"Dumfries, July 12th 1796."
"My dear cousin, when you offered me money assistance,
"little did I think I should want it so soon.
"A rascal of a haberdasher,
"to whom I owe a considerable bill,
"taking it into his head that I am dying,
"has commenced the process against me and will infallibly
"put my emaciated body in jail."
Robert Burns achieved more with his poetry
than any writer since Shakespeare.
With poems about the ordinary world,
he inspired everyone from Byron to Beethoven.
To this day, his birthday is celebrated all around the world.
In his own lifetime, he was famous beyond belief - rock star famous -
and acclaimed as a genius,
but dead in this house just two weeks after writing a begging letter.
"Will you be so kind as to accommodate me
"by return of post with £10?
"Ah, James, did you know the pride of my heart you would feel doubly for me.
"Alas, I am not used to beg."
So what brought Robert Burns, the greatest man of his age,
to the point where he would die a beggar?
When I look at this letter and see him begging a cousin for money
to pay off a haberdasher, right at the end of his life,
I feel heart-sore for him.
He was a man desperate to the end -
fulfilling his father's grave warning that he might fail in life.
And it raises a question.
What is it about Robert Burns? What is it about genius?
What is it about his character, fame itself in fact,
that could cause this man to fail?
I think one of the reasons people love Robert Burns is because his work speaks to them so personally.
I'm Andrew O'Hagan - a writer born and brought up in Burns country.
And this is a journey to the heart of my Robert Burns -
a search for what made my favourite writer into what he was
and to find his raw spirit here, in the everyday places
that inspired him and that still pulse with life today.
O, once I lov'd a bonnie lass,
Ay, and I love her still;
And whilst that virtue warms my breast,
I'll love my handsome Nell.
As bonnie lassies I hae see, And mony full as braw;
But, for a modest gracefu' mein, The like I never saw.
Robert Burns's first discovery as a writer was intensely personal,
inspired by a girl he met in the fields.
You know our country custom of coupling a man and woman together
as partners in the labours of harvest.
In my 15th autumn, my partner was a bewitching creature,
a year younger than myself.
My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language
but you know the Scotch idiom. She was a bonnie, sweet, sonsy lass.
A gaudy dress and gentle air May slightly touch the heart;
But it's innocence and modesty That polishes the dart.
'Tis this in Nelly pleases me, 'Tis this enchants my soul;
For absolutely in my breast, She reigns without control.
That was Robert Burns's first ever poem, written when he was only 15.
Not bad for a 15-year-old
but there's no way his gigantic reputation would've been made by that poem alone.
What it was though, was a start.
'It was also the result of years of study.
'Despite a lowly station in life, Burns's father insisted that his children were educated.
'But just after writing Handsome Nell,
'Burns and his family fell heavily into debt
'and were almost forced from their home by a cruel landlord.'
My father's generous master died and, to clench the misfortune, we fell into the hands of a factor.
My indignation yet boils at the scoundrel factor's insolent threatening letters,
which used to set us all in tears.
It was something he would never forget.
It might even be a key to understanding the man Burns would become.
'His head filled with poetry and learning,
'young Robert Burns grew restless to escape the small farming life
'but didn't quite know how.'
The great misfortune of my life was to want an aim.
I saw that my father's situation entailed on me perpetual labour.
In my 17th year, to give my manners a brush,
I went to a country dancing school.
'This village of Tarbolton became the focus of young Burns's social life
'and the girls of the parish filled his teenage imagination.'
My heart was completely tender
and was eternally lighted up by some goddess or other
and, as in every other warfare in this world,
my fortune was various.
Burns also sought relief from the toil of the fields in the company of other spirited young men.
He became the central figure in a group who were as hungry for life and for ideas as he was.
They organised themselves into the Tarbolton Bachelors' Club
and their aims were to forget their cares and labour in mirth and diversion.
They rented out this room
and turned it into their very own debating chamber.
For generations of poetry lovers,
Robert Burns was the ultimate sentimentalist.
He represented all the virtues of the rural hearth and home,
of the simplicity of poverty,
but in actual fact, Burns was a radical.
Both in sexual and political terms,
he believed in improvement and openness and freedom.
Here in Tarbolton at the Bachelors' Club,
he would sit down with like-minded young men
and debate some of the great controversial topics of their day
and they did so in a spirit of self-improvement, of openness.
They wanted change and they didn't want the dark instruction of the Church
to darken down their own particular needs for freedom.
'Burns grew eloquent as a maker of radical arguments
'and a maker of rhymes -
'rhymes that were drawn from life.'
"A shire is world enough", wrote Shakespeare,
and for Burns, it was Ayrshire.
This pub in Mauchline is the dead centre of his universe.
Marion, can I have a whisky, please? A whisky.
PEOPLE SING
'Burns was a genius at taking the carnival of life
'he encountered in ordinary places, like this village pub,
'and transforming it into art of the highest order.
'The Jolly Beggars, one of his neglected masterpieces,
'was inspired by the goings-on here,
'back when this place was more than just a lively local.'
This is the Jolly Beggars. It was a place of ill repute.
It was a brothel at that time of Burns.
The upper-class would like to think
that Burns was never in this establishment.
We all know better than that!
THEY SING AND CHANT
'The Jolly Beggars is more of a mini-opera than a poem -
'a beggar's opera that celebrates life at the bottom of society.
'I've come along tonight to hear a raucous rendition being performed
'in the very place that originally inspired it.'
# And now tho' I must beg, with a wooden arm and leg... #
And now tho' I must beg, witha a wooden arm and leg
And many a tatter'd rag hanging over my bum,
I'm as happy with my wallet, my bottle, and my callet,
As when I used in scarlet to follow the drum.
# ..La, la, la-la, la la... #
Who's this for? Is that for you?
In the Jolly Beggars the people that he chose are rough and ready. Oh, rough and ready, aye.
Would you say the clientele has changed over the years? No' really!
# ..What is title? What is treasure...? #
What is title? What is treasure?
What is reputation's care?
If you lead a life of pleasure, who's to worry who or where?
As a poet, Robert Burns is famous for his simplicity,
his honesty, his human empathy,
but actually at the same time,
he has massive sophistication as an artist.
The Jolly Beggars gives evidence of the most incredibly sophisticated literary mind.
It's a massive barbaric yop of a poem -
going right to the heart of pub culture, of everyday life.
Burns was a master at getting in among all that -
singing songs about a life that he loved to live himself and that he wanted to celebrate.
# ..A fig for those by law protected A fig for those by law protected.
# Liberty's a glorious feast Liberty's a glorious feast.
# Courts for cowards were erected Courts for cowards were erected,
# Churches built to please the priest... # Churches built to please the priest.
'Burns showed his true colours in these uncompromising lines.
'He didn't hide the fact that he was a radical and a freedom lover.
