My Luve is like a constantly evolving complex multi-cellular organism
by - 15:34 on 19 October 2008
So Bob Dylan appreciates Robert Burns. Imagine: one of the 20th century’s most influential song writers in his genre (however you define it) has chosen an 18th-century Scottish poet as his inspiration. It’s there on the website at http://hmv.com/hmvweb/navigate.do?pPageID=3562
This is the site on where HMV got a hundred singers and recording artistes to quote the verse that inspired them.
Dylan chose Burns’ ‘O my Luve’s like a red, red rose’ - a song described by the literary historian and critic, the late David Daiches, as having ‘the pure, folk feeling’. Perhaps it was Burns’ authentic voice that Dylan recognised.
Or perhaps he knew that this 18th-century farmer was one of the finest songwriters of any century, as well as a satirist, master of the verse letter, and a poet of friendship and sexual love.
Make your way to the Scotland Homecoming 2009 website and you find that Robert Burns has another function. He is the symbol and the justification of a year-long celebration. www.homecomingscotland2009.com
As I’m sure you know by now, 2009 is the 250th anniversary of Burns’ birth. By way of marking this, a huge programme of events has been organised, to appeal both to the Scottish diaspora and to ‘affinity Scots’ – defined perhaps as everyone else with the slightest sympathy for the place.
And should you not be aware of who Robert Burns was, there’s a tiny wee biography of Burns on the site. It says that ‘Starting out as a farmer then moving on to become a writer, Burns travelled throughout Scotland where he gathered inspiration for much of his work.’ That sounds quite a nice way to earn a living.
However, the reality was a little different. Burns mostly had a life of relentless struggle. His farming activities failed. He came to Edinburgh not just to get his poems published but to try to get a job with the Excise to make ends meet. At one stage he was farming and at the same time holding down a post as an excise officer. In 1787, as something of a ‘ploughman poet’ celebrity, he visited the Borders, the West Highlands, then the north of Scotland and finally the Stirling area. For little reward, he subsequently wrote, collected, recorded and amended a substantial body of Scottish song, while still working for the Excise. What we should really celebrate is the sheer creative energy this represents. After a hard day chasing smugglers and checking weights and measures most of us would be happy to hang our pair of pistols behind the door and put our feet up.
Burns made a huge contribution to traditional song, to Scottish literature and to the illegitimacy statistics in Ayrshire at the time. (Glad to have got that cheap shot out of the way.) Most importantly, with the idea of the Burns Supper – which came about very shortly after his death - he also gave us an excuse for a whisky-fuelled celebration at the very darkest and deadest part of the year.
It was such a good thing he was born on the 25th January. Makes you wonder if we’d be as enthusiastic if instead of the ‘red, red rose’ it had been Burns himself who was ‘newly sprung in June’. No, we’d have just sat outside with haggis and a small salad.
Anyway, here in Scotland, the Homecoming celebrations may rather eclipse the fact that it’s the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin. Everyone knows he was a scientist of huge significance. Born in Shrewsbury, England, he studied medicine at Edinburgh University and there are quite a few events next year, even in Scotland, commemorating the ground-breaking work that formed the basis of the science of Biology. And yes, there are even some planned at Edinburgh Zoo, so there are bound to be two gorillas and the joke that ends with one asking the other ‘Am I my keeper’s brother?’ Full events programme on www.darwin200.org But only if you get tired of Burns.
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