
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more;
And alas! I am weary, weary O.
Indeed Abraham Lincoln himself was a big Burns fan – apparently memorising much of Burns by heart. Of course Lincoln was a friend of Scottish Presbyterian minister, James Smith – who he appointed consul to Scotland and who is buried in the Calton Burial Ground in Glasgow.
Music opens doors
Burns’ influence on the development of music and on many later musicians too, are many and varied. Bob Dylan has cited ‘My luve is like a red, red rose’ as the lyric that had the biggest effect on his life. A majority of folk-based musicians acknowledge their debt to him. One of them, Dick Gaughan, along with Dave Swarbrick and a Canadian band formed by Jason Wilson have been exploring Scottish and Jamaican musical links recently. There is some fertile ground to be covered here, as the Scottish links to Jamaica are considerable, and, of course, almost included Burns himself at one point, though I’m far from sure that just adding No Woman, No Cry, to the end of A Red Red Rose is particularly successful. Auld Lang Syne is recognized by the Guiness Book of Records as one of the three most popular songs in the English Language – somewhat ironically!
Indeed a copy of the manuscript version of Auld Lang Syne was commemorated on a £2 coin. The manuscript I’m glad to say, currently resides in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow in the foremost collection of Burns-related material in the world. It resides there due to the work of my partner, Doreen Kean. It was Doreen’s work in pulling together the finances that allowed the city to purchase the MS from Christies in New York.
The immortal threads
So, What ARE the things that make Burns’ memory immortal? There are three clear threads that run through Burns’ work that I think ensure his immortality – threads that are linked but separate. Firstly, his ability to use specific personal images to allow us to visualize the scene, but more than this – to use an individual event or scene to shine a light onto general and universal truths. This needs the talent to both visualize the scene in a way people can relate to – the first lines from Tam O’Shanter for example:
When chapmen billies leave the street,
And drouthy neibors, neibors meet,
Immediately that shows me a scene at the end of the working day where people are on the lookout for a drink after work – something that I’m sure we’ve all experienced! And it also needs the talent to relate these events to general principles – later in Tam O’Shanter for example Burns has the “glorious” Tam
O'er a' the ills o' life victorious!
Haven’t we all put the world to rights over a drink? As a former colleague of mine once said: ‘The difference between us and Marx, is that Marx remembered to write it down!”
This use of the everyday to throw light on general principles is a major part of Burns’ genius, in To a Louse for example, where the sight of a louse on a lady’s bonnet in church takes us via concern, outrage and humour to the realization that she is about to fall foul of the gossip and fingerpointing that he himself has had to suffer –
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin’.
And finally it ends in the general truth,
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:
Now Westlin’ Winds as well, where a fairly standard romantic nature ballad suddenly leads to a condemnation of man’s attack on nature
Avaunt, away, the cruel sway
Tyrannic man's dominion
The sportsman's joy, the murdering cry
The fluttering, gory pinion
This universality is something that has separated the genius from the good throughout literature. Recently we have had to put up with a good deal of nonsense talked about the Great War. But if we go back to the poets who wrote about it at the time, we can see clearly that those that were able to ‘universalise the suffering’ about them – to broaden their vision like Wilfred Owen, ultimately made more long term impact with their verse than did the impressively sharp personal barbs of Siegfried Sassoon. Perhaps we should draw a veil over Jeffrey Archer’s favourite First World War poet (Rupert Brooke) but can I briefly put in a plea for a Scottish poet who seems to me unfairly ignored? Charles Hamilton Sorley may have died very early in the war, but his poems do seem to me to have that broad universal vision.
Art in the Community
Secondly, this ability mostly comes from writers who are close to, or based in, a community. Writers who have an empathy and understanding of the motivations of ordinary people are able to universalize the personal, far better than those who are brought up to look at life as something that is purely something for their personal exploitation and their individual pleasure. This is obviously a strength of Burns’. He wasn’t keen on the Edinburgh establishment, and his poems and songs based in his local communities have a life and reality about them. I’ve already mentioned Tam O’Shanter, here’s the opening of The Cotter’s Saturday Night:
The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.
Thirdly, artists who use and understand music – especially but not only – folk music are also more likely to have this talent. Music and song is a superb way to identify a concern, clarify an issue, to open doors. Folk songs – and that’s what many of Burns’ songs are – deal with the lives of ordinary working people, their trials and struggles, and also gives a voice to those people. Music and song too, are important for their ability to spread words and ideas into different environments – as Whittier had it
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
Burns was, in my view, as important for his songs as for his poems – possibly more so. He spent much of his short life working to collect lyrics and tunes, to write, and write down, traditional songs he heard at home and on his travels. He was involved with two collections of Scottish songs, and by far the most important is Johnson’s Scottish Musical Museum.
