BURNS ANNIVERSARY

Evening Star, Issue 21320, 26 January 1933, Page 13

BURNS ANNIVERSARY

CELEBRATED IN DELIGHTFUL CONCERT ADDRESS BY MR W. WOOD The Burns anniversary was celebrated in traditional style by the Scottish community in the Town Hall Concert Chamber last evening. Mr F. C. Cooper had arranged a delightful programme for this important occasion, and a large audience heard the many diversified items with much pleasure. Mr W. Wood, of Invercargill, delivered the address that has become a necessary institution at these celebrations, and his description of the man and his work held considerable interest. Mr 11. M'Kinlay, the president of the Dunedin Burns Club, occupied the chair. The Dunedin Hihgland Pipe Band, under Pipe-major W. Budge, opened the programme with a stirring selection ,of national airs, and then followed a distinctive and enjoyable entertainment. Among the vocalists were Mrs Wilfred Andrews, of Wellington, and Miss Mary Pratt, two accomplished ladies, who would receive a very cordial welcome on any concert platform in the dominion. Songs were also contributed by Miss Dorothy Mackay, Messrs A. M'Dowell, John Kennedy, and Arthur Macdonald, Messrs M'Dowell and Kennedy also appearing in a quartette with Messrs A. Jcavons and J. M'.Farlane. The Burns Club Choir, under Mr Cooper, sang two part songs, Mr Desmond Neil son contributed a banjo solo, and Mr A. Sligo a recitation. A national reel was danced by Misses Daphne Allen, Rita Warren, Patricia Atkinson, and Flora Macdonald. The accompaniments were played by Mrs T. J. Kirk-Burnnand. The audience accorded all the performers a warm reception, many encores being taken during the evning. ‘ BURNS, THE MAN.’ “ There are some influences that are indefinable—like the charm of the sunset or the scent of the heather—but tangible, nevertheless. Such an influence was that of Burns. His was not the ‘ touch of the vanished hand,’ but the ‘ richt guid wullie waucht.’ How many tens of thousands have sung and will sing, as we shall sing to-night, ‘ Auld Lang Syne,’ because in every line of every verso there is that touch of Nature that makes the whole world kin.” In these words Mr Wood paid tribute to the human appeal made to people the world over by the poetry of Robert Burns. Burns, he said, was intensely and vigorously liuman, and throbbed with the love and joy of existence. But his life, itself pathetic and sad for the most part, with a few gleams of happiness and comfort, and his little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love, were not such as to have an enduring and living influence on the lives of men. Burns was their supremo national poet. Ho belonged primarily to them, but he was not only their possession, ho was the possession of every man in whom there beat a human heart. That was the same as saying that ho belonged to the world. He was intellectually great, and the force and brilliancy of his conversation made him not only the lion of a season in Edinburgh, but held a group of noteless peasants on the lonely peat moss at Lochloa dumb with wonder. It needed more than this, however, to explain the hold he had on the affections and intelligence of the world to-day. Nothing that had been written of and about him had given them so luminous and vivid a portrait, so lifelike and vigorous an impression of the personality of the poet and the man, as the piclture the author had himself given in his own writings. Every one of them gave some glimpse into the heart and soul of the writer. He had said of himself, in the preface to the Kilmarnock edition of his poems, that his aim was to sing the sentiment and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him, to transcribe the various feelings—the loves, the hopes, the griefs, the fears in his own breast—and in working out his poetic method there was scarcely a Sosition of good human interest that e had missed. The terror and beauty of Nature, the unity of life and a consequent pity for the animal creation, the moral worth of man, the need for compassion, the vileness of avarice, sanctimony, hypocrisy, and grandeur of love, even when opposed to prudence—these were his common themes. Contemporary poets hadearned, as they deserved, a certain popularity, and compelled a certain admiration. Their achievements, however’, were oft interred with their bones. Through Burns, on the other hand, the world still listened in to the greatest volume of human ideals that had ever been broadcast, and the humblest crystal set could hear, appreciate, and understand every word. No arable land of the emotions was ever ploughed so productively. Crops of great fertility had been garnered in many lives from the furrows ho ploughed so deeply in the hearts of men, and women who loved the beautiful and despised the hypocritical. Burns’s genius, said the speaker, was cradled in adversity, and anxiety followed him all the days of his life. His genius was universal. In satire, in humour, in pathos, in description, in sentiment, ho was equally great, but his satire and humour partook of the soil whence they sprung. They were rude, forceful, and manly; they were not polished into elegance, nor laboured into ease, but in every composition the speaker was inclined to regard him as one of tho few geniuses who arise to illuminate the hemisphere of mind. Education had nothing in tho formation of his character. AVhat lie wrote was the pure offspring of native genius, and if they reflected how excellent ho was in all, what various powers ho had shown in paths that wore amongst the highest of poetical dcclinadion, they might, without much offence to justice, place him by the side of the greatest names that Scotland had over produced. There wore some who though that had his lot been cast in pleasanter places they would have had a greater Burns.' It was just because Burns had none of these things that they had the life of tbe people expressed in song, ballad, and poem. No university could ever have made him a graduate in tho gifts of God. No sheltered homo could over have made him tho sweet singer of tho “ butt and ben.” Burns’s Scotland was a hard task mistress, and in his case a stern preparation for a great destiny. A Scotsman of Scotsmen, he had endeared himself to tho hearts of a people, but ho was from first to last a man, and so had found entrance to tho hearts of all men. He was a patriot, but not of that parochial type which was, the speaker thought, unfortunately, so prevalent to-day. The whole world was his country. He was a groat and original thinker, a great Liberal—• not in tho party sense—but a great Liberal in his broadmindedness towards theological and political thought. He was the first Labour Prime Minister with a majority vote. “ But though -he passed many years ago,” concluded tho speaker, “it is no time for sorrow. It is a time for

rejoicing because we commemorate his birth, because ho is a living force with ns, because his fame covers all the continents ami laps the shores of the furthest islands of the seas, and because in every quarter of the globe, Scotsmen and Scotswomen are lifting up their voices and proclaiming that the poet’s memory is hallowed in their hearts for ever. That is why I give you tho remembrance of a man who in ids lifetime trod many a weary foot, but who bridged tho broad seas that roar between the peoples of the world and made them kinsmen in one great human family.”- (Applause.),