The Scottish National Party claims support in its independence campaign from the poems and songs of Robert Burns, but what did Burns have to say about self-determination and distinct identity?
On self-determination, in his 1791 poem, Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation, Burns reflected scathingly on the Scottish parliamentarians who had signed the Act of Union. The last two lines capture his sentiments succinctly:
We’re bought and sold for English gold —
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!
In short, Scots had sold their political independence for the economic benefits — direct and indirect — offered by the Act of Union. Economists would say that Scots had decided that the benefits of the union exceeded its costs.
And the evidence is persuasive. By Burns’s lifetime in the second half of the 18th century, it had become abundantly clear that Scots had received a very good price indeed for their surrender of parliamentary independence.
In 1707, Scotland was arguably the poorest country in Europe; by the turn of the 19th century Scotland was a relatively wealthy, industrialized part of the then-richest country in Europe and a considerable, and distinct player, intellectually, culturally, economically, on the rapidly expanding world stage of British imperial development.
Was Burns aware of this? Like most Scots, he was more than willing to take advantage of the benefits of the union. He seriously considered emigrating to the West Indies, and later took a job as a British government exciseman (tax official).
So we can perhaps infer that Burns, as a canny Scots farmer, would have concluded that the limited concessions on self-determination were justified by the clear evidence that Scotland was much wealthier as a result of the union.
But the evidence is explicit with respect to distinct identity. Burns’s poetry and songs were written as the principal and popular literary expression of the Scottish Enlightenment, the great outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments that occurred from the time of the Act of Union in 1707 until the early decades of the 19th century.
The fertile ground on which the Enlightenment thrived was that of reason-based, reflective, meritocratic, liberal democracy. And Burns’s poems and songs are the poetic expression of that ground. Burns painted a clear picture throughout his songs and poems, perhaps most memorably in A Man’s a Man for a’that, Tam O’Shanter, To a Louse and To a Mouse.
His writing honoured a more open society, the breaking down of power and privilege based on a rigid class system, and independence and opportunity for individuals to develop their powers of reason and character to the fullest.
Were these cultural ideas and practices that found timeless expression in Burns’s poems exclusively Scottish? On the contrary, Burns’s message was open and universal, rejoicing in the spreading throughout the world of the ideas and practices — economic, political, scientific, technological — of liberal democracy that were evolving most strongly in his native Scotland, and that promoted freedom, tolerance and prosperity wherever they went.
And that impact has never ceased.
Language can play a major role in arguments about nationalism. So it is worth stressing the vital role played by Burns in preserving and broadcasting the Scots language. This refers not to Gaelic, but to Scots, sometimes known as Lallans.
Scots is a recognizable dialect of standard English, but has distinct words, expressions, grammar and pronunciation. Building on earlier poets such as Ramsay and Fergusson, Burns proceeded to collect and publish the working language of southern Scotland in the form of hundreds of folk songs, thus helping to preserve this “national” language through song.
But he did more than that. His own poetry and songs were written consciously in an essentially bilingual and bicultural form-referred to as “code-switching.” His first great book of verse, entitled Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, was written in a subtle combination of standard English and Scots, and he pursued this style in all his poems and songs.
This helped to remove the stigma attached to Scots and gave it status as a literary language not only in Scotland but throughout the U.K. and its imperial reach.
In his poems and songs, Burns provided Scotland with a national character that could not be incorporated or dissolved, and the dissemination of his works broadcast that national character around the world — using his bilingualism to serve as a vehicle for the other features, noted above, of the Scottish Enlightenment.
But this was an open, positive nationalism that rejoiced in a native language, played to its strengths, cheerfully blended it with its chief competitor, and achieved a synergy in which both Scots and English were widened and deepened. Perhaps Tam O’Shanter is the best example of perfect linguistic synergy.
In sum, the national identity in Burns’s work and in the legions of Scots who travelled around the world was secure, open, humorous, inclusive and universal.
It stands in sharp contrast to forms of negative nationalism that can be insecure, protectionist, closed, humourless, xenophobic and tribal. The nationalism of the SNP manifests most of these negative features.
George Orwell defined nationalism as power-hunger tempered by self-deception — in short, delusional careerism — and Burns with his keen eye for pretentiousness would have recognized this in the posturing of the SNP.
Jim Cutt is retired from the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria.
