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Robt. Buns

ce N sic a night he took the road in as scarce poor
sinner was abroad,“in.”

“Site through the trees.
€rn in Ayr threw more

faggots on
caught in the storm entered and called for a

nappy.” The rain and sleet poured its fury against the

“clay biggin” where Agnes

dark, stormy night, January 25, 1759, di

Brown lay in labor. On such a
d William Burns

mount his restive steed and, spurring toward Ayr, sought
the midwife who was to attend his cottage.

At the rivulet which crossed the road he found it deep
in flood and a gypsy woman on the opposite side unable to

cross. Notwithstanding his own haste he

_ lifted the gypsy to his saddle,

across and directed her to his cottage. Ar
‘he found his;
and in the gypsy’s lap who,
s on his great future which
was later immortalized in famous verses de-.
Scribing the scene, And it is to that
Song, ‘Rantir, Rovin Robin,’
Pipes this January 25 will escort Scots and

tiving later with the midwife
Son already pores
Made predictio:

¢

their friends in the spirit of ‘Macgregor’s
therine’ to the banquet tables, marking
the the 187th birthday anniversary of Scot-

conveyed he

se

famous

that skirling |

land’s great) bard—Robert Burns. That night, 4 ¢, Campbell

January 25, is as Scottish as the wild

Of the pibroch, the swing of the kelt,

Breton or the pungent flavor

melody
the fiddlers of Cape
of the haggis. It is forever

hallowed in the heart and memory of Scots no matter how
far they may wander from their native glen or highland

croft, \

Ten days ‘after Burns had been
born another storm tore away
the gable ‘of the cottage and
mother ang son had to find
Yefuge in ja neighbor’s house.
And all his life thereafter Burns
was continually tossed into the
temptest (of stormy struggle
With merciless landowners, un-
relenting ‘oly Willies’ and gov-
ernment offficials who disagreed
with his; progressive political
Views, i

It was {he misfortune of Burns
to work /unfruitful farms where

he toileg from dawn to dusk
and ever be in debt. But if the
Seed h& cast in the ground

brought | poor returns, his liter-
ary labors taught the Scots of
his time| and ever since a love
of countiry, mankind and pride
Of - race {30 necessary to drive

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 11

i

the wheel of progress forward.

From the age of sixteen Burns
wrote verse which shone with
great depth of thought. Aside
from his many revoluntionary
poems, letters, epigrams, satires

-and political ditties with which

he lampooned reactionary poli-
ticians and landlords he wrote
over 200 songs.

In 1791 he contributed about
100 songs to George Thomson’s
Select Collection of Scottish

Airs. These songs are still sung
by every Scot from New 4ea-
land to Aberdeen and from Van-
couver to Cape Breton, But he
was ‘poorly paid. For this tre-
mendous work he received the
sum of five pounds; a shawl for
his wife and an illustration of
his own Cotter’s Saturday Night.

She sang 2 sans

sat

eo:

The wind screamed
ine host’ at the village tav-
“the fire as wayfarers
“tippenay of

AU
TR =

sg

~ Her sons d

Which pleas

c. CAMPBELL

tt
——ow

N July “21, 1796, at the age.
of. 37, Burns died of rheu-
waatic fever and consumption.
His poverty, and illness pressed
heavily upon him as he lay on
his death bed. “What business
has a physician to waste his
time on me?” he asked the at-
tending doctor. “I am a poor
pigeon not worth plucking. Alas!
I have not feather enough to
carry me to my grave.”

Thus in such tragic circum-
stances; his family “engulfed in~
debt, the horrors of a debtors
jail ever present to his troubled
imagination, Scotland’s greatest
genius with his mental powers
lost in delirium breathed his
last.

To this world which gave him
nothing but misery and frus-
tration Burns bequeathed a leg-
acy of poetry unsurpassed by
other Scottish men of letters and
whose sincerity and purpose has
few rivals in any land or other
tongues. His immortal songs de-
scribed the beauty of his native
land. His verse sung of its shag-
gy crags; its heather hills; its
torrential waterfalls; its peace-
ful streams and its glens and
vales. No chord of human sym-
pathy was left unsung.

“The great. misforune of my
life,” he wrote, “was to want
an aim. I had felt early some
stirrings of ambition but they
were the blind gropings of Hom-
er’s Cyclops round the walls of
his cave.”