'In fact, he revelled in it.
'Even if that put him at odds with the traditional Ayrshire community he lived in.'
# ..La-la, la, la, la! # RAUCOUS CHEERS
Polemical divinity about this time was putting the country half mad
and I, ambitious of shining
in conversation parties on Sundays,
between sermons at funerals, used the three years afterwards
to puzzle Calvinists with so much heat and indiscretion
that I raised the hue and cry of heresy against me.
Today Mauchline Parish is a warm and welcoming place but back then,
it was where the increasingly notorious young poet
most frequently clashed with Mauchline's moral guardians.
In the days of Robert Burns, drunkenness, Sabbath-breaking,
non-attendance at worship, fornication and adultery
were particularly frowned upon...
'In those days, fornicators - known fornicators at least -
'had to come out in front of the congregation
'and sit in a special penitents' seat, the cuttie-stool.'
This was a stool of repentance,
a seat set apart in church on which sinners had to appear,
before the worshipping congregation, to confess their waywardness
and to receive the public rebuke of the minister.
'The idea was that the local congregation was controlled through shame.
'But it didn't always work.
'When Burns first did penitence on the cuttie-stool, seven other fornicators sat beside him.'
Burns was always in two minds about religion.
On the one hand he believed in God but, on the other,
he felt that church hypocrisy was a blight on the Scotland of his day.
Here lie the remains of Willie Fisher -
who was an elder of the Mauchline Kirk -
and he became the subject of one of the most scabrous,
comical and wonderful satires on religious hypocrisy in any language.
That poem is Holy Willie's Prayer.
Oh Lord, yestreen, Thou kens, wi' Meg -
Thy pardon I sincerely beg,
O may't ne'er be a livin' plague To my dishonour,
An' I'll ne'er lift a lawless leg Again upon her.
The poem takes the form of a confessional prayer,
in which Holy Willie makes excuses for his own sins,
the very same sins that, as an elder of the Kirk,
he would have condemned in others.
But Lord, that Friday I was fou, When I cam near her,
Or else, Thou kens, Thy servant true Wad never steer her.
Loved poet, scathing satirist, political radical,
it all fed Robert Burns's local reputation
but he still lacked an aim in life.
But all that was about to change.
This is Mossgiel Farm in Mauchline in Ayrshire -
the place where Burns moved with his entire family in the 1780s.
He worked hard here as a farmer on tough ground
but he also wrote his greatest work here -
poems that would change not only the course of Scottish literature
but world literature as well.
'After a day labouring in the fields,
'Burns would come back to this farmhouse to write.
'It continues as a working farm to this day.'
HE KNOCKS AT DOOR
I entered on this farm with a full resolution, come go to, I will be wise.
I read farming books, I calculated crops, I attended markets.
Hello, Mr Wylie. How are you? Good to see you. Are you well? Aye.
How long have you lived here at Mossgiel? All my days.
Since you were a baby?
87 year...next week.
87 next week. And have your people always lived hereabouts?
They've lived here since...1806.
So not long after Burns's death?
Four or five years after Burns went out.
And you've got some photographs we could look at that show the past of your family here. Aye.
Can you think, Mr Wylie,
what the birthdays of some of these people in the photograph,
the older ones, would have been?
What year would they be born - this fellow for instance?
I think my grandfather was born in 1848.
Great-Grandfather definitely knew Burns.
The great-grandmothers of some of these people could conceivably have been girlfriends of Burns.
There's a chance! He seemed to go for every lassie in Mauchline!
If they attended dances, they would've been in the crossfire. Aye.
Burns's father is said to have cast doubt from his deathbed
on whether his aimless son, Robert, would succeed in life
but here at Mossgiel Farm, in the year after his father's death,
Burns wrote poetry like never before.
He gave life to some of his greatest work,
poems such as To A Mountain Daisy,
Scotch Drink, The Twa Dogs.
In that year, as he tried to make a success of his farm
and of his life,
it seemed like the smallest of things could inspire him.
Something happened in this field.
It was a cold, wet, November day
and Robert Burns came out into the field to work the plough as usual
and whilst doing so, he accidentally turned up a mouse's nest
and that gave rise to one of the most beautiful,
most empathetic poems in any language -
a political poem - To A Mouse.
Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty Wi' bickering 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!
'Did the ploughed-up mouse's nest
'stir up Burns's own painful memories?
'Had he done to a tiny fieldmouse
'what landlords had threatened to do to him and his family?
'It certainly inspired him
'to create one of the most empathetic poems ever.
'In line after line, he invited the world
'to feel the pulse of universal fellowship
'with that one insignificant animal.
'To understand, as he did, that life was a struggle against loss,
'that in the midst of living, we are also dying.
'Towards the end of the poem,
'he even longed to be like the mouse, to have no past to regret,
'nor any future to fear.'
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!
It's hard to think of many poets
who had Burns's intimate sympathy for the natural environment -
for animals and for the life of nature -
but actually, farm work itself was something Burns hated.
The long, laborious days in rain and snow was too much for him.
What he really yearned for was human company, the life of the town.
# I'm on my way to what I want from this world
# And years from now You'll make it in the next world
# And everything that you receive up yonder... #
'By 1785, Burns had an illegitimate child on the way with a local girl
'called Betsy Payton and, in nearby Mauchline,
'his infamy was growing.
'But many of the town's women caught his eye
'and he would turn on the charm to catch theirs,
'both in person and in rhyme.'
# ..I took the road that brought me to your home town... #
'I've come to the line dancing at Mauchline Community Centre
'because I want to ask these women about that other side of Burns -
'the rakish side, the side of the serial charmer.'
When people say that Rabbie Burns was obsessed with sex,
that his main preoccupation was the lassies,
do you think that's true? ALL: Yes! Why do you say that?
There's another name for that but I'll not say it! There is!
This is a family programme! Exactly!
As a piece of male behaviour, does that surprise you? ALL: No.
You'd take it if you lived in this day and age. You would be highly delighted!
Who would be delighted, him or you?
RAUCOUS LAUGHTER You never know!
In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles,
The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a',
Their carriage and dress a stranger would guess,
In Lon'on or Paris, they'd gotten it a',
Miss Miller is fine, Miss Murkland's divine,
Miss Smith she has wit and Miss Betty is braw;
There's beauty and fortune to get with Miss Morton,
But Armour's the jewel for me o' them a'.
Side, together, side shuffle...
# In Mauchline there dwells six proper young belles,
# The pride of the place... #
Of all the women Robert Burns knew,
there was only really one that conquered his affections.
Her name was Jean Armour. She lived here in the Cowgate.
He set many traps to catch her, and he did catch her,
but as he said in his famous poem,
"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
"Gang aft agley".
That's to say, they can lead to trouble.
