Podcast

Transcript

Five voices: male voiceover [MV]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Mairi Campbell [MC]; Gerry Carruthers [GC]; second male voiceover [MV2]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[JB]
Hello. Today, we’re going to talk about a piece of music that’s often described as the song everybody sings but nobody really knows. Beloved in the country of its roots and tucked into the knapsacks of nostalgia of Scots who went off to make their mark on the world, it’s now a global anthem.

Its words of friendship and yearning are simple, and yet they have surpassed and outlasted far more complex depictions of these themes in other songs. It’s been performed by everyone from Beethoven to Jimi Hendrix, and its powerful poignancy has been deployed to jerk those tears in movies stretching from Charlie Chaplin to Sex and the City. I could go on giving you the song’s impressive pedigree, but instead, let’s allow the music to do the talking.

[MC]
Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot?
And auld lang syne.

[JB]
Wonderful. And that’s the first time one of my guests has sung their hellos! Welcome to singer and musician Mairi Campbell. That was lovely. Hello there.

[MC]
Thank you, thank you.

[JB]
Welcome to the Love Scotland podcast. Mairi has performed the song in – well, I can’t tell you how many venues and around the world, but there’s one hugely eventful performance that we’re going to talk about later. And also the fact that, Mairi, you built an entire show around the song. So, welcome to the podcast. Now, Mairi is chatting to us from Edinburgh. In the studio with me is Professor Gerry Carruthers from the University of Glasgow. Gerry, take it away!

[GC]
Hello, I’m not going to sing that, but I’m looking forward to a chat about Auld Lang Syne.

[JB]
Gerry is the editor of the Oxford University Press multi-edition of Robert Burns. Did I get that right?

[GC]
More or less.

[JB]
OK, that’s good. That’s good enough for me. Now, today we’re going to be discussing the roots and the evolution of this remarkable song. In case you didn’t know, you can see a couple of copies of the earliest versions in Robert Burns’s own hand at the National Trust for Scotland Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayrshire. Now this song, it has a complicated history. Before we pressed record on this podcast, we’re all having a bit of a ding dong about origins of various tunes and words. But before we delve into it, I would like to ask you both what I hinted at in the introduction. There are songs with similar themes. Can you both articulate what is so special, not about the song generally and why it’s become so popular globally, but what is so special to each of you? I’ll start with Mairi. If you could just sum it up?

[MC]
What’s special about this song is it seemed to attach itself to me since the 1990s, when I was surprised to even be learning it with Dave Francis, who had suggested that we learned it together in our wee band called The Cast at the time. And just how the song has grown on me and walked alongside me in my life. I’m just very grateful for the song and the mystery of what’s occurred around it and for me, in relation to my life and this song.

[JB]
Ok, Gerry?

[GC]
Well, I should say that I grew up hating this song and everything around Hogmanay, especially as a teenager, when of course Hogmanay was particularly uncool. My ears began to be opened to Auld Lang Syne by two punk rock versions. That didn’t really make me think, but it does make me think later on that what fascinates me about Auld Lang Syne is that in some ways it is a work of genius, and I guess we might discuss that. But even though it’s a work of genius, a lot of the ways in which it becomes a world song, a world anthem, has to do with a whole series of historical accidents. And ultimately, that’s what fascinates me.

[JB]
OK, well, I called it a Burns song and the world knows of it as a song by Robert Burns. That is not entirely true. Gerry, can you give us the background to it?

[GC]
Let’s work back, Jackie, from Burns. It’s certainly true that Burns makes a universal anthem when he’s working on it 1787/88. He makes it a song appropriate to an age of emigration, people parting probably never to meet again.

[JB]
But where does he find the lyrics?

[GC]
That is quite a convoluted story. We can go back all the way to the Bannatyne manuscript in 1568, which is a collection of poems and songs put together by a man who’s hiding from the plague in Edinburgh. And in there, there’s a lyric called ‘Old Kindness for yet’, and that’s the deep roots. Then when we get into the 18th century, there are a number of songs like ‘Auld lang syne my Jo’. And when Allan Ramsay, one of Burns’s great Scots language predecessors, puts together his Tea-Table Miscellany, he has a song that begins: ‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot, though they return with scars?’
And the point about that is that this is a song that comes out of the English Civil War – or the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, we should call it. It’s about comrades parting, having been in battle, perhaps coming back together and sharing a glass together. And Burns’s genius is to take that lyric, to alter it, to adapt it and make it something that in the late 18th century really rings a bell with people, because that’s the beginning of the agricultural revolution, all kinds of dislocation, people emigrating, etc etc.

But there are many, many songs, both in terms of the tune and the lyric, that are a bit like that, including a whole body of Jacobite songs, because Burns is into Jacobitism and the notion of the Jacobites having to go their separate ways and hopefully come back one day and pick up the cause again. All these resonances are in there. So lyrically, it’s very complicated and part of Burns’s genius is he likes that. So that when he puts it together for the Scots Musical Museum in the first instance, for one of his song editors James Johnson, he says, ‘I took this down from an old man singing it’ and he signs it Z. Z in the Scots Musical Museum is where Burns is indicating that he’s collected it. Some of the material is pre-existing, but he is the man who makes it into a new lyric, so it is a Burns song.

[JB]
Mairi, what about the music? The melody that you delightfully sang for us there, that’s not the original, is it?

[MC]
No, it’s not the original. From what I understand, he learned this tune from the old man or, as you say, maybe it’ll have been an existing traditional tune no doubt, because that’s what he generally used for his lyrics. And then he took the song to his publishers. Publisher suggested they changed the tune to the one we know today. But what I am unsure about is exactly where that original melody came from. Gerry, I believe that maybe you do know it. It’s got a name – ‘A Miller’s Tale’, you said? That’s the first I’ve heard of it. That’s really interesting. I did wonder if there was a connection to Beethoven, because when I listened to that tune, I think it’s quite Beethoven-y. [De-dum-de-dum-di dah-dee] There’s a grandeur about it. I have wondered.

[JB]
You’re nodding …

[GC]
Beethoven does a setting for Thompson, so you’re spot on with that, Mairi. And the other thing, which I don’t need to tell a singer like your good self, is that these tunes in some ways can’t be pinned down definitively. Burns offers two tunes to Thompson, and one of the ones that he offers to Thompson, he thinks isn’t up to much – and that’s the one that’s come back into vogue via the folk or trad revival.

[JB]
Well, let me stop you there, because we have Mairi singing again. This is a recording of it, and this is the original tune that Burns … and the word that I researched was he said it was mediocre. Hmm. See what you think.

[MC]
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my jo
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet
For auld lang syne.

Now, I don’t think there’s anything mediocre about that. I think that fits the words perfectly. I think there’s a melancholy about that.

[GC]
Yes, and Mairi sings it gorgeously. Notoriously, Robert Burns’s tutor John Murdoch said he had a tin ear, and maybe occasionally he did, to think that that tune could be discarded. It’s a wee bit of a mystery why Burns didn’t think all that highly of it, but at that time, Burns is working through several dozen folk tunes, several dozen lyrics. He’s obsessed with the whole thing, and he hasn’t quite worked it all through.

[JB]
You say that he was sending his work to his publisher. What were those manuscripts used for? What was that fledgling music industry in those days?

[GC]
Well, he gets together with James Johnson for a collection called the Scots Musical Museum, which begins 1787 and goes on until after Burns’s death. Burns sets himself a kind of mission. He wants to collect and even restore what he fears might be the soon-forgotten musical heritage of Scotland. So, he’s a man on a mission, and he’s very quickly writing lyrics, adapting them to tunes. He doesn’t write tunes, really, yet he will suggest new tunes, he’ll take tunes that he knows, fiddle tunes, dance tunes, etc etc, strathspeys. And he’s rapidly sending this to James Johnson.

A few years later, by the early 1790s, he’s working with a second editor, George Thomson, who often gets a bum rap from Burnsians because they say, oh, he’s the man that makes it all classical, working with Beethoven and all these guys. The truth is that actually those drawing room settings in some ways historically are more authentic. And it’s later on we become more folksy, especially after jazz, especially after rock music, the 60s. Modern trad music tends to prefer some of the pared-down arrangements, the simple arrangements that we have with the James Johnson settings. But actually, I’ll let you into a wee secret: both the trad stuff and the classical stuff are brilliant. I’m glad we’ve got both … and the punk rock versions.

