Burns Robert

The Tumultuous Wedding of the Thistle and the Rose

by
image accessed via Pinterest,
https://jp.pinterest.com/pin/602919468901757681/

I could just quote the e-mail sent to me by the composer/arranger of “Thistle and Rose (with ‘Ye Bonnie Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon’),” Phyllis White, in answer to my inquiries about her thought processes as she wrote the piece, and you’d be quite well informed. I will indeed quote her later in this post. Have to say that it’s a total joy when I can communicate with living musicians as I’ve been able to do here. Let me first, though, unpack the symbolism of the thistle and the rose, which stand for Scotland and for England respectively. The story about the thistle comes from an incident in Scotland’s history:

It was 1263 when King Haakon’s fleet of battle-hardened Norsemen was blown off course and landed on the shores of Largs in Ayrshire. To their delight there was a sleeping Scottish army nearby. Not suspecting an attack, the Scottish were doomed to suffer an ambush. The Norsemen removed their boots in preparation for sneaking up on the slumbering soldiers. Fortunately, a field of thorny thistle flowers surrounded the Scottish. One Norse soldier, stepping on a thorn, yelled out in pain. This scream woke the Scottish men, who jumped into action and slaughtered the invading Norsemen.1

Read more

Robert Burns and the Lasses–Two Love Songs

by

Jean Armour at age 57, 26 years after Burns’ death. Image accessed via Wikipedia.

It’s always a bit of a facer to track down some lovely, idealized idea about a person or artwork and find out the real story. So it’s been with Robert Burns and two of his famous love songs, “O My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose” and “I’ll Ay Call In by Yon Town.” Was he a tender, faithful lover who paid the object of his desire these tributes? Does he stand as an example of proper behavior to those reading his poetry? Did he . . . well, I think you get the gist: the answer to these and similar questions is a resounding “no.”

When Burns died at age 37 he’d fathered 13 children (that we know of) by four different women and had love affairs with a number of others. The only woman he married, though, was Jean Armour. Were she alive today she’d probably be labeled as an “enabler;” she even went so far as to bring up Burns’ daughter by another woman who was born the same month as his son with Jean. As she said, “Oor Rab needed twa wives.” Just to sketch out the relationship between Jean and Burns takes up a fair amount of space. He met her in 1785 when Burns was 26. She quickly became pregnant by him, but her father refused to let the couple marry because of Burns’ poor financial prospects. He went off and got involved with someone else while Jean gave birth to twins. The couple reconciled and married after “many bizarre turnings” and yet another set of twins. She seems to have remained faithful, and her last child by Burns was born on the day of his funeral. He was an on-again, off-again presence in her life. I can’t imagine what they talked about when he was home!

Read more

Robert Burns’ Duncan Gray: Spurned, then Haughty, then Happy

by

Portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787, Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
Portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787, Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Image accessed via Wikipedia.

Original Scottish dialect:                                           Standardized English:

Duncan Gray cam here to woo                                 Duncan Gray came here to woo,
(Ha, ha, the wooing o’t!—repeated refrain)           (Ha, ha, such was the wooing of it!)
On blythe Yule-Night when we were fou                On merry Christmas Even when we were drunk,

Maggie coost her head fu’ high,                               Maggie cast her head full high, (raised her head)
Look’d asklent and unco skeigh,                             Looked askance (scornfully) and very skittish,
Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh –                           Made poor Duncan stand off

Duncan fleech’d, and Duncan pray’d                     Duncan wheedled/beseeched, and prayed
Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig                                     Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig (a rocky island)
Duncan sigh’d baith out and in,                              Duncan sighed both out and in,
Grat his een baith bleer’t an’ blin’,                         Wept his eyes both bleary and blind,
Spak o’ lowpin o’er a linn –                                       Spoke of leaping over a waterfall

Read more