by Robert Burns
Carlyle strangely misunderstood the spirit of democracy in Burns, although he justly wrote, long after the poet’s death: ‘He appears not only as a true British poet, but as one of the most considerable British men of the eighteenth century.’
What were the achievements, in addition to his poetic power, that made Burns ‘one of the most considerable men of the eighteenth century?’ Mainly the work he did to develop in the souls of men a consciousness of fundamental principles of democracy, and higher ideals of vital religion; yet Carlyle does not approve of his efforts to reform either social or religious conditions. As the centuries pass, the work of Burns for Religion, Democracy, and Brotherhood will be recognised as his greatest work for humanity.
Carlyle’s belief was that Burns wrote about the wrongs of the oppressed because he could not become rich. In that belief he was clearly in error. The love of freedom, justice, and independence was a basic passion in the character of Burns. The anxiety of Burns regarding money was not for himself, but for his family in case he should die. Several times he referred to this in letters to his most intimate friends.
CHAPTER VI. Burns and Brotherhood.
In the third letter Burns wrote Alison Begbie, the first woman he asked to marry him, he said: ‘I grasp every creature in the arms of Universal Benevolence, and equally participate in the pleasures of the happy, and sympathise with the miseries of the unfortunate.’
This statement of one of the fundamental principles which guided him during his whole life is a profound interpretation of the teachings of Christ in regard to the attitude that each individual should have, must have, in order that brotherhood may be established on the earth. He taught universal benevolence and vital sympathy with — not for — humanity; not merely when sorrows and afflictions bring dark clouds to hearts, but in times of happiness and rejoicing; affectionate sympathy, unostentatious sympathy, co-operative sympathy that stimulates helpfulness and hopefulness; sympathy that produces activity of the divine in the human heart and mind, and leads to brotherhood.
The amazing fact is, not that Burns wrote such fundamental Christian philosophy in a love-letter, but that a youth of twenty-one could think it and express it so perfectly.
To Clarinda he wrote, 1787: ‘Lord! why was I born to see misery which I cannot relieve?’
Again, in 1788, he wrote to her: ‘Give me to feel “another’s woe,” and continue with me that dear-loved friend that feels with mine.’
To Mrs Walter Riddell he wrote, 1793: ‘Of all the qualities we assign to the Author and Director of Nature, by far the most enviable is to be able “to wipe away all tears from all eyes.” O what insignificant, sordid wretches are they, however chance may have loaded them with wealth, who go to their graves, to their magnificent mausoleums, with hardly the consciousness of having made one poor, honest heart happy.’
In ‘A Winter Night,’ the great poem of universal sympathy, he says:
Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress;
A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss.
He closes the poem with four great lines:
But deep this truth impressed my mind —
Thro’ all His works abroad,
The heart benevolent and kind
The most resembles God.
In the same poem he paints the characters who lack loving sympathy, and whose lives and attitudes towards their fellow-men separate men, and break the ties that should unite all men, and thus prevent the development of the spirit of brotherhood. After describing the fierceness of the storm and expressing his heartfelt sympathy for the cattle, the sheep, the birds, and even with destructive animals such as prey on hen-roosts or defenceless lambs, his mind was filled with a plaintive strain, as he thought of the bitterness of man to his brother man, and he proceeds:
Blow, blow, ye winds, with heavier gust!
And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost!
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows!
Not all your rage, as now united, shows
More hard unkindness, unrelenting,
Vengeful malice unrepenting,
Than heaven-illumined man on brother man bestows.
The depth and universality of his sympathy is shown in ‘To a Mouse,’ after he had destroyed its nest while ploughing:
I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union,
An’ justifies that ill opinion
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
An’ fellow-mortal!
In his ‘Epistle to Davie,’ a brother poet, he emphasises the value of true sympathy, that should bind all hearts, must yet bind all hearts in universal brotherhood, when he says:
All hail! ye tender feelings dear!
The smile of love, the friendly tear,
The sympathetic glow!
Long since, this world’s thorny ways
Had numbered out my weary days,
Had it not been for you.
In his ‘Epistle to Robert Graham of Fintry,’ after describing the thrifty but selfishly prudent, ‘who feel by reason and who give by rule,’ and expressing regret that ‘the friendly e’er should want a friend,’ he writes:
But come ye, who the godlike pleasure know,
Heaven’s attribute distinguished — to bestow!
Whose arms of love would grasp the human race.
In the opinion of Burns, they are the ideal men and women who best understood, and most perfectly practised, the teaching of Christ.
In one of his epistles to his friend Lapraik he says:
For thus the royal mandate ran,
When first the human race began:
The social, friendly, honest man,
Whate’er he be —
‘Tis he fulfils great Nature’s plan,
And none but he.
The influence of any act on society, on the brotherhood of man as a whole, was the supreme test of Burns to distinguish between goodness and evil.
To Dr Moore, of London, he said: ‘Whatsoever is not detrimental to society, and is of positive enjoyment, is of God, the giver of all good things, and ought to be received and enjoyed by His creatures with thankful delight.’