'For a brief moment in 1785,
'Jean Armour alone seems to have been the tenant of Robert Burns's heart,
'so much so that within a year, Jean was pregnant.
'In small town Mauchline,
'there was only so long that he and Jean could keep it to themselves.
'The holy beagles, as Burns called them,
'soon got the scent of a full-blown scandal.'
'Back in the church, a remarkable document survives from the 18th Century.
'It reveals just how the church authorities tried to deal with it.'
The writing's difficult here. Robert Burns and Jean Armour
appeared before the congregation, professing their repentance.
Given Burns's poems on the question of hypocrisy in the Church,
we wonder how utterly sincere that repentance was.
"For fornication,
"and having each appeared to several Sabbaths
"were this day rebuked
"and absolved from the scandal."
Absolved from the scandal is good.
I wonder if you ever truly were absolved from such a scandal in a small town like Mauchline.
Thank you so much. Pleasure.
Jean Armour's parents wanted nothing to do with the notorious local poet
and they stopped Jean from seeing him.
I have tried often to forget her.
I have run into all kinds of dissipation and riots,
Mason meetings, drinking matches and other mischief,
to drive her out of my head,
but all in vain.
'By all accounts heartbroken,
'with at least three illegitimate children and on the verge of ruin,
'Robert Burns came up with a plan that would fix everything.'
# It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral... #
'Robert Burns decided to emigrate to Jamaica,
'where he planned to find work on a plantation.
'He said as a "poor Negro driver".'
"July 30th, 1786, my hour has now come.
"You and I will never meet in Britain more,
"I have orders within three weeks at furthest to repair aboard the Nancy."
Of course, Burns was the great laureate of human freedom
and therefore the Jamaica plan stands as a puzzle.
It's hard to understand how the man who wrote A Man's A Man For A' That,
and The Slave's Lament, could even contemplate leaving
and crossing the sea to become a slave driver.
It really is a conundrum.
It's the one thing about Burns, of all the elements,
that could cause us to worry about his integrity.
'To me, it's the action of a desperate man -
'a man who has made a mess of his life
'but who can't afford to be as principled as I'd like him to be.'
'To put his affairs in order, and make any money that he possibly could,
'Burns decided to get his poems published.
'Any poems that may have got him into hot water with Church or State
'were prudently set aside for another day,
'but all the poems of Burns's great creative period
'were set in good black print and bound together,
'soon to be hailed as a masterpiece.'
You will have heard that I am going to commence poet in print
and tomorrow my works go to the press.
I expect it will be a volume of about 200 pages.
It is just the last foolish action I intend to do
and then turn a wise man as fast as possible.
'Here at the Irvine Burns Club,
'they have a rare copy of that very thing
that Robert Burns put together in such desperate circumstances.'
This is the book I believe you're interested to view.
It's a first edition Kilmarnock, Robert Burns.
Wow. Amazing. Thanks very much.
Extremely rare. It's like the holy book, this.
Wow! There's nothing like the smell of time.
Robert Burns was so sociable, he could have I suppose just gabbed away his poems in the pub,
but that's not what he did.
He created this book - the Kilmarnock Edition.
An absolute work of genius, unlike anything published in his day,
and still, even now, there's nothing like it.
A book is, after all, a little intellectual and moral machine
and Burns made his contribution. What a contribution!
I can't believe I'm holding a first edition of that masterpiece,
opened here at the page with the very first poem, The Twa Dogs.
"Twas in that place o' Scotland's isle,
"That bears the name o' auld King Coil,
"Upon a bonnie day in June
"When wearin' thro' the afternoon,
"Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame,
"Forgather'd ance upon a time."
Scottish literature had never heard that voice before that.
It was the opening of an absolutely spectacular career.
'The book -
' "Poems Chiefly In The Scottish Dialect",
'was a runaway success.
'It sold out within a few months
'and made Burns a £20 profit.'
'And now Burns shelved his plans for escape to Jamaica
'and began to contemplate a whole new future.
'Could a bigger audience exist for these poems?
'Could a bigger print run make him rich?
'And could Robert Burns finally make a success of his life?'
'To find out, he'd have to leave behind his childhood landscape -
'the inspiring world of Ayrshire -
'and try his luck in Scotland's capital, Edinburgh.'
Ayrshire, to Burns, had been the whole world.
He knew its byways and its characters extremely well
but the rest of the world, the rest of Scotland even, was a bit of a mystery to him.
Edinburgh seemed like an exotic Babylon when he set out to reach there
but he suspected that if he got to know it, and if he succeeded there,
it might change his world forever.
At Edinburgh, I was in a new world
and mingled among many classes of men,
but all of them new to me,
and I was all attention to catch the character of their manners,
living as they rise.
'I'm coming to what was called the Athens of the North,
'to search for the story of Burns's success here.
'But also, perhaps, to find the seeds of a struggle for survival
'that exists at the centre of Burns's life.
'Burns came to Edinburgh with a clear mission to make money.
'But I think he was looking for something else too.
'Back in Ayrshire he'd been infamous, notorious even,
'but that wasn't enough for him.
'Burns also wanted to measure himself
'against the greatest men of his age.'
'18th-century Edinburgh was a hub of philosophical, medical,
'legal and journalistic genius.
'David Hume, Adam Smith, James Hutton,
'Joseph Black and James Boswell -
'a seemingly endless list of great men had placed Edinburgh
'at the very centre of Europe's intellectual life.
'What's more, a sophisticated literary culture existed here.
'And Burns arrived from Ayrshire, determined to chance his hand
'and find his place in it.'
Burns hit the ground running in Edinburgh.
He'd come into contact with the publisher William Creech,
whose offices were in this very close.
The idea was that he would raise subscribers for this new edition,
so Burns put his mind to that and got busy.
'But would the inhabitants of this most refined of cities
'really want to subscribe to an expensive book
'containing rustic poems such as To A Mouse,
'which said that man was no more significant than the smallest creature?'
'It was down to Burns himself to drum up interest in the book
'and just a few days after he arrived in Edinburgh,
'he got a great helping hand, with a review from Henry Mackenzie - Edinburgh's leading critic.'
'It's something that I have long heard of but never seen.'
Andrew. How nice to see you again. It's great to see you.
'Here at the National Library of Scotland, they keep a copy of that very publication.'
And what you are coming to see is The Lounger. All right, in you come.
Thank you. Here we are. This is the famous review.
And it's most famous of all, I think, for the wonderful passage on the final page,
where he says, "You will perceive
"with what uncommon penetration and sagacity
"this Heaven-taught ploughman,
"from his humble and unlettered station,
"has looked upon men and manners."
And Burns rose to this splendidly.
In a way, this was good fodder
because he liked to go around as the Heaven-taught ploughman.
He wore nothing but boots in Edinburgh,
when people wore silk stockings.
But he wore boots, as if he'd come from the field.