[JB]
Well, Mairi, you are a classical musician; you’re also a traditional musician. What do the various melodies evoke for you, and how do they do it?

[MC]
Good question. I have played the Beethoven and the Haydn arrangements of Auld Lang Syne and it’s nice to hear you say, Gerry, that you appreciate both of them and that’s right. It’s fascinating how both tunes have accommodated their times that they met.

The classical music is interesting one – lots of de de dee da da da da, little counterpoints – drawing room music, I would say. As a dance band player as well, having played 30 years of playing at New Year’s Eve with the ceilidh band at Hogmanay, everyone’s full, they form a circle: ladies and gentlemen, take your hands please for Auld Lang Syne. If I went into the original version of Auld Lang Syne at that point, there would be an uproar in the room as I meander through 5 verses! And so, in fact, at one point, we did that once upon a time. And somebody had said, well, I want your version because it’s your version. And I said, are you sure? And they said, Oh yes, oh aye. So we did it, sang it. But somebody came and complained. They were awfully put out because they couldn’t get the chance to run in and out and up and down and make a big hoo hah. So, I just think they both have their place.

[GC]
It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, about the most familiar version. I think we’ve all suffered a wee bit from Auld Lang Syne tune fatigue. We’ve all got a bit fed up with it, and that’s part of the reason that the less popular tune has recently become more popular. But if you go back to the more standard tune, it’s interesting to note of course that’s the one that features in films. And even though it’s more jaunty, very often it will be counterpointed with sad scenes. It’s been used, as Mairi says, for people to go a bit riotous after the bells. But at the same time, Wee Willie Winkie or whatever it’s sung in that most popularly known tune, but counterpointed with a sad scene.

[JB]
That’s Shirley Temple’s rendition in the movie Wee Willie Winkie, I think that’s 1937 or something like that, but not a dry eye in the house. Let’s talk about money. I take it Burns would have been paid for his work, but in terms of royalties for this song, who gets the royalties?

[GC]
No one, because it’s essentially out of copyright. It’s probably the second most sung song in the world after Happy Birthday. But it was a matter of pride for Burns when he was compiling the material for the Scots Musical Museum that he would not accept a penny. This was a man on a mission.

[JB]
Oh, he didn’t get paid? There are good decisions in your career, and there are bad decisions in your career. But not only that, he died before it really became popular.

[GC]
Yeah, it would have been a mystery to Burns perhaps, the extent to which the song went viral, went worldwide. He’s never entirely happy with it. He does two different versions for the Scots Musical Museum. He’s tinkering with it in letters to people like his confidante Mrs Dunlop, and he’s havering on about it to George Thompson before sending him material. Very often with Burns, with songs, with poems even, there are outtakes, there are extended versions; there’s things he might have put on the album! He’s a creative artist who doesn’t necessarily pin things down, and one of the problems of the Burns movement very often is both the man and the work they want certainty. Burns himself quite likes a lack of certainty, and some of that isn’t anything other than his creative development and uncertainty as he goes through the years.

[JB]
Well, you said that he did write about it to Mrs Dunlop, his patron. He wrote in 1788 and he asks her ‘is not the Scotch phrase auld lang syne, exceedingly expressive’, and added that ‘as an avid collector of traditional Scottish music and song that had thrilled through my soul’. He knew there was a bit of magic there. Mairi, when you’re performing it, do you perform all the verses?

[MC]
Yes, yes, I do the five verses. Think of it as two friends speaking to each other in a bar over a drink and when you think of it like that, it’s good.

We twa hae run about the braes, remembering the old days
And pou'd the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.

Yeah, it’s a beautiful song to sing all 5 verses.

[JB]
And in terms of those words, let’s take the easy bit first … or is it! ‘Auld Lang Syne’, what does it mean?

[GC]
It’s almost impossible to translate.

[JB]
So not the easy bit first!

[GC]
Not the easy bit. It’s become a bit in the brain that no one can say precisely what it means, but it means something like ‘since days of old’. But clearly, it’s more emotionally charged than that, and the phrase itself has become almost a standalone trope or metaphor or thing that defines a state.

[JB]
Mairi?

[MC]
Well, it’s funny because it has been explored and it means, as far as I am aware, ‘time since past’. In When Harry Met Sally, there’s a lovely scene in it when he talks about Auld Lang Syne. What does it mean? What does this song mean anyway? Should auld acquaintance be forgot? Does that mean we should forget all the acquaintances? Or does it mean if we happen to forget them, we should remember them? Well, maybe it just means we should remember that we forgot them! Well, anyway, I love that, because actually a lot of people don’t know.

[JB]
It must confuse the living daylights out of a lot of people who are not actually conversant in Burns and 18th century.

[GC]
It does, if they think about it, but both the lyric and both tunes – certainly the most popular tune – they’ve become kind of like memes. They’ve become things that people relate to as a whole. They don’t necessarily need to know what it means in any detail. The lyric itself is all about big human nature and big universal nature – seas and the landscape and so on. And those are the buttons that really pushes. And then some of the particular stuff about ‘willie waulks’ and so on, people just sing that – it gives it a wee bit of novelty, and it doesn’t take too much trouble to work out what those things literally mean. People don’t need to know that if they’re singing it and they’re charging their glasses and toasting one another; it’s all in there. It’s a brilliantly immediate song and lyric in all kinds of ways.

[MC]
I agree. I think the language is confusing and a lot of folk don’t understand it, which we’ve made a bit of a humorous point out of. And it comes back to, Gerry, when you were saying about in the Burns societies and that element of Burns, you have a sense that you ought to know what it’s all about. You should know and people hide the fact that they don’t really know. But when you bring that out like in my show Auld Lang Syne, which is a little music theatre show, I really make a point of that, of really not understanding because I didn’t understand what the words meant. I didn’t. I had to say today, if you know, what does ‘ye’ll be your pint-stowp’ actually mean?

[JB]
What does that mean?

[MC]
Well, it means ‘you buy your pint and I’ll buy mine’.

[JB]
How Scottish!

[MC]
I know. And then I was like, what does ‘a richt gude-willie waught’ mean, and what’s a willie waught? And he said it’s not a richt-gude willie waught. It’s a richt gude-willie waught. And it means goodwill. We’ll take a deep drink or draught of goodwill. And then he was like, I would be singing pooled and Dave says don’t say pooled, you should say poooooooled.

[GC]
And of course, the willie waught is about toasting one another. It’s not meanness per se. It’s like you both invest in getting the drink for each other as a token of friendship, as a token of love. The whole song is, as we keep saying, about love, about friendship. It’s the worldwide anthem of friendship, if not of love itself.

[JB]
Let’s take a break. That’s a good point to take a break when we talk about the worldwide fame of it. But before we do, can I just ask, was it immediately popular? Did it storm to the top of the Georgian Hit Parade?

[GC]
No, it didn’t. It was a fairly obscure text sent by Burns to Johnson, and it sits there somewhat inert until Thompson gets his hands on it. And actually, it begins to take off probably about the 1820s in any real meaningful way, because that’s when Burns becomes more respectable than he’d been. That’s when his music begins to be much more received in the European romantic context. So, it’s a slow burner.

[JB]
And he’s long gone, as I said. Let’s take a break. We have a homegrown song. It’s getting a bit of a following. When we come back, we’ll talk about how that following went global and why.

[MV2]
Impressive. For a moment I thought she was talking about me. I meant Falkland Palace, she said, with a smile. Of course she did. The art, the architecture, Scotland’s history can really turn your head. So we signed up to take care of it, keep it looking dapper.

Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to the podcast. I’m joined by singer and musician Mairi Campbell and, from the University of Glasgow, Burns scholar Professor Gerry Carruthers. Gerry, when did Auld Lang Syne begin to go global and why?

