Supper man should stay on his plinth; Willy Maley scolds Scots wha

'BACK to back they faced each other, drew their knives and shot each other". It's an old joke that could do duty as an apt description of Irish-Scottish relations. The reception and reputation of Robert Burns, arguably Scotland's greatest writer, offers an interesting sidelight on the inability of these two neighbour nations to see beyond their own vexed relationship with England and look each other in the eye.

In 1899, John Eglinton, one of the foremost critics of the Irish Literary Revival, alluded to a "well-known Scotch Professor" who had "once said that Ireland was not a nation because it had never had a Burns nor a Bannockburn". Eglinton took issue with this by declaring that it was "as reasonable to think that these glorious memories of Scottish nationality will form a drag on its further evolution as that the want of a peasant poet, or of a recollection of having at least once given the Saxons a drubbing, will be fatal to an attempt to raise people above themselves in this country by giving expression to latent ideals. Ireland must exchange the patriotism which looks back for the patriotism which looks forward".

Eglinton's words proved prophetic, for as Ireland rides the Celtic Tiger, Scotland bathes in the twilight of Braveheart and Burns Suppers, with the occasional sweetener of a deep-fried Creme Egg. Yet there are Celtic connections worth pursuing, for Burns built bridges between Scotland and Ireland, bridges since blown apart but now under construction once again.

Burns' ground-breaking Poems, Chiefly In The Scottish Dialect, published in Kilmarnock in 1786, was promptly printed - pirated - in Dublin and Belfast. Burns made a lasting impression on Irish writers, who drew both literary and political inspiration from a figure who crossed barriers of class, language, and nation in liberating ways. Adopted and adapted by the poets of the Ulster-Scots Literary Revival, the Ayrshireman moved the Ulsterman Samuel Thomson to sing in 1794 of "sweet Burns, the Scottish Shakespeare". But those who wanted literary comparison to be accompanied by political alliance were disappointed. Sure, Scotland had Burns and Bannockburn, but it knew what side its bannocks were buttered, and it liked them toasted, not burnt. Despite the urgings of the United Irishmen, the Scots across the water failed to follow the heroic example of Wallace and Bruce, and despite their brazen blaze of language went back to being the servants of Empire, at least in the eyes of Irish nationalists.

Burns, admired by Protestants North and South, was on the other hand regarded with suspicion and unease among Catholics. Irish critics even now are cynical about the compromise reached by Scottish writers between Scots and English, and for reasons that have more to do with race and religion than rhyme. According to poet and literary critic Seamus Deane, "the whole political force of the Ossian controversy in Ireland was that Scotland could not have it both ways - claim to be an authentic Gaelic culture and remain in union with Great Britain". So Scotland got the ballad, Ireland got the bullet, and England killed two birds with one stone.

The status of Burns in an Irish national context can perhaps be gauged from the fact that in 1904 Yeats could refer to Synge as "truly a National writer, as Burns was when he wrote finely". Yeats likewise defended Lady Gregory's Kiltartanese "as true a dialect of English as the dialect that Burns wrote in". But it was not just Yeats who counted Burns as a precursor. Ireland's other literary giant, James Joyce, knew his "Bobby Burns", as he called him. The fact that Joyce samples at least nine songs by Burns in Ulysses implies an auld acquaintance.

Ironically, while Yeats and Joyce were singing the praises of the ploughboy-playboy with the sexy sideburns, Scottish poet Edwin Muir was burying Burns, or at least shelving him alongside Barbour under the lost cause called Scottish Literature. Muir called for an end to Scots dialect poetry, warning that "while we cling to it we shall never be able to express the central reality of Scotland, as Mr Yeats has expressed the central reality of Ireland; though for such an end the sacrifice of dialect poetry would be cheap". Fortunately, the last train to Central Reality left Scotland around the time that Irvine Welsh pulled into Platform Two, and most of us were glad to see the back of it.

Muir pointed out that since the language of criticism in Scotland differs from the language of literature as championed by Burns, no critic could ever grasp the nettle of this prickliest of poets: "The critic cannot use Burns' language; he has no working standard for measuring the excellence which Burns attained in it; but, most important of all, he is not in the least involved in the preservation of a living speech". But rather than Scottish writers abandoning the vernacular, Scottish critics should lighten up on their own language.

Muir's modernist haste to bandage Burns up in the mummified body of Scotland's past was matched by Hugh MacDiarmid's prejudiced and possessive polemics in A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle (1926):

You canna gang to a Burns' supper even Wi'oot some wizened scrunt o' a knock-knee Chinee turns roon to say 'Him Haggis - velly goot!'

And ten to wan the piper is a Cockney.

MacDiarmid complained of Burns being "abody's property", but that's seen as something to celebrate now. (The last time I read Burns in public the piper was an Aussie, but like a true Scotsman he wore nothing Down Under.) Modern Scottish writers have by turns revered and resisted Rabbie, who remains the poet of bleeding hearts and Bravehearts. His "Scots Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled" can still make the hairs under the hem stand to attention, and Bruce's speech before Bannockburn is the climax of Mel's movie. If the Burns we've inherited is Casanova Scotia, a cross between Frank Sinatra and Frank McAvennie - never mind the ballads, where's the burdz? - then we have to reclaim Burns the democrat, Burns the radical, and Burns the bridge-builder between cultures equally impoverished, and equally enriched, by a long and troubled relationship with England.

Burns ought not to be hamstrung by those whom Edwin Morgan calls "Burns Culters", for we know the harm a bunch of cults can do, or a bunch of kilts, for that matter - and Burns has a huge kilt following. Nor should he be hog-tied by the "Burns Cringers", those embarrassed by his earthy, uncouth Scottishness. The Burns who inspired Joyce and Yeats, MacDiarmid and Morgan, is the Burns we ought to celebrate, a writer fond of firewater who, true to the double meaning of his name, generated heat between the sheets, but also managed to plug into the mainstream. So let's toast him, on both sides. After all, isn't Tam O'Shanter, like John O'Groats, a good Irish name?

Copyright 2001
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