Held on February 2, 50 lovers of poetry, song, haggis and the wee dram
gathered on our patio to pay tribute to Robert Burns
(our thanks to Patty Hannegan and Campbell and Joyce for the photos)
 Campbell and the Buddha with the traditional
Mardi Gras Beads |
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 Enter the Haggis |
 Fair fa' your honest, soncie face |
 and cut ye up with ready slight |
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To the Lassies
by Larry Ward
Among our young lassies there’s many so fair
She’ll beg e’er she work and she’ll play e’er she beg
At thirteen her maidenhead flew to the gate
And the door o’her cage stands open yet.
The curls and links o’ her bonnie hair
Would put you in mind that the lassie has mair.
A span o’ delight is her middle so jump
A taper, white leg and a thumpin’ thigh
She’ll stick at no price and you give her good measure.
what willingly do what they do
And never a poor wench
But a friend in a pinch.
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 To the Lassies |
 Jane prepares for the Reply |
 Tom, Larry and Cheryl discuss the Toast |
The Lassies’ Reply
by Jane Kronzer
Robert Burns was a zealous patriot who fiecely loved his Scotland
and Scotland’s fine whisky. So, in honor of Robert Burns and single
malts, I offer a toast:
May your lover be as sweet as a Speyside
May they have a disposition as smooth as an East Highland
May they have a sense of humor as dry as an Islay
May they keep your romance as spicy as a Northern Highland
May they not give you a headache, like so many blends
May they be aged over 18 years
May your lover also know that honor means “get on her and
stay on her”
Let us raise our glasses to Robert Burns and toast life, whisky
and honor
 Will Sutherland |
 Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled... |
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The Immortal Memory
by Tom Ovens
I’d like to begin my remarks by quoting the malt whisky menu
here at C.B. Hannegan’s:
“Most people know little of Scotland beyond bagpipes and
kilts. They little realize how much the Scots have affected our daily
lives. Our world is unimaginable without inventions such as the
telephone of Alexander Graham Bell and the television of James
Logie Baird. Our cars and bicycles are cushioned by tires invented
by John Dunlop and ride on hard paved roads first perfected by
John McAdam. The bicycle itself was invented by a Scot:
Kirkpatrick MacMillan. The Encyclopedia Brittannica came out of
Edinburgh and even non-readers know of Sherlock Holmes, Long
John Silver and Peter Pan, the creations of Arthur Conan Doyle,
Robert Louis Stevenson and James M. Barrie. And just about the
entire world sings a song of Robert Burns on midnight at New
Year’s Eve.”
The list of Scottish contributions to our world is extensive.
So... why no Robert Louis Stevenson Nights? No Alexander
Graham Bell Suppers? Why, at one thousand one hundred and
nineteen official Burns Federation Chapters and countless small
gatherings such as our own, do we gather to honor a man who lived
over two centuries ago? He died at the age of 37, a short life by any
standards, venturing from his native Scotland once only for a brief
sojourn in Northern England. He wrote in late 18th century
vernacular which is as foreign to us as...as talking to the McNab
Clan over there. To those who know Robert Burns only from the singing of
Old Lang Syne, this celebration must be a puzzlement. It can’t be an
excuse for just another party, as if we needed an excuse around
here. It certainly isn’t the drawing of the curious just to find out what
the heck is a Haggis anyway? And it is certainly more than just the
harkening back to an imagined past, to a mythical, romantic,
pastoral time, which the Scotland of Robert Burns’ day most
certainly was not.
I think the reason he endures is, quite simply, that he is
one of us. Even from our point of view in the 21st century, we can
look at Burns and say, “ I know what he’s talking about! I know
what he means!” We recognize the hypocrisies he lashed out
against and the foibles he admitted to. We look at him, his works
and his life, and we see something of ourselves. We see something
of the human condition which is a constant despite the passage of
centuries. In short, he was human, with all the inconsistencies and
contradictions that we all have within ourselves. Added to this was
his fervent belief that the worth of a person was more than rank or
privilege or money and that human kind was one.
Now, a long, traditional Immortal Memory can make the
Missa Solemnis sound like a Broadway musical. So I’ll try to keep
this on the short side. Mark Twain was right when he said, “It’s a
terrible death to be talked to death!” But I will address three areas
within which we can see Robert Burns for who he was...
and for who we are.
“The sweetest hours that e’er I spend
Are spent among the lasses, O”
“Green Grow the Rashes” One of his famous traits was his love of
women. Of course the case can be made that this “famous trait” was
nothing more or less than a love of sex: the using of the fair sex and
tossing them aside for the next one.
