Bryan Islip's Blog - Posts Tagged "robert"
On Robert Burns
I was already pretty well steeped in things Robert Burns, 1759 –1796, having visited his cottage near Ayr at age 19 (all the way back in 1954!) and a few months ago Dee and I had the opportunity to re-visit that same cottage. I often talk about a passion to write. But as I sit here at my keyboard and screen, cup of coffee to hand 'midst warm air and electric lighting, with the black of night and the wind and the rain kept well at bay, I am imagining that young farmer, quill poised, baby crying, candle guttering in cold, wet air under leaky thatch. He has not long since returned from a hard day in those difficult fields of his but is now assembling some of the finest thoughts, committing them to some of the most powerful, most beautiful words ever written by anybody in any language since Man first marked the dried skin of an animal.
I've read a couple of Burns biogs and like most if not all of us I've listened often to his songs - even attempted, as have many of us, to sing some of them when refreshed enough to throw our customary caution to the winds. Who has not reeled away to Auld Lang Syne? Here's a lesson for songwriters today; if the words aren't hearable and if they don't make you feel stuff then you're wasting your own and your listeners' time; you're 'shuffling smoke' as my American boss used to say.
Our first meeting with the Wester-Ross Burn Club was fully reported on this site. Amongst other memorable events we danced the Highlands way on Ian's lawn, our pace increasing from feverish to frenzied under attack from that monstrous battalion of midges. (I am convinced that highland dancing is the outward and visible sign of an inward pre-disposition to the most violent forms of cattle stealing and clan warfare.) But now has come a greater honour yet. I have been invited to propose the Toast To The Lassies at our upcoming Burns Supper. It will be an honour and a pleasure and it will not be difficult. Leaving aside any personal knowledge on the object of the Toast I have looked for inspiration to The Man himself. I believe there are some five hundred and forty eight Burns attributed works, and of these at least a third are on the subject of The Lassies. So I shall simply follow the leader.
I've read a couple of Burns biogs and like most if not all of us I've listened often to his songs - even attempted, as have many of us, to sing some of them when refreshed enough to throw our customary caution to the winds. Who has not reeled away to Auld Lang Syne? Here's a lesson for songwriters today; if the words aren't hearable and if they don't make you feel stuff then you're wasting your own and your listeners' time; you're 'shuffling smoke' as my American boss used to say.
Our first meeting with the Wester-Ross Burn Club was fully reported on this site. Amongst other memorable events we danced the Highlands way on Ian's lawn, our pace increasing from feverish to frenzied under attack from that monstrous battalion of midges. (I am convinced that highland dancing is the outward and visible sign of an inward pre-disposition to the most violent forms of cattle stealing and clan warfare.) But now has come a greater honour yet. I have been invited to propose the Toast To The Lassies at our upcoming Burns Supper. It will be an honour and a pleasure and it will not be difficult. Leaving aside any personal knowledge on the object of the Toast I have looked for inspiration to The Man himself. I believe there are some five hundred and forty eight Burns attributed works, and of these at least a third are on the subject of The Lassies. So I shall simply follow the leader.