And this is not to be wonder-
ed at, There was no organized
working-class of farm movement
during Burn’s lifetime. The re-
volts of the peasantry and early
industrial workers were spor-
adic and of a momentary char-
acter. They too were groping.
They had no aim. Scotland lay
helpless in the rule of English
mercantile and Scottish feudal
tories who smashed the clan
system, burned and pillaged the
crofts, exiled the highlanders to
Canada and made the highlands
a vast sheep run,

Ce

OUSANDS of dispossessed
peasants found their way ta
the industrial city of Glasgow.

where they lived from the gar-

bage pails and slept in the
‘closes’ and ‘wynds.’ It was a
period of colonial conquest. Mer-
cantile capitalism with its eyes
on the ends of the earth to
conquer was laying the basis
for modern industrial capital-
ism and the British empire.

standing b
id loudly ca,
‘ liberty,

ed them one &

y the tree,
man;

.- from Burns

What cared they for the “poor
dunghill sons of muck and mire.”

India was being overrun by
Clive and the East India Com-
pany. Wolfe’s army stormed the
heights of Quebec and made Ca-
nada safe for the feudal fur-
traders.

But it was also a period of re-
volution. Burns applauded the
American Declaration of Inde-
pendence in 1776 and wrote his
encouragement to the colonists.
At the fall of the Bastille on July
14, 1789, he wrote his famous
Tree of Liberty and sent two
cannon to the French revolution-
ists whom he toasted in song.

For his activities among the
rural poor and his ridicule of
government policy Burns earned

‘the undying hatred of the reac-

tionary ‘Holy Willies’ and gov-
‘ernment officials whom he lam-
pooned with ditties such as the
following:

“In politics if thou would’st
mix and mean they fortunes
be,

Bear this in mind, be deaf
and blind,

Let great folks hear and see.”

Burns the “peasant son of a
peasant father” was a man “of
independent mind” and would
not prostitute his talents to aid
the oppressors of the poor. On

June 4, 1786, birthday of George -

the Third, he rediculed the ser-
vile poets at court and in the
publication of A Dream address-
ed the King:

“For me before a monarch’s
face

Even there I ‘winna flatter;

For neither pension, post nor
place

Am I your humble debtor .. .”

Employed for a short time
by the excise department Burns
was told that his job was to
work, not think. His political
activities resulted in his mail
being censored. His letters to
editors favorable to the growing
reform movement in 1791 saw
him being officially warned that
he might find himself transport-
ed to Botany Bay with the rest
of his disafected friends.

UT the revolutionary spirit
of the Americas and France
began to be felt in Scotland. Tom
Paine’s pamphlet, The Rights of
Man, widely advertised by sup-

pression in English, was trans- ~

lated into Gaelic and quickly
read in both languages. The
evicted crofter of the highlands
and the cotter in the lowlands.
read how in -France manhood
suffrage followed the payment
of two sous in taxes; how tithes

nd ar; man!

: Tree of Liberty’

I

and the nobility were abolished;
that games laws were not harsh
and how chartereqd towns and
‘monopoly commerce had been
Swept away.

And when in addition to all
this the harvest of 1792 failed,
famine swept the new industrial
areas and climaxed the set or
circumstances whic saw the
birth of the Friends of the Peo-
ple Society.

This society with connections
in Ireland and England demand-
ed among other things “equal
political representation.” But the
answer to this movement by the
English and Scottish tories was
to disperse meetings with armed
force, arrest the orators and
transport them to Botany Bay.
‘The-savage sentences of life, 20
and 15 years’ imprisonment
fanned the flames of insurrec-
tion throughout the country.
Translations of pamphlets from
the French poured into the
country.

And in face of arrest, trans-
portation and hangings with the
stories of the French Revolution
still fresh, working-class ora-
tors held forth to thousands on
the common greens that that
political reform was but a pre-
liminary to a more equitable
distribution of property. In the
short space of 37 years Burns
Saw crowns fall, democratic re-
publics established and the be-
ginning of a Mass movement for
democratic reforms in Britain.

DAY the organized labor

movement has an aim. The.
aim of socialism where “man’s
inhumanity to man” will disap-
pear with monopoly capitalism
which breeds crisis, poverty, un-
employment and fascism. Today
our Tree of Liberty is in dan-
ger from those who organize

‘divisions in the labor movement;

who seek to perpetuate the rule
of a decadent system and who
continually attack the only coun-
try where men and women have
equal opportunity — the Soviet
Union — where unemployment
and poverty are only ghosts of
the past. : :

To understand the importance
of January 25 we must under-
stand Burns and the stormy
times in which he lived and
contributed toward the move-
ment for democracy and a bet-

-ter life for the common peo-

ple. And the powerful people’s
movements and governments in
Europe and the stirrings of the
colonial peoples for liberty in
the world today once again
mind us: . 2

‘It’s comin’ yet for a’ that

That man to man the world

be.

Shall brothers be for a’ that.”

__ FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1947