Robert Burns was born near Ayr, Scotland, 25th of January, 1759. He was
the son of William Burnes, or Burness, at the time of the poet’s birth a
nurseryman on the banks of the Doon in Ayrshire. His father, though
always extremely poor, attempted to give his children a fair education,
and Robert, who was the eldest, went to school for three years in a
neighboring village, and later, for shorter periods, to three other
schools in the vicinity. But it was to his father and to his own reading
that he owed the more important part of his education; and by the time
that he had reached manhood he had a good knowledge of English, a
reading knowledge of French, and a fairly wide acquaintance with the
masterpieces of English literature from the time of Shakespeare to his
own day. In 1766 William Burness rented on borrowed money the farm of
Mount Oliphant, and in taking his share in the effort to make this
undertaking succeed, the future poet seems to have seriously
overstrained his physique. In 1771 the family move to Lochlea, and Burns
went to the neighboring town of Irvine to learn flax-dressing. The only
result of this experiment, however, was the formation of an acquaintance
with a dissipated sailor, whom he afterward blamed as the prompter of
his first licentious adventures. His father died in 1784, and with his
brother Gilbert the poet rented the farm of Mossgiel; but this venture
was as unsuccessful as the others. He had meantime formed an irregular
intimacy with Jean Armour, for which he was censured by the
Kirk-session. As a result of his farming misfortunes, and the attempts
of his father-in-law to overthrow his irregular marriage with Jean, he
resolved to emigrate; and in order to raise money for the passage he
published (Kilmarnock, 1786) a volume of the poems which he had been
composing from time to time for some years. This volume was unexpectedly
successful, so that, instead of sailing for the West Indies, he went up
to Edinburgh, and during that winter he was the chief literary celebrity
of the season. An enlarged edition of his poems was published there in
1787, and the money derived from this enabled him to aid his brother in
Mossgiel, and to take and stock for himself the farm of Ellisland in
Dumfriesshire. His fame as poet had reconciled the Armours to the
connection, and having now regularly married Jean, he brought her to
Ellisland, and once more tried farming for three years. Continued
ill-success, however, led him, in 1791, to abandon Ellisland, and he moved
to Dumfries, where he had obtained a position in the Excise. But he was
now thoroughly discouraged; his work was mere drudgery; his tendency to
take his relaxation in debauchery increased the weakness of a
constitution early undermined; and he died at Dumfries in his
thirty-eighth year.
[See Burns’ Birthplace: The living room in the Burns birthplace
cottage.]
It is not necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away the
numerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater part of his
life. It is evident that Burns was a man of extremely passionate nature
and fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes of his lot combined with
his natural tendencies to drive him to frequent excesses of
self-indulgence. He was often remorseful, and he strove painfully, if
intermittently, after better things. But the story of his life must be
admitted to be in its externals a painful and somewhat sordid chronicle.
That it contained, however, many moments of joy and exaltation is proved
by the poems here printed.
Burns’ poetry falls into two main groups: English and Scottish. His
English poems are, for the most part, inferior specimens of conventional
eighteenth-century verse. But in Scottish poetry he achieved triumphs of
a quite extraordinary kind. Since the time of the Reformation and the
union of the crowns of England and Scotland, the Scots dialect had
largely fallen into disuse as a medium for dignified writing. Shortly
before Burns’ time, however, Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson had been
the leading figures in a revival of the vernacular, and Burns received
from them a national tradition which he succeeded in carrying to its
highest pitch, becoming thereby, to an almost unique degree, the poet of
his 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 of
the so-called “New Light” party, which had sprung up in opposition to
the extreme Calvinism and intolerance of the dominant “Auld Lichts.” The
fact that Burns had personally suffered from the discipline of the Kirk
probably added fire to his attacks, but the satires show more than
personal animus. The force of the invective, the keenness of the wit,
and the fervor of the imagination which they displayed, rendered them an
important 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 vividly
descriptive of the Scots peasant life with which he was most familiar;
and a group like “Puir Mailie” and “To a Mouse,” which, in the
tenderness of their treatment of animals, revealed one of the most
attractive sides of Burns’ personality. Many of his poems were never
printed during his lifetime, the most remarkable of these being “The
Jolly Beggars,” a piece in which, by the intensity of his imaginative
sympathy and the brilliance of his technique, he renders a picture of
the lowest dregs of society in such a way as to raise it into the realm
of great poetry.
But the real national importance of Burns is due chiefly to his songs.
The Puritan austerity of the centuries following the Reformation had
discouraged secular music, like other forms of art, in Scotland; and as
a result Scottish song had become hopelessly degraded in point both of
decency and literary quality. From youth Burns had been interested in
collecting the fragments he had heard sung or found printed, and he came
to regard the rescuing of this almost lost national inheritance in the
light of a vocation. About his song-making, two points are especially
noteworthy: first, that the greater number of his lyrics sprang from
actual emotional experiences; second, that almost all were composed to
old melodies. While in Edinburgh he undertook to supply material for
Johnson’s “Musical Museum,” and as few of the traditional songs could
appear in a respectable collection, Burns found it necessary to make
them over. Sometimes he kept a stanza or two; sometimes only a line or
chorus; sometimes merely the name of the air; the rest was his own. His
method, as he has told us himself, was to become familiar with the
traditional melody, to catch a suggestion from some fragment of the old
song, to fix upon an idea or situation for the new poem; then, humming
or whistling the tune as he went about his work, he wrought out the new
verses, going into the house to write them down when the inspiration
began to flag. In this process is to be found the explanation of much of
the peculiar quality of the songs of Burns. Scarcely any known author
has succeeded so brilliantly in combining his work with folk material,
or in carrying on with such continuity of spirit the tradition of
popular song. For George Thomson’s collection of Scottish airs he
performed a function similar to that which he had had in the “Museum”;
and his poetical activity during the last eight or nine years of his
life was chiefly devoted to these two publications. In spite of the fact
that he was constantly in severe financial straits, he refused to accept
any recompense for this work, preferring to regard it as a patriotic
service. And it was, indeed, a patriotic service of no small magnitude.
By birth and temperament he was singularly fitted for the task, and this
fitness is proved by the unique extent to which his productions were
accepted by his countrymen, and have passed into the life and feeling of
his race.
1771 - 1779