He wore buckskins on great occasions.
And of course, that phrase, "Heaven-taught ploughman" stuck.
That's right and Mackenzie was solely responsible for the image.
Presumably, The Lounger had no massive circulation.
How important would a review like this have been in the day?
It would have been very important
because the Edinburgh establishment would have read this periodical.
This is the Advocates Library copy.
We can speculate with certainty
that this very copy was read by many of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment -
certainly those members of the Faculty of Advocates.
And, on one of these pages, there is a very gratifying claret stain
which shows it was read with enjoyment! Perhaps by Burns himself. Possibly by Burns.
'In the pages of The Lounger, Burns read the review
'that would change his life.'
Burns must have had a few pints in celebration when he got this!
"I know not if I shall be accused of such enthusiasm and partiality
"when I introduce to the notice of my readers a poet of our own country,
"with whose writings I have lately become acquainted.
"But if I am not greatly deceived, I think I may safely pronounce him
"a genius of no ordinary rank."
This must have blown Burns away.
There is something also quite patronising about his tone throughout the review.
He keeps referring to his "lowly station"
and "a man with his disadvantages" and so on.
If you were to put that into a review nowadays,
it would be considered completely horrendous and unacceptable.
With the sense that, well, we must make allowances for this guy,
you know, he's been working in the fields and he's untutored.
And there it is.
"Heaven-taught ploughman"
gives a notion of a guy who's just, you know,
doused by the muse one day,
out in the fields, who it all came to from the sky.
Well, of course, Burns had a pretty good classical education.
And yet he accepted this label.
He realised, at any rate, that it was a way of identifying himself.
It was the great point of difference.
Burns wasn't just a genius,
he was a genius who came from a farm.
The review in The Lounger catapulted Burns into Edinburgh's high society.
And, all at once, Burns had the fame he'd craved.
"I have been introduced to a good many of the noblesse.
"I have warm and wise friends among the literati.
"I was, sir, when I was first honoured with your notice, too obscure.
"Now I tremble, lest I should be ruined
"by being dragged too suddenly into the glare of polite and learned observation."
'Burns shone in the limelight.
'With his farmers' boots and a formidable eloquence,
'honed in his Ayrshire debating club, he dazzled all he met here.
'Performing his poems at soirees and private gatherings across the city,
'holding forth on the great topics of the day.'
'The closest thing to it for a writer today
'is the Edinburgh International Book Festival.'
There is no poet in any country, in any language...
'Writers turn into performers
'and get the chance to explain their work and their influences.'
..with brilliance and excellence in the way that Robert Burns does.
He is the world's best poet. APPLAUSE
'He would have loved it up here.'
O wad some Power the giftie gi' us,
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in gait an' dress wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!
'Burns was a genius, a legend, so any too strong association of his experience with mine,
'would just be comical.'
'But I think this city's ongoing fascination for the business of literature
'is something he would recognise.
'Writers today have got it much easier than Burns ever had.
'When he performed in small private gatherings,
'he was hoping to raise subscribers to his edition.
'And there would be no print run without them.'
'With every invitation he accepted, every supper party he joined, he was creating demand for his new book.'
'Even if that meant playing the part of the Heaven-taught ploughman.'
That I have some merit I do not deny.
But I see with frequent wringings of heart
that the novelty of my character,
and the honest national prejudice of my countrymen,
have borne me to a height altogether untenable to my abilities.
I am in a fair way of becoming as eminent
as Thomas a Kempis or John Bunyan.
And you may expect, henceforth, to see my birthday inserted
among the wonderful events in the Poor Robin's Almanac.
In all probability, I shall soon be the tenth worthy
and the eighth wise man of the world.
'Edinburgh was a kind of mirage for Burns -
'something he knew wouldn't last.
'You get a deeper sense of that here in Canongate churchyard.'
I suppose this might be the ultimate tribute from one poet to another.
"No sculptured marble here, nor pompous lay,
"no storied urn nor animated bust,
"This simple stone directs pale Scotia's way,
"To pour her sorrows o'er the Poet's dust."
This monument was raised by Robert Burns
to honour fellow poet Robert Fergusson,
who had died - penniless and insane -
only a few years before Burns arrived here.
'Robert Fergusson was a huge inspiration to Burns.
'He wrote in Scots too.
'He had been rejected by the same Edinburgh that now embraced Burns.
'Before Burns came, Fergusson's grave had been unmarked.'
'I think Burns saw Fergusson as a sort of warning about what could happen to poets in Scotland.
'Fergusson's sad death in dire poverty
'was something Burns became determined to avoid.'
Is there for honest Poverty
That hings his head for a' that;
The coward slave - we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that!
For a' that, an' a' that, Our toils obscure for a' that,
The rank is but a guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.
'Burns seized every opportunity
'to mingle with the upper echelons of society.
'Those who might help him, or be in a position to buy his book.
'He was already a Freemason from his days in Ayrshire.
'And shortly after arriving in Edinburgh,
'he was taken up by a coterie of leading men
'who were also Freemasons.
'From them he received an accolade that overwhelmed him -
'taking up his appointment as Caledonia's bard.'
Yes, by all means, come in, please.
"I went to a Mason lodge yesternight,
"where the most worshipful master, among other general toasts,
"gave Caledonia and Caledonia's bard, brother Burns.
"Which rang through the whole assembly with multiple honours and repeated acclamations.
"As I had no idea such a thing would happen,
"I was downright thunderstruck and, trembling in every nerve, made the best return in my power."
They seemed to find in Burns here, among his Masonic brethren,
a man they wanted to believe in.
They really wanted to push him forward, didn't they?
Well, absolutely. Like the Kilmarnock Edition,
if you look at the subscribers to the Edinburgh Edition,
a very large number are Freemasons.
And, in fact, lodges bought his book in bulk.
The Masonic temperament, if you like, was quite close to him.
He felt it was important. Why do you think that was?
Well, probably simply because everybody's equal.
There are people who are just ordinary men meeting,
as we say in Freemasonry, "On the level".
So everyone is equal. Is that how it's said, "On the level"? Yes.
The rank is but a guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.
Would you show me through? Certainly, yes. Come this way.
Wow. So, it has an atmosphere all of its own.
As I say, a purpose-built building - a purpose-built lodge building.
Yes. And the oldest in the world.
We know that Burns was definitely in this room on the 1st February 1787.
In this exact spot here? Yes.
He was recorded by the lodge secretary as being a visitor to the lodge and he is named.
They didn't name every visitor.
But Burns was, of course, famous and so... Where would he have stood?
Well, he could sit really anywhere he liked.
Again, because we're all on the level within Freemasonry,
there is no specific place except for the people who are performing, if you like, the actors.
'Burns loved equality.
'And it occurs to me
'that the brotherly atmosphere he enjoyed in these secret rooms
'may have played into his true values as a writer.'