[GC]
Part of the reason is from about the 1810s, the 1820s, people are looking at Burns as a writer who has been set in his songs by the likes of Beethoven and Haydn, as we’ve said, and it’s quite difficult to trace exactly what’s going on. But at some point, this has to do with empire; it has to do with the Anglophone world as well as Europe. We have it taking off somewhat in America, so that we know by the time of the American Civil War, it’s very much seen as a song that is associated with home. And indeed, for a time, the Union side in the Civil War, the bands aren’t allowed to play it, and it’s finally struck up again …

[JB]
Why aren’t they allowed to play it?

[GC]
There’s a kind of fear – it’s strange – but there’s a fear that this will make the troops too homesick and not be concentrating on the cause. When the Confederates finally surrender, that’s one of the first tunes that struck up, Auld Lang Syne. The idea is you can all go home now. We know that by that time in the United States, partly but not exclusively due to the expat Scots community, Auld Lang Syne has got a real coinage. It’s got a real popularity. That, and also from about the 1820s/1830s in Europe, we know that people are appreciating it. Those are two strands.

And also, obviously enough in Scotland, it’s taking on more and more momentum through the 19th century as the Burns cult develops.

[JB]
Mairi, do we know when it was first associated with Hogmanay?

[MC]
Well, I wonder if it was to do with Guy Lombardo at this point, the Canadian–Italian bandleader who had a band called the Royal Canadians and he was doing great and he was working down in New York. They asked him if he had something he could bring to Hogmanay, and he arranged the version of Auld Lang Syne that he was familiar with from his hometown in Ontario, which had been settled by Scots. And he arranged it, and they played it in New York. And it’s one that became recorded on television in 1950s, I think before that, from 1929, I think it was in the radio. But it really became a fixture, a Hogmanay fixture – beautiful arrangement that the band did. For at least 30 years, that was a regular. I think that’s when it really became a fixture. Would you say that?

[JB]
Gerry, can you add to that?

[GC]
Yes. I think Mairi’s spot on. There’s a wee bit of happenstance. It’s partly Guy Lombardo; it’s partly the fact that it’s in circulation in North America anyway. And then the fact that, really more than anyone, Guy Lombardo’s dance band brings that together with Hogmanay celebrations in the age of radio, the age of TV, Times Square.

In many ways, this is a song that has to do with the new media, and that’s what propels it worldwide.

[JB]
Is it the case, though? Again, so many urban myths surrounding it, that one of the main sponsors of the radio show back in 1929, the Hogmanay show, was Robert Burns Panatelas. And that’s what gave him the idea to use Auld Lang Syne.

[GC]
That might or might not be true.

[JB]
This is Gerry’s nice way of saying you’re havering, which is another good Scots word that’s probably included in Burns history.

[GC]
I think it’s just the genesis and the ongoing fame and the increasing fame of Auld Lang Syne. It’s covered in all kinds of unknowable bits, and we know that culture often works like this. You know how do football fans all suddenly learn the same chant? How do they know to do that together? Auld Lang Syne is something the same. There’s about 200 different routes that underlie its popularity and its transmission. That’s one of the things that makes it quite wonderful. That’s one of the things that makes it a phenomenon.

[JB]
It was also used as a bit of background music in a Charlie Chaplin film, in The Gold Rush, and that’s back in 1925. Guy Lombardo took it and ran with it in terms of Hogmanay ,but it had been associated because that was a New Year scene then. And it’s the sentimentality, Mairi, isn’t it? It’s the old and the new. It just fits New Year.

[MC]
It fits New Year and it fits the marking of the end of something, the marking of the end of a gathering, the marking of the end of the year, the closing of something. It’s played in Japan in shopping stores at the end of every single day of the year to let the customer know that the establishment will soon be closing. I think having a song which marks a closing, you don’t need that many. Maybe there’s something about that one where people go, well, that’ll do, and they’ve somehow, just like Gerry’s saying, it’s gathered its own momentum.

[JB]
But I can understand it catching on in the English-speaking world. But it’s big in Japan. It’s been translated into Arabic and Czech, Esperanto, Maori, Russian, Swahili, Urdu, Vietnamese, and it goes on and on and on. What is the power of the song that has enabled that to happen?

[GC]
One of the things simply has to do with the medium, and that is the fact that all of those places you’ve just mentioned Jackie are hearing the song on the radio. So, even without understanding the lyric or having the lyric somewhat explained to them, we’ve got the tune pushing those buttons. Not because they absolutely push those buttons, but because it has gone viral through the age of radio.

It’s also the case that in places like Soviet Russia, Burns becomes more and more a poet of the people. And it’s also the case that vary widely across the world – in Asia, in North America and Europe – Burns has that association as a poet of the people and therefore his oeuvre is consumed. It’s published, it’s re-published and all these things have come together in a way that’s very difficult to pin down. So that becomes, as we keep saying, the world anthem that it becomes.

[JB]
Now, Mairi, as I said, you’ve performed it countless times, including one very special event. I’ll let you tell the story … and don’t skimp on the name dropping.

[MC]
Well, yes. So, the recording that I mentioned that Dave and I first made in 1993 was made on a tape and off it went into the world in 1993. About six years later in 1999, we got a call from the producers on the Presidential Lifetime Achievements Award in America who were asking us if we would come to sing Auld Lang Syne for Sean Connery’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

It came out the blue, but apparently one of the producers had our tape in her car and the production team were trying to figure out, shall we honour Sean Connery’s James Bond story, or shall we go with the Scottish one? And so it was between myself and Shirley Bassey, apparently.

[JB]
You’re indistinguishable, you two!

[MC]
Yes, there’s another name-drop: Shirley Bassey. Anyway, in the end they chose us and so we were invited to this grand event. It was quite an extraordinary weekend. I was slightly in No Man’s Land or No Woman’s Land, maybe. My mother had only died just six weeks before that, and my baby was 8 months old. And so we were in this maelstrom of living life, at this particular juncture. And then on top of that came this event: fly out to Washington, sing this song. It was really thrilling. And Sean Connery was there. And George Clooney and Stevie Wonder and Bill Clinton, among many, many others. It was an A List celebrity moment.

[JB]
And am I allowed to remind you? Yes, you’re nodding. You forgot the words.

[MC]
Correct, correct. It all was a bit, went a bit over. It was too much; it was a wee bit too much and my professional holding evaporated in the moment. Just one of those real things that that you get, which I wasn’t expecting because I’m not someone that tends to have nerves really. But once I was on that stage, the producers had said just sing the first verse and the last verse and that was fine.

But what I did was I went into verse three, ‘We twa hae run about the braes, And pou’d the gowans fine’. And as I spoke those words, this great black tunnel came towards me and I knew I was going to lose the words. I knew it. I could feel it. I just lost it.

But I kept singing. Of course I had to make it up. I had to make all the words up, and I was in the middle of the chorus. Who doesn’t know the Auld Lang Syne chorus? Auld lang syne, my Jo; for auld lang syne. And I’m off on these little meanderings – making it all up!

[JB]
The joy of old Scots. The fact that you were in America and few people knew, but yeah, like a trooper!

[MC]
I had two things happen to me that helped me through that moment and probably only lasted for 30 seconds. But 30 seconds is a long time when you’re in that space. First thing was keep singing. They don’t understand the words anyway, right? And then the second thing that happened was there was this voice that came from somewhere. And it was like the voice of my mother, and I do think it actually was. And she was saying fling out your arms and feel your feet; feel your feet, fling out your arms. It was so much for me, so I did that. I opened my body up and I threw my arms out. And I felt my feet and I just saved myself and came back. The words came back. Dave meanwhile, bless him, was still playing the old chords. He just kept going and I finally hooked back into what was required.

[JB]
But isn’t that lovely of your mum and how she helped you through, and no one did notice. You went down a storm. Let me move on a few years because there was someone in the audience who was going to take your performance of that song and run with it. Tell me about that.

[MC]
Matthew Broderick was one of the presenters that night and his wife is Sarah Jessica Parker. So, another 10 years. You see, every 10 years we get a good gig. We get one of those fancy gigs, actually a little bit over 10 years since the last one …

[JB]
Anyone listening to this – you can contact Mary on …

[MC]
We’re ready! Back in 2008, Sarah Jessica Parker’s production team for the show for Sex and the City: The Movie contacted us and said we’ve got your song in a queue. It might be used, we’re not sure. But just to let you know, it might be happening.

