Burns Night

It's Burns Night tonight and, for the first time since the Covid pandemic, I'll be toasting the poet and enjoying my supper of haggis, tatties and neeps. 

I'm not Scottish - as far as I know there is no Scots blood in me at all. My lot are all Cornish on my Mum's side and Irish and Cornish on my Dad's (my surname is Irish in origin and means 'Swordsman', which I rather like). And while there are a lot of Scottish Colgans and McColgans I'm not closely related to any that I'm aware of. However, there is a deep bond between the various Celtic peoples who were pushed to the peripheries of the UK by successive waves of invaders such as the Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. There is strength in shared adversity and the Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Manx, and Scots have fought long and hard to retain their unique cultures, including their languages and their music and poetry. 

For me, Burns Night usually means acknowledging that fighting Celtic spirit by way of folk music or after-dinner speaking. My good friend Hodge and I are often booked to play a selection of Scottish folk songs at local pubs but in 2018 I was also asked to do the speech at a Burns Night Supper at a Masonic Lodge (which always takes place on a Thursday so not always on the actual night) and it went down so well that they've asked me back every year since despite the fact that I'm not a Mason myself (or Scottish). 

Covid meant that the 2021 and 2022 dinners were cancelled but I'll be back on my hind legs again this year. And four stones lighter! It means I can enjoy the whole ceremony proper, with a piper, the address to the haggis and all of the rest of it. Wonderful.

That's the Cornish National Tartan on my tie by the way.

The origin of the Burns Night Supper lies with nine of his close friends who, on the 21st of July 1801 - five years after the poet's death at the young age of just 37 - gathered at his childhood home in Alloway. The evening’s main purpose was to celebrate the poet’s timeless works and compelling life in a way that Burns himself would have loved: dinner, drinks, poetry and laughter aplenty. The men enjoyed this night of revelry so much so that they decided to honour Burns again the following year, on what would have been the poet’s 43rd birthday. However, a misunderstanding of the exact date resulted in the men celebrating on the 29th of January. Third time lucky, in 1803, Burns’ life was finally commemorated on his birthday, the 25th of January – a date which would become cemented in Scottish history as ‘Burns Night’. 

Over two centuries later, Burns Night has reached almost every corner of the earth. The proof is in the  Interactive Burns Supper Map, compiled by the Centre for Robert Burns Studies and the University of Glasgow, which is currently the most detailed record of global Burns Night activities ever made (see here). 

If that doesn’t have you convinced of his worldwide stature, Burns remains the only poet in the literary canon to have a day in the calendar devoted to celebrating his works. 

Of course, the only place to properly celebrate Burns is in Scotland, something I've yet to do despite many visits to the country (and I'll be there again salmon fishing in the late spring - okay, attempted salmon fishing). 

But to all my Scottish friends on this special day I offer the Selkirk Grace:

 

Some hae meat and canna eat, 

And some wad eat that want it, 

But we hae meat and we can eat, 

And sae the Lord be thankit.

And to the rest of you I raise a toast to the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns, and say, 

May the best ye've ever seen 

Be the worst ye'll ever see 

May a moose ne'er leave yer girnal 

Wi' a tear drap in his e'e 

May ye aye keep hale an' he'rty 

Till ye're auld eneuch tae dee 

May ye aye be jist as happy 

As we wish ye aye tae be.

Slàinte Mhath!