POEMS AND SONGS OF ROBERT BURNS
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reface Robert Burns was born near Ayr, Scotland, 25th of January, 1759. He wasthe son of William Burnes, or Burness, at the time of the poet’s birth anurseryman on the banks of the Doon in Ayrshire. His father, thoughalways extremely poor, attempted to give his children a fair education,and Robert, who was the eldest, went to school for three years in aneighboring village, and later, for shorter periods, to three otherschools in the vicinity. But it was to his father and to his own readingthat he owed the more important part of his education; and by the timethat he had reached manhood he had a good knowledge of English, areading knowledge of French, and a fairly wide acquaintance with themasterpieces of English literature from the time of Shakespeare to hisown day. In 1766 William Burness rented on borrowed money the farm ofMount Oliphant, and in taking his share in the effort to make thisundertaking succeed, the future poet seems to have seriouslyoverstrained his physique. In 1771 the family move to Lochlea, and Burnswent to the neighboring town of Irvine to learn flax-dressing. The onlyresult of this experiment, however, was the formation of an acquaintancewith a dissipated sailor, whom he afterward blamed as the prompter ofhis first licentious adventures. His father died in 1784, and with hisbrother Gilbert the poet rented the farm of Mossgiel; but this venturewas as unsuccessful as the others. He had meantime formed an irregularintimacy with Jean Armour, for which he was censured by theKirk-session. As a result of his farming misfortunes, and the attemptsof his father-in-law to overthrow his irregular marriage with Jean, heresolved to emigrate; and in order to raise money for the passage hepublished (Kilmarnock, 1786) a volume of the poems which he had beencomposing from time to time for some years. This volume was unexpectedlysuccessful, so that, instead of sailing for the West Indies, he went upto Edinburgh, and during that winter he was the chief literary celebrityof the season. An enlarged edition of his poems was published there in1787, and the money derived from this enabled him to aid his brother inMossgiel, and to take and stock for himself the farm of Ellisland inDumfriesshire. His fame as poet had reconciled the Armours to theconnection, and having now regularly married Jean, he brought her toEllisland, and once more tried farming for three years. Continuedill-success, however, led him, in 1791, to abandon Ellisland, and he movedto Dumfries, where he had obtained a position in the Excise. But he wasnow thoroughly discouraged; his work was mere drudgery; his tendency totake his relaxation in debauchery increased the weakness of aconstitution early undermined; and he died at Dumfries in histhirty-eighth year. [See Burns’ Birthplace: The living room in the Burns birthplacecottage.] It is not necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away thenumerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater part of hislife. It is evident that Burns was a man of extremely passionate natureand fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes of his lot combined withhis natural tendencies to drive him to frequent excesses ofself-indulgence. He was often remorseful, and he strove painfully, ifintermittently, after better things. But the story of his life must beadmitted to be in its externals a painful and somewhat sordid chronicle.That it contained, however, many moments of joy and exaltation is provedby the poems here printed. Burns’ poetry falls into two main groups: English and Scottish. HisEnglish poems are, for the most part, inferior specimens of conventionaleighteenth-century verse. But in Scottish poetry he achieved triumphs ofa quite extraordinary kind. Since the time of the Reformation and theunion of the crowns of England and Scotland, the Scots dialect hadlargely fallen into disuse as a medium for dignified writing. Shortlybefore Burns’ time, however, Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson had beenthe leading figures in a revival of the vernacular, and Burns receivedfrom them a national tradition which he succeeded in carrying to itshighest pitch, becoming thereby, to an almost unique degree, the poet ofhis people. He first showed complete mastery of verse in the field of satire. In“The Twa Herds,” “Holy Willie’s Prayer,” “Address to the Unco Guid,”“The Holy Fair,” and others, he manifested sympathy with the protest ofthe so-called “New Light” party, which had sprung up in opposition tothe extreme Calvinism and intolerance of the dominant “Auld Lichts.” Thefact that Burns had personally suffered from the discipline of the Kirkprobably added fire to his attacks, but the satires show more thanpersonal animus. The force of the invective, the keenness of the wit,and the fervor of the imagination which they displayed, rendered them animportant force in the theological liberation of Scotland. The Kilmarnock volume contained, besides satire, a number of poems like“The Twa Dogs” and “The Cotter’s Saturday Night,” which are vividlydescriptive of the Scots peasant life with which he was most familiar;and a group like “Puir Mailie” and “To a Mouse,” which, in thetenderness of their treatment of animals, revealed one of the mostattractive sides of Burns’ personality. Many of his poems were neverprinted during his lifetime, the most remarkable of these being “TheJolly Beggars,” a piece in which, by the intensity of his imaginativesympathy and the brilliance of his technique, he renders a picture ofthe lowest dregs of society in such a way as to raise it into the realmof great poetry. But the real national importance of Burns is due chiefly to his songs.The Puritan austerity of the centuries following the Reformation haddiscouraged secular music, like other forms of art, in Scotland; and asa result Scottish song had become hopelessly degraded in point both ofdecency and literary quality. From youth Burns had been interested incollecting the fragments he had heard sung or found printed, and he cameto regard the rescuing of this almost lost national inheritance in thelight of a vocation. About his song-making, two points are especiallynoteworthy: first, that the greater number of his lyrics sprang fromactual emotional experiences; second, that almost all were composed toold melodies. While in Edinburgh he undertook to supply material forJohnson’s “Musical Museum,” and as few of the traditional songs couldappear in a respectable collection, Burns found it necessary to makethem over. Sometimes he kept a stanza or two; sometimes only a line orchorus; sometimes merely the name of the air; the rest was his own. Hismethod, as he has told us himself, was to become familiar with thetraditional melody, to catch a suggestion from some fragment of the oldsong, to fix upon an idea or situation for the new poem; then, hummingor whistling the tune as he went about his work, he wrought out the newverses, going into the house to write them down when the inspirationbegan to flag. In this process is to be found the explanation of much ofthe peculiar quality of the songs of Burns. Scarcely any known authorhas succeeded so brilliantly in combining his work with folk material,or in carrying on with such continuity of spirit the tradition ofpopular song. For George Thomson’s collection of Scottish airs heperformed a function similar to that which he had had in the “Museum”;and his poetical activity during the last eight or nine years of hislife was chiefly devoted to these two publications. In spite of the factthat he was constantly in severe financial straits, he refused to acceptany recompense for this work, preferring to regard it as a patrioticservice. And it was, indeed, a patriotic service of no small magnitude.By birth and temperament he was singularly fitted for the task, and thisfitness is proved by the unique extent to which his productions wereaccepted by his countrymen, and have passed into the life and feeling ofhis race. 1771 - 1779
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