I M M O R T A L M E M O R I E S
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Robert Burns by John Muir
It is surely a fine thing to stop now and then in the throng of our common everyday tasks to contemplate the works and ways of God's great men, sent down from time to time to guide and bless mankind. And it is glorious to know that one of the greatest men who appeared in the last century was a Scotsman, Robert Burns... His lessons of divine love and sympathy to humanity, which he preached in his poems and sent forth white-hot from his heart, have gone ringing and singing around the globe, stirring the heart of every nation and race.
And yet what a hard, sad life he had in his own Scotland, amang his ain folk. "The largest soul of all the British lands," said Carlyle, and perhaps no man had so false a reception from his fellowmen. Wae's me that Scotsmen let our best Scotsman starve. And though now he has love and honor beyond bounds, and noble monuments to his worth are rising in every land on the globe, the idea of Burns forlorn and starving in Scotland blinds us with tears. He died a hundred and ten years ago in a storm of trouble and pain, full of despairing care about his wife and bairns, deserted by his canny fault-counting friends. but in the midst of it all he knew something of the wroth of his short life's work.... When lying forsaken in the shadow of death, he said to his despairing wife, "Never mind, I'll be more respected a hundred years after I am dead than I am now." How gloriously this prophecy has been fulfilled! His fame began to grow from the day of his death, and year by year it has grown higher and brighter, cheering and enriching all mankind. In the halls of fame there is none like his. "The birthday of no other human being is so universally celebrated"; and, as Lord Roseberry well says, "He reigns over a greater dominion than any empire the world has yet seen, and his name excites a more enthusiastic worship than that of any saint in the calendar." And this marvelous ever-growing admiring devotion is perfectly natural Could Burns have seen it, how glad he would have been! What is the secret of it all? It is his inspiring genius derived from heaven, growing with all-embracing sympathy. the man of science, the naturalist, too often loses sight of the essential oneness of all living beings in seeking to classify them in kingdoms, orders, families, genera, species, etc., taking note of the kind and arrangement of limbs, teeth, toes, scales, hair, feathers, etc., measured and set forth in meters, centimeters, and millimeters, while the eye of the Poet, the Seer, never closes on the kinship of all God's creatures, and his heart ever beats in sympathy with great and small alike as "earth-born companions and fellow mortals" equally dependent on Heaven's eternal love. As far as I know, none in all the world so clearly recognized the loving fatherhood of god as our ain Robert Burns, and there has been none in whose heart there flowed so quick and kind and universal a sympathy. One calls to mind his field mouse, "wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie," turned out of house and home, its store of food scattered and cold winter coming on; the tender pity for silly sheep and cattle, and ilk hopping bird, "wee helpless thing" shelterless in a winter snowstorm; the wounded hare crying like a child; the unfortunate daisy, "wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flower" crushed amang the stoure. He extended pity and sympathy even to the deil, entering into his feelings and hoping he might perhaps be able to repent and escape from his gloomy den.
'Hear me, Auld Hangie, for a wee.
An' let poor damnèd bodies be;
I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie,
Ev'n to a deil,
To skep an' scaud poor dogs like me
An' hear us squeel....
Bur fare-you-weel, Auld Nickie-Ben!
O, wad ye tak a thought an' men'!
Ye aibline might - I dinna ken -
Stil hae a stake:
I'm wae to think upo' yon den,
Ev'n for your sake!
Many a song he sang in the troubled years allotted him, and he made all the world his debtor. But Scotland's debt is in several ways peculiar. He brought her forward into a bright light and made her great among the nations, and he saved the grand Scottish language when it was in danger of sinking into English. though unfit for science it is wonderfully rich in love-words for telling 'a' the pleasure o' the heart, the lover and the friend.' And since Burns's poems are enshrined in guide braid Scots, the world will never allow it to perish.
None in this land of plenty can realize the hardships under which Burns's immortal work was accomplished. Of what we call education he had almost nothing -- he was brought upon on the Bible in his father's auld clay biggin. this was his school and college, his poor neighbors and the fields and the sky his university. He sang untrained like a stream or a bird, while under the crushing weight of doure unchangeable poverty -- a kind of poverty unknown in America, where doors open everywhere to affluence and ease. When he was in the fullness and strength of early manhood, standing five feet ten, his great eyes flashing, such eyes as Walter Scott said he had never seen in any other countenance, as bold and brave and bonnie a chiel as ever trod yird, he toiled from daybreak till dark, digging, plowing, reaping, thrashing for three dollars a month!
