Burns, Scott and Wilson - their legacy

7/27/2019 Burns, Scott and Wilson - their legacy

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One of my favourite questions on the TV programme, QIis: What have Scotland, Haggis,

bagpipes, tartan and whisky all got in common?

The answer will be revealed later and has much to do with the works of Burns, Scott and others.

When I was asked to deliver his talk it was as someone who hadnt taken much interest inliterature, Scottish or otherwise. So I am no expert on the works of these men and if you arelooking for any critique of their work then look elsewhere.

But the subject I was asked to speak on was their legacy and that, I have fornd is a fascinating

story. Many of you here will know the background to Burns and Scott but for those who do not, Ibelieve it is worth looking at their stories as they are pertinent to their legacy.

Robert Burns was born on 25th January 1759in Alloway, two miles south of Ayr. The Burnesfamily came to Alloway after losing the tenancyof their farm in Dunnotar, Kinkardineshire in

the north-east of Scotland because of theirJacobite leanings in support of their landlords,the Keiths. After a spell in Edinburgh, Williammoved to Alloway in Ayeshire as a nurseryman,

took a lease on seven and a half acres ofland and built a two-bedroom cottage thoughprobably not without the decorations.

He married Agnes Broun and had a family, rstRobert in 1759, followed by six siblings. Theywere brought up in his fathers strict ScottishPresbytarian tradition with a good dose ofthe Scottish Covenanter from his mothersbackground.

Robert and his brother Gilbert received what

seems like an excellent education for that timeand for children of their means. They excelledat reading under the tutilage of John Murdoch.They would have to memorize hymns, scriptureand poetry.

This formal education was complimented bytheir mothers singing of traditional songs.Burns was fascinated by these and also thesongs and stories from one of her older relatives, Betty Davison. They sparked his imagination;he later said that she,

had, I suppose, the largest collection in the county of tales and songs concerning devils,ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, giants, inchanted towers,dragons and other trumpery.

One has to remember that in Scotland up to the mid-18th century Enlightenment, there had beenno great tradition of written literature in Scotland.

There was however a rich tradition of storytelling possibly inherited from the saga-telling Vikingshundreds of years earlier. Families would gather around a re after sundown, performing whattasks could be done and telling tales. Even the phrase to spin a yarn relates to this tradition.

In Burns own words, these cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy.

Life was hard for the family. They moved eventually to a farm called Lochlea near Tarbolton. Itwas here in 1779 that Robert incurred the wrath of his father by attending a village dance, an actwhich soured their future relationship.

Portrait of Robert Burns,by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787


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My father as I said before was the sport of strong passions; from that instance of rebellionhe took a kind of dislike to me, which I believe was one cause of that dissipation whichmarked my future years. I only say, Dissipation, comparative with the strictness andsobriety of Presbyterian country life; for though the will-o-wisp meteors of thoughtless Whimwere almost the sole lights of my path, yet ingrained piety and virtue never failed to point meout the line of Innocence.

Burns was a sociable man, joining the local

freemasons lodge and the Talbolton BachelorsClub, a local debating society.

He had been writing poetry and love songssince he was fteen and when he movedto Irvine on the west coast, he was rstencouraged to publish his work.

Poverty, hard toil and illness were never farfrom the family and in 1784 William Burnesdied. His death may have acted as acatalyst for Roberts creativity. He was now

his own man and started what he called acommonplace book of Observations, Hints,Songs and Scraps of Poetry. He would writepoems and songs to satirise local dignitariesand comment on social issues but also to

tease the local girls and in it we see his love ofAyrshire and its beauty.

To understand Burns, we have to considerthe social climate of the period known as theEnlightenment. The Enlightenment spread

throughout Europe and manifested itself inScotland in the early 18th century after the1707 Act of Union. It was an age of discovery,encompassing new ideas about philosophy,political economy, engineering, architecture,medicine, geology, archaeology, law, agriculture, chemistry and sociology.

The 1770s saw the emergence of the Romantic movement which manifested itself in art, musicand literature. Before this there were certain parts of Britain no self-respecting lady or gentlemanwould dare venture.

No-go areas included the desolate wastelands of the north like the Lake District, Northumberland

and pretty much all of Scotland including of course, the Borders. These were places of harshlandscape and weather which couldnt be farmed. Polite societys attitude was akin to theirequivalent today and inner city ghettos. The locals were viewed with deep suspicion; at worst,they would rob you or murder you, and at best would be far too uncouth to socialise with.

