Bitter spat between feuding Burns scholars threatens to overshadow Year of Homecoming

Published on Saturday 3 January 2009 19:20

IT IS the Year of the Homecoming when all Scots are expected to pull together to celebrate their country and the glorious legacy left by national bard Robert Burns.

But an acrimonious feud between two eminent Burns scholars, which could end up in court, is threatening to overshadow the Scottish Government's festivities and the 250th anniversary of the ploughman poet's birth.

Burns biographer Patrick Scott Hogg has accused Burns expert Gerard Carruthers of verbally attacking him and launching a smear campaign on his character and work.

Hogg said he was now planning to sue Carruthers, head of the University of Glasgow's department of English and Scottish literature, for defamation after Carruthers claimed Hogg made abusive phone calls to his home.

Other Burns experts said the row threatened to "muddy the waters" of the Homecoming year at a time when the movement should be pulling together. Peter Westwood, editor of the Burns Chronicle, said: "This has been going on for a number of years. I know them both and Patrick has a tendency to get the academic's back up.

"Over the years there have been many articles written criticising Patrick, who is out on his own.

"This is an important year with it being Burns' 250th anniversary and it's a shame that this is still going on."

The dispute between the scholars, who previously worked together at the University of Strathclyde, dates from 1997 when Carruthers dismissed claims that Hogg had found a new Burns poem. Since then, Hogg says Carruthers has published accusations against the writer on internet forums and in the media. Carruthers accused Hogg's book, The Canongate Burns, of being beset by basic errors and vehemently questioned Hogg's claim that he had uncovered a series of poems by Burns never before recognised as the Bard's work.

On the World Burns Club forum last year, Carruthers said of Hogg's book. "What my work clearly exposes is Hogg's fraudulent methods."

In 2006 he had talked of "the sheer bad workmanship (and this is to put it very politely!) of both The Lost Poems and The Canongate Burns."

Speaking out for the first time since Carruthers' attack, Hogg claimed he was being hounded out of his profession by his rival, who "ripped apart" everything he did.

Hogg said: "Anything I do, Gerry just pours scorn on it. I have tried to avoid what he has written about my work, but a few months ago I contacted him and he said I should read what he had written. I was absolutely horrified at the level of invective. I couldn't believe what he was saying. He's calling me a glory hunter."

The situation culminated, Hogg said, in a personal attack on him. "I tried to make up with him on the Burns Federation forum, but Gerry started accusing me of abusive phone calls... that was absolute rubbish and serious defamation."

Hogg now claims he wants to take Carruthers to court over the accusation. He said: "I have been taking advice from a lawyer on it. I'm seriously thinking about taking it to the High Court. You can't let something like that go on."

Carruthers was unavailable for comment.

&#149 The Year of the Homecoming is a marketing exercise by the Scottish Government, which is hoping to attract thousands of Scots descendants and expatriates back from abroad to Scotland for a series of events to mark the Burns anniversary. A series of high-profile events have been planned between Burns Night on January 25 and St Andrew's Day in November.