And for today’s dose of culture, here’s a verse from his:
"Does Haughty Gaul Invasion Threat?"
O let us not, like snarling curs,
In wrangling be divided,
Till, slap! come in an unco loun,
And wi' a rung decide it!
Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang ourselves united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted!
No! never but by British hands
Shall British wrangs be righted!
Unlike Tom Brown in The Scotsman, I won’t attempt to prise open the gates and release the hounds of hell by suggesting that he was a Unionist-for the more extremist wing of Scottish nationalism, a claim, akin, it would appear, to alleging that their mothers were dodgy oul English slappers.
But while I'm at it, I think I’ll update my blog motif above with another of his quotations:
"Whatever might be my sentiments of republics, ancient or modern, as to Britain I ever abjured the idea. A constitution which, in its original principles, experience has proved has in every way to fitted for our happiness, it would be insanity to abandon for untried visionary theory."
5 comments:
I tend to see Burns as like many Scots - patriotic about Scotland but ambivalent rather than hostile against the British state.
A bit like the "Grandfather" of the Czech nation Palacky. When Austria faced revolt from Hungarian, German, Italian and to a lesser degree Polish nationalists in 1848, the small Slavic nations such as the Czechs, Slovaks, Croats and Slovenes rallied around the Austrian state.
Palacky memorably defended the union of these people within Austria saying that against larger more hostile states, Austria was positively enlightend. "Indeed if Austria did not exist, she would need to have been invented".
This quote was often used against Czech nationalists that one of their heroes was pro-Vienna.
But---
As Palacky lay dying whilst under virtual house arrest a few years later he declared---
"Before Austria we were and after Austria we will be again!"
Very nice, but did Burns say anything similar?
To expand on the above, Palacky is credited with creating the doctrine of Austro-Slavism, the belief that the true home of the small Slavic nations was within the Austrian state. This was to counter "the Prussian Jackboot and Cossack's Whip (of Russia)". Not to mention (for the south Slavs) the twin threats of the Ottoman Empire and later on a resurgant unified Italy.
However Austria or to be more correct, Austria-Hungary collapsed largely due to the fact that it failed to adjust its institutions for the national aspirations of the people within it. Bluntly it became decrepit.
100 years ago Austria-Hungary was a multi-national state that was slowly unwinding, although nobody really wanted to see its end, with outdated institutions, reluctant to reform and whose foriegn, economic and defence policies were in the thraw of a larger, more aggressive, more militaristic cousin state. Headed by a long serving, venerable head of state.
No paralells between that and the UK then!
Chekov
"Whit is a this din aboot the toon o'London".
And of course "Parcel of Rogues in a nation" - full text.
And his rant about the English after in his only south of the border when he got fined for allowing his horse to graze on the common ground in Carlisle.
Also according to Burns expert Patrick Scott-Hogg there are a number of poems with a nationalist vent that are in Burns' style published anonymously in the last years of Burns' life. It has to be remembered that Burns in those years was government servant who already had been disciplined for showing sympathy towards the French Revolution.
He was an ambivalent character.
Interestingly he famously cursed the peerage in a "Man's a man". The irony is that amongst his descendents are the Viscounts Weir of Cathcart (the industrialist family famous for making pumps) who sat in the Lords for four generations!
Present Viscount Weir has his estate near his his forbears stamping grounds in Mauchline, Ayrshire.
It seems to be that Burns had a visceral dislike of the English at odds with his political support of the Union, unproven anonymous poems not withstanding. That's not entirely unusual for unionists. I experience it every time the English football or rugby team take the field. It certainly does not equate to enough evidence to imply nationalism.
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