You're putting me in mind of something I hadn't thought of in relation to Burns.
That some of the levelling is very much there in the work and there in his character. Yes.
And it chimes with Freemasonry, as you describe it -
a sense of the high-heedyins and the lower orders coming in to a common space. Exactly.
And that again is typical of...
'One of Burns's fellow Masons,
'one of Scotland's most eminent men, Lord Glencairn,
'certainly pulled some Masonic strings for Caledonia's bard.
'He persuaded all 100 members of his other elite club,
'the Caledonia Hunt, to subscribe en masse.'
'The literati, the aristocracy, the Masons.
'Edinburgh had taken up Robert Burns
'in a way he could never have expected when he left Ayrshire.'
Burns was now an official national curiosity.
And people all over the place wanted to see what the rustic genius looked like.
So what are we still missing?
Yes. A portrait.
Today we are very familiar with the process of fame-building.
But Robert Burns in his own day was completely familiar with it too.
He built a celebrity image for himself,
and an important element in that, perhaps the most important element,
was to have a great portrait. And this is it.
The Naismith portrait of Burns,
which was famous in his own day through reproductions,
but in all the years since then has become the garlanding image on a million shortbread tins.
Sitting for a portrait was only for the elite.
But this wasn't to be the only portrait
Burns would have done in Edinburgh.
"My honoured friend, I will soon be with you in good black print.
"I am getting my phiz done by an eminent engraver
"and will appear like all other fools, looking to my title page."
John Bugle, Edinburgh's leading engraver, also went to work
on Burns's face, creating a timeless image of a strikingly handsome Burns
at the very height of his fame.
With this image on its inside cover,
the package for the new print run of his poems was complete.
Close observers could have asked, as I do myself,
where the radical Burns is, in all this excellent self-promotion.
I see a poet ever ready to greet his applause.
But what about his strongest feelings regarding church hypocrisy and political compromise?
He did write some new poems in Edinburgh,
but it was almost as if he was trying too hard to please his hosts.
Fair fa' your honest sonsie face
Great chieftain o' the puddin' race
Aboon them a' ye tak your place
Painch, tripe or thairm
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace as lang's my arm
The groaning trencher there ye fill Your hurdies like a distant hill
Your pin wad help to mend a mill in time o need
While thro' your pores the dews distil like amber bead
His knife see rustic labour dight An' cut you up wi' ready sleight
Trenching your gushing entrails bright, like ony ditch
And then, O what a glorious sight Warm-reekin, rich.
At the moment of his greatest visibility, he could have created a platform for protest.
But he didn't.
He gave the people a colourful and cheerful piece of whimsy.
A poem about a simple national dish.
Sorry, we've no whisky.
Keith's a Glayva man. Is he?
I think whisky should be drunk before or after. But not with.
You can't taste the haggis.
And you can't appreciate the whisky. That's my view.
The people who were feeling critical of Burns might say that he lent his name too easily to the promotion
of national mythology and a sense of Scotland.
I wonder if he wanted...
to see himself as the Caledonian bard,
and having a national dish to promote
must have helped his sense of that.
But did people think of it as a national dish before he wrote that?
I think it suited him, because it was humble,
and, you know, I think he could see
that it summed up Scotland's personality.
But I don't know if anyone would have ever thought to have written a poem about it before.
And I think maybe that's why it was so striking.
He just notices things,
but he notices timeless things. And that's another reason why I think we still bother to talk about him today.
I think the other point to make is, Burns Night is secular.
There's no religion.
I'm going to sound like John Lennon now!
But, you know, I think that's helped.
That's possibly the first time in history where John Lennon
and his aesthetic has been linked to haggis! Why not?
The second edition of the book was a huge success.
He knew how the public saw him and he gave them what they wanted.
He'd raised enough subscriptions to make several years of wages in pure profit.
Edinburgh, the Athens of the North, was heroically conquered.
Then he sold away the rights to the poems.
And from that moment on, he wouldn't make another penny from them.
But getting any of the money his publisher, Creech, owed him wouldn't be easy.
So Burns fell back on his usual enjoyments.
He had affairs with women of all classes,
and took up with a notorious drinking club,
a group of Edinburgh grandees and self-styled wits, the Crochallan Fencibles.
Have you still got your facsimile skull of Burns?
Where is it? It's in the house.
You left the skull at home?!
This group meets to keep the spirit of that particular episode in Burns's life alive.
They've invited me to one of their dinners in the Officers' Mess at Edinburgh Castle.
Welcome.
Good evening, gentlemen.
THEY CLAP
Take a seat. Thank you so much.
We're about to launch into a small passage from The Libel Summons.
Before we do that, would you like a glass? I'd love one, thank you.
These men are true Burns devotees
and they take turns to perform his work and other poems that they think Burns would have liked.
By virtue of the acerbic nature of Burns's tongue,
he would also have appreciated...
Once on a time
I fair Usebia kissed
Whose nose...
was too distinguished to be missed
LAUGHTER
Quoth I, Sweet wench fain would I kiss you closer
But though your lips say aye
Your nose says no, sir
LAUGHTER
The maid was equally to fun inclined
And placed her lovely lily hand behind
Here swain, cried she, mayst thou securely kiss
Where there's no nose to interrupt thy bliss.
LAUGHTER
'The Cochallan Fencibles were those
'who occupied fairly prominent positions in Edinburgh society'
of the day - Writers of the Signet, rector of the High School,
Latin master of the High School,
Governor of Edinburgh Castle, they were Fencibles.
They last met in 1795.
And in 1993, then the Adjutant and myself decided
there should be a modern-day equivalent of the Cochallan Fencibles,
hence the Cochallan Fencibles Second Battalion.
No-one would confuse this gathering with a rally on political correctness
but then that some of Burns's poems aren't the most politically correct, either.
As has been pointed out already, Burns was a great lover of the lassies.
He also did not thole the other side of women terribly well.
He gave this advice
to a man who was unfortunate in the wife that he had. He says...
Curs'd be the man The poorest wretch in life
The crouching vassal o' a tyrant wife
Who has no will but by her high permission
Who has but sixpence but in her possession
Who must to her his dear friend's secrets tell
Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell
If such a wife were fallen to my part
I'd break her spirit or I'd break her heart
I'd charm her with the magic of a switch
I'd kiss her maids And I'd kick the perverse bitch.
LAUGHTER
Listening to these entertaining gentlemen, I begin to wonder
if there isn't a side to Burns - the less soothing side, perhaps - that only appeals to men.
Would anybody care to take up the cudgels on behalf of Burns and yourselves
in defence of male company and its exclusive jokes?
He did it with tongue in cheek.
I think a lot of the "anti" ladies...