But he was a true Romantic, he wrote:
“The deities that I adore
Are social Peace and Plenty
I’m better pleased to make one more
Than be the death of twenty”
And this attitude can be seen in the impressive amount of children,
at least 10, that he fathered in and out of wedlock. In his many
affairs, he did indeed take advantage of his looks and charms. And
who amongst us would not, were we able to do so? But, even before
his celebrity status, he was your basic chick magnet. Women were
as much attracted to him as he to them. Yet he was a more than just
a rutting flirt with the morals of your average bartender. His heart,
he wrote, was like “tinder, eternally lighted up by some Goddess or
another.” That the inevitable result of these dalliances -- children --
came along, is not surprising. What is surprising is the joy he took in
all his children. He welcomed them with unabashed delight, as in
this poem to his first, out of wedlock child:
Though ye come here a wee unsought for.
Lord grant that thou may inherit
Thy mother’s looks and graceful merit,
And thy poor worthless daddie’s spirit
Without his failings!!”
attractive alternative to him, as he did love his women. Love, he
said, was the “first of human joys, our dearest pleasure here below.”
women. As he proclaimed at the end of “Green Grow the Rashes”:
Her noblest work she classes.
Her ‘prentice hand, she tried on man...
And then she made the lasses.”
“Let other Poets raise a fracas
‘Bout vines and wines and drunken Bacchus.
I sing the juice Scotch beer can mak’ us.”
can all identify with: his love of a good time fueled by John
Barleycorn in all his guises.
What dangers thou canst make us scorn.
Wi’ tipenny we fear nae evil,
Wi’ usquaebach, we’ll face the devil!”
was more than just the drunkeness of the alcoholic. He loved the
fellowship it seemed to engender. When he was 21, he and his
brother founded the Tarbolton Bachelor’s Club, dedicated to serious
discussion and debate and some pretty serious drinking.
A cuckold, coward loon is he.
Who first beside his chair to fall
He is king amongst us three”
lodgings a floor below a brothel. He frequented taverns which were
worlds apart from the salons where he was the literary darling. He
joined a men’s club, whose mocking of propriety was shown in the
military titles each member assumed and the bawdiness of their
meetings. Burns wrote many of his bawdy verses and songs for them. These of course, are not so well known having been kept
from the eyes of the general public until recently. But it was here
that sex and drinking came together. Not so very different from
today and what goes on in back of me up in the cheap seats.
Each man a glass in hand.
And may his great posterity
Ne’er fail in Old Scotland!”
And lastly (you’ll be glad to hear) what about this
Plowman/Poet role that figures so much in Burns’ reputation? You
know, the rustic, almost “noble savage” type? Well, it’s true he was
a farmer. As a child he learned the hardscabble life of a tenant
farmer: the crops, the seasons. He continued this as a young adult in
partnership with his brother. Even after the successful publication of
his second volume of poems, he wrote that he intended to use the
proceeds “to return to my old acquaintance, the plow.”
But his education had not been neglected. He was taught by a
teacher hired jointly by his father and neighbors for the benefit of all
their children. He was educated in the English classics: Milton,
Shakespeare, Pope. He spoke, and could write “proper English”.
Yet he chose to write in the vernacular Scots of his day. And this
made him a bit of an oddity. After the publication of his first volume
of poems, he became the flavor of the month in the salons of
Edinburgh where he was, as he described it, “paraded like a learned
pig.” He played the educated rustic because the money, the celebrity
and the women were there. Yet by all accounts he held his own, in
conversation, in debate, and in manners simply because he knew
that he was as worthy as his so called betters. He believed with all
his heart what he wrote in “A Man’s a Man”:
“The rank is but the guinea’s stamp”
or, to put it in our words: social position is merely a result of having
money and not necessarily an indication of character. Now is there
anyone here, in 21st century America, outside of Washington, D.C.,
that is, that can argue with that?
He believed in the common people because at heart he was
one. As he wrote in “The Cotter’s Saturday Night”:
An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”
Enough for Immortal Memories a plenty: his contempt for the
hypocrisies of his day; his love of Scotland mixed with his
internationalism; his ability to take the commonplace and draw from
it lessons of life. But let us just end with this:
After all the seeming contradictions of his life, what are we to
make of him?
Was he a womanizer or true lover of women?
Was he a simple farmer with a gift or a gifted poet able to
work the monied folk of his day?
Was he the carouser who loved fellowship or just loved getting legless?
The answer, I think, is: all of the above. The saying goes,
“Condemn not the dream, but condemn the dreamer.” So, condemn
Robert Burns if you will for his failings. But don’t condemn him for
his strivings. Because he does embody that which we all hold most
high: a deploring of hypocrisy and unearned status; and a love of life,
of friendship and of honesty. And, as the final measure of what we
all strive for: a belief in the final kinship of humanity, as echoed in
the final lines of “A Man’s a Man”:
As come it will for all that.
That, man to man, the world o’er
Shall brothers be for all that”
So, charge your glasses, raise them high, and join with me:
To Robert Burns!