Burns Night
Friday, 26 January 2024 08:24
January 25 is Burns Night, dedicated the the Scottish bard Robert (‘Rabbie’) Burns, who was BOTD in 1759. It's celebrated by absolutely everyone anywhere with a Scottish connection (although that is not compulsory). The main event is a very convivial evening meal.
The Burns Supper is a pleasing ritual involving bagpipes, whisky, cullen skink or cock-a-leekie, whisky, bagpipes, haggis, recitations, whisky, tatties, neeps, whisky and bagpipes. The main supper dish is a haggis, which is led to the table by a piper and, when there, addressed by the host who recites the eight-verse poem, Address to a Haggis, written by Burns himself in 1786.
Burns packed a lot into his 37 years, combining hard physical labour (he was a farmer) with a huge poetic talent, expressed through lyrical ballads written in Scottish dialect. He didn’t do epic, he made vivid chronicles of the lives and experiences of ordinary people, and showed a mastery of spontaneous sentiment (He wrote Auld Lang Syne, the New Year’s Eve anthem that never fails to wet the eye.)
Romantic, revolutionary, republican Rabbie Burns was a bit of a hot Bard, as you can see by his likeness, and as Belvedere points out, with some approval, emulated the ways of the tomcat. He fell in love ardently and often, and fathered 12 children, with four different women. At least.
Being a farm boy, he was also attuned to animals. Yet for some unfathomable reason he never wrote a poem or lyric about a cat. He did, however, write a very famous one to a mouse. It is a favourite of many in our feline circle. Here it is.
To a Mouse
On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickerin brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!
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!
I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave
’S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin wi’ the lave,
An’ never miss ’t!
Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It’s silly wa’s the win’s are strewin!
An’ naething, now, to big a new ane,
O’ foggage green!
An’ bleak December’s winds ensuin,
Baith snell an’ keen!
Thou saw the fields laid bare an’ waste,
An’ weary Winter comin fast,
An’ cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro’ thy cell.
That wee-bit heap o’ leaves an’ stibble
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turn’d out, for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the Winter’s sleety dribble,
An’ cranreuch cauld!
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!