I know that when we all do Burns suppers, most of the Fencibles
all perform at different times and in different ways,
at different suppers. But at the end of the day, we all appreciate that
we couldn't live without the lasses, and I think Burns accepted that as well.
I think he summed it up in one of his earliest songs,
which he never bettered.
Auld Nature swears the lovely dears
Her noblest work she classes, O
Her prentice hand she tried on man And then she made the lasses, O.
That sums it up.
We'll start off canny with a chorus and you can join in.
# Ye Jacobites by name
# Lend an ear, lend an ear
# Ye Jacobites by name
# Lend an ear
# Ye Jacobites by name... #
These men also celebrate Burns's musical side.
The poet met a song collector at one such meeting, James Johnson,
who would remain in Burns's life after so much of the Edinburgh glow had gone.
# ..What is right, what is wrong By the law, by the law?
# What is right, what is wrong By the law...? #
As Burns lingered among the drinking clubs of Edinburgh, his mind was increasingly
on what he'd do once the great mirage disappeared,
when his season among the great men of his time was over.
Edinburgh's grandees didn't really want him to stay,
they wanted him to go back to the country, to return to that rustic life that had first inspired him.
But Burns was in turmoil about that life and about ever being able to support his family that way.
He drifted back and forth from Edinburgh to Ayrshire,
where he reconciled with his sweetheart, Jean Armour.
He toured the country, collecting songs, but he couldn't settle.
Then he did something really quite astonishing.
At the height of his fame, he decided to try to join the Customs and Excise.
He wrote to his masonic friend, Lord Glencairn, someone he knew
who could pull strings for him, and he turned on the charm.
"My Lord, I know your Lordship will disapprove of my ideas in a request that I'm going to make to you.
"I wish to get into the Excise.
"I am told that your Lordship's interest will easily procure me the grant from the commissioners."
'Burns puts the matter very strongly in the letter.'
He talks about the possibility of extraordinary distress or helpless old age,
how they've often harrowed my soul with fears, he says.
"I've one or two claims on me in the name of father."
That must be the understatement of the 18th century.
This is a guy who has more than a few small claims on him as father.
He'd weans from one end of Ayrshire to the other, if some are to be believed.
He's always mindful, Burns, that he's a duty of care
to his family, and he's asking Lord Glencairn to put his affection for him to good use,
to help Burns get a position in life which would actually let him pay the bills.
This is a man who has been through all the trials and tribulations
of the small farming life in Ayrshire.
He really dreads the idea of going back to that.
He knows it could be ruinous, it could be failure, so the Excise offers a lifeline.
Poet Burns, poet Burns Wi' your priest-skelping turns
Why desert ye your old native shire?
Though your muse is a gypsy Yet were she even tipsy
She could ca' us nae waur than we are, Poet Burns
She could ca' us nae waur than we are.
The Edinburgh gamble had largely paid off.
But Burns was once again at a crossroads. His rural roots were calling him back.
How monie hearts this day converts
O' sinners and o' lasses
Their hearts o' stane gin night are gane
As saft as ony flesh is...
Come on, hit it!
..There's some are fou o' love divine
There's some are fou o' brandy
An' monie jobs that day begin May end in houghmagandie
Some ither day.
These men are trying to get a ham wrapped up in a sheet and nailed to the top of this greasy pole.
This is one of the highlights of a fair that has been taking place
in Irvine, near my home town, since medieval times.
Robert Burns would have known about this fair and fairs like it.
They were the focus of community life in rural Scotland.
In his early years, he had found great inspiration in this world.
But the success of his first book of poems
had lured him away to Edinburgh and I think that as a poet, he had lost his way a bit there.
He needed to be close to this carnival of Ayrshire voices, to create his best work.
What the BLEEP are ye yappin'? Will you BLEEP get here? Hurry up!
Now Burns had several hundred pounds in his pocket
and the acclaim of the great city of Edinburgh still echoing behind him.
But all he could think about
was how he was going to find a life of security for him and for his family.
When he came back from Edinburgh, Burns married Jean Armour, his understanding Ayrshire sweetheart,
the woman who later said that our Rabbie should have had twa' wives.
"There is, you must know, a certain clean-limbed, handsome, bewitching
"young hussy of your acquaintance, to whom I have lately and privately given a matrimonial title."
Burns was loath to give up the chance of the idea of becoming a traditional, successful farmer.
This is Ellisland farm in Dumfriesshire
which sits along the beautiful River Nith.
Burns came here in the early summer of 1788, full of hopes. It was a new chapter in his life.
This farm was Robert Burns' new hope, the place he chose to start again,
the place where the poet would bring up his family.
Burns even had a safety net, something to calm any insecurities about the farming life.
The commission in the Excise that he had long petitioned the great Glencairn for, finally came through.
And what a relief it was.
"My dear friend, I know not how the word Exciseman will sound in your ears.
"I too have seen the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject.
"But a wife and children are things which have a wonderful power in blunting those kind of sensations.
"£50 a year for life and a provision for widows and orphans,
"you will allow, is no bad settlement for a poet."
Ellisland in some ways represents the last attempt
to live the kind of life that his father would have liked him to live.
To be an effective farmer, an effective Christian and a good family man.
It's the part of Burns's life where I feel closest to him in some ways
because writers have all that public life
of signings and public events and even in his day, the local fame.
Everybody in Mauchline had known Rabbie Burns but he'd come away from all of that,
he'd come away from the lads and the hubbub of life and the drinking and the reputation
and come to this table.
He'd come in after a long day working for the Excise
and he'd be drying himself beside this very oven here
and trying to write.
You suddenly get a sense of this phenomenon that he's come to seem to us,
this phenomenon was really just a man.
Perhaps this genius, for all his love of freedom,
ultimately was a victim of the very opposite of freedom.
He was imprisoned by duty and responsibility.
Yet amazingly, he turned himself into the 18th century equivalent
of a hit factory when it came to the production of songs.
"Besides my farm business, I ride on my Excise matters at least 200 miles every week.
"I have not by any means given up the muses.
"You'll see in the third volume of Johnson's Scots songs that I've contributed my mite there."
# ..Every hour that passes, O What signifies the life o' man
# 'Twere na for the lasses, O
# Green grow the rashes, O... #
I've come to a homely gathering of musicians who have a lot of time for Burns's devotion to song.
# ...That e'er I spend
# I spent among the lasses, O... #
'A lot of people have written through the 19th century into the 20th,'
"What was he doing wasting his time?
"We could have had more good poetry in those last years."
Basically, music and the notion of song
was important to Burns from the very start.
His early life, he did dabble in some songwriting but the first publications included mostly poetry.
It's really the trip to Edinburgh and a chance meeting, or perhaps it was a fateful meeting,
with James Johnson, the publisher, that kind of provided a catalyst to Burns becoming really obsessed,
to all intents and purposes, with songs in the last years of his life.