Burns came across James Johnson, and his massive project, when he visited Edinburgh the first time in 1786. He was immediately fascinated with the idea, and began to collect and seek out local people's songs, eventually contributing around 200 songs in total, about a third of the whole work. Obviously this kind of work predated the kind of work that Cecil Sharp, Frank Kidson, AL Lloyd and of course Hamish Henderson did much later. In reality, however, Burns is probably closest to another songwriter and collector - Ewan MacColl - as he often rewrote old songs and introduced new songs to old tunes. Amongst the songs he added to The Musical Museum were:- Auld Lang Syne, My love is like a Red, Red Rose, The Battle of Sherramuir, Scots Wha Hae, Green Grow the Rushes, O, Flow Gently Sweet Afton, Ye Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon, Ae Fond Kiss, The Winter it is Past, Comin' Thro the Rye and John Anderson, My Jo, and many more.
An immortal legacy?
This text was first published in Socialist Correspondent Issue 22, Spring 2015.
Scroll back from the cosmos,
To inner space.
The mind's micro-structure
Nanoscientists mind-mapping
The brain's hundred billion neurons,
Its thousand trillion connections,
Processing 0.1 quadrillion thoughts per second.
Vastly more sophisticated
Than any computer.
What causes that leap
Across the synapse?
The spark between Creator and Man?
That lets the poet contemplate the rose –
And move the human heart.
David Betteridge presents two poems to help you enjoy an alternative Burns supper.
At An Alternative Burns Supper
His short life and his fertility
lift his perfection to the rank of the phenomenal...
- Aphorisms on Mozart, by Ferruccio Busoni
I
Here’s tae the man’s life -
its drivin root, its rise, its faur reach –
and tae the great hairst he gather’d in!
Here’s tae the wark -
the high skill, the luve, the daurk hours -
that he pit in!
Here’s tae the words that he gar’d flow -
a muckle stream -
frae his hert’s ferment and his mind’s still!
Here’s tae the faur-travellin o’ that stream!
Here’s tae its carried gowd!
Here’s tae the lang and future legacy
ane sma’ life endow’d!
Idealist without losing touch
with the earth, realist without ugliness...
II
... I would winnow the man
from the chaff of his myth;
the works from the man;
and the best of the works
from the run of the mill.
Winnow, I say, then winnow more;
then, at the last, distil!
I would sweep aside the cotter’s
and the hoghmagandie nights,
the barley-rigs and -bree;
likewise the chameleon roles
of ploughman-penman-citizen,
of ranting dog, of Jacobite, and Jacobin,
and keeper of crapulous company.
Winnow, and distil!
His resources are extraordinarily abundant,
but he never uses them all...
What’s left of worth -
epistles, satires, songs, a handful’s few -
has high cask-strength: here
is the bard’s best, and the world’s best, too...
III
“The bard’s best, and the world’s best, too.”
Best: how Ah hate thi term!
Wurld’s best is wurse, excrementil,
thru-n-thru. As fur thi shit wurd the - euch! -
it’s faur-n-awey thi wurst o aw thi terms
in Abstractionism’s buik.
It’s purest extramentil, n that is definit.
He disposes of light and shadow, but his light
does not pain, and his darkness still shows
clear outlines...
Tak thi man-n-his stuff intire!
Nae finicky-pickity pluckin o plooms!
Burns wis complexit wi his place-n-times,
n he writ wi his haill sel fired.
Read it thi same: leeve in it, imbrace it,
breathe it, crap bits-n-aw: like it’s a freend:
jist as it is: baggy, raw.
Gie us this dey ur poems incarnate!
Onythin less is Plato’s pish,
n that is definate.
IV
... He was amphibian.
Languages, genres, points of view, and styles -
he moved between them easily.
Fast-travelling, he seldom stayed in any one
for long, until, towards his early end,
he made landfall in an archipelago of song.
It was for him, and for posterity,
his Fortunate Isles.
There, to every Muse
containable in verse, he gave the blessing
of his voice, a blessing that, in reading
and in singing, we can never lose...
He is young as a boy,
and wise as an old man -
never old-fashioned and never modern...
V
If Life’s nae a jig in July weather,
but a gallop insteid, hell for leather,
wi’ nocht at the end save a tightenin’ tether,
wi’ dark beyond,
best we a’ gang our gate thegither,
in Freenship’s bond.
...carried to the grave
and always alive...
May SANG sustain us on our way,
remind us whaur we first saw day,
an’ prime us for the waitin’ clay,
whan a’ are cow’d.
Until that time, may LUVE haud sway,
an’ LIFE ride proud.
CHORUS OF THE PEOPLE
Against the Elites
We are the nothings you walk past.
Your lowest and least,
we live in the margins of your power.
Expendable,
we fight your many wars.
Your triumphs we pay for,
but have none.
Unheeded and unnamed,
we make your schemes come true.
