The World according to Robert Burns

“The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley”.[1] ‘To A Mouse’.

“O wad the power the giftie gie us,

To see ourselves as others see us.”[2] ‘To a Louse.

           The wisdom of Robbie Burns is still with us. With Burns Night being almost upon us, January 25^th being the poet’s birthday and the occasion for many a Burns Supper, it seemed to me appropriate to furnish three modern day examples of what he saw in human nature.

        There was a British cartoonist who came here to British Columbia in the 1950s. I have tried to trace this gentleman’s name but have been enable so to do. Apparently this young Marxist-Leninist left the UK in the 1950s having taken exception to the way the British government conducted itself over the event that became known as the Suez Crisis. This was when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal.  He was renowned for his passionate defence of his leftist belief system. He frequently lost his temper at perceived slights by people whom he believed to be establishment lackeys.  On one occasion he had to be hospitalized in Vancouver for an unknown illness.

      The hospital staff were, of course, curious about what his illness was and in an attempt to establish some history asked a nurse to quiz him about his symptoms. Many of the questions were easily answered but one left him seething with rage. When his wife came in to see him about 30 minutes after his admission she found him righteously indignant, dressed and ready to leave. After his questioning there was no way he was going to stay in this right wing fascist institution. His wife who had seen such febrile apoplexy all too often in the past, sat him back down and quizzed him about what he found so offensive. The nurse who had asked the questions was present. What had she said that had caused so much offence? She was totally confused and did not know what she was supposed to have done. All was revealed very quickly.

She had asked him if he had read Marx. Of course, he had, he was a Marxist-Leninist, for Pete’s sake. What had his politics to do with his ailments? He was not going to stay in a place where his treatment was going to be based on his political beliefs. His wife smiled and looked across at the alarmed nurse who was still struggling to understand what she had done wrong. His wife shook her head.

“She asked you if you have red marks, not if you have read Marx, you dopey bugger. Apologise and get back into bed.”

That was a true story. The following is a fiction. It is a poem by Robert Service called “Bessie’s Boil”.

Bessie’s husband Sam realizes that his wife is in some pain and sends her to the hospital because he feels that she would be best served if she had the boil on her right buttock syringed and cut out. She arrives at the hospital and immediately runs into a white coated young man who ushers her into his office and agrees to take a look. Embarrassed though she is, she reveals her ailment. The young doctor studies it carefully before sending her off to visit the specialist in Room 63. There she is inspected thoroughly. She is then directed towards the surgeon’s office, Dr. Hoyle. After her third thorough examination, the man in the white coat, expresses how interested he is in her problem but explains that the hospital is closed for painting and that she would really be better off showing the boil on her bum to a doctor!

To me these stories could very well be part of the tradition of Robert Burns. His ability to poke fun, to link unlikely situations to pithy verse and earthy wisdom was the corner stone of his success.

Robert Burns was an unlikely source of poetry and verse. Burns was born in 1759 to peasant stock in a country which, in a moment of inspiration, had decided to teach its poverty stricken children to read. As far as many other countries were concerned Scotland’s decision to educate all of its children was quizzically eccentric, not to say, a complete waste of time. Burns, the hard scrabble ploughman, benefitted from that unlikely Scottish event called ‘The Enlightenment’. So, amongst a cadre of people who would never have been thus educated before, the man also had the benefit of earthy wisdom to add to his repertoire. He was able to see everyday things such as a mouse having its home destroyed by a plough; a louse crawling through a lady’s hair in church; a drunken night at the inn; common fun-loving humanity v gung-holier preachers at a religious gathering. He was able to view these events from the perspective of a humble upbringing, a place not far removed from abject poverty and, incredibly and indelibly, relate them to the human character and condition. He could take a microcosm from his own narrow experience and unknowingly place his thoughts and poems on a world stage. For this, the poet’s verse was much lauded in his short lifetime and has become a world-wide phenomenon thereafter.