# ..I spent among the lasses, O. #
"I am engaged in assisting an honest Scotch enthusiast, a friend of mine
"who is an engraver and has taken it into his head to publish
"a collection of all of our songs set to music.
"This you will easily guess is an undertaking exactly to my taste.
"I have collected, begged, borrowed and stolen all the songs I could meet with."
# ..Green grow the rashes, O... #
'The influences come from a whole variety of places.'
They come from him listening to people sing and noting things down.
They come from wee fragments that he finds in a whole wide variety of publications.
I think we often think he's kind of the man of the folk
and he's keen to note down people singing folk songs in the field or at convivial gatherings,
which indeed he did, but he's also incredibly well read in terms of all the song publications.
# Should auld acquaintance be forgot... #
And he pinches and steals and chooses a phrase from here
or a chorus from there, and that just inspires him.
# Should auld acquaintance be forgot And auld lang syne... #
There's not really far off about 400 songs that we can kind of prove he had his hands on.
Auld Lang Syne was already the title of a song.
Burns took it, he set it to new music and transformed it into something magical.
And, to him, it was for offering to posterity as a gift.
Burns himself never made a penny from it.
He seemed far more reluctant than you might expect to charge them for it.
He didn't rush towards them with invoices.
Quite the opposite. Why was that?
Did he see it as a national service? As something to be given to the nation?
I think he did. I think he felt very strongly about that.
He didn't seek funding or any kind of payment from Johnson.
And it's funny that Burns critics, after his death, have, you know, laid the blame
very much at the editors' doors and said, you know, "Those horrible men.
"Made him do all that work and never paid a penny for it."
As if they exploited him. As if they exploited him. But the correspondence doesn't suggest that at all.
By late 1790, Burns was in perfect voice.
And he was about to stun the world of poetry again.
Something extraordinary was brewing in his imagination.
And like so many of his poems, it's kept alive today by performance.
Good morning. Good morning.
We're going to do Tam O' Shanter.
Tell me about Tam O' Shanter.
Who wrote it? ALL: Robert Burns.
So, let's just go from the beginning.
First four or five lines... When chapman billies leave the street
And drouthy neibors, neibors meet
As market days are wearing late
And folk begin to tak the gate
While we sit bousing at the nappy
An' getting fou and unco happy
We think na on the lang Scots miles
The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles
That lie between us and our hame
Where sits our sulky, sullen dame
Gathering her brows like gathering storm
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm
..She's nursing her wrath to keep it warm.
Do you think she' sitting at home going, "I can't wait for Tam to come back,
"I'll make his dinner, we'll watch EastEnders, it'll be fantastic"?
No. What is she waiting to do?
Kill him. Kill him? Well, I hope not!
Maybe give him a good slap over the ear?
Right, OK. So, he comes outside and it's raining.
It's windy.
And the thunder's really loud!
BELL TOLLS
That night a child might understand
The deil had business on his hand
SCREAMING
How did Tam O' Shanter come about?
Well, very simply. Burns was having dinner with Captain Francis Grose,
the famous antiquarian, who was collecting stories of Scotland for his book, The Antiquities.
He asked Burns if he had any ideas about buildings that he might take
an interest in and Burns immediately said, "Auld Alloway Kirk".
"Fine", said Gross.
"But you write me a supernatural story to accompany the picture."
Right, so let's get into our groups.
The witches over here.
Witches over there and the third group of witches over here.
Tam O' Shanter and the horse, Meg, over here.
So, Meg is trotting up to the graveyard.
Look through the window, Tam, see the devil
having a good time. The big black dog who's playing the bagpipes
and all the witches are dancing.
And having a great time and screaming...
And how Tam stood like ane bewitch'd
And thought his very een enrich'd
Even Satan glowr'd and fidg'd fu' fain
And hotch'd and blew wi' might and main
Till first ae caper, syne anither,
Tam tint his reason a' thegither
And roars out "Weel done, Cutty-sark!"
And in an instant all was dark
SCREAMING
And scarcely had he Maggie rallied
When out the hellish legion sallied
As bees bizz out wi' angry fyke
When plundering herds assail their byke
As open pussie's mortal foes
When, pop! She starts before their nose
So, what do you think of the graveyard then and the old graves?
It's fantastic, isn't it?
This haunted kirkyard in Alloway, the very place where, in Burns's imagination, he figured witches
and Satan performing their hellish jig, was a place he knew well in real life.
His own father was buried here.
So, remember, Tam has come scootling down here on his horse, so what I want you to do is,
as soon as I clap my hands, I want you to scream as loud as possible
and when I clap my hands, I want you to run as fast as you possibly can.
But, not too fast cos Nannie has got to get your tail.
For Nannie, far before the rest
Hard upon noble Maggie prest
And flew at Tam wi' furious ettle
But little wist she Maggie's mettle
Ae spring brought off her master hale
But left behind her ain gray tail
The carlin claught her by the rump
And left poor Maggie scarce a stump.
How many witches and ghouls do you think you could get on this bridge?
About 3,500. Exactly 1,500?
3,000.
'When Tam o' Shanter's old mare, Meg, disappeared
'over the brig here at Alloway, she arrived in literary legend.'
Even at the time, Robert Burns understood that out of the wonderful
fog of his own creativity, out of all the supernatural past
of his childhood, in fact, out of the culture of a whole country, he had produced his masterpiece.
Burns is said to have written the whole of Tam O' Shanter at Ellisland
in just one day by the banks of the river Nith.
But if the scenery was inspiring to him as a poet,
the stony soil did nothing but crush his hopes for success as a farmer.
"Dear brother, my nerves are in a cursed state.
"I feel that horrid hypochondria pervading every atom of both body and soul.
"This farm has undone my enjoyment of myself.
"It is a ruinous affair on all hands."
Burns was anxious to escape the dreadful toil and insecurity of farmwork.
And when a new position came up in the Excise in Dumfries,
the heaven-taught ploughman severed his ties with the land.
Robert Burns was now 100% a civil servant in a prosperous regional town, with status,
a permanent salary, a new house and even prospects of promotion...
if he could keep his nose clean.
Burns became a founding member of Dumfries's new theatre.
But one evening in late 1792,
something happened here that would threaten his position.
He was a Government officer, but he didn't always behave like one.
Now, was it a rowdy place, this theatre, during those years?
Would it have been a place where the free expressers of Dumfries would have come with a drink in them?
There is every chance that would be the case.
It was very much a social centre.
Now it seats something like 200.
Then, it could seat or stand 600. Oh, really.
And during that time, remembering the French Revolution was on, Dumfries was completely split politically
between radicals like Robert Burns
and others of a very right-wing nature, called the Loyal Natives.
And they wanted to keep the radicals, sort of, in their place.
'One evening, the rowdy atmosphere got the better of the radicals in the pit.'
