Burns and Macbeth: Twenty-First Century Scottish Heroes
By HARRY McGRATH
EDINBURGH – It would be fair to say that here in Scotland Robert Burns’ 251st birthday passed off with considerably less fanfare than his 250th.
Last year’s birthday marked the start of Scotland’s Year of Homecoming and so there was an explosion of Burns celebrations all around the country.
It’s not really surprising, then, that this year’s Burns Day was somewhat muted by comparison.
My own unusual, possibly unique, record as far as Burns is concerned remains intact. I have yet to attend a Burns Supper in Scotland despite having attended as many as five in a week during various “Burns Seasons” in Vancouver.
My previous incarnation as Simon Fraser University’s professional Scotsman is the most likely explanation for this peculiar phenomenon, but it could also be indicative of a wider trend.
Nobody is counting Burns Suppers in Canada, but it is obvious to me that the number of haggis, neeps and poetry bashes is increasing by the year.
In Scotland, until Homecoming worked its magic, the number of Burns celebrations was levelling off or even decreasing.
There was some wailing and gnashing of teeth at the end of 2008 when Visit Scotland, with no sense of irony, revealed that for the first time there were more Burns Suppers in England than in Scotland - 1011 to 802.
And so without the energizing influence of Homecoming, it could be that Burns Suppers will take their place along side piping as things that are done better furth of Scotland.
I am sure that, once Scottish pride is assuaged, this will be seen as a good thing and of mutual benefit to the home country and (in Homecoming speak) its “affinity” diaspora.
I was fascinated, for instance, by a recent example of Burnsian international cooperation. A letter by the poet’s widow Jean Armour has been discovered in a New York junk shop by American scholar Dr. Nancy Groce and purchased for $75.
It was written in 1804 and probably intended for one Mary Riddell who lived in Dumfries. In it, Armour tells of the death of her two children and explains that she is still living in the house in Dumfries where Burns died eight years previously. The letter is to be acquired by the National Library of Scotland.
While waiting in vain for an embossed invitation to celebrate Scotland’s hero-poet, I spent my time reading about Macbeth, arguably the country’s most infamous anti-hero.
I’d been deployed by a national newspaper to review a fascinating new book by historian Fiona Watson called Macbeth: The True Story which sets out to reclaim the real Macbeth from Shakespeare’s dark version.
I’ve been down the real Macbeth route before. In 2005 a motion presented in the Scottish Parliament to recognize the achievements of the real Macbeth received some signatures and a flurry of attention.
I remember making an uneasy satellite appearance on a Toronto talk show and having to tease out the little I knew about the real Macbeth across a 10 minute slot.
I knew, for instance, that he ruled Scotland for 17 years in the Eleventh Century, had been praised by the poets for his generosity (“I will be joyful in him”) and ability to feed his people (“Scotland will be brimful in the west and in the east”), killed a young Duncan not an old one, and died at Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire not Dunsinane in Perthshire. It was the longest 10 minutes of my life.
In truth, there is not a lot more to know about the “true” Macbeth. What Watson does is place Macbeth in his historical context and set out to trace how the reputation of an apparently good king suffered such calumny.
She rejects the prevailing notion that Shakespeare did it and posits an alternative one that “he [Shakespeare] was merely repeating, with some of his own embellishment, what was already being said of Macbeth by the Scots themselves.”
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Watson’s book is her noble attempt to win something back for Scotland and its history.
She has no time for Dark Age clichés or the “no gods and precious few heroes” school of Scottish self-denigration.
Even poor old Visit Scotland gets a scolding for insisting on applying the word “turbulent” to Scotland’s history.
It is, she insists, “a term that has stuck like a knife in the back of attempts to moderate our perception of the Scottish past as more violent and less sophisticated than anywhere else – especially if that ‘else’ is England.”
Watson certainly succeeds in moderating our perceptions of Macbeth not only by exploring his “good” kingship but by viewing him and Eleventh Century Scotland as “part of a dynamic Continental society.”
The real Macbeth and his wife Gruach gave grants of land in Scotland for monastic use before making a pilgrimage to Rome where they “scattered money among the poor like seed” and were greeted as visitors of importance.
I don’t suppose Macbeth will ever acquire the iconic status that Burns has in Scotland no matter how often his legacy is reinvestigated.
However, there are lessons in his story that modern Scotland could learn from. According to Watson, Macbeth once provided sanctuary for a boatload of Norman refugees who were under threat in England.
This gesture compares very favourably with our modern Border Agency which is still locking up children in Scottish detention centres.
And some would argue that the Continental connection which Watson explores has been sundered in modern times. A Brussels bureaucrat of my acquaintance recently described Scotland as “Europe’s invisible country.”
And so here’s to Macbeth and Burns in 2010! They are an unlikely couple but may not be as incompatible as previously thought.
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