FORCE IN SCOTTISH UNITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23565, 27 January 1940, Page 1 (Supplement)

FORCE IN SCOTTISH UNITY

The Voice of a People

By KOTARE

Robert burns was bom on January 25, 1759. Sco land realised too late to help the poet in his lifetime how great a gift the gods had seen fit to bestow. The tides of enthusiasm have flowed steadily and without diminution through all the nineteenth century and right down to our own day. January 25 rather than the official St. Andrew's Day. has become for Scots throughout the world the day when Scottish sentiment and patriotism reach their highest intensity of feeling and expression. Then the world, usually without . understanding or sympathy, sees a dour, reserved, cautious people really let themselves go. One grants that the exuberance of the Scottish worship of Burns has often involved patriots in foolish extravagance. Things are said and done that can only make the judicious grieve. Enthusiasm is not always linked to sound critical judgment.

Dick Sheppard used to say that the only tiling worse than the unthinking "My country right or wrong" was the egregious "My . country always, wrong" which he saw developing among the intelligentsia, self-constituted of course, of our own day. For my part give me an enthusiasm that makes mistakes in its patriotic fervour before a cold superior detachment that can find something to admire only in the brave music of the distant drum. Revering the Poet It is curibus how full-blooded a contempt is aroused in some people by the spectacle of a nation doing its highest honours to its supreme poet, to. the man who made articulate in deathless song the deepest feelings bred in the hearts of. his countrymen by their history and their environment. The snobbery that insists the plays of Shakespeare could only have been written by an aristocrat, finds ridiculous all these raptures over a mere peasant. 1 There arc many things in the Scottish character of which I as a Scot am proud, as there are things of which I io not boast; but I am prouder of nothing more than .this, that in a world ?iven over to the worship of material Tuccess one small nation still thinks" its greatest man is its greatest poet. Pricipal Shairp, who in many ways ivas a true product of his Victorian age, ind who saw Burns perhaps more as the interpreter of a special peasant 3lass than as the mouthpiece of the humanity that underlies all social distinctions, had a wider vision when he Tound in Burns the restorer of Scottish nationality. VWhen Burns appeared hlie spirit of Scotland was at a low 2bb. The fatigue that followed a tury of religious strife, the. extinction of her Parliament, the removal of all symbols of her royalty and nationality had all but quenched her ancient spirit. Englishmen despised Scotsmen and Scotsmen - seemed ashamed •. of - themselves and of their country. The Democrat "A race of literary men had sprung up in Edinburgh who as to national fooling were entirely colourless, Scotsmen in nothing but their dwellingplace. The thing they most dreaded was to be convicted of a Scotticism. Among these learned cosmopolitans in walked Burns, who with the instinct of.genius chosfl for his subject that Scottish life which they ignored, and for his vehicle that vernacular which they despised, and wlio touching the springs of longforgotten emotions brought back to the hearts of his countrymen a tide of patriotic feeling to which they had long been strangers." Burns was a civil servant in his last years ahd got himself ■ into serious trouble by his democratic sympathies. Scott was probably right when he said that the political predilections of Burns wore entirely determined by' his feelings. Burns was,' emotionally at least, like many another Scot whose intelligence pointed another way, an enthusiastic .Jacobite. The poet in him responded to the drama in the story of the ill-fated house of Stewart. But he was also an eager democrat. It is reported of him that he once left a. social group because .they refused to substitute for a toast "The health of William Pitt" his own suggestion, "The health of a greater and a better man, George Washington." He hailed the French Revolution as the beginning of a new era for mankind. During the early days of our war with France he proposed the toast "May our success in the present war he equal to the justice of our cause." His enthusiasm for liberty, equality, and fraternity . led- him _to practical assistance of the revolutionary cause, and brought upon him the stern censure of bis superiors. The Country's Danger But when the French, as Mrs. Oarswell says, "launched against Britain a new offensive of unprecedented bitterness which even contemplated an invasion," Burns was one of the first -_to join the Dumfries Volunteer Corps for home defence, and not only carried out his duties with keenness, but wrote songs that did more to -unify opinion in Scotland against the national danger than all the efforts of preachers and orators. He had already in his earlier days rallied Scotland: Auld Scotland has a raucle tongue, She's just a devil with a* rung, And if she promise auld or young To tak' their part, Though by'the neck she should bo strung, She'll no desert, - But bring a Scotsman frae his hill, Clap in his cheek a Highland gill, Say, "Such is Royal George's will, An' there's the foe," He has nae thought but how to kill Twa at a blow. And this is part of the song that swept Scotland when invasion threatened :

The kettle o' the Kirk and State Perhaps a clout may fail in t, But de'il a foreign tinkler loun Shall ever ca' a nail 111 t. Be Britain still to Britain Arnaug oursels united; For never but by British hands Maun British wrangs be righted. The staunch democrat was an even staunche patriot. "Whatever might be my sentiments of republics, ancient or modern,'" he wrote, I ever abjured the idea of such changes here. A Con stitution which in its original principles experience has proved to be in ever way fitted for our it wouM be insanity to abandon for an untried Vi ?Ss'S'wcW., writt M in * Jfo, crisis not m,like: pur owu.jn helo to show why Scots nna ilwavs' up-to-date with a. word situation, still the m 0? men 144 years after his-death.,, . .