A drink with Robert Burns

By Michael Meighan

Was Robert Burns an alcoholic? Was he a womanising drunkard who neglected his family and work, and who died in poverty? I set out to examine the truth of this while exploring Burns relationship with alcohol.

A number of coincidences following a visit to the amazing National Trust for Scotland Burns Centre in Alloway led me to consider a book with specific references to drinking and to his relationship to it through his life. Through his songs and letters I have explored his references to alcohol in toasts, epistles, epitaphs songs and letters. I have also examined his role in the Excise where he was responsible, among other things for inspecting brewers and distillers.

Burn's relationships to alcohol and to women have been troublesome, mostly due to the early reviews and criticisms of his works. While some of it might have been fair I was struck by the unfairness of much of the commentary on Burn's drinking and set out to examine the truth in what his early critics and biographers wrote about him.

I have used previously unpublished photographs of an early Burns tour as well as postcards and prints to illustrate Burn's association with what he called in one poem: 'Scotch Drink'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Booklist Publications
• Release date: Feb 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9780956262547

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A drink with Robert Burns

First published February 2023

Booklist Publications Scotland

[e-mail]

Copyright© Michael Meighan 2023

The right of Michael Meighan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted to in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying or recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publishers.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Burness family

The Burnesses in Alloway 1756 to 1766

Mount Oliphant 1766 to 1777

Lochlea (or Lochlie) 1777 to 1784

Burns the flax worker 1781 - 1782

Burns the Freemason 1781

Mossgiel 1784 to 1791

Burns and Scotch Drink

Scotch Whisky

Burns' Epistles

Epitaphs and elegies

Burns and Jean Armour

Burns in Edinburgh

Burns the Exciseman

Burns the military volunteer

The Dying Days

The Burns Supper and Auld Lang Syne

The Scots Musical Museum and other works

A Robert Burns pub crawl - Inns and taverns

Burns and drink

Other Scotch drink

Burns, rum and slavery

Burns' biographers

Burns the connoisseur?

Conclusion

References

Introduction

While I love the works of Robert Burns, I hadn't really thought about a book until a series of coincidences led me to consider the possibilities.

My first recollections of Robert Burns were the poetry readings in English class at school where, being a Catholic institution run by the Marist Brothers, we were kept firmly away from any discussion on the supposed romantic or drink-related facts or fiction in the Bard's life. The twa dogs and The cotter's Saturday night I certainly remember but not much else of my time in school where Chaucer and Shakespeare featured more than Burns, Fergusson or Ramsay, the latter two never mentioned.

Burns’ songs and poems were certainly prominent in Scottish culture when even the Weekly News would publish supplements dedicated to Scottish songs. The Folk Song Revival of the 1960s also gave us many almost forgotten works. The emergence of folk singers such as the Corrie Folk Trio and Paddie Bell, Robin Hall and Jimmy MacGregor and the McCalmans helped.

We became familiar with the many singers who delighted us with their interpretations. There was the great Kenneth McKellar, Moira Anderson, Andy Stewart and Calum Kennedy. More recently there have been The Corries, The Sangsters, Eddie Reader, Michael Marra and many others.

Many of these appeared on the White Heather Club which ran from 1958 to 1968 and probably the first time traditional Scottish music appeared on TV, albeit condemned now by some as Scottish kitsch.

Of course, probably the most famous of Burns’ works wordwide is Auld Lang Syne which has become firmly established as an anthem for the turning of the year; Hogmanay. It has been taken to all parts of the globe by exiled and travelling Scots.

In 1965, John Cairney was the actor who gave us the story of Burns’ life in There Was a Man. John's interpretation of Robert Burns’ has entertained people on his tours throughout the world.

Possibly one of the greatest contributions to the wider appreciation of Burns’ music was the collaboration between Serge Hovey and Jean Redpath. It was Serge who produced the musical arrangements that were sung by Jean. This wonderful set of recordings was promoted in the 1970s by the great Hamish Henderson of the School of Scottish Studies. They were on tape when I first encountered them and they added depth to my understanding of Robert Burns. Serge Hovey died before the project to record the complete works of Burns could be completed. Only seven of 22 volumes were produced.

More recently, singers like Eddie Reader, Karen Matheson and Karine Polwart have taken Burns work to wider and younger audiences. The Celtic Connections Festival of Scottish music has also contributed. Burns continues to be held in awe with his works being performed by many contemporary artists. I love Carly Simon and Lucy Simon's version of My love is like a red, red rose.

Of course, we became very familiar with the Burns Supper, from whose simple beginnings, like a religious celebration (in a way Burns might have scoffed at) it has grown and developed its own life throughout the world.