Every ton and inch and cubic yard and chisel-cut
of every building you command,
is ours.
Every furrow ploughed and filled with seed
is ours.
Your wealth-producing factories;
your cities -
ours!
Day in, day out, we do your work and will.
We pipe the water that you need from reservoir to tap;
we stitch the clothes that cover up your nakedness;
we bake the bread (and cake) you eat.
We are your numerous and essential kin.
My word you can’t know Burns unless you can hate the Lockharts and all the estimable bourgeoisand upper classes as he really did – the narrow gutted pigeons. Don’t for God’s sake be mealy-mouthed like them. I’d like to write a Burns life. Oh, why doesn’t Burns come to life again andreally salt them.
D. H. Lawrence, letter to Donald Carswell.
Catherine Carswell’s response was positive enough, and in her bio-novel on Burns, published in 1930, she duly acknowledged: “Without D. H. Lawrence, my friend, and Donald Carswell, my husband, this book could not have been. I therefore inscribe it to them both.” She even excused Burns one of his darkest hours, when he was literally thrown out of Robert Riddell’s house for what was deemed, drunken, inexcusable behaviour, during a New Year celebration. Some of the men had decided to act out the ‘Rape of the Sabine Women’, and Burns, allegedly well gone in drink, was to lead the ‘amorous raid’. He did so by grabbing hold of Maria Riddell, the host’s sister-in-law, only to realise too late that he was on his own; the whole escapade was a lousy trick - to expose him as, “a too haughty poet whose hands were not clean of the coom of Jacobin democracy.”
The plot had nothing to do with Robert Riddell himself, but, as Carswell suggested, it was the idea of a group of army officers who were also guests in the company. Class, after all, is class, a drunken exciseman had affronted the Riddells, and he was compelled to leave the house in complete disgrace, no longer accepted as a friend of the family. He admitted in verse that the thought of having to pass Maria Riddell in the streets of Dumfries filled his mind:
The shrinking Bard adown an alley sculks,
And dreads a meeting worse than Woolwich hulks-
Tho’ there his heresies in Church and State
Might well award him Muir and Palmer’s fate:
The reference to his heresies in Church and State was no exaggeration. Thomas Johnston, in his epic work, The History of the Working Classes in Scotland (published in 1946), made the point that, “a somewhat injudicious letter”, sent by Burns to the editor of a radical newspaper in 1792, “almost resulted in Botany Bay for Scotland’s greatest singer, and, in truth, good men did go there for less.” Burns had been extremely fortunate that his friend, Robert Graham, an Excise Commissioner, had accepted his explanation that he no longer supported the French Revolution, and he was spared the threatened inquiry the Excise had ordered regarding his disaffection toward the Pitt government. Graham probably suspected that, the poet’s plea of loyalty, was merely a desperate lip service to an Establishment that he had no particular liking for; however, he chose to standby him, and Burns, much to his relief, was duly excused. He then informed his correspondent Mrs Dunlop that his lips were henceforth sealed regarding his political opinions, but to her he would breathe his true sentiments. The part of the letter in which he did so was torn away, and we can but guess what he had written!
Burns’s politics seemed to fall into two diametrically opposed viewpoints – Jacobitism and Jacobinism. The former stemmed from his deep love of Scotland, his passionate patriotism and nationalism. He was convinced that his forebears had committed themselves to the cause of the Stuarts, and the very thought of the family who had replaced them on the British throne was anathema to him:- “An obscure beef-witted race of foreigners whom a conjuncture of circumstances kickt up into power and consequence” was his verdict on the Hanoverians. The Jacobites, by attempting to win back Scottish independence, gained his sympathy, though his overall support for the Stewarts was decidedly questionable.
The injur’d STEWART-line are gone,
A Race outlandish fill their throne;
An idiot race, to honor lost;
Who know them best despise them most.-
According to a close friend of Burns, James McKitterick Adair, when revolution broke out in France in 1789, Burns and his crony, William Nicol, who had previously expressed themselves as ardent Jacobites, immediately pledged their support for the French democrats – the Jacobin party. Although Burns, as a democrat, had been greatly influenced by Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man – it had inspired his great song, ‘For a’ that and a’ that’ – he did not follow Paine’s support for the Girondists in the French Assembly. In a reckless moment, he attempted to send four carronades to the French Assembly. It is unlikely they reached their intended destination; however, this act and reports of him proposing seditious toasts in Dumfries, brought him under close scrutiny concerning his political activities.
In 1793 a young doctor arrived in Dumfries who was soon to be regarded by Burns as his “most intimate friend”. He was the scion of dedicated Jacobites: his grandfather had answered the call in 1715, his father in 1745. William Maxwell, however, had returned from France where he had played an active role in the revolution as a fully committed Jacobin, and member of the National Guard, who had escorted King Louis to the scaffold. Burns and Maxwell were indeed kindred spirits, staunch republicans who were now effectively silenced. Maxwell was well aware that he was under constant surveillance, and it had been made clear to Burns that the Excise Board would no longer tolerate any displays of disaffection.