And that was in about September. And then the following spring we saw the film was being launched in London and everybody was there. It was a red carpet affair, but we hadn’t heard anything at that point so we weren’t sure. I phoned up the record company and I said, oh, by the way, any idea what’s going on? And they said your song’s in the movie, so that was amazing. That was amazing. So after that there was a whole, it all worked out beautifully. It was all great, but it was a surprise. It was a surprise but a very nice surprise.

[JB]
Well, I’ve spoken to artists in my time who have also been told that their song’s been chosen to be in a movie, and they’ve paid their money, they’ve got their popcorn and they sat down – and it’s either not made the final cut or there’s a line of it in the background. You got, what, 3½ minutes? Was it almost 3½ minutes? It’s a pivotal point in the movie and it’s your version. And I suppose not only the brilliance of your version, Mary, but the fact that it was fitting for the most emotional pivot point of that movie.

Gerry, you’ve studied not only the Burnsian scholar bit of this, but also which of its uses in a movie, in a song or whatever, has most enhanced its fame?

[GC]
I think it’s quite portable in a lot of ways, Jackie. It becomes a kind of filmic trope, and you see this in the Chaplin Gold Rush film. You see it in It’s a Wonderful Life where it’s played where the individual at that point is outside the circle and it’s calling them back in. And it works every time. And without lambasting directors and producers and writers of film, I would say it’s quite a cheap right to do that. And it works because it’s part of this universal worldwide vocabulary of culture.

So, it’s a very easy thing to do in a sense, but also because it helps anchor New Year. You see Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, where, as I say, he’s outside the circle. And the idea is let’s bring you back into the love, let’s bring you back into the light. And that’s almost always the way in which it’s used. So, this is a repeated trope that does genuinely tug on the heartstrings, but at the same time it’s a bit of a cliche in terms of filmic language I would suggest.

[JB]
The Internet means, of course, that the music industry has changed and much more fragmented. There are and will be fewer – there will still be global music superstars – pieces of universally known music because we can all make our choices now. Will Auld Lang Syne sustain? I’ll ask you both. Gerry, you go first.

[GC]
Yes, I think it absolutely will because the essential structures of festivity of both the Burns Supper, which is something we get a lot, Hogmanay – while these things endure, Auld Lang Syne will remain one of the great world hits. I don’t think there’s any possibility unless society and culture change radically worldwide that will lose its place, he said confidently.

[JB]
We could be doing with a bit of the sentiment of the song, that’s for sure. Mairi, what do you think?

[MC]
Yeah, I agree. I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere unless it’s banned …

[JB]
… or cancelled! Why would they cancel Auld Lang Syne?

[MC]
No, I think it’s like Gerry says, the societal things are in place. It has its place in our events that we like to hold. Yeah, I think it’s here to stay as well.

[JB]
Well, let’s hope so. Something that the world can share. And the theme of friendship is a good note on which to end. Mairi Campbell, thank you for your words and your music. And thanks to Professor Gerry Carruthers.

And just to mention that this is the last edition of the podcast in the series. We’ll be back again very soon. In the meantime, why not visit the Burns Birthplace Museum, which has more than 5,000 artefacts, including those Auld Lang Syne manuscripts. You can get details of opening times on our website at nts.org.uk and that’s also where you’ll find details of the Your Scotland campaign.

Now, the National Trust for Scotland is a charity and if you’d like to make a donation, we’d be very grateful. It’ll help ensure your Scotland, whether it’s your heritage or your wild places, from manuscripts to mountains, continue to be cared for, for generations to come. That’s all from me. Until next time, goodbye.

[MC]
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,

For auld lang syne
And here’s a hand, my trusty fere!

Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.

For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Transcript

Six speakers: male voiceover [MV]; male singer [MS]; Jackie Bird [JB]; Gerry Carruthers [GC]; Chris Waddell [CW]; David Purdie [DP]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[MS]
There’s nought but care on ev’ry han’, in ev’ry hour that passes, O
What signifies the life o’ man, An’ ‘twere na for the lasses, O.

[JB]
Robert Burns, the ploughman poet, born in 1759, died in 1796 aged just 37, but whose work during that short life resonates down the centuries. His words have inspired and influenced an incredibly diverse group of people, from William Wordsworth to Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King to J D Salinger, Abraham Lincoln to Nick Patrick, a NASA astronaut who took a book of Burns poetry into space. But who inspired and influenced Burns himself?

No matter how great the talents of an individual, there are always people, places and moments that feed into that genius. Well today, in an effort to cast some light on that, I’ve brought together a couple of people extremely well versed not only in the poetry of the Bard, but on his life and times.

Gerry Carruthers is Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, who has researched and written more pieces of work on Robert Burns than this podcast, quite frankly, has time to list. So, take my word for it! Is that a fair enough description, Gerry?

[GC]
That’s very kind. Thank you.

[JB]
He's joined by Chris Waddell, Learning Manager at Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, which is run by the National Trust for Scotland. The museum is not only the premier place to visit to get the overarching story of Burns’s life, but is a treasure trove of more than 5,000 Burns artefacts, including handwritten manuscripts and – a quote from Chris himself – ‘a pair of Burns’s scabby old socks’. Although you do add, Chris, that if your old socks are in a museum 250 years on, you must have made your mark! Have you examined said pair of socks?

[CW]
Intimately, yes, and they’re very scabby indeed, but they have the hint of celebrity about them. Absolutely.

[JB]
But very, very special. So, the premise of our chat today is loose, gentlemen. I asked you to give me a handful of names that you believe influenced Robert Burns. And from you I got some other poets, I got family members, I got educators. Again, a very diverse group. So, before we start, are any of those names acknowledged as influences by Burns himself, or are they results of retrospective analysis of his life and output? Gerry?

[GC]
I think, Jackie, you can find traces of all the names that Chris and I have given you in the work mentioned, or you can find direct lines of influence in other ways. In some cases, what we’re talking about is correspondence with people that’s now a bit lost, so we wish we had more. For instance, William Tytler, the man who basically schools Burns in Jacobite-ism, we pretty certainly know there is correspondence lost between the two; and if we had that correspondence, we would clearly know a lot more. William Tytler is the man who makes Burns think that the Scottish muses are all Jacobites, as he more or less says. And he is the man who, for instance, writes a book justifying Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been vilified as a female, a Stuart, the despotic Queen, a Catholic. And the revisionism that follows on, especially from Tytler, feeds into Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Frederick Schiller and indeed the kind of iconicity that we have with Mary today.

There’s one wee line where a historian, a lawyer, a song collector is a big influence on Burns and makes an impact on his creative output and his, if you like, Jacobite mentality, because people often wonder, where does that come from? Burns is a Presbyterian boy – how can he be a Jacobite? He makes that choice personally, but there are influences like Tytler and others who make him the Jacobite that he becomes, so to speak.

[JB]
Chris, what’s your view on the sources of the names that you have provided?

[CW]
As Gerry says, a lot of these are names that crop up in letters, but they crop up in poems as well. I mentioned Fergusson and Ramsay because they’re hugely important to Burns. They’re often thought of as a bit of a triumvirate, with Ramsay coming first. And there’s a bit of overlap between the three lives, then Fergusson in Edinburgh and then Burns following on.

And these are three guys who in many ways helped to preserve the Scots language at a time where it’s under threat because of the great political machinations of the 18th century. There’s a movement in Edinburgh contemporaneous with Burns where people are actively hoping to excise the Scottish-isms from their mode of speech. Hume was one of them. And yet here we have Burns lionised when he goes to Edinburgh in 1787 for using that very language and a very popular form of poetry. He’s standing on the shoulder of significant giants, Ramsay and Fergusson.

[JB]
Let’s talk a wee bit more about because we’ve already thrown three names into the mix, some of whom may be known to our listeners and some not. So, let’s talk about the poets that we’ve discussed. Allan Ramsay: now, he was dead before Burns was born. How and when would Burns have come across him?

