News Article about Robert Burns

From The Herald, Thursday 13 January 2005

Let's save our nation's bard from the shortbread trail.

Joan McAlpine

Is the legacy of Robert Burns too important to be left with the guid people of Ayrshire? That is a question Scotland, as a nation, should ask itself. Burns is more than a poet. He is the most important cultural figure we have ever produced. Yet his birthplace, and some of the precious artefacts relating to his life and work, moulder away in the damp of Alloway.

The culture minister, Patricia Ferguson, is aware of the crisis at Burns Heritage Park, a locally-run trust which cares for the famous cottage where young Robert listened to the ghost stories that would later inspire his comic masterpiece, Tam O'Shanter. The museum - if such a word can accurately describe the leaking building - is home to an impressive collection of manuscripts, including a rare copy of the Kilmarnock edition of poems. It also houses the journals he kept during trips to Edinburgh and the Highlands, and the family bible, which had to be restored after (recent) water penetration.

A £7m plan to safeguard the cottage and build a new museum and education and conservation centre has fallen through, jeopordising the future of the entire park, which has seen its income dwindle as visitor numbers fall. Now Ms Ferguson has demanded a meeting with the people who run it. They in turn demand money from her.

You have to ask, with the bard's 250th anniversary just four years away: how did it come to this? Despair is not a particularly useful response to setbacks. But it will be many people's immediate reaction to this sorry tale. Despair tinged with disbelief. Is our country so out of touch with itself, so lost, that we must establish a cultural commission to determine who we are, while simultaneously neglecting a writer who did just that?

Burns held a mirror to the best part of us. We love his poems for their celebration of compassion, sexuality, friendship and love. He contrasted these human qualities with failings such as sloth, drunkenness and hypocrisy. His vernacular verse could convey philosophy as effectively as what then passed for standard English. He described the landscape of the mind with the same sensitivity as he conveyed the beauty of the external world. And although the ploughman-poet image owed something to eighteenth-century hype, his life exemplified the belief that literacy need not be contingent on material wealth.

Burns, who grew up in the countryside of a Scotland on the cusp of the industrial revolution, is sometimes viewed as representing an arcadian idyll. Yet he was a modern thinker as much as he was a romantic. A son of the Enlightenment, his celebration of fraternity, A Man's a Man for A' That, still has a credible claim to be the Scottish national anthem. His work continues to unite people, and not just when they link arms at New Year. We need no cultural commission/review/consultation to tell us Burns is worth remembering: We do that ourselves later this month.

Except, of course, that this artist represents more than an excuse to get drunk in the depths of January. As Hugh MacDiarmid spent a lifetime arguing, Burns must not be ossified. His own epic poem, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, which is greatly influenced by Tam O'Shanter, mocked the supper cult, which pressed the radical poet into the service of the British Empire. (Anyone who has heard God Save the Queen sung before the haggis is served will shudder in solidarity.) MacDiarmid despised inebriated, establishment Scots who sentimentalised Burns, while caring little for poetry. He wanted the language of Burns to live again, and for Scotland to take the written word seriously. Only then, he said, could the nation take itself seriously.

Decades later, we seem to have taken several steps back in time. The set up at Alloway still has an air of Victoriana about it, a fact that was recognised by the people behind the modernisation proposal. Last week there were hints that the Scottish Executive may back a less ambitious proposal. But £7m is a modest sum, considering the cultural importance of the man. There is an argument for thinking even bigger. Scottish Opera has received millions over the years, as have the other national companies. Our money helped save the Madonna of the Pinks for the nation, just as we devoted large sums to keeping The Three Graces in the country.

These are, of course, magnificent works of art. But it is surely a sad reflection that we recognise the importance of such art while neglecting an aspect of our own culture of which we should be justly proud.

Compare the failed attempt to modernise the Alloway park to the Playfair Project, a bit of revamped gallery space with a classy restaurant attached. Yes, it has a prime position in the heart of our capital city, but however architecturally impressive, it will never be at the heart of our indigenous culture in the same way as Burns.
Consider, also, Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of another bard - one revered by the proud nation which begot him. It is inconceivable that England would neglect Shakespeare. Stratford has become a destination for cultural tourists attracted, not just by the preserved cottages, but the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Shakespeare Institute.

The Ayrshire experience is not elevated to that intellectual level. It is just another stop on the shortbread trail, a place where coach tours top up with carbohydrates and tartan. What it really needs is a visionary.

So to answer my original question: Burns is too important to remain a worthy local project. He is very much a national treasure - even though his museum lies furth of Edinburgh.

Patricia Ferguson must ensure that the modernisation goes ahead soon and has national leadership. The National Trust for Scotland might take up the reins, but it would need financial support from the centre. We may need a highly professional fundraising drive, such as that behind the Playfair Project, or, indeed, the refurbishment of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow, where public and lottery money is matched by generous private-sector donations.

The success of these is down to energetic fundraisers such as Sir Robert Smith and Sir Norman Macfarlane. Significantly, the successful rebuilding of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London was the result of another inspirational man - the actor Sam Wanamaker.

The Globe is more than a memorial or quirky South Bank building. It engages Shakespeare with the modern world through live performance, exhibitions and discussions. The centre in Alloway ought to do the same. The annual Burns festival, which takes place there in spring, attempts to do that. But we need to finance something that will promote the vibrancy of his verse, life, politics, song - not to mention contemporary Scots poetry - all year round.

Burns himself knew the significance of memorials, and the pain of forgetting. He spent much time and money trying to improve the recognition of the poet Robert Fergusson, whom he felt was unfairly ignored by the Edinburgh establishment. What a pity if he suffered a similar fate.