With his health now failing, and being totally dependent on his government salary to provide for his family, Burns became a mere shadow of the free spirit that had once sent shock waves through the Kirk with a series of devastating anti-clerical satires exposing absurd dogma to ridicule and scorn. He had also threatened the political establishment with his radical verse and song. In the early morning of 21 July, 1796, Burns died. On the day of his funeral Jean Armour gave birth to his son, who was duly named Maxwell, after the doctor and friend who attended him in his final illness.
Flow Gently Sweet Afton
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, Flow gently, I’ll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary’s asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Flow gently, clear Afton, among thy green braes,
The song was duly published in Vol. IV, p. 400, of the Scots Musical Museum, with the title, ‘Afton Water’, and with ‘clear’ amended to ‘sweet’. The full text of the lyric is given in all main works of Robert Burns, and, the internal evidence of some verses make it immediately obvious that he had taken considerable poetic license. In the third stanza he comments:
There daily I wander as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary’s sweet Cot in my eye.
Whilst in the following stanza he continues the theme of Mary and him still together by Afton’s pleasant banks and green valleys:
There oft as mild ev’ning weeps over the lea, The sweet scented birk shades my Mary and me.
Stanza five has Mary bathing her snowy feet in Afton’s wanton waters, and, in the concluding verse, as she sleeps by its ‘murmuring stream’, the river is charged not to disturb her dream. Burns, however, never lived anywhere near the River Afton, with, or without a girl named Mary. He would have passed through the area on his journeys between Ellisland farm and Mauchline, June to November, in 1788, and doubtless enjoyed the picturesque views he observed, which he encapsulated into his exquisite lyric.
Although he expressly stated that his lyric was paying a compliment to the River Afton, there is a reference to Mary in every verse, in all but one by name. In his letter to Mrs Dunlop he gave no indication or identification of any specific Mary. Several months later, in a letter to her, dated 13th December, he did, however, mention a Mary whom he had known intimately. Reflecting on the possibility of a life beyond the grave he declared:
There should I with speechless agony of rapture, again recognise, my lost, my ever dear MARY, whose bosom was fraught with Truth, Honor, Constancy & LOVE.-
My Mary dear departed Shade! Where is thy place of heavenly rest? Seest thou thy Lover lowly laid Hear’st thou the groans that rend his breast!
It is unlikely that Mrs Dunlop would have connected the Mary of ‘Afton Water’ with the “dear departed Shade” she had now learned about. Burns, however, found to his cost that she was none too pleased with his reference to Mary in this letter. This was probably due to the fact that he was still a few months short of a mere two years married to Jean Armour. There is no doubt that, the Mary in his letter was Mary Campbell, who had been parted for ever from him by cruel fate, when she died in the typhoid epidemic at Greenock on, or around, October 20, 1786. It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that she had been betrothed to Burns at the time of her death. Was she, however, the heroine of the exquisite lyric he had sent to Mrs Dunlop in February?
It would seem inconceivable that, an emotionally charged poet such as Burns, could have used the name Mary in his song without reflecting sadly and deeply, about the Highland Lassie whom he had been planning to marry, three years previously. Indeed, one renowned Burns editor, Robert Chambers, thought it quite possible that Burns had written the song back in 1786, when Highland Mary was still alive, that he had shelved the verses on learning of her death; but had decided in 1789 to make it known, with the setting amended from the scenery around the River Ayr, to the area where the Afton flowed into the Nith. Chambers had obtained information from George Thomson that Gilbert Burns regarded Highland Mary as the heroine of ‘Afton Water’, and Chambers concluded that: “The averment of the brother and bosom-friend of Burns must be next, in a case of this kind, to his own.” Chambers was also aware that a daughter of Mrs Dunlop, claimed that she heard Burns confirm Highland Mary as the subject of the song. The introduction to the song in Chambers’s edition had a quotation by the poet drawn from biblical text:
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not, nor awake my love – my dove, my undefiled! The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of the birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. – R. B.
Taking up on this, Scott Douglas in the headnote of the song in his edition commented: “And where does the adored name of MARY appear in a more glorious setting than in this lyric? Even the inspired ‘Singer of Israel’ has contributed something to heighten the effect of the poet’s rapturous song.” Douglas was quite convinced that, when Burns had written to Clarinda in a drunken rant, telling her of the finest woman he had known, whose name was indelibly written in his heart’s core - though he dared not look in on it - as a degree of agony would be the consequence, he was referring to Highland Mary. For some vague reason Scott Douglas thought this proved, “... beyond reasonable doubt that MARY was the subject of ‘Afton Water’ and that it was composed when she was yet alive.” As it turned out, Burns was actually referring to Margaret Chalmers.