[CW]
Well, Ramsay was genuinely very popular. There’s a thing about these three poets that’s been mentioned to me by a number of contemporary poets – they would love to have had the notoriety nowadays that Burns, Fergusson and Ramsay had in their own lifetimes. Ramsay sets out in, I have to say, a very prosaic way. He starts life in Leadhills. He goes to Edinburgh. He’s a wig maker and then a bookshop owner. But he starts to compose poetry. He’s the guy who really popularises the Habbie stanza – this stanza that’s the very heart of Scottish poetry. This wonderful rhythmic stanza that’s used again by Fergusson and ultimately by Burns to a degree, that eventually becomes known as the Burns stanza.

But Ramsay uses Scots, and he’s thoroughly unashamed of its use.

[JB]
Although Ramsay became a very successful wig maker, and we talked about Ramsay because he’s also the father of the portraitist Allan Ramsay, but he was lowly born. Is that something that Burns felt they had in common?

[GC]
It might be, but I think what’s really going on, Jackie, is that Burns in 1782 in Irvine is looking for an influence. At this point he’s largely writing poetry in English, but sometimes songs in Scots, and he discovers the poetry of Robert Fergusson. He already knows Ramsay and he thinks there’s Fergusson influenced by Ramsay. Ramsay is the governor. He’s the kind of godfather of Scots poetry, as Chris is indicating. But Fergusson in some ways is a miniaturist, writing more spectacular miniature pieces. Burns discovers Fergusson, begins to write in Scots in poetry from his discovery of Fergusson, and then increasingly reads back to Ramsay and finds also that Ramsay’s a song collector, which is a big influence again on the song collecting.

And the other thing that goes on there that’s very important is religion. Because Burns, he’s got form for speaking out against what he sees as the hardline Calvinists; both Ramsay and Fergusson have got that. And Ramsay does it in the context of Edinburgh where he’s against the Whigs. He’s the man who establishes the first real post-Reformation theatre in Edinburgh – doesn’t last long because the Calvinists don’t like it. He encourages portrait painting, including his son. In other words, he wants Scotland to be inculturated with poetry, with song, with painting, because, rightly or wrongly, he reads it as a puritanical place.

[JB]
So, tell me more about Fergusson, because Fergusson was a contemporary of Burns, who died at a terribly young age, 24?

[GC]
Robert Fergusson is a man who is schooled at the University of St Andrews and he comes out actually of a North East tradition – goes to school in Dundee. And the Scots poetry revival in men like Ramsay and Fergusson is associated as often as not with Episcopalians and Catholics and Jacobitism – and Burns is the man who makes it Presbyterian. Fergusson in some ways has more formal schooling than Burns, but Burns clearly identifies with him – ‘my elder brother in misfortune; my elder brother in the muse.’

And Burns, being a wee bit solipsistic at times, thinks ‘there’s a young dude that was writing poetry and dies tragically young; that’s a bit like me’. And he says that Fergusson and also Ramsay are guys he would like to aspire to. And it’s partly genuine. And it’s partly not genuine because ultimately Bums is a much better poet.

But it’s a modesty topos where they become part of his calling card and part of the context where he breezes into Presbyterian Ayrshire with his first collection and says, ‘right, we’re now going to do the Jacobite Scots poetry thing’. That’s part of the reason that a lot of people are quite hostile to Bums until the end of the 19th century, until they’re suitably able to forget about all those other denominational influences and begin to earth the Scots poetry revival as Presbyterian.

[JB]
Chris, did you want to add anything about Fergusson’s influence?

[CW]
Yeah, just that it’s massively important. Gerry mentions that North East influence and of course there’s an influence of that on Burns as well – his father is from Kincardineshire and the Mearns, Burns’s father. So, he hears the speak of the Mearns in his house in Alloway as he’s growing up. So, there’s this strong thread of a Doric influence going through both of them, even though Fergusson largely grows up in Edinburgh and Burns grows up in Ayrshire. They have this strong background in Aberdeenshire. And that brings with it, as Gerry points out, a whole raft of issues, not least issues that are political and religious as well as linguistic.

[JB]
Was Burns influenced by any female poets or writers?

[GC]
He’s not particularly influenced by any female poet. We’re talking Ramsay, Fergusson on the English side; we’re talking Milton, Dryden, Pope, more than any female. But what I would add in there, which is why I’ve chosen Lady Don, is that Burns has got a very astute sense of the intellectual females around him to whom he can send work, and they can help him finesse it, critique it, etc. The obvious person here is his confidante Mrs Dunlop, for instance. So, there’s a whole bunch of women where – I’m not quite claiming a feminist Burns, although I would almost go down that line – Burns likes talking to females with brains. He’s not remotely sexist in that sense.

[JB]
You mentioned religion a lot, and it does figure a lot in Burns’s work. And his father, is that where it came from? His father was, I think, Chris, in the information that you gave me, you say his zealous Presbyterianism both influenced and indeed caused friction with his son.

[CW]
Absolutely. Burns, like most of the people in that part of Scotland at that time, is a subscriber to the Kirk, to the Church of Scotland; it’s largely unavoidable. It’s this massive powerhouse institution that finds its way into people’s everyday lives, not least through things like the Kirk session, these kangaroo courts that are set up.

But Burns very early on starts to lock horns with the Kirk in a way that feeds into a lot of the scurrilous stuff that people love about Burns: the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. I could just point out there were no actual drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, but there was a moderate amount of sex. And Burns finds himself locking horns with a Kirk, being admonished by them, having to sit on the cutty stool in Mauchline.

And of course this is going to have an effect on his father. But there’s other things as well where the petty Presbyterianism of his father creeps in, such as Burns attending dancing classes in Tarbolton as a boy. Burns later writes that he attends these country dancing classes to give his manners a brush. It’s to meet the lassies of the parish as well; there’s no doubt about that. Although he wants to learn to dance, it’s a vital social skill in those days. His father objects to this bitterly, and there’s friction between them as a consequence.

But then again, it’s that same Presbyterian zeal, which manifests itself in a desire for learning, that gets Burns his initial education as well. When Burns is a boy, he and his brother Gilbert are sent off to the local school in Alloway. It closes within weeks due to a combination of financial pressures and the master moving out of the district. So William, who’s very, very active almost as a community leader, catalyses the local families to find a replacement tutor.

The people find this unusual when they approach Burns and they have this notion that he’s this great man of the people, but he has a tutor as well. The tutor was active in the community in teaching many of the children, but it’s driven by William. And that’s that zeal for learning that goes right back to John Knox and his proclamation that every parish in Scotland should have a parish school. That only comes about to lesser and greater degrees, depending on how successful it was locally.

But the Scots have this zeal for literacy. It’s seen as a godly trait to be able to read your Bible. Of course, when the Scots start reading their Bibles, the genie gets out of the bottle. They read anything that they can get their hands on, so that by the time of Burns, Scotland is arguably one of the most literate nations per capita in the world.

About eachy peachy with Sweden, incidentally – they’re Lutherans, we’re Calvinists – but it’s similar processes that have brought them to that point. So, William’s very much a supporter of education, of learning for the sheer beauty of it as a godly trait, and he instills that in Robert. The consequence is that this young man, John Murdoch, is engaged to teach the children in Alloway and to teach the Burns boys. And he’s only 18 when he’s interviewed and given the gig. He’s little more than a boy himself.

[JB]
OK, so before we go on though to John Murdoch, because that is one of your other chosen influencers, let’s not forget Burns’s mum. What part did she play in this? Tell me about her.

[GC]
Well, we don’t know as much as we might want to know about her, Jackie. And it’s the case that a lot of stuff is overly passed down, that supposedly she had a sweet singing voice. Maybe she did. That she and other family members like Betty Davidson, that no one quite knows exactly how she’s related to the Burns or the Burnesses, but she’s in the household – these are tradition bearers who probably are passing on stories and legends and songs.

[JB]
So, his mum was Agnes. Agnes Broun.

[CW]
Agnes Broun, yeah, and she’s a Maybole woman. And as Gerry says, there’s not a lot about her, but one has to assume that the way that Burns writes about the happiness of his youth and the fact that he comes from essentially a stable background, she has some bearing on holding the household together.

