Robert Burns, Principal Shairp [warren buffett book recommendations txt] 📗

are wholly unlike those songs which seize on the changing aspects of society. As the phases of social life change, these are forgotten. But no time can superannuate the subjects which Burns has sung; they are rooted in the primary strata, which are steadfast. Then as the subjects are primary, so the feeling with which Burns regards them is primary too - that is, he gives us the first spontaneous gush - the first throb of his heart, and that a most strong, simple, manly heart. The feeling is not turned over in the reflective faculty, and there artistically shaped, - not subtilized and refined away till it has lost its power and freshness; but given at first hand, as it comes warm from within. When he is (p. 205) at his best you seem to hear the whole song warbling through his spirit, naturally as a bird's. The whole subject is wrapped in an element of music, till it is penetrated and transfigured by it. No one else has so much of the native lilt in him. When his mind was at the white heat, it is wonderful how quickly he struck off some of his most perfect songs. And yet he could, when it was required, go back upon them, and retouch them line by line, as we saw him doing in Ye Banks and Braes . In the best of them the outward form is as perfect as the inward music is all-pervading, and the two are in complete harmony.

To mention a few instances in which he has given their ultimate and consummate expression to fundamental human emotions, four songs may be mentioned, in each of which a different phase of love has been rendered for all time -

Of a' the airts the wind can blaw,

Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon,

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine;

and that other, in which the calm depth of long-wedded and happy love utters itself, so blithely yet pathetically, -

John Anderson, my Jo, John.

Then for comic humour of courtship, there is -

Duncan Gray cam here to woo.

For that contented spirit which, while feeling life's troubles, yet keeps "aye a heart aboon them a'," we have -

Contented wi' little, and cantie wi' mair.

For friendship rooted in the past, there is - (p. 206)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

even if we credit antiquity with some of the verses.

For wild and reckless daring, mingled with a dash of finer feeling, there is Macpherson's Farewell . For patriotic heroism -

Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled;

and for personal independence, and sturdy, if self-asserting, manhood -

A man's a man for a' that.

These are but a few of the many permanent emotions to which Burns has given such consummate expression, as will stand for all time.

In no mention of his songs should that be forgotten which is so greatly to the honour of Burns. He was emphatically the purifier of Scottish song. There are some poems he has left, there are also a few among his songs, which we could wish that he had never written. But we who inherit Scottish song as he left it, can hardly imagine how much he did to purify and elevate our national melodies. To see what he has done in this way, we have but to compare Burns's songs with the collection of Scottish songs published by David Herd, in 1769, a few years before Burns appeared. A genuine poet, who knew well what he spoke of, the late Thomas Aird, has said, "Those old Scottish melodies, sweet and strong though they were, strong and sweet, were, all the more for their very strength and sweetness, a moral plague, from the indecent words to which many of them had long been set. How was the plague to be stayed? All the preachers in the land could not divorce the grossness from the music. The only way was to put (p. 207) something better in its stead. This inestimable something better Burns gave us."

So purified and ennobled by Burns, these songs embody human emotion in its most condensed and sweetest essence. They appeal to all ranks, they touch all ages, they cheer toil-worn men under every clime. Wherever the English tongue is heard, beneath the suns of India, amid African deserts, on the western prairies of America, among the squatters of Australia, whenever men of British blood would give vent to their deepest, kindliest, most genial feelings, it is to the songs of Burns they spontaneously turn, and find in them at once a perfect utterance, and a fresh tie of brotherhood. It is this which forms Burns's most enduring claim on the world's gratitude. Imprint

Publication Date: 05-22-2008

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