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Complete Poems and Songs of Robert
Burns
Preface
Robert Burns was born near Ayr, Scotland, 25th of January, 1759.
He was the son of William Burnes, or Burness, at the time of the
poet's birth a nurseryman on the banks of the Doon in Ayrshire.
His father, though always extremely poor, attempted to give his
children a fair education, and Robert, who was the eldest, went
to school for three years in a neighboring village, and later, for
shorter periods, to three other schools in the vicinity. But it
was to his father and to his own reading that he owed the more important
part of his education; and by the time that he had reached manhood
he had a good knowledge of English, a reading knowledge of French,
and a fairly wide acquaintance with the masterpieces of English
literature from the time of Shakespeare to his own day. In 1766
William Burness rented on borrowed money the farm of Mount Oliphant,
and in taking his share in the effort to make this undertaking succeed,
the future poet seems to have seriously overstrained his physique.
In 1771 the family move to Lochlea, and Burns went to the neighboring
town of Irvine to learn flax-dressing. The only result of this experiment,
however, was the formation of an acquaintance with a dissipated
sailor, whom he afterward blamed as the prompter of his first licentious
adventures. His father died in 1784, and with his brother Gilbert
the poet rented the farm of Mossgiel; but this venture was as unsuccessful
as the others. He had meantime formed an irregular intimacy with
Jean Armour, for which he was censured by the Kirk-session. As a
result of his farming misfortunes, and the attempts of his father-in-law
to overthrow his irregular marriage with Jean, he resolved to emigrate;
and in order to raise money for the passage he published (Kilmarnock,
1786) a volume of the poems which he had been composing from time
to time for some years. This volume was unexpectedly successful,
so that, instead of sailing for the West Indies, he went up to Edinburgh,
and during that winter he was the chief literary celebrity of the
season. An enlarged edition of his poems was published there in
1787, and the money derived from this enabled him to aid his brother
in Mossgiel, and to take and stock for himself the farm of Ellisland
in Dumfriesshire. His fame as poet had reconciled the Armours to
the connection, and having now regularly married Jean, he brought
her to Ellisland, and once more tried farming for three years. Continued
ill-success, however, led him, in 1791, to abandon Ellisland, and
he moved to Dumfries, where he had obtained a position in the Excise.
But he was now thoroughly discouraged; his work was mere drudgery;
his tendency to take his relaxation in debauchery increased the
weakness of a constitution early undermined; and he died at Dumfries
in his thirty-eighth year.
[See Burns' Birthplace: The living room in the Burns birthplace
cottage.]
It is not necessary here to attempt to disentangle or explain away
the numerous amours in which he was engaged through the greater
part of his life. It is evident that Burns was a man of extremely
passionate nature and fond of conviviality; and the misfortunes
of his lot combined with his natural tendencies to drive him to
frequent excesses of self-indulgence. He was often remorseful, and
he strove painfully, if intermittently, after better things. But
the story of his life must be admitted to be in its externals a
painful and somewhat sordid chronicle. That it contained, however,
many moments of joy and exaltation is proved by the poems here printed.
Burns' poetry falls into two main groups: English and Scottish.
His English poems are, for the most part, inferior specimens of
conventional eighteenth-century verse. But in Scottish poetry he
achieved triumphs of a quite extraordinary kind. Since the time
of the Reformation and the union of the crowns of England and Scotland,
the Scots dialect had largely fallen into disuse as a medium for
dignified writing. Shortly before Burns' time, however, Allan Ramsay
and Robert Fergusson had been the leading figures in a revival of
the vernacular, and Burns received from them a national tradition
which he succeeded in carrying to its highest pitch, becoming thereby,
to an almost unique degree, the poet of his people.
He first showed complete mastery of verse in the field of satire.
In "The Twa Herds," "Holy Willie's Prayer," "Address to the Unco
Guid," "The Holy Fair," and others, he manifested sympathy with
the protest of the so-called "New Light" party, which had sprung
up in opposition to the extreme Calvinism and intolerance of the
dominant "Auld Lichts." The fact that Burns had personally suffered
from the discipline of the Kirk probably added fire to his attacks,
but the satires show more than personal animus. The force of the
invective, the keenness of the wit, and the fervor of the imagination
which they displayed, rendered them an important force in the theological
liberation of Scotland.
The Kilmarnock volume contained, besides satire, a number of poems
like "The Twa Dogs" and "The Cotter's Saturday Night," which are
vividly descriptive of the Scots peasant life with which he was
most familiar; and a group like "Puir Mailie" and "To a Mouse,"
which, in the tenderness of their treatment of animals, revealed
one of the most attractive sides of Burns' personality. Many of
his poems were never printed during his lifetime, the most remarkable
of these being "The Jolly Beggars," a piece in which, by the intensity
of his imaginative sympathy and the brilliance of his technique,
he renders a picture of the lowest dregs of society in such a way
as to raise it into the realm of great poetry.
But the real national importance of Burns is due chiefly to his
songs. The Puritan austerity of the centuries following the Reformation
had discouraged secular music, like other forms of art, in Scotland;
and as a result Scottish song had become hopelessly degraded in
point both of decency and literary quality. From youth Burns had
been interested in collecting the fragments he had heard sung or
found printed, and he came to regard the rescuing of this almost
lost national inheritance in the light of a vocation. About his
song-making, two points are especially noteworthy: first, that the
greater number of his lyrics sprang from actual emotional experiences;
second, that almost all were composed to old melodies. While in
Edinburgh he undertook to supply material for Johnson's "Musical
Museum," and as few of the traditional songs could appear in a respectable
collection, Burns found it necessary to make them over. Sometimes
he kept a stanza or two; sometimes only a line or chorus; sometimes
merely the name of the air; the rest was his own. His method, as
he has told us himself, was to become familiar with the traditional
melody, to catch a suggestion from some fragment of the old song,
to fix upon an idea or situation for the new poem; then, humming
or whistling the tune as he went about his work, he wrought out
the new verses, going into the house to write them down when the
inspiration began to flag. In this process is to be found the explanation
of much of the peculiar quality of the songs of Burns. Scarcely
any known author has succeeded so brilliantly in combining his work
with folk material, or in carrying on with such continuity of spirit
the tradition of popular song. For George Thomson's collection of
Scottish airs he performed a function similar to that which he had
had in the "Museum"; and his poetical activity during the last eight
or nine years of his life was chiefly devoted to these two publications.
In spite of the fact that he was constantly in severe financial
straits, he refused to accept any recompense for this work, preferring
to regard it as a patriotic service. And it was, indeed, a patriotic
service of no small magnitude. By birth and temperament he was singularly
fitted for the task, and this fitness is proved by the unique extent
to which his productions were accepted by his countrymen, and have
passed into the life and feeling of his race.
Glossary
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