Ar Turas - Scottish Ancestry and Genealogy Research

Robert Burns

Robert Burns was born on January 25th 1759 in a clay cottage in Alloway built by his father William Burnes (sic) who had left his native Kincardineshire to try his hand at farming in Ayrshire. William Burnes was ambitious for his children and formed a consortium of himself and four neighbours to pay for a schoolteacher for their sons. They employed John Murdoch, a young man aged 18 years, who boarded in turn with each of the families. It seems that Murdoch found the young Robert difficult, preferring his younger brother Gilbert:

“Gilbert always appeared to me to possess a more lively imagination, to be more of the wit, than Robert. I attempted to teach them a little church music... Robert’s ear, in particular was remarkably dull, and his voice untunable. It was long before I could get them to distinguish one tune from another.”

This seems bizarre in hindsight, given Burns’ position as one of Scotland’s foremost song collectors and composers. Indeed Murdoch’s experience may have been due to the wrong type of music. Burns’ mother, Agnes Broun, was a singer of folk songs and the words and rhythms of these songs surrounded Burns from his earliest days. He loved Scottish folk songs and one of the attractions of his future wife, Jean Armour, was her ability as a singer.

One of the first turning points of Burns’ life was at the age of 15 years when he was paired with Nelly Kilpatrick for that year’s harvest. He fell in love; later admitting that,

“For my own part I never had the least thought or inclination of turning Poet till I got once heartily in Love, and then Rhyme and Song were, in a manner, the spontaneous language of my heart.”

He wrote a poem to Nell (unpublished during his life but appeared in his Commonplace Book under the title Song) set to the tune of Nelly’s favourite reel.

Life as the son of a tenant farmer was hard; William Burnes never made a success of any of his ventures. As a teenager Robert had to undertake extremely hard, physical work which sowed the seeds of the heart problem (rheumatic endocarditis) which would eventually lead to his early death.

At the age of 21 years, “abandoned of aim or view in life; with a strong appetite for sociability...” Robert was instrumental in founding the Tarbolton Bachelors’ Club. The poet in him needed an audience and the club provided him with the perfect stage. At the club, which met every fourth Monday, the young men debated questions on all manner of subjects (except religion), discussed literature, sang and drank. Around this time he also joined the Kilwinning Lodge of the Freemasons.

In 1784 Burns met Jean Armour, daughter of James Armour – a highly respectable Mauchline master mason. By early 1786 Jean was pregnant and the couple intended to marry. However, the Armour family would not countenance having him as a son-in-law, not even to ‘make an honest woman’ of Jean. Robert and Jean contracted an irregular marriage, going so far as to sign a written document drawn up between them. Jean’s father was horrified and ordered Jean to surrender the document which he then gave to his lawyer to have the names deleted. As well as the anger of the family, the couple had to endure the punishment of the church: they would have to attend three consecutive Sundays to be named in public as fornicators. Burns was so upset by what he saw as Jean’s betrayal that he made plans to emigrate to Jamaica.

On July 31st 1786, just weeks before Jean gave birth to their twin children, Burns found himself at last as a published poet. Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect appeared in Kilmarnock to instant acclaim. He had meant for this to be his legacy to Scotland,

“Before leaving my native country for ever, I resolved to publish my poems. I weighed my production as impartially as in my power; I thought they had merit; and ‘twas a delicious idea that I would be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears...”

One of the enduring myths about Robert Burns is the image of the ‘ploughman poet’ – the untaught peasant. Burns had had a good, if eclectic, education and was praised by Thomas Carlyle as a master of rhetoric. The phrase ‘heaven-taught ploughman’ was coined by Henry Mackenzie (author of A Man of Feeling) in a review of the Kilmarnock edition for the Lounger,

“With what uncommon penetration and sagacity this heaven-taught ploughman, from his humble and unlettered station, has looked upon men and manners.”

Burns realised the PR potential of the image and colluded with it.

Burns arrived in Edinburgh in November 1786 as ‘Caledonia’s bard’ – ostensibly to arrange for the publication of a second edition and to further his hopes of a career in the Excise. He was fêted by Edinburgh society and remembered by Walter Scott, who met Burns as a sixteen year old at the house of Dr Adam Ferguson; Scott later recalled,

“I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I would have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school; that is, none of your modern agriculturalists who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the douce guidman who held his own plough. There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments: the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a cast which glowed (I say literally glowed). I never saw such another eye in a human being, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time. His conversation expressed perfect self-confidence, but without the least intrusive forwardness; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty.”

Burns had a problem with Edinburgh society; he never could suffer fools gladly. He could not tolerate the combination of high rank and stupidity – he was brought face to face with the inequalities of class and with hypocritical social conventions. He learned to seek entertainment and pleasure outside the drawing rooms and so joined the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge and the Crochallan Fencibles. It was at a meeting of the Fencibles that he met James Johnson, an engraver, who was about to publish the first volume of his work on Scots song. He invited Burns to work with him on the project and Burns quickly became the de facto editor. Burns contributed around 300 songs – some collected, some composed, some fragments which he completed or ‘improved’. He wrote to the Reverend John Skinner about what would become known as the Scots Musical Museum,

“There is a work going on in Edinburgh, just now, which claims your best assistance. An engraver in this town has set about collecting and publishing all the Scotch songs, with the music, that can be found. Songs in the English language, if by Scotchmen, are admitted, but the music must be all Scotch...I have been absolutely crazed about it, collecting old stanzas, and every information remaining respecting their origin, author, etc, etc.”

He would never accept any payment for his work with Johnson, even though it represented the great majority of his poetical output for the remainder of his life. He regarded himself as working for Scotland – the embodiment of Scottish song and was aware that this was a work which would endure through time.

The excise appointment was proceeding slowly (it eventually came through in 1789 at an annual salary of £50) so Burns accepted the lease on a farm at Ellisland near Dumfries; making plans to finally marry Jean Armour who was about to give birth to a second set of twins. In 1791 Burns moved himself and his family to Dumfries where he lived until his death in 1796. During his time at Ellisland and Dumfries he worked steadily collecting and composing songs for Johnson. His only major poem of this time was Tam O’Shanter, written in 1791 for the antiquary Captain Grose who asked him for a contribution to his Antiquities of Scotland.

Robert Burns had suffered ill health all his adult life although he often dismissed his ailments as hypochondria. During the last year of his life his health deteriorated dramatically and he died (of bacterial endocarditis secondary to chronic rheumatic heart disease) surrounded by his family on 21st July 1796.