Burns’s sister writes about Agnes and describes her in fairly explicit terms. It’s a good-looking woman, a bit inclined to plumpness, I believe – for the 18th century, that’s a terribly politically correct term! Inclined to plumpness, but that she could also have a fierce temper. She also describes her as having light red hair, but dark brows and incredibly dark eyes. So, there’s elements there of a very strong physical link with Burns.

But she’s described as having a sweet singing voice. And of course, people sung all the time. These were the days when families actually spoke to each other, remarkably enough. But they also sung to each other. They would also recite poetry and tell stories. It wasn’t just a conversation-based entertainment of an evening. People entertained each other because it was all they had to do, other than reading their Bibles, of course. And even William would have relented on that occasionally.

[GC]
Agnes Broun had lost her own mother very young and was more or less a surrogate mother to her siblings from about the age of 11 or 12. Later on, she – a bit like Burns’s wife, Jean Armour – is very indulgent, very much into looking after Burns’s illegitimate kids. She’s very much a family woman. It’s slightly strange that Burns never writes to her, but that’s probably because her reading skills were limited; we know she had some. But a very powerful, very loving woman. I know that sounds traditional, but I think in some ways she represents an ideal that Burns always aspired to.

[JB]
Well, let’s take a break at this point, and when we come back, we’ll talk more about the people who have influenced the life and work of Robert Burns.

[MV]
From coastlines to castles, wildlife to wilderness, when you become a member of the National Trust for Scotland, you can enjoy the very best of what Scotland has to offer, as often as you like, and you can help to protect it. You’ll join thousands of others who are all playing their part to care for the places we love, for generations to come. Join us and become a member today. Just search National Trust for Scotland.

[JB]
Welcome back to the Love Scotland podcast where I’m joined by Professor Gerry Carruthers from the University of Glasgow and Chris Waddell from Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. Now, just before the break, we mentioned Robert Burns’s teacher John Murdoch. Many of us can single out a teacher who made an impact on our lives, and Burns was no different. Chris?

[CW]
Absolutely. Murdoch had a significant influence on Burns. They remained friends throughout Robert’s life. Murdoch actually, despite living in very reduced circumstances in London in the latter part of his life, makes it to the grand old age of 77. But he has to leave Ayrshire because of an almost comic element of scandal. He decries a local minister, Dalrymple, who’s actually the guy who christens Burns, isn’t he? He’s described as a great friend of the Burns family and he’s usually respected by Burns’s father. He’s described as ‘Dalrymple mild’ because of his more soft leanings as a moderate, as a new licht in the Church of Scotland.

But in a rather bizarre, possibly drink-fuelled, episode, the young John Murdoch – and this is the actions we bear in mind of a young man who’s perhaps speaking out of turn, because bear in mind he’s only 18 when he’s engaged to teach the Burns children – says some very scurrilous things about Dalrymple. These are picked up publicly. There’s a trial of sorts. And he has to leave. He goes then to London to try and make his fortune. He settles in Bloomsbury, the hub of all literary greatness in London, and for a wee while he makes something of a living teaching French there.

But then a little thing called the French Revolution happens, and suddenly London’s filled with people who can speak French and who can teach it clearly far better.

[JB]
So, it’s not a USP anymore!

[CW]
Yeah, it’s not! He works away doing various things, but he writes to Burns later on. And I think this conveys a sense of the affection that they have for each other. When Burns has been lionised and he’s in Edinburgh, then does his tours in 1787, Murdoch writes to him and points out that he is as respected by the Caledonians of London as he would be by the Caledonians of Edinburgh. The expat community in London has really taken to Burns, to the point where he’s already being recited and quoted at their dinners and meetings and things like that. And Murdoch says something along the lines of ‘I’ve indulged my vanity. I’m pointing out to these people that I was an early cultivator of the genius that is Burns.’

There’s clearly a lot there. These are guys who appreciate each other’s intellectualism, and there’s a genuine friendship that seems to blossom as they enter into adulthood. Murdoch would have been, as all Scots schoolmasters, as all dominees would have been, fairly strict with them.

There’s a wonderful thing that he writes in a letter that always kills me a wee bit. He early on figures Gilbert as the smart one, as the brains, as the more talented one. And he speaks specifically about music, which is a strong element of things curricular in those days. He says Robert’s ear was remarkably dull, and his voice untunable – cannot get him to distinguish one tune from another. Well, go anywhere on Hogmanay and you’ll see that Burns made the grade as a bit of a musician!

[JB]
Everyone loves a report card like that, from a teacher about a famous person, that they were proven very very wrong.

[GC]
Also because, a bit like Burns, he liked to push boundaries. And Chris has mentioned the French thing and his brightness comes out in the fact that he has some success writing pedagogical books in French, etc. But also when he’s tutoring Burns, and Burns has been young and sensitive, Murdoch is horrifying him with the really gruesome scenes from Shakespeare, and the young Burns doesn’t like this. So, Murdoch is always pushing boundaries.

And then Chris has mentioned the outspoken contretemps with Dalrymple, about which again we’d like to know a wee bit more. Goes to London, has the confidence to make it in London, and wants Burns to come to London. Unfortunately, doesn’t happen. ‘See, if you came to this place, this would be great material for a poem’. And there is one of those many opportunities you get in any artistic life where wouldn’t it have been great to have Burns writing about London? But so it goes.

[JB]
There’s a counterfactual there, isn’t there?

[CW]
Oh yes, it’s one of the great ‘what ifs’ in Burns’s life. That familial closeness that Murdoch has with the broader Burns family manifests itself in London when Burns’s younger brother William, who’s a saddler, passes away very young whilst he’s working in London. And Murdoch takes it upon himself to largely oversee his funeral and to be present at it, and to act as liaison between what’s happening in London and with the Burns family back in Ayrshire. So, it’s more than just a teacher-pupil relationship; these guys become friends. But the influence early on – as Gerry points out – he’s introducing Burns to great literature. I think it’s Titus Andronicus, isn’t it?

[JB]
And how old would Burns have been at that time?

[GC]
Oh goodness, very young.

[JB]
Because if we’re saying John Murdoch was only 18, then Burns would have been what?

[GC]
We’ve got probably a couple of early dealings where Burns is about 8 and then a bit later when he’s 12, he gets a bit of exposure to Murdoch. And of course, the other thing that goes on, as well as that sexy stuff, we’ve mentioned religion already and everything Chris says about William Burness, the father, is right, but John Murdoch helps William Burness write the …

[JB]
Let’s just clarify, William Burness is Robert Burns’s dad, but he pronounced the name differently.

[GC]
I think Robert thinks that Burns is a cooler name. The artist for the family formerly known as … ! So, Burns is a bit cooler than the clunky peasant-like Burness, I think. William Burness wants a religious manual written for the instruction of Robert and Gilbert, and the man who feeds into that is John Murdoch. And although there’s a lot of traditional Calvinism in there, there’s also bits of moderatism that one might suspect is coming from Murdoch. For instance, there’s a bit of emphasis on kindness and good works as well as faith alone, where the hardline Calvinists might just want faith.

There’s something between harder-line Calvinism and the newer moderate thing going on. It’s never exactly black and white. And also, Murdoch is a man who thinks about religion a lot, which again I think is why he gets into a fankle with Dalrymple. He’s outspoken, etc. And Burns is watching this and thinking, ‘Oh, you can speak back to ministers?’ And the rest is history.

[JB]
So I can see why, at such a young and impressionable age, having a trendy young teacher who perhaps wasn’t what your dad intended would have made such an influence on Burns. OK, so let’s leave John Murdoch there. Gerry, you mentioned Lady Don: Henrietta Cunningham. Tell me about her.

[GC]
She is the sister of the Earl of Glencairn, James Cunningham, who is one of Burns’s patrons in a number of ways, including getting entry to the Excise Service. And from 1787 in Edinburgh, Burns, as well as the brother, has made the acquaintance of the sister. We again don’t know the precise details – and he starts sending her work.

