Burns Night: a Brief History

Burns Night is a celebration of food, friendship and perfect poetry, writes Julia Lasica

The first Burns Night was celebrated in 1801. Five years after the death of the Scottish poet, a group of Robert Burns’ friends gathered at his childhood home in Alloway, a village just south of Glasgow.

At first it was a private affair, in honour of a man widely seen as the Bard of the Scottish people. But as the years went on, clubs and societies also began to mark the occasion. Soon, Scots all over the world were celebrating, a tradition that continues to this day.

Each Burns Night since then has had a broadly similar structure. It begins with the arrival of the guests, greeted by a bagpiper. After the host’s welcome, grace is said in the Selkirk variation that uses the Scots language,

Some hae meat an canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.

Burns’ poetry significantly popularised the use of this language which, at the time of his birth, was waning through exposure to the English language. This had begun after James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne in 1603. Then in 1707, just a few decades before Burns’ birth, the Act of Union between England and Scotland was passed. A Scottish form of Standard English replaced Scots in most formal writing.

But following in the Scots literary tradition set by the poets Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson before him, Burns stubbornly stuck to his vernacular. And it’s in this language that the highlight of the evening is conducted: the “Address to a Haggis”.

All guests rise and the bagpipes are played as the haggis is carried to the table by the cook.

A savoury pudding, haggis is made up of sheep’s heart, liver and lungs, all minced with onion, oatmeal, stock, spices, salt and pepper, and encased in sheep’s stomach: a prime example of “waste not want not” cuisine. Robert Burns’ tongue-in-cheek poem in praise of the dish is read aloud, beginning as follows,

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang’s my arm.

So legendary is the status granted to haggis by Burns’ verse that a 2003 poll showed that 33 per cent of American tourists in Scotland believed that a haggis was actually an animal. One claimed it was “a wild beast of the Highlands, no bigger than a grouse, which only came out at night”. Another purported that it made its home in cities, like a fox.

No doubt Burns would have enjoyed the ridiculous ideas sparked by the poem. He had allegedly composed it to poke fun at the Scottish upper classes who viewed haggis as a luxury to be eaten only on the most special of occasions.

After the main course and dessert have been served, three toasts are given. The first is in the “Immortal Memory of Robert Burns”, during which a speech on Burns’ life and poetry is given. Then there is an “Address to the Lassies”, quickly followed by a “Reply to the Laddies”: a male speaker gives his view on women and vice versa. The speeches are usually composed in collaboration prior to the supper, to smooth out any points of contention.

Then the evening gives way to poetry and songs. One favourite is “A Man’s A Man for A’ That”, based on Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man, which points to the democratic ideals present in Burns’ poetry. In it, he levels “a prince […] a marquis, duke, an’ a’ that” with the ordinary man so “That Man to Man, the world o’er / Shall brothers be for a’ that.”

It was this that drew writer Maya Angelou to Burns from her childhood. Asked about his influence on her life, Angelou responded, “I was a mute. I was poor and black and female. The only key I had which would open the door to the world for me was a book. I read everything. I fell in love with poetry. And amazingly in a small village in Arkansas, I met Robert Burns.”

In 1996, the director Elly Taylor invited Angelou to come to Scotland after hearing of her regard for the poet. The journey and visit that followed was captured in the BBC documentary Angelou on Burns. It airs again this Wednesday on BBC Four at 10pm.

At one point in the documentary, Angelou captures Burns’ propensity for egalitarian companionship, “He was the first white man I read who seemed to understand that a human being was a human being and we are more alike than unalike.”

It’s a sympathy that can be felt throughout Burns’ poetry, extending even to the smallest mouse, the “wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie” whose nest Burns had accidentally destroyed while ploughing the fields. “I’m truly sorry man’s dominion,” Burns wrote in “To a Mouse”, “Has broken nature’s social union.”

And it’s a spirit of companionship that ends the evening. Gathering together, the guests sing “Auld Lang Syne”, narrating a friendship that has lasted from “Old Long Since”.

Till next year.

Burns Night is celebrated every year on 25 January. For more on the life and works of Robert Burns, we recommend The Canongate Burns: The Complete Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (Canongate Books, £19).

We’ll be talking to the author of Trainspotting Irvine Welsh on “A Drink with the Idler” this Thursday, 26 January, at 6pm London time. Book your tickets here. Free to subscribers.

Our January/February issue is available in bookshops as well as Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, WHSmiths, Booth’s and Easons.