The four volume Centenary Burns (1896), edited by W E Henley and T F Henderson, announced that they were putting Chambers and Douglas right regarding the information about ‘Afton Water’. They insisted, “... that the heroine – if heroine there were – was another than Mary Campbell.” Robert Chambers, in assigning the lyric to 1786, got it completely wrong, in their opinion, as did Scott Douglas who suggested 1791. (Scott Douglas actually gave 1786, as has been shown above). Henley, in his essay on Burns, Life, Genius Achievement, was particularly scathing about the Mariolaters, and justifiably so, for their absurd adulation of Highland Mary; however, his caustic comments on the woman herself were totally unreasonable. Denouncing Chambers for styling her as the heroine-in-chief of Burns’s story, he pointed out that it was Jean Amour whom he (Burns), “appreciated as the fittest to be his wife he’d ever met.” Yet, it is undeniable that, had Mary not died in 1786, it was she, not Jean Armour, who would have been Mrs Robert Burns.
The attempts of Henley and Henderson to deny Highland Mary’s right as the subject of ‘Afton Water’ appeared to be given a boost when the name of another Mary surfaced in an article in the Burns Chronicle (1910), claiming that, Mary Murdoch who lived at Laight, close to the River Afton, was in fact, the girl Burns had in mind when he had written his verses. In the book, Burns and Stair, by John McVie, published in 1927, this opinion was given further coverage with the viewpoint: “Her claim to be the heroine of ‘Flow gently, sweet Afton,’ is certainly the most feasible of any yet put forward.” She was the niece of John Logan of Laight, New Cumnock, whom McVie stated was an intimate friend of the poet, who stayed with him often when in that area. There is, in fact, no definite evidence to substantiate such a claim. Mary Murdoch, according to McVie, “... is said to have been a great favourite with Burns.” Again, where is the evidence to verify such a statement, apart from local hearsay, not published until 122 years after the alleged event, when anything could have been fobbed off as ‘fact’?
It is true that Burns visited John Logan; however, there seems nothing to suggest that he stayed with him at any particular time, far less the frequent overnight stops claimed by McVie. On Sunday, October 19, 1788, Burns dined with Logan at Laight; however, as he made clear in a letter to Jean Armour, after doing so, he intended to continue his journey and arrive at Mauchline late in the evening. On his return journey to Ellisland, on the 23rd October, he again called at the home of Logan, before proceeding to Sanquhar, where he wrote to Mrs Dunlop. The dates of those visits to Logan occurred, incidentally, around the time of the second anniversary of Highland Mary’s death.
The authority of Gilbert Burns in naming Highland Mary, was also dismissed by John McVie, mainly on the grounds of Gilbert being incapable of contradicting Dr Currie. This referred to information supplied to Robert Chambers from George Thomson. Gilbert had inferred that Currie was misinformed in several of the comments he made about the song, in particular the claim of it being presented by Burns to Mrs Stewart of Stair, as a compliment to her; “but Dr Currie must not be contradicted.” This is rather ambiguous – it seems more than likely, that it was Thomson himself, not Gilbert, who was insisting on Currie being correct. It would really have been absurd of Gilbert to point out Currie’s errors, then quite emphatically state that his comments were probably founded on fact after all.
Another version of opinion based on local tradition about the composition of ‘Afton Water’ is given in a book, The Ayrshire Book of Burns-Lore, written by A. M. Boyle, (1987):
Local legend maintains that the song was written in an inn by the River Afton at New Cumnock. The poet had halted at the inn on his way from Ellisland to Mauchline and gone to visit Mr. Logan of Laight, Glen Afton, for the evening. During his absence from the inn, the landlady spread news of the poet’s presence, expecting to have a busy, lively night on his return. When Burns returned he seemed to be pre-occupied with his thoughts and went straight to his room. In the morning he sent a servant to Laight with a draft of the song Clear Afton which he had composed on his way back to the inn.
Again, like the hearsay given out by John McVie, this is no more than a fabricated legend. If Logan received a manuscript of ‘Afton Water’ he was a very privileged fellow indeed, but what became of it? Surely it would have been regarded as a prized and treasured possession, and carefully secured in a safe place. Would Burns not have mentioned to Logan that the Mary of his verses was Logan’s niece? If he had done so, then it would have been made known long before being passed down by word of mouth from 1788 until finally appearing in print in 1910. In more recent times, James Mackay commented that, “Burns visited John Logan on several occasions ... and during one of them is believed to have composed Afton Water.” (Complete Letters, p. 123, headnote). In this and his later comprehensive, well documented biography of Burns, covering the poet’s private life in intimate detail, there is no mention whatsoever, of anyone named Mary Murdoch, nor does any other major biography make any comment concerning her. Indeed, Robert Crawford (The Bard, 2009, p. 309), regarded the song “as an elegy to a dead Mary.”
