Robert Burns

by Gabriel Setoun

The little that we do know is worth recording. 'Gilbert,' to quote from Chambers's excellent edition of the poet's works, 'used to speak of his brother as being at this period a more admirable being than at any other. He recalled with delight the days when they had to go with one or two companions to cut peats for the winter fuel, because Robert was sure to enliven their toil with a rattling fire of witty remarks of men and things, mingled with the expressions of a genial glowing heart, and the whole perfectly free from the taint which he afterwards acquired from his contact with the world. Not even in those volumes which afterwards charmed his country from end to end, did Gilbert see his brother in so interesting a light as in those conversations in the bog, with only two or three noteless peasants for an audience.'

This is a beautiful picture: the poet enlivening toil with talk, lighting and illustrating all he said with his lively imagination; Gilbert listening silently, and a group of noteless peasants dumb with wonder. No artist has yet painted this picture of Burns, as his brother saw him, at his best. Writers have glanced at the scene and passed it by. It needed to be looked at with naked, appreciative eyes; they had come with microscopes to the study of Burns. Far more interesting material awaited them farther on: The Poet's Welcome, for example! They could amplify that. Here, too, is the first hint of Burns's brilliant powers as a talker; a glimpse on this lonely peat moss of the man who, not many years afterwards, was to dazzle literary Edinburgh with the sparkle and force of his graphic speech.

Probably it was about this time that Burns went for a summer to a school at Kirkoswald. In his autobiography he says it was his seventeenth year, and, if so, it must have been before the family had left Mount Oliphant. Gilbert's recollection was that the poet was then in his nineteenth year, which would bring the incident into the Lochlea period. In the new edition of Chambers's Burns, William Wallace accepts Robert's statement as correct; yet we hardly think the poet would have spent a summer at school at a time when the family was under the heel of that merciless factor. Besides, although he speaks of his seventeenth year, he has just made mention of the fact that he was in the secret of half the amours of the parish; and it was in the parish of Tarbolton that we hear of him acting 'as the second of night-hunting swains.' Probably also it would be after the family had found comparative peace and quiet in their new home that it would occur to Burns to resume his studies in a methodical way. The point is a small one. The important thing is, that in his seventeenth or nineteenth summer he went to a noted school on a smuggling coast to learn mathematics, surveying, dialling, etc., in which he made a pretty good progress. 'But,' he says, 'I made a greater progress in the knowledge of mankind. The contraband trade was at this time very successful; scenes of swaggering riot and roaring dissipation were as yet new to me, and I was no enemy to social life. Here, though I learnt to look unconcernedly on a large tavern bill and mix without fear in a drunken squabble, yet I went on with a high hand in my geometry.'

The glimpses we have of Burns during his stay here are all characteristic of the man. We see a young man looking out on a world that is new to him; moving in a society to which he had hitherto been a stranger. His eyes are opened not only to the knowledge of mankind, but to a better knowledge of himself. Thirsting for information and power, we find him walking with Willie Niven, his companion from Maybole, away from the village to where they might have peace and quiet, and converse on subjects calculated to improve their minds. They sharpen their wits in debate, taking sides on speculative questions, and arguing the matter to their own satisfaction. No doubt in these conversations and debates he was developing that gift of clear reasoning and lucid expression which afterwards so confounded the literary and legal luminaries of Edinburgh. They had made a study of logic, but here was a man from the plough who held his own with them, discussing questions which in their opinion demanded a special training. For an uncouth country ploughman gifted with song they were prepared, but they did not expect one who could meet them in conversation with the fence and foil of a skilled logician. We may see also his burning desire for distinction in that scene in school when he led the self-confident schoolmaster into debate and left him humiliated in the eyes of the pupils. Even in his contests with John Niven there was the same eagerness to excel. When he could not beat him in wrestling or putting the stone, he was fain to content himself with a display of his superiority in mental calisthenics. The very fact that a charming fillette overset his trigonometry, and set him off at a tangent, is a characteristic ending to this summer of study. Peggy Thomson in her kail-yard was too much for the fiery imagination of a poet: 'it was in vain to think of doing more good at school.'