Romanticism can then be seen as a counter-enlightenment movement. German painter CasparDavid Friedrich that the artists feeling is his law. To William Wordsworth, poetry should be the

spontaneous overow of powerful feelings

In his Commonplace Book, Burns wrote,

We have never had one Scotch poet of any eminence, to make the fertile banks of Irvine,

the romantic woodlands and sequestered scenes on Aire, and the healthy, mountainoussource, and winding sweep of Doon emulate Tay, Forth, Ettrick, Tweed etc

Tarbolton Bachelors Club.


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And this is largely true for the rest of Scotland

too. There had been early writers such asJohn Barbour who wrote The Brus in the 14thcentury and bards known as makars suchas the 15th century William Dunbar. Theyusually wrote pieces for ofcial occasions.Allan Ramsay who ourished in the early18th century was admired by Burns. Hispoems, most famously The Gentle Shepherd,developed from the makar tradition and wereoften of a pastoral nature, anticipating the later

Romantics.

Burns published his rst book, Poems, Chieyin the Scottish Dialect, in 1786 and began tomix with the intelligencia in Edinburgh. He wasperceived as plain but having a noble dignityand was treated as an equal.

Burns radical views emerged during this time.A erce sense of social justice and suspicionof the Act of Union, perhaps harking backto his fathers eviction from Kincardineshirebecause of his Jacobite sympathies. This was

a dangerous time; revolution was in the air inEurope following the success of the colonialistsin the Americas. Burns and others were worried that the traditional Scottish way of life would beswallowed up in a greater, anglicised Britain.

Burns wrote:

Fareweel to all our Scottish fameFareweel our ancient gloryFareweel even to our Scottish nameSae famed in martial storyNow salt rins oer Solway sandsAnd Tweed rins to the ocean?

To mark where Englands province standsSic a parcel of rogues in the nation!

It was this sense of patriotic identity that motivated him when, in 1787 he met James Johnson andbecame a major contributor to his Scots Musical Museum, an anthology of Scottish folk songs.

This work was published in three volumes between 1787 and 1802 with Burns supplying about athird of the 600 songs. As well as collecting old songs, Burns wrote new words to old tunes, andmany of the songs now attributed to Burns have older roots; songs such as Auld Lang Syne, MyLove is Like a Red, Red Roseand Scots Wha Hae.

He also contributed to other antiquary works such as George Thomsons A Select Collection ofOriginal Scottish Airs, published between 1793 to 1818, which adapted Scottish folk-songs withclassical arrangements.

In 1786 there was a chance meeting with a fteen year old apprentice solicitor called Walter Scott.

Burns noticed a print with a poem that he had not seen. The young Scott was the only person athe social gathering able to identify the author.

That would have been because at an early age, Scott had been interested in the oral traditions ofthe Borders, having been schooled in Kelso.

Portrait of Allan Ramsayby William Aikman 1722


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Scott was to differ from Burns. If Burns was

a man of the people; Scott was part of theestablishment. It has been said that if Burnswas a proto-nationalist, Scott might be likenedto a Scots Tory. He was in favour of the Union.But like Burns he worried about the loss of theScottish way of life.

He was appointed Deputy Sheriff of Selkirk andin the 1800s published his Minstrelsy of TheBorders which includes many of his famousworks including Thomas the Rhymer, a taleof prophecy and fairy folk and Flowers of TheForest, the famous lament for the Scottish lossof Flodden.

He also differed from Burns in that he merely recorded the words of songs. Whereas Burns was

musically inclined and was able to sing the songs, Scott had a curious way of recording songs andpoems using notches on sticks. Writing down the words was treated with suspicion by many of theolder people he visited in his travels around Liddesdale, Ettrick and Teviotdale.

Ironically, in trying to preserve these ballads and songs he might have detroyed them. Famously,the mother of James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd, who had supplied him with Auld Maitland, oneof the oldest ballads, was scathing of him when she saw the published version.

They were made for singin and no for readin; but ye hae broken the charm noo and theyll neverbe sung mair. An the worst thing is theyre naither richt spellt nor richt setten doun.

This rather put me in mind of a motto on a 16th century mural rescued from a building in BridgeStreet in Berwick, the origins of which lie with Socrates:

Wysedome & science whiche are pure by kynde,Shulde not be wryt in bookes, but in mynde.

Fortunately for us, old Mrs Hogg has been proved wrong.