In all the comments and opinions regarding the song ‘Afton Water’, arguably, none have surpassed that of James C. Dick, for a logical, concise and reasonable assessment, given in his much admired volume, The Songs of Robert Burns, published 1903, p.372:
Currie states that it was written on Afton Water, and in compliment to Mrs. Stewart; Gilbert Burns states that Highland Mary was the heroine; Scott Douglas agrees with this, but in the Centenary Burns it is asserted that it has no connexion with Highland Mary, but was written as a compliment to the River Afton which flows into the Nith near New Cumnock; and that the verses were sent to Mrs. Dunlop on February 5, 1789. This is doubtless correct; but it may be, and very likely is, a reminiscence of Mary Campbell.
In the first of a series of articles on Chartist poetry and working class struggle, Dr. Mike Sanders traces the background to its development.
At first sight, this might seem like a ridiculous question. However, given that poetry has effectively been 'privatised' for a number of centuries, perhaps the question is not so far-fetched. Indeed, the world's first working-class movement - Chartism - devoted a great deal of energy in its attempts to restore poetry to its proper status as the common property of all. In pursuit of this aim Chartist newspapers and journals printed articles such as 'The Politics of Poets' which ran for ten weeks in the Scottish Chartist Circular. This series explicitly sought to reclaim what we would now call 'elite' or 'canonical' poetry for the working-classes. Even more significantly, Chartist newspapers actively supported working-class poets by regularly publishing their poetry. The leading Chartist newspaper, the Northern Star, published almost 1,500 poems from at least 390 Chartist poets between 1838 and 1852.
The Northern Star's poetry column was not an attempt to impose ‘culture’ from above, rather it was a response to a popular demand that poetry could and should speak to working-class desires and needs. From the start, literally hundreds of Chartists sent in their poems and quite a few appear to have pestered the editor with enquiries as to when their work would appear. Occasionally, the editor lost patience with his correspondents. In March 1838 he wrote “We have received as much poetry as a donkey could draw; we shall select from it as occasion offers, so let none be jealous, or we will take it by lot”! Poets sending their poetry had to have a fairly thick skin as the editor could be brutal. ‘W.M.’ (a weaver) sent in a poem and gave the editor permission to make any alterations needed. The editor replied “The best thing we can suggest to him is, to alter all the words, or, what might be still better, take them all away, and leave the paper blank.”
Given the risk of such withering criticism what made so many Chartists put pen to paper to produce poetry? Some wrote to promote solidarity, others to celebrate or commemorate leaders and events. Some wrote to rouse their comrades to action, others to reflect on the aims, aspirations, tactics and strategy of the Chartist movement. We are used to this kind of ‘political poetry’ and I have no wish to deny its importance. However, for many Chartists the simple fact of writing poetry (irrespective of its content) was itself a political action. Composing poetry was an affirmation of working-class creativity in the face of the dehumanising grind of industrial capitalism – a reminder that the ‘hands’ who worked the machines themselves possessed hands capable of producing beauty as well as profit.
One example of this is a poem from a woman who signed herself ‘E.H., a Factory Girl of Stalybridge’. Technically speaking E.H.'s poem is not a good one, as she herself acknowledges. Yet for all its technical deficiencies it is, I feel, a particularly moving poem. E.H. dedicates her poem to the factory reformer, Joseph Rayner Stephens, and she compares her position as a ‘factory girl’ with that of the millowners’ wives and children:
Their children, too, to school must be sent,
Till all kinds of learning and music have learnt;
Their wives must have veils, silks dresses, and cloaks,
And some who support them can’t get linsey coats
E.H. not only points out that their advantages are bought at the cost of her class’s impoverishment, she also protests against her cultural as well as her material deprivation:
If they had sent us to school, better rhyme we could make
I think it is time we had some of their cake.
[...]
We factory lasses have but little time,
So I hope you will pardon my bad written rhyme.
God bless him for striving to get us our rights,
And I wish the world over were true Stephenites.
A Stephenite I am from the ground of my heart,
And I hope from the same I shall never depart.
May God spare your life till the tyrants are ended,
So I bid you good bye, till my verses I’ve mended.
NB: Readers interested in reading all of E.H.'s poem will find it in the Northern Star for May 18th, 1839. The digitised version of the Northern Star can be found at the following website: http://www.ncse.ac.uk/index.html
On Tuesday 15th December, 2015 Christie’s Auction House held a sale of property that had belonged to the late British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The sale realised more than £4.5 million pounds. The Guardian dryly stated that ‘she was worth more dead than alive’. Thatcher presided over one of the most bitter industrial disputes of the 20th century; the 1984-85 Miner’s Strike. Two days after this sale the last deep coal mine in Britain, Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, closed.
