BURNS IN DUMFRIES: In the Footsteps of Scotland's Bard
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THE ROBERT BURNS house in Dumfries, Scotland. |
By HARRY McGRATH
I often think that the best response to Robert Burns's warning that "The best laid schemes o' Mice and Men/Gang aft agley" is not to lay any schemes. That's probably why I find myself in Dumfries in mid-January with four hours to spare and nothing planned.
Fortunately Dumfries and Galloway Council are only too happy to do the planning for me and I start "A Burns Trail - in the footsteps of Robert Burns, Scotland's National Bard" at the poet's house.
When I push open the heavy door to Robert Burns House, a startled caretaker drops the book he is reading and jumps to his feet. He isn't expecting me or, it seems, anyone. I sign the guest book and notice that the last person to do that was here two weeks ago.
It is well documented that this house represented a significant upturn in Burns's fortunes and is much larger than the flat he and his family originally occupied in Dumfries.
And yet, the first impression is of how tiny the rooms are and how sad the place is. I read somewhere that he lay dying while staring out at the Galloway hills, but the windows are so small that I can barely see the street, never mind the countryside.
The artefacts on display add to the air of melancholy, especially those relating to Burns' wife, Jean Armour. She lived here for 38 years, Burns for only three.
There is a portrait of her as an older woman, a bible with her name in it, her glasses, and, most poignantly, a chair she bought soon after Burns died which is still positioned by the fireplace.
Down the street at St. Michael's Kirkyard, the wind is howling and the rain starting to scythe across the gravestones. There's not a soul in sight, but any number that I can't see. Burns is here and Jean and many of their friends.
In the north-east corner is the site of Burns' original grave. Some of the iron railings around it are missing and it backs on to an alley of dilapidated garages and lock ups.
The mausoleum they moved him to is in the other corner of the graveyard. It is "a more fitting location" according to the tourist guide. And yet the mausoleum seems out of place amongst the solidity and democracy of guid Scottish stone.
Jean was laid here with him and a cast of the poet's skull taken at the same time that she was interred in the belief that Phrenologists could use it to identify the source of his character and genius.
Outside the graveyard, someone has put up a poster, the Wayside Pulpit. It says, "In a way goodness counts more than greatness." In a way recognition is worse than neglect.
The Robert Burns Centre is on the other side of the River Nith which is in winter-spate and batters against the bridge foundations. The display area here is closed for lunch and so I roost in the Hullabaloo restaurant at the other end of the building.
It strikes me that hullabaloo is a pretty good word to describe what is about to happen in the name of Burns.
With two weeks to Burns Day, they are girding up all over the world to remember the man and his poetry except, apparently, in Dumfries where at 2:10 PM the display area still isn't open and at 2:15 PM I give up. As I walk away towards the Nith, I think I hear the slip of a reluctant bolt somewhere behind the din of the water.
My destination now is the Globe Inn, Burns' favourite howff. I pass the statue of Burns and his dog Luath on the High Street. The poet looks well, sitting on a tree trunk with his foot across the back of the dog's neck.
Luath, however, is not quite right and has the mane and tail of a male lion. The guide says that "the unnamed craftsman who reproduced Luath had obviously never seen a true Scots collie."
In the Globe, the denizens of Dumfries are gathering for their Friday night libation. The ladies from the bakery are on one side, a group of young latex-spattered painters on the other. Access to the bar is partially blocked by two large puggies (gambling machines) with whirling lights, but the main focus of the room is a wide-screen television permanently tuned to a rock video channel.
Here I do have a plan of sorts and soon the kenspeckle figure of Professor Ted Cowan, frequent visitor to Vancouver and now Director of Glasgow University's Crichton Campus in Dumfries, enters the bar.
His latest work is on Scotland's chapbook heritage and even a cursory glance through it reveals the extent to which the ordinary voices of Scotland turned to Burns (and he to them) for inspiration in poetry or song.
Here, for instance, is the first verse of a song collected by Cowan but originally published in a Dumfries chapbook called Garland of New Songs:
Come sit down my Cronies and gie me your crack,
Let the win tak the care and the life on its back;
Our hearts to despondency we never will submit,
For we've ay been provided for and sae will we yet,&c
And as we sit bousin, at the nappy, it strikes me that this is the way Burns would have liked it. The perpetual rock songs are still songs of some kind and he would surely have approved of the young, and not so young, people gathered to drink and listen to them.
And even the gamblers, their coins, the puggies and the loud cries of joy they occasionally elicit, might remind him of a young man who published a three shilling book of poems in his own dialect and hoped for the best.
Harry McGrath is the Coordinator of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University currently residing in Scotland. He can be reached by e-mail at: harrym@sfu.ca.
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