If you look at the kind of work he’s sending her, he’s not just being a wee bit salacious about it, writing sexy stuff to a woman, but he’s sending her, for instance, ‘Holy Willy’s Prayer’ or ‘The Jolly Beggars: Love and Liberty – A Cantata’. He’s sending her some of the radical work that he only usually shows to blokes, and this is because the Cunningham family have got a lot of brains and he clearly believes … 1787 Edinburgh. He’s still got to be a wee bit careful with men and women. He clearly believes that Henrietta is someone who can receive this stuff. Again, there’s probably lost correspondence, but there’s a whole bunch of what were known as the Don Manuscripts, material that Burns sent to Lady Don, now in Edinburgh University. And that’s a significant corpus of Burns text that tells you a lot about how he was operating and how he was having this intellectual friendship with a semi-aristocratic woman.

[JB]
Now, that’s really interesting: an intellectual friendship, because in terms of women and Burns, his dalliances are well known. Was he able, therefore, to differentiate between women he was sexually attracted to and those with whom who could have a platonic relationship?

[GC]
Sometimes.

[CW]
Sometimes, yeah. And I think there’s an element of overlap there. The classic one that most people know about is Agnes MacLehose or Clarinda. Similarly, she’s a woman from a significantly higher echelon in society than Burns. She’s the daughter of a family of Glaswegian lawyers. She’s decamped to Edinburgh with her husband. When she knows Burns, she and her husband have separated, but he instantly finds in her that intellectual spark, which I think is a bit of an unknown for them ...

[GC]
Well, it is. You’re dead right, Chris. There’s something intellectual going on. I was going to say mental there, but that means something different in Glasgow. But at the same time, Clarinda, Mrs MacLehose is full of religious zeal, and they’re writing poetry to one another. And sometimes it’s like, do you feel the religious zeal? Yes, I feel it. Are you burning with religious …? Yeah, I’m! Clearly burning with something else. It’s classic Freudian sublimation. But there’s a number of things going on there that are formative in Burns’s life and lead ultimately to the great song ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, for instance.

So what we’ve got is time and again, Burns – yes, it’s undeniable; he likes women for their bodies – but he also likes women for their minds. There’s no question of that. And Lady Don falls into that category, among others.

[CW]
And the way that society is ordered then, that intellectualism only manifests itself where women have the opportunity to do so. So, it’s women from the upper orders that he tends to cleave to, and he seeks advice from them. He trusts them. Gerry’s already mentioned Mrs Dunlop, Frances Dunlop. She’s this confidante. She’s an older woman to the point where there’s clearly no sexual element there. But Burns really trusts her. And it’s a relationship that becomes frayed at times because of disagreements that they have. But this isn’t the great Burns throwing his ideas onto the table and expecting these women, especially Frances Dunlop, to fall down at his feet. They will argue back. And I genuinely feel that he takes something from that, Gerry, that ability to engage intellectually – an argument and indeed an agreement.

[JB]
Let’s talk in more general then about the upper echelons of society that he began mixing with when he was in Edinburgh particularly. Many people with lowly beginnings are influenced by people with money or with status, and perhaps they’re overwhelmed sometimes by their education. Did that apply to Burns in any way?

[GC]
Burns genuinely likes a number of aristocrats. There are points when he’s a bit of a crawler because he needs to be to get on. There are points where he explicitly doesn’t like members of the aristocracy and writes political ballads against them in election campaigns, etc, etc. There’s a whole mixture of these things.

One of the things he enjoys on his tour of the Highlands and elsewhere is being received in his first flush of celebrity by aristocrats who want to know him. And for a while, with many of these folks, there is a kind of equilibrium where it’s a meeting of minds. Status is very nice: you’ve got a big posh house so you can give me a nice dinner, you can give me resources. But actually, the thing that’s really going on is the artistic thing, where you can introduce me to so-and-so who’s also a song collector or whatever. So, he has that engagement.

He also has what my late parents would have called a good going foot, where he’s more or less happy introducing himself to people from all walks of life because he’s got this promiscuous sympathy – that phrase I probably over-use – where he’s interested in everything. Like many writers, he’s nosy and he wants to get into lives of all kinds and all statuses.

[JB]
Chris?

[CW]
Yeah, absolutely. He draws inspiration from all echelons of society. Burns is as happy in Poosie Nancy consorting with the prostitutes and ploughmen there, as he is in the literary salons of Edinburgh.

[JB]
He was a social chameleon.

[CW]
Very much so. But he uses that chameleon-like ability to great effect in his work in that he’s able to portray a very broad swathe of Scottish society at that time. Following on from what Gerry says, he goes to Edinburgh, he goes on his various tours – initially the Borders in spring 1787, then the Central Highlands and the Highlands proper. And he does become a wee bit of a dancing bear, but a lot of it is very much on his terms as well. Burns is benefitting from this. He’s savvy; he knows he’s benefitting from it.

Burns is a man of ultimate ambition. He wants to be recognised as a poet. He knows he’s a great poet. There’s no doubt about that. And he has this almost carefully managed image. Burns striding up and down the Royal Mile is an image that I often have in my mind, with his blue frock coat and his riding boots and his hair kept in a ponytail, which was unfashionable at that time, but with a ribbon. He knows what he’s doing.

He didn’t decide he was the heaven-taught ploughman, but he certainly does ascribe to that as time goes on. And he knows it’s beneficial to him and he knows it’s working, especially with those people. And crudely speaking, he can be seen as a bit of rough, but I think there’s a genuine appreciation of his intellectual capacity and his abilities as an artist as well among those people.

[GC]
And if he’s a chameleon, we retrospectively impose lots of different contradictory qualities on him. It’s a truism because it’s true that you can make him into anything you want politically. But one of the reasons when he dies that some people say basically he was a Tory was because if you look at the second edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, the so-called Edinburgh edition of 1787, it’s dedicated to the Caledonian Hunt in Edinburgh.

There you’ve got that semi-aristocratic society. It’s the upper nobs. He knows what he’s doing – that’s the group to which he wants to appeal. And he knows that they, rather than the peasantry at that point, can broadcast his name, his fame – can do things for him. And that’s fair enough, I suppose.

[JB]
Before we leave the aristocracy, if we had to nail it, what did those particularly influential women, how did they influence him? Or was it just a case of such was his thirst for knowledge that he just wanted to learn from them … and quite fancied a few of them too?

[CW]
I think he quite fancied them. But they act as genuinely useful sounding boards for Burns. And that’s, I think, the thing he takes the most from. He does write poems about them, especially Agnes MacLehose. It’s a funny one. I think there’s this notion that we think about in terms of this sexual conqueror, but that’s a relationship that, as far as we know, goes unconsummated. It’s conducted largely on paper and there seems to be a sense of real affection, to the point where it becomes really flowery. These letters are flying back and forwards with classical sign-offs on them. The caddies are carrying them across Edinburgh. This is texting!

[GC]
He’s speaking to these ladies when their aristocratic brothers are possibly a bit too snooty to condescend. So, there’s an nudge there to people who are educated, which is it’s easier speaking to these aristocratic women than it is to men. I think there’s a lot … again, I don’t want to get a cliche here about feminine reception, feminine sympathy, but in some ways many of these women are more receptive. You look at the women who are receptive to Burns intellectually – Agnes MacLehose, Mrs Dunlop, Lady Don, and there’s at least a dozen others. There’s something going on where there is a meeting of minds. And again, partly that is because Burns is a poet who’s interested in some of the traditional female themes.

And I know that’s a bit stereotypical, but Burns isn’t being stereotypical about that. He knows that women very often, as he found in his own family, are singers of songs, are tradition-bearers, and he’s getting some of that from them too, as well as other things.

[JB]
So, we come back to his mum then, Agnes. Gerry, you’ve given me some names. We are running out of time. If I gave you the names William McGill, William Tytler (the historian that we’ve sort of talked about already) and Captain Robert Riddell, which would you choose as most influential and why?

[GC]
In some ways, Jackie, I think they’re equally influential, but the one that I am drawn to – which doesn’t necessarily mean that we should go there but maybe we will – is Captain Robert Riddell. He is the man who owns Friars Carse, the house along the road from Burns when he takes his farm, Ellisland, from 1789. And he again is minor gentry, and they become bosom buddies. He is a man who is a historian, who’s a song collector. And to some extent, there’s a creative partnership going on there, which has never properly been acknowledged.