On my lonely walks I have often thought how fine it would be to have the company of Burns. And indeed he was always with me, for I had him in my heart. On my first long walk from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico I carried a copy of Burns's poems and sang them all the way. the whole country and the people, beasts and birds, seemed to like them. In the Sierra I sang and whistled them to the squirrels and birds, and they were charmed out of fear and gathered close about me. So real was his companionship, he oftentimes seemed to be with me in the flesh, however wild and strange the places where I wandered -- the Arctic tundras so like the heathery muirlands of Scotland, the leafy Alleghanies, icy Alps and HImalayas, Manchuria, Siberia, Australia, New Zealand -- everywhere BUrns seemed at home and his poems fitted everybody.
Wherever a Scotsman goes, there goes Burns. His grand whole, catholic soul squares with the good of all; therefore we find him in everything, everywhere. Throughout these last hundred and ten years, thousands of good men have been telling God's love; but the man who has done most to warm human hearts and bring to light the kinship of the world, is Burns, Robert Burns, the Scotsman.
Sources:
The Pasadena Evening Star, Jan. 26, 1907, p. 6, cols. 3-4; p 7., col. 1.
Wolfe, Linnie Marsh, ed., John of the Mountains (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1938, 1966).
And yet what a hard, sad life he had in his own Scotland, amang his ain folk. "The largest soul of all the British lands," said Carlyle, and perhaps no man had so false a reception from his fellowmen. Wae's me that Scotsmen let our best Scotsman starve. And though now he has love and honor beyond bounds, and noble monuments to his worth are rising in every land on the globe, the idea of Burns forlorn and starving in Scotland blinds us with tears. He died a hundred and ten years ago in a storm of trouble and pain, full of despairing care about his wife and bairns, deserted by his canny fault-counting friends. but in the midst of it all he knew something of the wroth of his short life's work.... When lying forsaken in the shadow of death, he said to his despairing wife, "Never mind, I'll be more respected a hundred years after I am dead than I am now." How gloriously this prophecy has been fulfilled! His fame began to grow from the day of his death, and year by year it has grown higher and brighter, cheering and enriching all mankind. In the halls of fame there is none like his. "The birthday of no other human being is so universally celebrated"; and, as Lord Roseberry well says, "He reigns over a greater dominion than any empire the world has yet seen, and his name excites a more enthusiastic worship than that of any saint in the calendar." And this marvelous ever-growing admiring devotion is perfectly natural Could Burns have seen it, how glad he would have been! What is the secret of it all? It is his inspiring genius derived from heaven, growing with all-embracing sympathy. the man of science, the naturalist, too often loses sight of the essential oneness of all living beings in seeking to classify them in kingdoms, orders, families, genera, species, etc., taking note of the kind and arrangement of limbs, teeth, toes, scales, hair, feathers, etc., measured and set forth in meters, centimeters, and millimeters, while the eye of the Poet, the Seer, never closes on the kinship of all God's creatures, and his heart ever beats in sympathy with great and small alike as "earth-born companions and fellow mortals" equally dependent on Heaven's eternal love. As far as I know, none in all the world so clearly recognized the loving fatherhood of god as our ain Robert Burns, and there has been none in whose heart there flowed so quick and kind and universal a sympathy. One calls to mind his field mouse, "wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie," turned out of house and home, its store of food scattered and cold winter coming on; the tender pity for silly sheep and cattle, and ilk hopping bird, "wee helpless thing" shelterless in a winter snowstorm; the wounded hare crying like a child; the unfortunate daisy, "wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flower" crushed amang the stoure. He extended pity and sympathy even to the deil, entering into his feelings and hoping he might perhaps be able to repent and escape from his gloomy den.
'Hear me, Auld Hangie, for a wee.
An' let poor damnèd bodies be;
I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie,
Ev'n to a deil,
To skep an' scaud poor dogs like me
An' hear us squeel....
Bur fare-you-weel, Auld Nickie-Ben!
O, wad ye tak a thought an' men'!
Ye aibline might - I dinna ken -
Stil hae a stake:
I'm wae to think upo' yon den,
Ev'n for your sake!
Many a song he sang in the troubled years allotted him, and he made all the world his debtor. But Scotland's debt is in several ways peculiar. He brought her forward into a bright light and made her great among the nations, and he saved the grand Scottish language when it was in danger of sinking into English. though unfit for science it is wonderfully rich in love-words for telling 'a' the pleasure o' the heart, the lover and the friend.' And since Burns's poems are enshrined in guide braid Scots, the world will never allow it to perish.