The young Walter Scott meetsRobert Burns.

Portrait of James Hoggby Sir John Watson Gordon c.1770

Portrait of Sir Walter Scottby Sir Henry Raeburn, 1822


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Scott wrote of The Minstrelsy,

This is my contribution to the history ofmy native country, the peculiar featuresof whose character are daily melting anddissolving into those of her sister andally.

Scott divided his ballads into two catagories,

the Historical and the Romantic, an articialcontruction if ever there was as these storiescan encompass both and so much morebesides.

There are ballads of battles such as the Battleof Otterburn which tell of brave deeds an

almost obligatory heroic death and an equallyobligatory defeat of the English. Daring deedsare the subject of Jamie Telfer of the FairDodheidin which a cattle raid is revenged andAuld Maitland, a story dating to 1300 in whichour eponymous hero and his sons beat backthe horrid English.

The border reiver families are a rich sourcewith tales of treachery such as JohnieArmstrongand The Lament of The BorderWidowset in the time of James V. Another wellof inspiration is the supernatural. In he MiddleAges the moors were subject to all mannerof spirits, fairies and brownies. Thomas the

RhymerI have already mentioned and YoungTamlaneis a story set at the conuence ofthe Ettrick and Yarrow, telling how Tamlane isturned into a wee, wee, man by the fairy folk.

Which brings us to John Mackay Wilson. Hewas born in Tweedmouth in 1804 and likethe poets before him grew up to love the

surrounding countryside. In a poem, TheTweed Near Berwick he wrote:

Midst the daydream of boyhood, ereglowing ambitionHad sung the fond thrillings of beauty and

love,Thy banks were my study - my only tuitionThe sounds of thy waters, the coo of thydove.

Boyhood was not to last long as at the age of11 he was apprenticed to the Berwick printerWilliam Lockhead of Marygate who specialised

in producing bibles and history books. JohnMackay Wilson soaked up the contents ofthese books.

The ballad of Young Tamlane.

John Mackay Wilsonby James Sinclair, 1833


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After being rejected in love, he left his apprenticeship and moved to London, no doubt red by

glowing ambition. Like Burns before him, perhaps the hardship he suffered was to inuence hislater writing.

Wilson failed to nd any success and was forced to sleep rough. Luckily he was rescued byJames Sinclair, an agent for Lloyds at Berwick, who happened to be visiting London. Sinclairgave him enough money to return to Tweedmouth. It is probably this James Sinclair who painteda portrait of Wilson that is now in Berwick Museum and Art Gallery. Yet another is in the Scottish

National Portrait Gallery.Wilson then moved to Edinburgh where he worked on the staff of the Literary Journal. In 1829he found some success with The Gowrie Conspiracy and other stage plays. At this time he alsolectured on poetry throughout the country.

He returned to Berwick in 1831 and began helping to edit The Border Magazine. Many of Wilsonspoems and lectures were included in the early editions, together with his story The Vacant Chair,which was later to become the rst of a series of Tales of the Borders.

In 1832, when in Manchester again with little money, Wilson was approached to become Editor ofThe Berwick Advertiser. Wilson was far from keen as he feared it would stie his creativity. Themarket for his work in London was no better and Wison nally agreed to take the Editorship.

The paper included national and foreign news and political pieces written by Wilson. Duringperiods when news was scarce, Wilson would include one of his own stories, in verse or prose.

In November, 1834, the rst issue of Historical, Traditionary, and Imaginative Tales of the Borders,by John MacKay Wilsonwas published. The issue would cost three-halfpence. The Taleswere tobe published weekly with a monthly compilation edition.

The rst issue of The Tales contained two stories, The Vacant Chairand Tibby Fowler. Twothousand copies were printed, but before the week was out a second edition had to be printed tomeet the unexpected demand. Two weeks later sales had reached four thousand. In commonwith other contemporary writers, many ofWilsons Tales were of a moralizing and

didactic nature.

The Taleswere a phenomenal success. A yearand a half into the run, Wilson wrote,

There never was an instance of what iscalled a provincial publication meetingsuch a reception from the public; and it isonly one or two metropolitan publicationsthat can boast of the same circulation

TheTales of the Borders werecommenced at about two thousandweekly. Many then said that quantitywould never sell. But they not only arenow nearly two thousand every week,but of many of the earlier numbers more

than seventeen thousand have been sold;and from proposals that have been madeto the author by London book-sellers, tocirculate the work throughout England,Scotland, and Ireland, within a month

the weekly circulation will not be belowTHIRTY THOUSAND.

