Robert Burns

by Gabriel Setoun

'But I gae mad at their grimaces,
Their sighin', cantin', grace-prood faces,
Their three-mile prayers, and half-mile graces,
Their raxin' conscience,
Whase greed, revenge, and pride disgraces
Waur nor their nonsense.'

The first of Burns's satires, if we except his epistle to John Goudie, wherein we have a hint of the acute differences of the time, is his poem The Twa Herds, or The Holy Tulzie. The two herds were the Rev. John Russell and the Rev. Alexander Moodie, both afterwards mentioned in The Holy Fair. These reverend gentlemen, so long sworn friends, bound by a common bond of enmity against a certain New Light minister of the name of Lindsay, 'had a bitter black outcast,' and, in the words of Lockhart, 'abused each other coram populo with a fiery virulence of personal invective such as has long been banished from all popular assemblies.' This degrading spectacle of two priests ordained to preach the gospel of love, attacking each other with all the rancour of malice and uncharitableness, and foaming with the passion of a pothouse, was too flagrant an occasion for satire for Burns to miss. He held them up to ridicule in The Holy Tulzie, and showed them themselves as others saw them. It has been objected by some that Burns made use of humorous satire; did not censure with the fiery fervour of a righteous indignation. Burns used the weapon he could handle best; and a powerful weapon it is in the hands of a master. We acknowledge Horace's satires to be scathing enough, though they are light and delicate, almost trifling and flippant at times. He has not the volcanic utterance of Juvenal, but I doubt not his castigations were quite as effective. 'Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?' Burns might have well replied to his censors with the same question. Quick on the heels of this poem came Holy Willie's Prayer, wherein he took up the cudgels for his friend, Mr. Gavin Hamilton, and fought for him in his own enthusiastic way. The satire here is so scathing and scarifying that we can only read and wonder, shuddering the while for the wretched creature so pitilessly flayed. Not a word is wasted; not a line without weight. The character of the self-righteous, sensual, spiteful Pharisee is a merciless exposure, and, hardest of all, the picture is convincing. For Burns believed in his own mind that these men, Holy Willie and the crew he typified, were thoroughly dishonest. They were not in his judgment—and Burns had keen insight—mere bigots dehumanised by their creed, but a pack of scheming, calculating scoundrels.

'They take religion in their mouth,
They talk o' mercy, grace, and truth,
For what? to gie their malice skouth
On some puir wight,
And hunt him down, o'er right and ruth
To ruin straight.'

But it must be noted in Holy Willie that the poet is not letting himself out in a burst of personal spleen. He is again girding at the rigidity of a lopped and maimed Calvinism, and attacking the creed through the man. The poem is a living presentment of the undiluted, puritanic doctrine of the Auld Light party, to whom Calvinism meant only a belief in hell and an assurance of their own election. It is evident that Burns was not sound on either essential. The Address to the Unco Guid is a natural sequel to this poem, and, in a sense, its culmination. There is the same strength of satire, but now it is more delicate and the language more dignified. There is the same condemnation of pharisaism; but the poem rises to a higher level in its appeal for charitable views of human frailty, and its kindly counsel to silence; judgment is to be left to Him who

'Knows each cord, its various tone,
Each spring its various bias.'

Of all the series of satires, however, The Holy Fair is the most remarkable. It is in a sense a summing up of all the others that preceded it. The picture it gives of the mixed and motley multitude fairing in the churchyard at Mauchline, with a relay of ministerial mountebanks catering for their excitement, is true to the life. It is begging the question to deplore that Burns was provoked to such an attack. The scene was provocation sufficient to any right-thinking man who associated the name of religion with all that was good and beautiful and true. Such a state of things demanded reformation. The churchyard—that holy ground on which the church was built and sanctified by the dust of pious and saintly men—cried aloud against the desecration to which it was subjected; and Burns, who alone had the power to purify it from such profanities, would have been untrue to himself and a traitor to the religion of his country had he merely shrugged his shoulders and allowed things to go on as they were going. And after all what was the result? For the poem is part and parcel of the end it achieved. 'There is a general feeling in Ayrshire,' says Chambers, 'that The Holy Fair was attended with a good effect; for since its appearance the custom of resorting to the occasion in neighbouring parishes for the sake of holiday-making has been much abated and a great increase of decorous observance has taken place.' To that nothing more need be added.

In this series of satires The Address to the Deil ought also to be included. Burns had no belief at all in that Frankenstein creation. It was too bad, he thought, to invent such a monster for the express purpose of imputing to him all the wickedness of the world. If such a creature existed, he was rather sorry for the maligned character, and inclined to think that there might be mercy even for him.

'I'm wae to think upon yon den,
Even for your sake.'

Speaking of this address, Auguste Angellier says: 'All at once in their homely speech they heard the devil addressed not only without awe, but with a spice of good-fellowship and friendly familiarity. They had never heard the devil spoken of in this tone before. It was a charming address, jocund, full of raillery and good-humour, with a dash of friendliness, as if the two speakers had been cronies and companions ready to jog along arm in arm to the nether regions. He simply laughs Satan out of countenance, turns him to ridicule, pokes his fun at him, scolds and defies him just as he might have treated a person from whom he had nothing to fear. Nor is that all. He must admonish him, tell him he has been naughty long enough, and wind up by giving him some good advice, counselling him to mend his ways. This was certainly without theological precedent. It was, however, a simple idea which would have arranged matters splendidly.... Even to-day to speak well of the devil is an abomination almost as serious as to speak evil of the Deity. There was assuredly a great fortitude of mind as well as daring of conduct to write such a piece as this.'

The poem has done more than anything else to kill the devil of superstition in Scotland. After his death he found, it is averred, a quiet resting-place in Kirkcaldy, where pious people have built a church on his grave.