The good, the Bard and the ugly

Published on Thursday 22 January 2009 12:36

EACH year, thousands of Scots commemorate the birth of the Bard. But all the pomp, fake sentiment and sloppy food means a Burns Supper can stick in the throat.

I'VE been to a fair few Burns Suppers in my time, and if I've learned one thing, it's that the only foodstuff that should be served up with ice-cream scoops is ice-cream. Those three dollops of grey-brown, white and orange, like the flag of a forgotten former British colony, were doled out throughout my schooldays, and even at a rather pukka Edinburgh society event. It's a wonderful irony that the essential neep – or rutabaga, or swede, or tumshie – was only introduced to Scotland in Burns's lifetime and by Burns's Ellisland landlord, Patrick Miller. Apparently, excessive consumption of neeps can lead to hypothyroid goitre. After a few forkfuls, I can quite imagine the truth of that.

I actually quite like haggis, but you can't really beat groundskeeper Willie's sales pitch in The Simpsons – "Chopped heart 'n' lungs! Boiled in a wee sheep's stomach! Tastes as good as it sounds!" The tatties usually aspire to being Smash instant potatoes.

With a consistency that wouldn't challenge the gummiest of pensioners, and with almost everything resembling a flavour systematically boiled out of it, it's no wonder that at rowdier affairs the guests are reduced to drowning the whole meal in whisky. Usually preceded by a cock-a-leekie soup, world-famous as the only soup improved by the addition of prunes, and followed by cranachan, which is not a pudding proper, but a bowl of cream with garnishes. It's maybe only the Burns that makes a Burns Supper bearable. But even that's not a guarantee.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that "the people who care nothing for literature or poetry care for Burns". He meant it as a compliment, but watching a kilted Colonel Blimp affect an accent he would never use on any other day, and then get dewy-eyed at sentiments about global brotherhood he would denounce as lunatic Leninism if he ever heard a politician express them, is an object lesson in an especially Scottish form of philistinism.

If the vowel-mangled and inappropriately guttural readings aren't bad enough, there's the modern toasts. 'The Toast to the Lassies' all too often is a farrago of sexism, excused by being "tongue in cheek". For a truly Burnsian toast, perhaps the speaker ought to mawkishly flatter the wealthy lassies, then nip off to impregnate one of the serving staff. 'The Response' is a modern concession, and can't help but seem defensive. 'The Immortal Memory' has various manifestations, but is incomplete without some "wha's like us" parochialism, and should ideally last seven and a half minutes longer than necessary. As for all the sporrans and sgian dhus, white lace jabots and white heather sprigs – it's not a society wedding! The closest Burns got to a kilt was a Masonic apron.

It's no wonder that the Burns Supper attracted the wrath of Scotland's second greatest poet, Hugh MacDiarmid. In 'A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle', he excoriated "Croose London Scotties wi' their braw shirt fronts / And a' their fancy freens, rejoicin' / That similah gatherings in Timbuctoo / Bagdad – and Hell, nae doot – are voicin' / Burns' sentiments o' universal love". "What unco fate mak's him the dumpin'-grun' / For a' the sloppy rubbish they jaw oot?" he wondered. Just to rile them further, he compared the relationship of Burns to the Burns Club to the difference between Christ and the Church.

The first Burns Supper was held in 1801 at the cottage where Burns was born, on the wrong day. A group of friends decided to commemorate his death, which happened in July, by singing his songs and getting drunk. The following year, the first Burns Supper on January 25 was held by the newly formed Greenock Burns Club. By 1816, such suppers had moved far from the ideals of Burns. The Edinburgh Evening Courant records one in that year, beginning with loyal toasts to the King and the Prince Regent, and ending with toasts to the "Wooden Walls" (the British Navy), Wellington and the Battle of Waterloo. The man who had called Louis XVI a "perjured Blockhead", and purportedly kept his hat on – a mark of disrespect – through the national anthem to George III, would have been surprised at being yoked to tipsy celebrations of monarchy.

It's clear that the Bard would have found ample opportunity at a Burns Supper to inveigh against the hypocrisies, pomposities and phoney sentimentalities that he railed against in life. What would he prefer? Throughout his life, Burns cultivated small groups of like-minded friends, whether in the Tarbolton Bachelors' Club, the Crochallan Fencibles or the Freemasons. Although he was no teetotaller, Burns could deplore drunkenness: in a note written of the margin of his edition of The Works of Laurence Sterne (in a section on the Koran no less), he admits that he loves to drink "now and then" but goes on to excoriate the drunkard who "defecates the standing pool of thought". If we take his more lavish gifts as an indication of his personal taste, a "kippered salmon" comes high up a list of favourites, with oats pretty near the bottom.

So how should we celebrate the 250th anniversary of Scotland's Bard? A convivial meal with friends and a good blether seems preferable to the tartanry and Balmorality of the official suppers. Personally, I'm travelling back from the Lake District, where I'm giving a lecture on Scott, and then watching the new series of Lost on Sky. But what I will be doing this year is re-reading Burns. He is a poet for life, not just for one day in the year.

For a sophisticated twist on the traditional Burns Supper, see page 26

An original manuscript of 'Auld Lang Syne', signed by Burns and usually displayed in Glasgow's Mitchell Library, went to New York for last year's Scotland Week celebrations.

Presenter Jeremy Paxman sparked fury recently after he dismissed the Scots Bard as "no more than a king of sentimental doggerel".