Robert Burns: Was Scotland's bard political?

Many theories position Burns as a secret radical – with a fire lit under the famed Scot during his time working for HM Customs and Excise.

The latest discovery has led to fresh suggestions of being able to draw pro-French revolution sentiment from between the lines of his writing.

However, it has been debated whether historians are projecting their own views on to Burns’s work.

The last four years of Burns’s  life coincided with a movement for democratic and parliamentary reform that directly involved ordinary Scots in politics for the first time. Like other poets of the era, many of his political poems and songs including Scots Wha Hae were published either anonymously or under a pseudonym.

For example, A Man’s A Man For A’ That was published anonymously in a magazine in 1795.

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As well as recently unveiled letters, analysis has helped to inform the debate on the extent of the bard’s radicalism.

Professor Gerard Carruthers, a leading expert on the subject, is convinced that Burns’s political leanings were an “open secret” in the civil service where he worked.

Professor Carruthers pointed out: “And in this ‘space’ Burns writes some of his most political songs, including Scots Wha Hae and A Man’s A Man.

"Here in song, where the texts might be read as ‘historic’ or ‘masonic’, he was actually commenting on contemporary politics of that time.

“In both these songs and surrounded by his like-minded excise colleagues, he was hiding his politics in plain view.”

A dangerous time

However, Burns was reported to his employers on suspicion of being a radical after his poem The Rights Of Woman was read in the Dumfries theatre in November 1792.

It states: “While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things, / The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings; / While quacks of State must each produce his plan, / And even children lisp the Rights of Man …”

Reportedly, the French revolutionary song “Ça Ira” was sung in the auditorium in opposition to “God Save the King”, but the bard managed to escape discipline.

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Carruthers has also argued that the cancelled working manuscript of the song Ye Jacobites By Name was written by Burns in 1791 in the early years of the French Revolution and is the most “explicit instance” where Burns wrote with 18th-century current affairs in mind.

It is set against a time when reformers in the British Isles were also agitating for political change when most working people were not permitted to vote – including Burns.

Scots, wha hae wi’ Wallace bled

Between 1792 and 1796, an extreme repression of democracy led to increased action by a group called the Friends of the People, a Scottish popular reform organisation.

It was impossible for Burns to declare his support openly for the group, however, he may have done so through one of the most famous Scottish songs in existence.

Thomas Muir, a famous Scottish reformer, was in 1793 transported to Botany Bay with a sentence of 14 years after being found guilty of sedition due to speeches he had given on “the ideals of democracy” – and is considered an inspiration for the famous Scots Wha Hae.

The song was published anonymously, in 1794, and Burns had composed it in the summer or autumn of the previous year, around the time of Muir’s trial.

In a letter to a friend, he explained that his “accidental recollection of that glorious struggle for Freedom, associated with the glowing ideas of some other struggles of the same nature, not quite so ancient, roused my rhyming Mania”.

The song was credited to Burns in the same magazine it was first published in only after his death.

So , today Burns is known as an opponent of monarchy and slavery and a champion of democracy – silenced in public by his employment and the dangers of the time, but not in secret with his pen and imagination.

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,

Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;

Welcome to your gory bed,

         Or to victory!

 

Now's the day, and now's the hour;

See the front o' battle lour;

See approach proud Edward's power—

         Chains and slavery!

 

Wha will be a traitor knave?

Wha can fill a coward's grave!

Wha sae base as be a slave?

         Let him turn and flee!

 

Wha for Scotland's king and law

Freedom's sword will strongly draw,

Freeman stand, or freeman fa',

         Let him follow me!

 

By oppression's woes and pains!

By your sons in servile chains!

We will drain our dearest veins,

         But they shall be free!

 

Lay the proud usurpers low!

Tyrants fall in every foe!

Liberty's in every blow!—

         Let us do or die!