AN ENGLISHMAN PAYS TRIBUTE TO ROBERT BURNS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

AN ENGLISHMAN PAYS TRIBUTE TO ROBERT BURNS

By NORMAN BOYES

HTHE ancients had a lively appreciation of the importance of a great man in human affairs. They believed that his appearance was foreshadowed by a grouping of the stars, or the sudden blaze from a new celestial body. Seers would have prophetic dreams and speak of the mighty things to come as if they were already established facts. But it is to be feared that these were the stories told by people who were wise after the event. The simple details were in most cases: an obscure birth, a quiet upbringing and a sudden flaming forth of genius under pressure of some native or contiguous force, followed in some instances by eclipse and possibly, extinction. " One ol Themselves " But out of the wreck, the watchers would gather up the fragments as children piece together a sea-shell broken by the storm. From admiration and wonde'r, worship would come, radiating its waves in widening circles until they overflowed the local pools and whispered through the oceans of the world. The birth of Robert Burns in a claybuilt cottage near Ayr 011 January 25, 1759, was just such an event. Even his mother could hardly have imagined such fame, for it is no exaggeration to say that the Scots are more devout in their veneration of Burns than are the English toward Shakespeare. The Scots revel luxuriously in Burns as one of themselves who not only made

Poet Who Won All Hearts

them race-conscious, but revealed them to the world in all their piety, doggedness and love of home and hearth, using as his medium the native vernacular. Nor did he fail to bring to light the unco guid and the cheeseparer, as much a part of the Scotsman as the lover, the hero and the worker. Mice and Men If Shakespeare hold the mirror up to Nature, Burns was the reflection in the mirror. Equally at home with the affairs of mice as of men, his work scintillates with lovely images of cool braes and gently-flowing streams; and there is a place jn his regard for the mountain daisy, as well as the wounded hare, and even tho unpromising louse, of whom he wrote the famous lines: O wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithcrs see us I About Shakespeare there is an Olympian greatness outreaching human imperfection. He is always controlled, restrained, greater than his greatest work. Bi;t Burns is the sinner, bitterly repentant, dragging himself to the feet of his conscience like David remembering Uriah His is the voice of every man at grips with the oldest of life's problems, the flesh and th«» spirit. Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman: Though thoy may gang a kennin wrang. To step aside is human. His are no half measures, no negative virtues, but the everlasting yea to life; beaten, battered, but still believing in the deep core of him Nae treasures nor pleasures Could make us happy lang: The heart ay's the part ay 1 That makes us right or wrang.

And if he wore his heart on his sleeve he did so with a difference in that everyone who saw it knew it for his own heart and was moved to rapture or remorse as the poet willed. Lovely Native Airs Yet the abiding influence of Burns has come from his songs which have invested him with a power beyond that of many a statesman. He found a wealth of lovely native airs defamed by tawdry, tinkling words and by his genius wrought them into an imperishable inheritance. No doubt his interest in the traditional songs and ballads was developed early by his mother and an old nurse, both of whom were repositories of all that was wonderful and romantic. • Helped by his father, who encouraged his sons to learn, and a varied reading which ranged from the Bible and the Spectator to Shakespeare and "A Select Collection of English Songs" which he has cabled his vade mecum, he was not ill-equipped for his task. At one time he wrote: Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire That's a' the learning I desire. And in this spark lies the real secret of his influence, this and that grand simplicity of art that conceals art, producing such gems as: O my love is like a red, red rose. That's newly sprung in June; O my love is like a melodie. That's sweetly played in tune. A man's humanity is often a measure of his greatness. Courage, determination, fortitude, intellect are all admirable traits. But in a world with so much of moiling and toiling, where the old, old cry of every man for himself resounds over hill and dale, echoing through the streets and dwelling-places like the huntsmen's "Tally-ho 1" at the sight of the quarry, there is need of a Burns. " Auld Lang Syne! " Indeed our debt to such men cannot be measured out and parcelled up like a commodity. With humility and a full heart would be a fittipg form of acceptance, for it is the lot of poets to "learn in suffering what they teach in song," and the study of imperfection is often more helpful to others than the study of perfection. Surely there was never a song of more universal acceptance than "Auld Lang Syne 1" What greater apology have the proudly poor than "Is there for Honest Poverty"? After all there is no disputing that "the rank is but the guinea's stnjnp" and "the man's the gowd for a' that' 1 It is the directness, the magnanimity of the man that wins us. H. V. Morton says: Burns was the Pan of Scotland . Centuries of repression spoke in him; he was Scotland's only great expression of animal humanity since the Reformation. Ho snapped his pagan fingers at the gloomy, kirk-made, ugly vindictive, narrowminded, key-hole gazing tradesman's god and opened his arms to the beauty of the earth. He was a faun born in an age of clastic-sided boots. . • He was a peasant who had to bear the pain of voicing the inarticulateness of centuries of peasants. * In his voice, clear and unhesitant, one heard all the joys and sorrows which lay unspoken for generations in the heart of men who work with their hand. And it is characteristic of the Scot to admire courage, even when -directed against him. Few can resist the occasion of a Burns' discussion to remind you with a twinkle in the eye what a very devil he was, as if it were a matter of some vicarious satisfaction. But the mood is passing. Soon familiar couplets are uttered with a sincere delight and a faithfulness that argues a life-long devotion. It is an experience not easily forgotten even by a complacent Englishman. Yet, if I were a Scotsman, as 1 am an Englishman, I would not envy the English their Shakespeare; not while there was heather on the hills and honest and kindly Scottish hearts.