It is very possible for any of us, pandemic permitting, to travel to many cities in the world, to Beijing, Sydney, Delhi or Vancouver, for example, and invite ourselves to a Burns Supper on or around January 25^th, the bard’s birthday. Be assured that there will be one a spit away from where we are at the time. Here at Chez Davidson, Irene and I have hosted a supper for about 20 people for the last few years. We follow the traditional format and set menu. Kilted Stuart Morton pipes in the haggis, his wife Val bakes Scottish shortbread, I address the haggis with the traditional  verses of the poem, Richard toasts the lassies, Marg honours the laddies, I make a speech to ‘The Immortal Memory”.  During the days previous to the event, Irene has bought and prepared the traditional menu. Cock-a-Leekie soup, haggis, beef and neeps and a trifle dessert known as “Tipsy Laird” are all offered up with a glass or two of stimulation. It is a community gathering of neighbours and friends. The evening ends occasionally with singing but always with mingling and merriment. Irene and I like to think that “The Rabbi”, as the poet is sometimes endearingly known, would not only approve of this bantering humour but would recognize it as a thread linking us to his own time.

I will try not to wax too lyrical and associate too much pretension and linkage between Burns’ works and our evening in his honour. Irene and I are blessed to have friends who are ordinary people of extraordinary character. Down to earth, practical, resilient, blessed with sound common sense and judgements of situations and people who are wise and pragmatic.  The conversations on that evening speak truth to power; see celebrity and frippery as failings rather than assets; hold their ‘heroes’ in limited esteem and put them on conditional pedestals. They recognize the fallibility and frailty in humanity both in themselves and in the wider world. They see that:-

“The cleanest corn that ‘ere was dight,

May have some piles o’chaff in.”[3]

They are prepared to cut the human condition a bit of slack as long as it eats a bit of humble pie occasionally.

One final story.

I taught with a wonderful guy called Mick Lenton back in rural Lincolnshire. Brant Broughton had all the qualities associated with an English village, probably still does. Mick and I were at school when the new tents for the outdoor programme arrived. We had lunchtime and an afternoon prep period free of duty, so we decided to walk up through the village to the cricket pitch and learn how to put up the new tents. It was a bright, sunny winter’s day but very cold, so we donned our thick coats and gloves. On arrival we unpacked the three tents, read the instructions and, with the help of vigorous hammering, were able to get the tent pegs into the frozen ground.  We were sweating by the time we had finished and had discarded our thick quilted ski jackets. Next task was to take the tents down and ensure that they were properly folded and put neatly back into their canvas bags. After some minor adjustments to the folding patterns, flysheet folded neatly and rolled up with the main body of the tent for example, we had successfully rolled up two out of the three. So we were confident that the third would be a cinch. It wasn’t. No matter how we tried, it just wouldn’t fit into the bag. Our failure only increased our determination to make it work. Every fold, every nuance and pattern of fold and design was fought over. We sweated and cursed.  Finally, all the canvas and its accoutrements were jammed into the sack in which it came. It looked awkwardly out of shape compared to the other two but, nevertheless, we knew all the bits were contained therein.  We sat down and caught our breath. Finally we decided to put on our coats and head back to the school. I was dressed and ready to go when Mick frowned and said,

“Pete, where’s my coat?”

Robbie Burns would have versified this little incident, written about it far better than me. He would have added a meaningful phrase which would have caught the moment, seized the imagination with a pithy saying that the world would still be using 200 years later.

After Mick and I had overcome our side splitting laughter, reduced it to mere chuckles so we could retrieve his coat from inside the tent, we were able to smile our way back through the village and carry on with our day. It was a little incident, a mere moment, yet here am I, some thirty something years later, smiling as I write, opening my heart out to a colleague who was a friend and with whom I have lost touch.  The poetry of Robbie Burns has moments like that when suddenly there will be an incident or an event. His words will appear unheralded and shine a light on interesting pieces of human interaction and nature in ways only a person of his genius could muster.

Happy Burns Night, Dear Reader.

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[1] No matter how well prepared we are our plans and goals can still go wrong.

[2] It would be so good for us if we were to be given an outside view of what other people think of how we act.

[3]  The cleanest corn cut may have some rotten pieces in it. In other words even the best of humanity has its faults.