None in this land of plenty can realize the hardships under which Burns's immortal work was accomplished. Of what we call education he had almost nothing -- he was brought upon on the Bible in his father's auld clay biggin. this was his school and college, his poor neighbors and the fields and the sky his university. He sang untrained like a stream or a bird, while under the crushing weight of doure unchangeable poverty -- a kind of poverty unknown in America, where doors open everywhere to affluence and ease. When he was in the fullness and strength of early manhood, standing five feet ten, his great eyes flashing, such eyes as Walter Scott said he had never seen in any other countenance, as bold and brave and bonnie a chiel as ever trod yird, he toiled from daybreak till dark, digging, plowing, reaping, thrashing for three dollars a month!
On my lonely walks I have often thought how fine it would be to have the company of Burns. And indeed he was always with me, for I had him in my heart. On my first long walk from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico I carried a copy of Burns's poems and sang them all the way. the whole country and the people, beasts and birds, seemed to like them. In the Sierra I sang and whistled them to the squirrels and birds, and they were charmed out of fear and gathered close about me. So real was his companionship, he oftentimes seemed to be with me in the flesh, however wild and strange the places where I wandered -- the Arctic tundras so like the heathery muirlands of Scotland, the leafy Alleghanies, icy Alps and HImalayas, Manchuria, Siberia, Australia, New Zealand -- everywhere BUrns seemed at home and his poems fitted everybody.
Wherever a Scotsman goes, there goes Burns. His grand whole, catholic soul squares with the good of all; therefore we find him in everything, everywhere. Throughout these last hundred and ten years, thousands of good men have been telling God's love; but the man who has done most to warm human hearts and bring to light the kinship of the world, is Burns, Robert Burns, the Scotsman.
Sources:
The Pasadena Evening Star, Jan. 26, 1907, p. 6, cols. 3-4; p 7., col. 1.
Wolfe, Linnie Marsh, ed., John of the Mountains (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1938, 1966).
Introduction to "The Complete Songs of Robert Burns"
by Dr Fred Freeman
The 18th century poet, Robert Burns, whom today's folk artists have rediscovered and, thereby, forced one to reassess, was a major song-writer. In the course of challenging his editor, Thomson, and the "classical" establishment of the day, he would develop seminal theories of language and interpretation which would take him to the very height of his artistry.
He knew this. At a time when song had even a lower status than it does now, he considered it high art; the ideal medium for much of his creative output. He wished himself numbered among the great Scottish song-writers - "men of genius", he called them - who had come before. "Composing a Scotch song", he averred, was not a "trifling business".
He would neither permit Clarke nor the celebrated Pleyel (Thomson's music advisors) to "alter one iota" of what, in his judgement, were the "native features" of the best Scottish airs. Burns fussed over the words of his songs with the painstaking subtlety of a man obsessed with fusing English and Scots language, of unconventionally mixed register and variety, into veritable tone poems. What could be freer, or more idiosyncratic, than his deceptively simple - "gie's a hand o' thine" (Auld Lang Syne)? Ralph Waldo Emerson would rightly pronounce the achievement: "the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man".
For Burns, composition (and editing) became, primarily, a matter of what he termed "ballad simplicity". With this in mind he developed, paradoxically, perhaps, elaborate theories regarding the appropriate music and language for a given song; the length and expression of syllables in a musical phrase; the natural rhythmic and tonal irregularity of the Scots musical idiom (which, he felt, few musicians grasped); the closeness of song to the tradition of dance, song and piping - the instrumental music he was so busily re-jigging and ingeniously simplifying for his songs.
Through these principles he would change the course of folk music in Europe. Little wonder that Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was certainly in a position to know, would state categorically: "there can be no more original genius than Burns..."
What interests me is that Burns himself, along with the early music theorists whom he knew and respected (William Tytler and James Beattie) was deeply involved in the self-same battle as the modern Scottish folk artists. Only his battle was (from their point of view historically) before the fact: with the advent of classical and early romantic trends he disapproved of for folk song - especially the more homophonic texture of the music; the heavier articulation and vibrato in singing; the less communal character of the performance.
To his mind, communication and expression were paramount. Enunciation and the clarity and informality of the speaking voice - as with the singing of someone like Tony Cuffe - were central to his idea of song. As William Tytler stated at the time, it was already "a common defect...to smother the words, by not articulating them..." Likewise James Beattie deplored the inappropriately "warbled" delivery of Scots songs. For him, as for Burns, however much a pretty voice "tickles the ear...A song which we listen to without understanding the words, is like a picture seen at too great a distance."