We see that to some degree in the Glenriddell manuscripts, where Bums gifts to Riddell and his family some of his work, and he’s adding more work into it. Clearly, there are discussions going on that we’ll never be privy to because they’re not recorded, not even in correspondence, where Riddell is collaborating with them. Indeed, there are several airs written by Riddell that Burns sets to music. So, we’ve got the romantic myth of the individual writer working alone, but with guys like Riddell, we should bear in mind the collaborative thing.

I’m going to be making quite a lot of that riff when I edit the poetry for Oxford University Press in a couple of years – that Riddell is one of his creative partners.

[JB]
You’re nodding furiously, Chris.

[CW]
Yeah, absolutely. He’s hugely significant in that latter part of Burns’s life. If I can indulge myself with a plug for the museum here, Burns famously gifts to Riddell the interleaved Scots Musical Museum, which puts down a lot of his working notes as to how a great many of these songs, airs and poems come about.

So, there’s a strong collaborative element. And I think it’s reflective of the notion that Burns was never that tortured artist. He’s gregarious, he’s garrulous, he likes to be around people. He’s a people person, if I can use that somewhat irritating phrase – but it’s people from all echelons of society.

We often think that the upper echelons of society will exploit the lower. I think Burns is able to kick it into reverse a wee bit at times. He’s able to be that dancing bear. He’s able to flirt not just with individuals, but with an entire group of people in 18th-century Scotland, and he does it very well. At times, he’s the guy that they want him to be, but he ultimately benefits out of it in terms of the doors that it opens for him – those minor nobles who are genuinely influential in literary circles.

From the outset when Burns goes to Edinburgh, he starts to try desperately to meet people. He writes to Dr John Moore, the famous autobiographical letter. Moore’s a man who’s influential in literary circles. Burns sets out to gain success in the way that modern people set out to gain success.

[GC]
Patronage is something you need to succeed as a poet, and that’s what he’s in search of wherever he can get it. Why wouldn’t you be?

[JB]
From the people that we have discussed, and perhaps we haven’t even touched on the answer to this next question, is there a towering influence? And if so, who would you both say?

[GC]
I think in poetic terms, and this might not go down well in all circles, there’s no question for me that the man who teaches Burns to think poetically in didactic moral terms is Alexander Pope – and his poetry and his letters are replete with references.

Pope isn’t the only one we’ve mentioned. Ramsay and Fergusson, hugely influential, but in many ways I think the poet who is most influential is the Englishman Alexander Pope. And why not? That is the influence if you have to pick out one, in terms of aesthetic terms for me.

[JB]
I get the feeling that you’re agreeing, Chris.

[CW]
There’s signs that Gerry and I’ll argue about, but not Robert Burns. I know when I’m going to get beat, let’s be honest. Pope’s massively influential on Burns and from a very early age as well. He’s there on that Murdoch-inspired reading list. And if we look at some of his earliest, the one I’ve quoted already, song composed in August ‘Now Westlin Winds’. It’s replete with Popian influences. Pope composes a piece called ‘Windsor Forest’. It’s an Augustan description of the Thames Valley; it creates an Elysium out of the Thames Valley.

But Burns does that thing that Scots writers do. He does it, but he takes a more demotic approach to it. He very cheekily uses phrases that are almost identical to Pope, but he casts this whole thing as happening somewhere in Ayrshire, somewhere around about Alloway or Mauchline or Tarbolton most likely, going by the time it was written. And he does it with a lassie on his arm far by.

[JB]
And that is the Burns twist.

[CW]
And that demotic approach to poetry also goes to his appreciation of those writers. He mentions Ramsay and Fergusson in a number of poems. He mentions them almost as a pairing, and he mentions them in these epistolatory poems to Lapraik and to William Simpson. It’s almost as if he’s saying, ‘Oh, by the way, I’ve read these guys as well.’ He’s throwing it in there.

[GC]
And the verse epistles also. Everyone thinks that’s what farmers in Ayrshire did. No, they didn’t. The verse epistle form he’s taking from Alexander Pope because that way of speaking and urbane, cultivated, widely cultural fashion he’s getting from Alexander Pope. We forget these influences and that’s fine because we do see Burns writing verse epistles, but the lineage of that is in writers like Alexander Pope, Dryden, and also Ramsay and Fergusson.

The other thing he gets from Pope also is a preferential option for the Stuarts, because Pope is also a Jacobite.

[JB]
We have run out of time, but I’ve got one more question for you both, and we’re sort of turning the tables. We’re talking about the people who influenced Burns. I’d like to ask is there a piece of poetry or lyrics from Burns that has supremely influenced you both. Chris?

[CW]
Absolutely. I was a late developer in many ways, but especially about in finding Burns. I grew up in a house that was filled with books, but there wasn’t a book of Burns in my house. I went to a school in East Kilbride called Hunter High and the school motto was ‘The man’s the gowd’. Yet in five years of English, I didn’t get taught one single line of Burns.

I started reading Burns when I was in my late 20s, when I was a countryside ranger, because in a moment of dreadful homesickness, I was working in the Cotswolds and I went into a bargain bookstore and picked up the Lomond edition, which is where a lot of us start. The Lomond Complete Poems and Songs of Burns. And I opened it at ‘The Holy Fair’.

‘The Holy Fair’ is this wonderful acidic polemic against the local clergy, this ongoing battle, which I know is a particular area of interest for Burns. And it’s a funny read, but the opening verse is wonderful nature poetry. I’m always banging this drum that Burns isn’t appreciated as a nature poet.

[JB]
Go on, give us the opening verse.

[CW]
Upon a summer Sunday morning,
When Nature's face is fair,
I walked forth to view the corn,
And sniff the caller air.
The rising sun, over Galston Moors,
With glorious light was glinting;
The hares were hirpling down the furrows,
The lav’rocks they were chanting
Fu’ sweet that day.

Fu’ sweet indeed. This is Burns as a boy, alive and enjoying the countryside before he goes off to the Holy Fair and gets involved in the various flesh pots that leads him to …

[JB]
OK, from flesh pots, Gerry, what would you?

[GC]
So, there’s a number of fancy pants academic answers I could give to this, but if I really boil it down, if you said to me that everything that Burns wrote was going to disappear except for one piece, the one piece I would hold onto would be Tam o’ Shanter because it’s his greatest performance in Scots.

It’s a great mock epic and it contains within it, in miniature, a lot of his different signatures that you get elsewhere across his oeuvre. So, everything else has been destroyed, I would keep Tam o’ Shanter.

[JB]
And is there a particular stanza there that just gets you going?

[GC]
All of it. And in fact, the answer here means that I can’t recite any particular bit of it. It’s the shifts between different voices. It’s the shifts between moods that you need to have in totality. It’s a great organic work where he’s all over the place a wee bit, mimicking Tam and his supposed drunkenness – so, it’s the totality of the poem that is wonderful.

[JB]
Well, perhaps in the future we will devote an entire podcast to Tam o’ Shanter, because I’m sure it could take it … and then some. That is all we’ve got time for, gentlemen – thank you so much. I hope we’ve thrown some additional light on the life and work of this complex and talented man whose work has meant so much to so many.

As I said at the start, whether you’re a Burns expert or a newcomer, the Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway run by the National Trust for Scotland should certainly be a port of call. And, you can say hello to Chris! It exists and its collections are growing because of you, because of your support, your membership and your donations. Thank you.

Archive collections from the museum are now available for everyone to explore online. Just head to the Trust website for more information. So, thank you once again to Professor Gerry Carruthers.

[GC]
Thank you.

[JB]
And to Chris Waddell.

[CW]
Thank you.

[JB]
Thank you both. Until next time on Love Scotland, goodbye.

And if that has whetted your appetite for all things Burns, there are plenty of other podcasts about the Bard. Just take a look on the National Trust for Scotland Love Scotland podcast feed.

[DP]
The poet was no teetotaller, not at all. Sometimes he overdid it, there’s no question of that. Sat with his friends on the evening hours in the taverns of Dumfries or Ayr or whatever. But he was no alcoholic. His behaviour and what was observed about him do not support that.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird. For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.