The Kaiser Biscuit American Bald Eagle
Realised almost half a million dollars;
More absurd and obscene lots soon followed;
A set of ten gilt miniature oil barrels...
Mencken’s Dictionary of Quotations,
Hammered down for only fourteen grand;
An Emes and Barnard George IV inkstand;
Cinderella flounce and ostentation.
But now the room’s abuzz, they look askance,
Blood drips from each hedgefund manager’s maw,
As ravenously they surge and push and paw,
For surely now, the pièce de résistance;
Kellingley Colliery and its miners renowned,
Who’ll start the bidding! Surely, come, a pound...?
You'd Only Have To Do It Once
by Chris Amos
"You'd only have to do it once.
One burst of rapid fire - BRRRAAAPPP!
And stop the scum right then and there
And put Great Britain back on track.
They did it in Tiananamen Square - it worked for them.
'Course, they were Commie bastards mind,
But all the same it shut 'em up - fair's fair.
Dish out a similar kind of treatment here
And problem solved, mate!
You'd only have to do it once!"
So there he is - sat at the bar;
The voice of middle aged and Middle England
Spitting bile and half-chewed crisps out into empty air,
His words a red top tabloid blare that echo near and far.
His denims strain to hold his bloated beer gut in,
His Live Aid tee-shirt wearing thin,
His hairdo ageing Status Quo
And knowing all he needs to know
To judge on life and death.
And I'm sat thinking "Christ, shut up!"
But matey-boy's just warming up.
"How come his kids are dead and he's alive?
Eh? Eh?
If they was my kids I would DIE before I let 'em come to harm!
I'd keep 'em safe at home
Among the bombs, among the drones, among the bodies and the rats
And just a hint of mustard gas upon the burning air,
I am a caring parent more than he would ever be!
If that was me, them kids would be alive back home in Migrant Land-Istan!"
And so he talks, and so I hear,
His words a horde, a stinging swarm about my ears.
I've known his kind these thirty years and never liked them.
What he calls common sense I call obscene,
A Katie Hopkins hard wet-dream.
"You're fired - BRRRAAAPPP!"
The bull bars on his four-by-four for ramming shut that open door.
It's always Nineteen Eighty-Four for him;
The generation given everything give something back?
Why?
Back's for wimps!
Unless it's "Back to where you come from, Gunga Din!"
And on the screen
The little child lies cold,
Carried shoreward in the gentle fold of waves that make no judgements.
He can't talk.
Yet he tells more truth in one still, silent image than you'd ever hear
From those slurred, snarling lips fuelled by wilful ignorance and beer.
Be still.
Be silent.
Turn your gaze upon the revelation in those waves
And find the compassion your hatred stunts.
LOOK AT THE PICTURE.
YOU'D ONLY HAVE TO VIEW IT ONCE, I'D HOPE.
And "God?" I think; "We've talked before.
I'm not the best of men, but surely we can do a deal here?
Grant me, O Lord, by Thy great might a one-way helicopter flight
That I might shove him out the door into the Syrian Desert night
Abandoned, frightened, all alone and tell him;
"Make your own way home."
I'd only have to do it once and then I'd be a saint, I swear."
But God's not there.
Or if He is, He's keeping shtum.
The talk subsides.
And meanwhile with the waiting tides more children come.
And more.
And more.
But we're not looking anymore - the footy's on.
The child is gone.
Beachcombing
by Jim Aitken
1.
Mackay Brown once combed the beaches
of Orkney. Once he found a boot
of salty leather, throwing it
back into the white foaming waves.
And once, like Hamlet before him,
he brooded on a seaman’s skull
with sand rather than earth dripping
from the base. He threw that back too.
Usually it was just seaweed
strewn over the shore like mulched leaves
but he would always return here
to raise the profile of his place.
2.
Once we called it Mare Nostrum
and it was where the real action
took place. It was there, we were told,
that civilisation started.
And now the Greek beachcombers
would welcome salty leather boots
that had danced the waves from Orkney
rather than real human jetsam.
More troubling still than traffickers
are the voices further in land
proclaiming their Christian values
by telling them to go away.
3.
The universal brotherhood
of brine understands no borders
and would crash through all razor wire
smashing down all fences and walls.
For fragile is what we all are,
vulnerable our condition.
And what should flow, should surge from this
is nothing less than compassion.
We are all at sea, all at sea
in the same sea that soaks us all
and only by us reaching out
can we hope to keep our boots on.