To Clarinda he wrote: ‘Thou Almighty Author of peace, and goodness, and love! Do thou give me the social heart that kindly tastes of every man’s cup! Is it a draught of joy? Warm and open my heart to share it with cordial, unenvying rejoicing! Is it the bitter potion of sorrow? Melt my heart with sincerely sympathetic woe! Above all, do Thou give me the manly mind, that resolutely exemplifies in life and manners those sentiments which I would wish to be thought to possess.’
In ‘On the Seas and Far Away’ he says:
Peace, thy olive wand extend,
And bid wild war his ravage end;
Man with brother man to meet,
And as a brother kindly greet.
In the ‘Tree of Liberty’ he says, if we had plenty of the trees of Liberty growing throughout the whole world:
Like brothers in a common cause
We’d on each other smile, man;
And equal rights and equal laws
Wad gladden ev’ry isle, man.
To Clarinda, when he presented a pair of wine-glasses — a perfectly proper gift to a lady in the opinion of his time — he gave her at the same time a poem, in which he said:
And fill them high with generous juice,
As generous as your mind;
And pledge them to the generous toast,
‘The whole of human kind!’
In his ‘Epistle to John Lapraik,’ after describing those whose lives do not help men towards brotherhood, he describes those who are true to the great ideal:
But ye whom social pleasure charms,
Whose hearts the tide of kindness warms,
Who hold your being on the terms,
‘Each aid the others,’
Come to my bowl, come to my arms,
My friend
s, my brothers.
Burns gives each man the true test of the influence of his life for the promotion of true brotherhood in the short line, ‘Each aid the others.’ That line is the supreme test of duty, and is the highest interpretation of Christ’s commandment to His disciples, and through them to all men, ‘Love one another, as I have loved you.’ Vital love means vital helpfulness.
Dickens gives the same great message as Burns when, in describing Little Dorritt, he says: ‘She was something different from the rest, and she was that something for the rest.’ This is probably the shortest sentence ever written that conveys so clearly the two great revelations of Christ: Individuality and Brotherhood.
There are some who dislike the expression ‘Come to my bowl.’ They should test Burns by the accepted standards of his time, not by the standards of our time. The bowl was the symbol of true comradeship in castle and cot, in the manse and in the layman’s home, in the time of Burns.
No other writer has interpreted Christ’s revelations of Democracy and Brotherhood so clearly and so fully as Robert Burns. He sums up the whole matter of man’s relationship to man in ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That,’ in the last verse:
Then let us pray that come it may —
As come it will for a’ that —
That sense and worth, o’er a’ the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an’ a’ that. pre-eminence
For a’ that, an’ a’ that,
It’s coming yet, for a’ that,
That man to man the world o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that.
He revealed his supreme purpose in ‘A Revolutionary Lyric’:
In virtue trained, enlightened youth
Will love each fellow-creature;
And future years shall prove the truth —
That man is good by nature.
The golden age will then revive;
Each man will love his brother;
In harmony we all shall live,
And share the earth together.
While the so-called religious teachers of the time of Burns were dividing men into creeds based on petty theological distinctions, Burns was interpreting for humanity the highest teachings of Christ: Democracy based on recognition of the value of the individual soul, and Brotherhood as the natural fruit of true democracy.
CHAPTER VII. Burns a Revealer of Pure Love.
Many people yet believe that Burns was a universal and inconstant lover. He really did not love many women. He loved deeply, but he had not a great many really serious experiences of love. He loved Nellie Kirkpatrick when he was fifteen, and Peggy Thomson when he was seventeen. He says his love of Nellie made him a poet. There is no other experience that will kindle the strongest element in a human soul during the adolescent period so fully, and so permanently, as genuine love. Love will not make all young people poets, but it will kindle with its most developing glow whatever is the strongest natural power in each individual soul. Parents should foster such love in young people during the adolescent period, instead of ridiculing it, as is too often done. God may not mean that the love is to be permanent, but there is no other agency that can be so productive at the time of adolescence as love that is reverenced by parents who, by due reverence, sympathy, and comradeship, help love to do its best work.
These two adolescent loves did their work in developing Burns, but they were not loves of maturity. From seventeen till he was twenty-one he was not really in love. Then he met, and deeply and reverently loved, Alison Begbie. She was a servant girl of charm, sweetness, and dignity, in a home not far from Lochlea farm. He wrote three poems to her: ‘The Lass o’ Cessnock Banks,’ ‘Peggy Alison,’ and ‘Mary Morrison.’ He reversed her name for the second title, because it possessed neither the elements of metre nor of rhyme. He gave his third poem to her the title ‘Mary Morrison’ to make it conform to the same metre as ‘Peggy Alison.’ There was a Mary Morrison who was nine years of age when Burns wrote ‘Mary Morrison.’ She is buried in Mauchline Churchyard, and on her tombstone it is stated that she was ‘the Mary Morrison of Burns.’ His brother Gilbert knew better. He said the poem was written to the lady to whom ‘Peggy Alison’ was written. It is impossible to believe that Burns would write ‘Mary Morrison’ to a child only nine years old.