Yes, that night, he was down there as God Save The King was being played, or was being introduced.
Lo and behold, some of the folks in the pit decided that they wanted something else.
# Ah! Ca ira, ca ira, ca ira
# Les aristocrates a la lanterne... #
They wanted Ca Ira, which was a song,
and the song of the French revolutionaries.
What did it say?
It said that les aristocrates ought to be burned or hanged or whatever.
And this was quite a statement.
# ..Ni nobles, ni pretres
# Ah! Ca ira, ca ira, ca ira... #
And did Burns participate in the singing of the song?
Hah! This is the question.
He may well have mouthed something, but he stated that he did not participate at all.
He stated, however, that, yes, this was happening,
and a small group of people round about him were causing this trouble.
So maybe he was mouthing, "It wasnae me!"
He could easily have been mouthing that, you never know!
But definitely, he was a radical, definitely.
We know where his sentiments would have been.
# O, wert thou in the cauld blast...
Someone in the Theatre Royal that night reported Burns,
and he was soon exposed to the cauld blast of official scrutiny.
"I have been surprised, confounded and distracted by Mr Mitchell, the collector,
"telling me that he has received an order from your board to inquire into my political conduct,
"and blaming me as a person disaffected to government."
Do you think this was a contradiction that Burns had to carry through that time?
That he, as you say, was a radical, he was certainly a democrat, a free-thinker, and yet his position
in the Excise as a Government official denied the possibility
of him giving too free an expression to that side of himself?
That sums the whole thing up, yes.
He had to be very, very careful.
Most of the time he was, but sometimes after a wee bit of whisky or whatever,
especially in the Globe Inn, he would possibly make statements that he ought not to have made.
'It took three months for Burns to learn that he was to be cleared and keep his job.
'But no matter how hard he tried,
'Burns couldn't always hold back his well-known political opinions.
'This was a time when Britain and France were at war,
'so political temperatures were running high
'and so were political fears.
'Burns's misbehaviour in Dumfries was a real threat to him,
'to his well-being and that of his children. He understood that.'
Hi there. Hello, can I help you?
He lived in fear of being dismissed from the Excise,
a job that he'd sought with such energy,
and he'd really compromised himself to get that job.
And yet he would go out some evenings and just let rip.
'One night, at a drinking party, Burns raised a toast in company.
"May our success in the present war
"be equal to the justice of our cause."
'One of the other drinkers took offence
'and the incident threatened to escalate out of control.'
Would you like anything in this? Some ice would be great, thanks.
Had I had nobody's welfare to care for but my own,
we should have come, according to the manners of the world,
to murdering one another about the business.
The words were such that I believe normally end in abrasive pistols.
FIDDLE PLAYS
'The next morning, Burns was terrified that news would get out
'and he'd lose his livelihood,
'so he was forced to write a letter,
'imploring those at the drinking party to hush up his behaviour.'
"You know that the report of certain political opinions being mine
"has already once before brought me to the brink of destruction.
"I dread lest last night's business be misrepresented in the same way.
"You, I beg, will take care to prevent it."
Some people took against this contradiction, this hypocrisy in Burns, in a big way.
Because here, after all,
was the guy who had really put his finger on hypocrisy in the church,
and in the state, in a way that nobody else had.
He'd built his entire reputation on being an enemy of hypocrisy.
He'd satirised the double-dealers in the society of his day.
'But was he himself a double-dealer?
'Was Burns himself a hypocrite?'
I think, to some extent, he knew that it was unsustainable,
that he'd lost sight of the person he used to be
and that's the Burns that I feel is most pitiable.
The one who wanted freedom but couldn't afford it.
'Burns's loyalty to King and country would be tested one more time.
'Fear of a French invasion was growing
'and all over Britain local militias were being set up.'
'This time, Burns acted impeccably,
'leaving no question over his loyalty,
'by being one of the Dumfries Volunteers' founder members.
'And he even got into debt to pay for his scarlet uniform.
'But within a few months of joining up, it was apparent that something was wrong.
'It wasn't his political enemies that threatened Burns,
'it was the oldest enemy of all - bad health.'
'In no time, he was in the grip of the most wracking illness.'
'Soon he was so sick that he could no longer work for the Excise.
'Wasted, feverish, in pain, his doctor diagnosed gout
'and prescribed a course of sea bathing.
'So Burns came here to Solway Firth,
'where he waded out chest deep every day.'
"Were you to see the emaciated figure who now holds the pen to you,
"you would not know your old friend.
"Whether I shall ever get about again is only known to Him,
"the great unknown, whose creature I am.
"I begin to fear the worst."
'Desperate for a medical miracle,
'Burns continued to bathe in the freezing sea water.'
'While back in Dumfries, a debtor was closing in.
'The haberdasher who supplied Burns's military uniform
'had heard the rumour that Burns was dying and called in his debt.
'But this was a debt that Robert Burns couldn't pay.'
'The money from the poems was long gone on failed farms.
'The copyright profits sold long ago.
'His songs he had given away,
'and the Excise salary had been cut due to ill health.'
'Now Burns feared he would be thrown into a debtor's prison,
'to die there - the very same threat
'that had hung over his own father's head, almost till the grave.'
'So Caledonia's bard was forced to write a begging letter,
'to his cousin, asking for £10 to pay off his debt.'
'Then Robert Burns went home to die.'
Robert Burns used his diamond stylus to strike his name into the glass here.
There: "Robert Burns."
It's actually quite moving to be in this room,
after all the years I've spent thinking about Burns
and reading him and admiring him.
To think that he came to such a...
sad end here, at the age of 37.
'Everything in Burns's life seemed to be dramatic
'and his death was no different.'
As he lay dying, his wife, Jean Armour,
was in the room behind me,
days away from giving birth to their latest child.
His last words, allegedly, were,
"Don't let the awkward squad fire over me."
He was keen to go into the next world
very much as he'd wanted to be in this one - a freedom fighter,
somehow above or apart from authority,
from government,
and from control.
'Two days after Robert Burns died,
'the last of his 13 known children was born.
'As well as his children,
'he left behind countless letters and around 600 poems and songs.
'The population of Dumfries was then just 5,000,
'but it's said that 10,000 people
'watched Robert Burns's coffin travel to the graveyard.'
'Robert Burns, the Heaven-taught ploughman,
'died on the 21st of July 1796.
'He was 37 years old.
'He once wrote that the whole of life is but a day
'and what a glorious day Robert Burns spent on earth.'
"For a' that an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
"That Man to Man, the whole world o'er,
"Shall brothers be for a' that."
That was his message to the world but as he lived and breathed,
Robert Burns could never have guessed
that his fame would spread over centuries and over continents.
He's become part of the general oxygen,
part of the common air -
the people's poet, the writer's writer, the friend's friend.
At least, that's what Robert Burns is to me.