Frontispiece to an edition of theBorder Tales.


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Wilson died aged 31 on 3rd October 1835 after a period of illness. Wilson left a widow, Sarah, but

no children, and was buried in Tweedmouth Churchyard.

What of the Tales? Academics are unsure about where they originate. Are they based on historicfact or legend, or are they Wilsons own concoctions? Or did he collect them in the same manneras Burns and Scott.

Wilsons story The Deserted Wifebegins with the sentence. The following tale wascommunicated to me when in Dumfriesshire, in the year 1827, by an old and respectable lady, who

was herself the subject of it. But this may have been a literary device to give authenticity to thestory.

The Taleswould appear to be an amalgum, some based on history such as The Red Hall; or,Berwick in 1296and The Siege; a Dramatic Taleand some imagined and others not without a hintof inspiration from the likes of Scott whom Wilson is known to admire.

After Wilsons death the demand for he stories remained and other writers contributed to the

publication. Wilson wrote 66 of the tales but after his death the area was increased to include allScotland and eventually over 500 tales were written by a number of contributors. These continuedto be reprinted in a variety of forms until the mid 20th century a testimony to their enduringappeal.

John Mackay Wilsons grave inTweedmouth cemetery.

Plaque commemorating the centenary

of John Mackay Wilsons death. TheScotch Church was in Tweedmouth

West End.


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But what of the legacy of these men? Returning to the question posed at the beginning of this

piece: What have Scotland, whisky, bagpipes, tartan and haggis all got in common?

The answer is, somewhat surprisingly; none of them.

The name Scotland is derived from the Irishtribe, the Scoti, whisky is Roman, bagpipesoriginate in the Middle East, tartan is Englishand haggis is Viking.

But we think of these as being Scottish in nosmall part because of these writers, especiallyBurns and Scott. Haggis is rst recorded inLancashire in 1430 and may not have beenimported into Scotland till much later.

James Macsween, director of Macsweens, the

Edinburgh haggis-maker, said:

This is certainly a revelation to me, buthaggis is now renowned as Scotlands

dish largely due to Robert Burns, whomade it famous. Thats not to say thatprior to Burns that haggis wasnt eatenin England, but Scotland has done abetter job of looking after it. I didnt hearShakespeare writing a poem abouthaggis.

Tartan as we know it can be attributed to theRomantic period. After the Jacobite risings itand many other parts of Highland identity were

banned under the Dress Act of 1746. Thiswas later repealed in 1782 and reinvented withindividual clan association after Scott stage

managed the visit to Scotland by George IVin 1822. He wore a specially designed shortkilt - before then kilts were much longer - andset them off with rather fetching pink stockingsrather than what is portrayed in the picture byDavid Wilkie.

In the Borders today, arguably the greatestlegacy has been the rehabilitation of the reivers- the steel bonnets of the debatable lands.Even the Scottish Borders Council promoteand romanticise the noble reiver soldier and hissturdy nag in their logo.

James Macsween and a traditionalScottish dish?

King George IV by Sir David Wilkie, 1829A reiver as symbol of strength andtrustworthyness?


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This celebration of history of horsemanship is

continued in the various Common Ridings thathappen throughout the borders.

Many Ridings are merely to check theterretorial boundary markings as in Berwickand some are modern creations tapping intothe spirit of the past such as the Peebles

Beltane Festival.In Hawick the Riding celebrates the captureof an English ag in 1514. It is a week longfestival with various races and games and theriding of the commonty of Hawick. A song,

written by James Hogg in 1819 is sung duringthese festivities:

Teribus ye teri odinSons of heroes slain at FloddenImitating Border bowmen

Aye defend your rights and common

Established in 1930 to celebrate the townshistory Galashiels Riding begins with the BrawLad receiving the Burgh Flag and leading hismounted supporters to the Raid Stane where,in 1337 Gala lads killed English raiders in aeld of wild plums.

Jedburgh Callants Festival was inauguratedin 1947 and lasts two weeks with ceremonialrides, the most important of which is toRedeswire, close by Carter Bar. In a battlehere in 1575 the Jedburgh contingent turnedup to save the day and turned an apparentdefeat of the men from Liddesdale into a routof the English.

