Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
This year's Burns Night on January 25th sees the 250th anniversary of the poet's birth. Such celebrations began only a few years after the death of Robert Burns in 1796, and have continued ever since. A focal point of the original Burns Night was of course the haggis:
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin'-race!
Haggis is the quintessential Scottish dish, and Burns is famous as the poet of Scotland, both of its history, as in 'Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn':
Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,-
Or to victorie.
and of its landscape:
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here;
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer.
He is also particularly remembered for his adaptations of old Scottish songs, such as:
O, my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
Last year, Jeremy Paxman described Burns as 'the king of sentimental doggerel' but his scope is much wider than that suggests. Some of his lines have even entered the language. 'The best laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley', 'Man's inhumanity to man', 'O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!', and 'A man's a man for a' that' are all so frequently quoted as to have become clichés.
Sir Walter Scott, another writer who took Scotland as his inspiration, wrote:
O Caledonia! stern and wild,
Meet nurse for a poetic child!
while the American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson said 'The Confession of Augsburg, the Declaration of Independence, the French Rights of Man, and the "Marseillaise" are not more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Burns'.
Burns himself took a less serious view of his vocation:
Some rhyme a neebor's name to lash;
Some rhyme (vain thought!) for needfu' cash;
Some rhyme to court the countra clash,
An' raise a din;
For me, an aim I never fash;
I rhyme for fun.
But one of the folk songs he worked on remains a favourite both internationally and in Scotland.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
We'll tak a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.
Susan Ratcliffe
20/01/2009
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