In travelling too, it is not unusual to find statues to Burns in faraway places as we did in Ballarat, Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, many of course sponsored by Scottish exiles who also took the Burns Supper with them to be enjoyed throughout the world. There are around 60 known statues of Burns around the world, the oldest in Camperdown, Victoria, Australia.

While Robert Burns made very little profit from his music, his works are worth millions to the Scottish economy, particularly to his native Ayrshire and to Dumfriesshire where he worked as an Exciseman.

In both these counties you will find a wealth of attractions explaining the history of Robert Burns and his works. From his family home in Alloway, his farms at Mossgiel, Lochlie and Ellisland to The Batchelors Club in Tarbolton and the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Ayr.

This all gives a background to the book and the emphasis on Scotch drink is explained by the first coincidence. Back in the 1980s when my family moved from Edinburgh to the Highlands, we were given the opportunity to build a house on a plot of land on the Black Isle near to Dingwall, north of Inverness.

This land was at Ferintosh, a name with which I was not familiar but would learn about later on while we were settled there. We were told of a spring beneath a possible chambered cairn beside where we lived. There was said to once have been a distillery there and I probably put this down to the stories of illicit whisky distilling rife in Scotland at one time.

It was much later, that I read somewhere of the Ferintosh Privilege, a right given to Duncan Forbes, to allow him to distill whisky free of tax, and which was written about by Robert Burns when this tax free bounty to all was removed. I was fascinated by this history on our land and began to investigate further. I will tell that story later.

I am a collector of old photographs, particularly glass negatives. A couple of years ago I came across and bought a collection of interesting negatives that quite clearly showed a very early tour, possibly late Victorian or Edwardian, of places associated with Robert Burns. I have used some of these to illustrate the book as they give an idea of how places related to Burns and his time might have looked.

The last, and most interesting to me, is one that is related to Burns’ time as an Exciseman in Dumfries. We had just been visiting the wonderful Robert Burns Visitor Centre in Dumfries run by the National Trust for Scotland. We were doing our own tour of Burns Country and that has also produced some photos of places associated with him and his circle of friends.

Just after our return from our Burns trip I was looking online for collectible photographs when I spotted a little round tin object. It was labelled as a Glasgow eighteenth century 'Hydrostatic excise tester'. I was fascinated by it and after a little research I decided to buy it.

I have spent a lot of time working in the distilling industry and I had not come across such a thing although I was very familiar with the process of measuring specific gravity of alcohol, which this little instrument turned out to do.

When I received it and examined it I was intrigued to think about the connections with Burns, for inside was a handwritten list of the specific gravities of various alcoholic distillations, including rum and whisky.

The fact that this turns out to have possibly been made during Burns' lifetime raised all sorts of possibilities and rather than talk about them now, read on. I hope you find it as fascinating as I did.

The final coincidence takes me back to my childhood in Anderston, in Glasgow, where we lived in a tenement block at the junction of North Street and Argyle Street. Here, on North Street was a cemetery dating from 1821 and which had been out of use for many years. I was in the cemetery often and I remember a grave with an inscription noting that the person interred had had some relationship to Robert Burns.

I had not thought a lot of this until recently when I was undertaking some research for a friend of mine in Australia. His ancestors had come from Sutherland and a great grandmother had apparently been buried in the same graveyard.

When I started to think about writing a book about Burns on the theme of Scotch Drink, I recalled the graveyard's Burns connection. Further research delighted me when I discovered that the grave had been that of Alexander Findlater, Burns’ supervisor in his time in the Excise service. Again, more of that later on.

In writing this I have adopted Burns’ writings in their entirety, with the grammar and spellings that he used. I have not attempted to translate the works into modern day English but have explained some of the terms particularly where they apply to drinking. In the preparation of this work I have relied heavily on the excellent Dictionaries of the Scots Language, a Scottish charity hosted by the University of Glasgow.

I have given only extracts where I thought appropriate but a few of his works in their entirety. Please don't feel that you have to read through all of the longer poems as the language can be hard work.

Michael Meighan

February 2023

The Burness family

This is not a biography of Robert Burns but a wee bit of background would be helpful.

The Mearns, or Kincardine, is still an agricultural region.  Its main town, Stonehaven, south of Aberdeen has grown in size, mainly as a result of Scotland's oil boom centred on Aberdeen and from where you can see the many rig supply ships anchored out in the North Sea.

It is a land of cliffs, shooting estates, farms and forests and of ruined castles. It is also the land of Lewis Grassic Gibbon - the author of A Scots Quair Trilogy starting with Sunset Song, a tale of hardship in a hard landscape. Set in the early 20th century it follows the life of Chris Guthrie, a woman from the area. Sunset Song is considered to be one of Scotland's classic novels.