Burns wrote five love-letters to Alison Begbie. Beautiful and reverent letters they were, too. In the fourth, he asked her to become his wife. In Chapter III. it has been explained that he was too shy, even at twenty-two, to ask the woman whom he loved to marry him when he was with her. This does not indicate that he had a new love each week, as many yet believe. Miss Begbie refused to marry him, and his reply should win him the respect of every reasonable man or woman who reads it. It is the dignified and reverent outpouring of a loving heart, held in control by a well-balanced and considerate mind.
Although Burns had no lover from seventeen to twenty-one years of age, he wrote love-songs during those years, but even his mother could not tell the name of any young woman who kindled his muse during these four years. Neither could the other members of his family.
He wrote one poem, ‘My Nannie O,’ during this period. He first wrote for the first line:
Beyond the hills where Stinchar flows.
He did not like the word ‘Stinchar,’ so he changed it to ‘Lugar,’ a much more euphonious word. He had no lover named ‘Nannie.’ Lugar and Stinchar were several miles apart. He was really writing about love, not the love of any one woman, during those four years; and he was writing about other great subjects more than about love, mainly religious and ethical ideals.
From the age of twenty-two he was for three years without a lover. At twenty-five he met Jean Armour, then eighteen. Jean spoke first to the respectfully shy man. At the annual dance on Fair night in Mauchline, Burns was one of the young men who were present. His dog, Luath, who loved him, and whom he loved in return, traced his master upstairs to the dance hall. Of course the dance was interrupted when Luath got on the floor and found his master. Burns kindly led the dog out, and as he was going he said, ‘I wish I could find a lassie to loe me as well as my dog.’ A short time afterwards Burns was going along a street in Mauchline, and was passing Jean Armour without speaking to her, because he had not been introduced to her. She was at the village pump getting water to sprinkle her clothes on the village green, and as he was passing her she asked, ‘Hae you found a lassie yet to loe you as well as your dog?’ Burns then stopped and conversed with her. She was a handsome, bright young woman. Their acquaintance soon developed a strong love between them, and resulted in a test of the real manhood of the character of Burns. When he realised that Jean was to become a mother, he did not hesitate as to his duty. He gave her a legal certificate of marriage, signed by himself and regularly witnessed, which was as valid as a marriage certificate of a clergyman or a magistrate in Scottish law.
Jean’s father compelled her to destroy, or let him destroy, the certificate. This, and her father’s threatened legal prosecution, nearly upset the mind of Burns. He undoubtedly loved Jean Armour. In a letter written at the time to David Brice, a friend in Glasgow, he wrote: ‘Never man loved, or rather adored, a woman more than I did her; and, to confess a truth between you and me, I do still love her to distraction after all.... May Almighty God forgive her ingratitude and perjury to me, as I from my very soul forgive her; and may His grace be with her, and bless her in all her future life.’
He had arranged to leave Scotland for Jamaica to escape from his mental torture, when two things came into his life: Mary Campbell, and the suggestion that he should publish his poems. The first filled his heart, the second gave him the best tonic for his mind — deeply and joyously interesting occupation.
Mary Campbell, ‘Highland Mary,’ he had met when she was a nursemaid in the home of his friend Gavin Hamilton. Meeting her again, when she was a servant in Montgomery Castle, he became acquainted with her, and they soon loved each other. It is not remarkable that Burns should love Mary Ca
mpbell, because she was a winsome, quiet, refined young woman, and his heart was desolate at the loss of Jean Armour. He, at the time he made love to Mary, had no hope of reconciliation with Jean. The greater his love for Jean had been, and still was, the greater his need was for another love to fill his heart, and he found a pure and satisfying lover in Mary. Their love was deep and short, lasting only about two months. Two busy months they were, as Burns was preparing his poems for the Kilmarnock edition, till he and Mary agreed to be married. They parted for the last time on 14th May 1785. The day was Sunday. They spent the afternoon in the fine park of Montgomery Castle, through which the Fail River runs for a mile and a half. In the evening they went out of the grounds about half a mile to Failford, a little village at the junction of the Fail with the Ayr. The Fail runs parallel to the Ayr, and in the opposite direction after leaving the castle grounds, until it reaches Failford. There it meets a solid rock formation, which compels it to turn squarely to the right and flow into the Ayr, about three hundred yards away. At a narrow place where the Fail had cut a passage through the soft rock on its way to the Ayr, Burns and Highland Mary parted. He stood on one side of the river and Mary on the other, and after they had exchanged Bibles, they made their vows of intention to marry, he holding one side of an open Bible and she the other side. Mary went home to prepare for her marriage, but a relative in Greenock fell ill with malignant fever, and Mary went to nurse him, and caught the fever herself and died.
The poems he wrote to her and about her made her a renowned character. When in 1919 a shipbuilding company at Greenock, after a four years’ struggle, finally purchased the church and churchyard in which Mary was buried, with the intention of removing the bodies to another place, the British Parliament passed an Act providing that her monument must stand forever over her grave, where it had always stood. Though she held a humble position, the beautiful poems of her lover gave her an honoured place in the hearts of millions of people all over the world.