In the Borders, there is still a strong sense ofplace and people. In the past ones loyaltywas to your family. Now there is a strong localpatriotism best summarized by the phrase, Idrather be a lamp post in Hawick than a Provost

in Selkirk. Outsiders are still treated withsuspicion. Interlopers arent going to tell us

what to do! is often to be heard.

But behind the romance you nd a breed ofaggressive warring family units killing andstealing from each other. Many might recoilin horror at the idea of having such a personin their family tree but thanks to the popularity

of genealogy a thriving business has grownup and people are keen to boast of their reiver

connections. Presumably this is because alittle bit of that romance with brush off on them- they will be imbued with that ghting spirit,even if in reality they have a boring ofce job inthe middle of a city!

The excitement of Gala Common Riding

Genealogy taps into the romance of the

reiver families.

Cattle rustling in the lawless Borders apossibly more accurate depictiion of thereiver families.


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The Borders were a lawless no-mans land.

The reivers were able to evade the law bysimply crossing back over the border fromwhichever side they came to evade anyofcials. Shortly after James VI ascendedthe English throne he talked of my UnitedKingdom. Now there could be no such hidingbehind invisible lines and James even tried toabolish the identity of the Borders by callingthem the Middle Shires.

We have seen this rehabilitation of a group ofpeople before more recently. Irish immigrantswere treated with contempt up till the 1960scertainly. I believe, it was not until somenotable advertising by Guinness in the 80sand 90s that the idea of Irishness becameacceptable and even cool. Nowadays, people

are proud to aunt their Irish connectionswhenever possible, however spurious andthe same is true of those with reiver familyconnections.

Although principally inuenced by Nordic

mythology, Tolkien took many sources forhis inspiration and his stories are populatedwith the same elves and fairy folk that wend in the Tales of The Borders. It may bethat the reaction we saw to the enlightenmentin the form of Romanticism is now part of

a wider cycle. In the latter half of the 19thcenury the Arts and Crafts movement wasstarted by William Morris as an antidote to themechanisation of production.

And now, in answer to the 1960s white heatof technology and more recently because ofthe new wave of computerisation and other hi tech advances, coupled with a decline in popularityof traditional belief systems, we nd ourselves immersed in New Age fancy in which the likesof witchcraft is given a new face. No longer are witches the stuff of superstition to be feared butare reinvented with better PR and a face lift. Created in 1956 by a civil servant, Wicca is now an

recognised as an ofcial religion. Spells and magic are peddled as alternatives to conventionalmedicine.

Typical traditional English attitude

towards the Irish, typical of manyprejudices by many people towards

others.

Elves and fairies are kept alive in newtales and popular culture.

New view of witches!A traditional view of witches by Goya.


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This trend to look to the past in the late 20th

century manifested itself in popular literaturewith the likes of Nigel Tranter. In Scotland,the folk music rivival was led by The Corries;in England by the likes of Steeleye Span andFairport Convention. In Northumberland thecall was answered by Alex Glasgow and BillyPigg and nowadays by the likes of KatherineTickell and The Unthanks.

The Ballads are used in marketing. TheBroughton Brewery near Biggar celebratesBorders culture with ales such as Merlin,The Reiver, Dark Dunter (a type of goblin),Exciseman (a reference to smuggling andBurns), Black Douglas and Greenmantle.Portrayed as a proud Scottish soldier,Greenmantle was actually the codename of a

ctional Turkish religious leader and prophetin the novel by John Buchan, author and 1stBaron of Tweedsmuir, but let it pass.

To conclude, Burns, Scott, Wilson and otherscreated Scotland and the Borders as we know

them today. Much of it is a wistful memory,a romantic ideal of what might have been inmuch the same way and with about as muchauthenticity as a Dickens Christmas. Butthese dreams and romantic notions are nowpresent in even the most sceptic, like me.

I have found that, when in comes to history, most people would always prefer the legend to truth.Who doesnt love the idea that Berwick is still at war with Russia rather than boring old Clause 3 inthe Wales and Berwick-upon-Tweed Act of 1746?

Stand on a bleak Cheviot hill with the rain lashing down and the wind howling. As night falls it iseasy to let the mind run riot, cunjuring up the old spirits, fairies, brownies and other supernatural

beings.

And who doesnt support the underdog, struggling for existence; battling for their identity againstthe larger forces of ofcialdom and nature.

The Unthanks on a suitably romantic

location in Northumberland.

Romantic landscape or desolate wasteland?

The magic of the Border tales is kept alive.

Documents

Burns, Scott and Wilson - their legacy