This is the land of Doric, a dialect in which exists many forms of literature, particularly the bothy ballad, traditionally sung by unmarried farm labourers to entertain themselves. One of the most well known is The Barnyards o' Delgaty. William Burnes, Robert Burns’ father would certainly be aware of bothy ballads as he was growing up in the area.

Robert Burnes (as Burns was then) was the son of William Burnes and Agnes Broun. William, born in 1721, was one of four brothers; William, James, Robert and George, who died at a young age,

William was raised at Clochnahill Farm in Dunottar in the Mearns, on the estate of the Earl Marischal, William Keith in the north east of Scotland. Keith had forfeited his title as he had participated in the 1715 Jacobite Rising.

William trained as a gardener at Keith's Inverugie Castle but in 1748, possibly because of the poor state of the rural economy following the rising, he moved away with his brother.  If William had at any time explained the potential hardships of the farming life to his sons then they may have had second thoughts, but that was to be all in the future.

William moved to Edinburgh where gardening and 'improvement' was thriving, being in the throes of the Scottish Agricultural Revolution. The Meadows is a well-known parkland area of Edinburgh. Once known as Hope Park, it was here that William came to work for Sir Thomas Hope as a gardener/landscaper for two years.

Sir Thomas Hope, of Craighall was an aristocrat, Member of Parliament, and an agricultural reformer whose ambitious project was to transform this marshy area on the outskirts of Edinburgh into a park. He created a loch with surrounding parkways, which was eventually to become protected as a public space, although the loch is long gone. Hope Park is still remembered in Hope Park Terrace and Square.

Following his period in Edinburgh, William moved to Ayrshire, where, in 1750, he worked for the Laird of Fairlie and later the Crawfords of Doonside.

The Burnesses in Alloway 1756 to 1766

With some ambition William set up as a nurseryman, leasing 7 acres of land at Alloway. He also took up a position as head gardener at Doonhom, the estate of a retired London doctor, Provost William Fergusson, of Ayr. He built a two-roomed cottage on the land at Alloway and, at 36, he met and married Agnes Broun, a farmer's daughter who hailed from Craigenton, in Kirkoswald. This marriage lasted 26 years until William's death in 1784.

This then was the background to the birth of Robert Burns, the first of 7 children. Robert was born in the Alloway cottage and lived there for seven years until 1766 when his father took the tenancy of the 70 acre Mount Oliphant farm, to the south east of Alloway.

It was one aspect of Robert's time at Alloway, and then two years at Mount Oliphant, that was crucial to his development. A young teacher, John Murdoch was engaged by William Burnes and some neighbours to be a schoolmaster. Murdoch seems to have been a clever and well-read fellow and was quite clearly an influence on Burns. Gilbert, Robert's brother wrote:

With him we learned to read English tolerably well; and to write a little. He taught us, too, the English grammar; but Robert made some proficiency in it, a circumstance of considerable weight in the unfolding of his genius and character; as he soon became remarkable for the fluency and correctness of his expression, and read the few books that came in his way with much pleasure and improvement; for even then he was a reader when he could get a book. Murdoch, whose library at that time had no great variety in it, lent him the Life of Hannibal, which was the first book he read (the school-books excepted), and almost the only one he had an opportunity of reading while he was at school.

William Burness must have had opinions on the fate of the Jacobites. His move south, after all, had been precipitated by the forfeiture of land in the previous Jacobite uprising and it was hardly any time since Prince Charles Edward Stuart had fled following the massacre of his troops at Culloden in 1746.

In the debacle, up to 2000 Jacobites were killed in battle or in deadly pursuit by British troops. Following the battle, as well as high ranking officers executed in England, 120 common soldiers were executed and up to 1200 transported or banished.

In the aftermath of Culloden, many restrictions were placed on the population. The use of the tartan was banned, except in the army. Estates were seized and sold with profits used to further Scottish trade and agriculture, as well as rewarding loyal Government supporters.

While we certainly know that William brought up his children in the knowledge of Holy Scripture, we do not know to what extent he influenced his children other than in his worthy character and example.

Current affairs included the Seven Years War that broke out in 1756, three years before Robert Burns' birth. Britain took a major part in this European war which was a struggle between France and Britain for world domination, with Britain emerging victorious.

It was considered at the time to be a fight for world domination. The war between France and Britain was carried out in Europe but also in North America where, in 1759, General James Wolfe, 'The Hero of Quebec' was celebrated for his capture of the city. The capture led to the taking of Montreal and the eventual end of French control in Canada.

Even in the 1950's Wolfe's daring surprise attack on Quebec, during which he met his death, featured highly in our school history books just as it must have done in 1759, dubbed the Annus Mirabilis recognising a host of victories over the French and their