Too much stress is not to be laid on Burns's own mention of 'scenes of swaggering riot and dissipation' at Kirkoswald. Such things were new to him, and made a lasting impression on his mind. We know that he returned home very considerably improved. His reading was enlarged with the very important addition of Thomson's and Shenstone's works. He had seen human nature in a new phasis, and now he engaged in literary correspondence with several of his schoolfellows.

It was not long after his return from Kirkoswald that the Bachelor's Club was founded, and here could Burns again exercise his debating powers and find play for his expanding intellect. The members met to forget their cares in mirth and diversion, 'without transgressing the bounds of innocent decorum'; and the chief diversion appears to have been debate.

If we are to believe Gilbert, the seven years of their stay in Tarbolton parish were not marked by much literary improvement in Robert. That may well have been Gilbert's opinion at the time; for the poet was working hard on the farm, and often spending an evening at Tarbolton or at one or other of the neighbouring farms. But he managed all the same to get through a considerable amount of reading; and though, perhaps, he did not devote himself so sedulously to books as he had been accustomed to do in the seclusion of Mount Oliphant, he was storing his mind in other ways. His keen observation was at work, and he was studying what was of more interest and importance to him than books—'men, their manners and their ways.' 'I seem to be one sent into the world,' he remarks in a letter to Mr. Murdoch, 'to see and observe; and I very easily compound with the knave who tricks me of my money, if there be anything original about him, which shows me human nature in a different light from anything I have seen before.' Partly it was this passion to see and observe, partly it was another passion that made him the assisting confidant of most of the country lads in their amours. 'I had a curiosity, zeal, and intrepid dexterity in these matters which recommended me as a proper second in duels of that kind.' His song, My Nannie, O, which belongs to this period, is not only true as a lyric of sweet and simple love, but is also true to the particular style of love-making then in vogue.

'The westlin wind blaws loud an' shill;
The night's baith mirk and rainy, O:
But I'll get my plaid, an' out I'll steal,
An' owre the hills to Nannie, O.'

According to Gilbert, the poet himself was constantly the victim of some fair enslaver, although, being jealous of those richer than himself, he was not aspiring in his loves. But while there was hardly a comely maiden in Tarbolton to whom he did not address a song, we are not to imagine that he was frittering his heart away amongst them all. A poet may sing lyrics of love to many while his heart is true to one. The one at this time to Robert Burns was Ellison Begbie, to whom some of his songs are addressed—notably Mary Morrison, one of the purest and most beautiful love lyrics ever poet penned. Nothing is more striking than the immense distance between this composition and any he had previously written. In this song he for the first time stepped to the front rank as a song-writer, and gave proof to himself, if to nobody else at the time, of the genius that was in him. A few letters to Ellison Begbie are also preserved, pure and honourable in sentiment, but somewhat artificial and formal in expression. It was because of his love for her, and his desire to be settled in life, that he took to the unfortunate flax-dressing business in Irvine. That is something of an unlovely and mysterious episode in Burns's life. Suffice it to say in his own words: 'This turned out a sadly unlucky affair. My partner was a scoundrel of the first water, and, to finish the whole business, while we were giving a welcome carousal to the New Year, our shop, by the drunken carelessness of my partner's wife, took fire and burned to ashes, and I was left, like a true poet, not worth a sixpence.'

His stay at Irvine was neither pleasant for him at the time nor happy in its results. He met there 'acquaintances of a freer manner of thinking and living than he had been used to'; and it needs something more than the family misfortunes and the deathbed of his father to account for that terrible fit of hypochondria when he returned to Lochlea. 'For three months I was in a diseased state of body and mind, scarcely to be envied by the hopeless wretches who have just got their sentence, Depart from me, ye cursed.'