THE WESTERN WALL PLAZA
Jerusalem is the dwelling place of the Shekinah
the Plaza rained out, no one at prayer, no one intoning under an umbrella, their
feet would be flooded if so
I take refuge in a wooden shack at the opposite end, wet seats, wet tables,
soldiers on duty, some armed, some unarmed, two teenage girls in green
uniforms, one of African descent, lurid Uzis cocking between their legs
soldiers and tourists smoke in rainy silence, another of the young females has
a raw blush of acne on her cheeks, a child, other soldiers pass a crisp packet
hungrily as dozens more shove in for shelter, the floor over-crowded with black
boots, the scene a makeshift barracks on the site of the ex-Moroccan Quarter
shekinah rains,
above the Herodian wall
deciduous green
grows darker
Alan Morrison surveys the recent 'mushrooming depth-charge' of political poetry in various anthologies, welcomes the rise of radical publishers, and introduces his new website, Militant Thistles.
Fitting, since we are in a decade effectively twinned with the Depression-hit 1930s, a decade during which there was an explosion of political poetry (Auden, Spender, Day Lewis, MacNeice, Wintringham, Cornford, Lindsay, Caudwell etc.), and prose polemic through Victor Gollancz’ Left Book Club (recently resuscitated by Pluto Press, hot on the heels of the revival of that other Thirties-born polemical imprint, Pelican).
Surprising, since, in spite of today’s social and political upheavals we are, nevertheless, at the tail-end of an at least two-decade-long apolitical postmodernist hegemony in mainstream poetry.
POLEMICAL ERUPTION IN POETRY
But, just as the momentous triumph of left-wing outsider Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership race took even the most optimistic by surprise, so too has the sudden polemical eruption across the poetic spectrum in response to Tory ascendency. Both would have been thought highly fanciful prospects only months before, but, today, they are actually happening.
Emergency Verse’s direct response to Chancellor Osborne’s epoch-crushing ‘Emergency Budget’, back in June 2010, anticipated the steady rupture of more openly political poetry, contrapuntal to Jody Porter’s re-energising of the Well Versed columns in the Morning Star.
Throughout the past five years there have been a number of ‘big imprint’ collections at least ostensibly addressing socio-political topics; scores of more authentically political collections through presses such as Smokestack, International Times, Waterloo, Red Squirrel; many political poetry anthologies and campaigns, such as Poems for Freedom, Fit for Work: Poets Against Atos, The Stare’s Nest, Proletarian Poetry; and, more recently, the pre-election Campaign in Poetry, the post-election poetry blogsite, New Boots and Pantisocracies, and promptly ‘on-the-pulse’ Poets for Corbyn and 21 Poems for Jeremy Corbyn.
New Boots and Pantisocracies is worth particular mention for accomplishing the considerable feat of attracting contributions from scores of ‘high profile’ poets not normally known for composing polemical poems. It seems these poets were prompted to contribute to this vast project due to entering what the site terms the ‘new dispensation’ i.e. solo Tory rule.
That we have been under Tory rule for the past five years (due to the impotence of the Lib Dems’ much-trumpeted “restraining influence” of so-called “Coalition”), with much of the most devastating cuts and social culls already enacted (not least the 91,000+ Atos-hounded sick and disabled claimants who ‘died’ between 2011 and 2014!), is a moot point. But W.N. Herbert and Andy Jackson’s valiant initiative distinguishes itself for having managed to galvanise a sizeable portion of the hitherto politically inert poetry mainstream to finally assert itself against Tory austerity and associated narratives. It has also served to provide much-needed reinforcements to the veteran anti-austerity poetry alternative.
MILITANT THISTLES
Militant Thistles (strap-line: ‘prickling the politics of permanent austerity’) is The Recusant/Caparison’s latest venture, which is essentially an online continuation of the outpouring of polemical poetry that our two previous e- and print anthologies brought to a significant readership.
The Caparison anthologies were published at a period when speaking out politically in poetry was still perceived as outré –even reputationally perilous– in the mainstream, in spite of tokenistic attempts by such flagship journals as Poetry Review to catch up with the rupture of political poetry happening pretty much entirely outside its culturally-lagging pages (cue the solipsistic ‘Where is the New Political Poetry?’ issue under Fiona Sampson’s twilight editorship).
That it now appears to be de rigueur to write political poetry in opposition to Tory-imposed austerity, and the hitherto taboo of “welfare reform”, is to be greatly celebrated.
Militant Thistles’ title is taken from Cyril Connolly, who himself lifted the phrase from George Crabbe’s ‘covert pastoral’ (see William Empson) poem ‘The Heath’. Connolly employed the phrase, in his Enemies of Promise (1938), as a metaphor for ‘political writers’, and, in part, meant it thornily: he saw political writing as one of many potential pitfalls for authors and poets.
Our use of the phrase is a prickly riposte to Connolly’s cautionary take which, together with the truncated Auden trope ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ (which goes on, however: ‘…it survives/ In the valley of its making…/A way of happening, a mouth’), inadvertently let the postmodernist mainstream ‘off the political hook’.
Militant Thistles welcomes political poems or polemics. Please send submissions in the body of the email together with a brief biography to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please put ‘Militant Thistles’ in the header.