The 18th century poet, Robert Burns, whom today's folk artists have rediscovered and, thereby, forced one to reassess, was a major song-writer. In the course of challenging his editor, Thomson, and the "classical" establishment of the day, he would develop seminal theories of language and interpretation which would take him to the very height of his artistry.
He knew this. At a time when song had even a lower status than it does now, he considered it high art; the ideal medium for much of his creative output. He wished himself numbered among the great Scottish song-writers - "men of genius", he called them - who had come before. "Composing a Scotch song", he averred, was not a "trifling business".
He would neither permit Clarke nor the celebrated Pleyel (Thomson's music advisors) to "alter one iota" of what, in his judgement, were the "native features" of the best Scottish airs. Burns fussed over the words of his songs with the painstaking subtlety of a man obsessed with fusing English and Scots language, of unconventionally mixed register and variety, into veritable tone poems. What could be freer, or more idiosyncratic, than his deceptively simple - "gie's a hand o' thine" (Auld Lang Syne)? Ralph Waldo Emerson would rightly pronounce the achievement: "the only example in history of a language made classic by the genius of a single man".
For Burns, composition (and editing) became, primarily, a matter of what he termed "ballad simplicity". With this in mind he developed, paradoxically, perhaps, elaborate theories regarding the appropriate music and language for a given song; the length and expression of syllables in a musical phrase; the natural rhythmic and tonal irregularity of the Scots musical idiom (which, he felt, few musicians grasped); the closeness of song to the tradition of dance, song and piping - the instrumental music he was so busily re-jigging and ingeniously simplifying for his songs.
Through these principles he would change the course of folk music in Europe. Little wonder that Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was certainly in a position to know, would state categorically: "there can be no more original genius than Burns..."
What interests me is that Burns himself, along with the early music theorists whom he knew and respected (William Tytler and James Beattie) was deeply involved in the self-same battle as the modern Scottish folk artists. Only his battle was (from their point of view historically) before the fact: with the advent of classical and early romantic trends he disapproved of for folk song - especially the more homophonic texture of the music; the heavier articulation and vibrato in singing; the less communal character of the performance.
To his mind, communication and expression were paramount. Enunciation and the clarity and informality of the speaking voice - as with the singing of someone like Tony Cuffe - were central to his idea of song. As William Tytler stated at the time, it was already "a common defect...to smother the words, by not articulating them..." Likewise James Beattie deplored the inappropriately "warbled" delivery of Scots songs. For him, as for Burns, however much a pretty voice "tickles the ear...A song which we listen to without understanding the words, is like a picture seen at too great a distance."
Immortal Memory
Based on a poem written by John Greenleaf Whittier, the so-called Quaker Poet of Haverhill, Massachusetts. Burns: On Receiving a Sprig of Heather in Blossom (Abridged)
Immortal Memory
1. No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
2. In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.
3. I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
4. How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow.
5. Sweet day, sweet songs! - The golden hours
Grew brighter for that singing,
From Brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
6. New light on home-seen nature beamed
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
7. I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
8. But who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
to love a tribute dearer?
9. Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes!
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes!
10. But think while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalene,
Like her may be forgiven.
Immortal Memory
1. No more these simple flowers belong
To Scottish maid and lover;
Sown in the common soil of song,
They bloom the wide world over.
2. In smiles and tears, in sun and showers,
The minstrel and the heather,
The deathless singer and the flowers
He sang of live together.
3. I call to mind the summer day,
The early harvest mowing,
The sky with sun and clouds at play,
And flowers with breezes blowing.
4. How oft that day, with fond delay,
I sought the maple's shadow,
And sang with Burns the hours away,
Forgetful of the meadow.
5. Sweet day, sweet songs! - The golden hours
Grew brighter for that singing,
From Brook and bird and meadow flowers
A dearer welcome bringing.
6. New light on home-seen nature beamed
New glory over Woman;
And daily life and duty seemed
No longer poor and common.
7. I saw through all familiar things
The romance underlying;
The joys and griefs that plume the wings
Of Fancy skyward flying.
8. But who his human heart has laid
To Nature's bosom nearer?
Who sweetened toil like him, or paid
to love a tribute dearer?
9. Through all his tuneful art, how strong
The human feeling gushes!
The very moonlight of his song
Is warm with smiles and blushes!
10. But think while falls that shade between
The erring one and Heaven,
That he who loved like Magdalene,
Like her may be forgiven.