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Lisbon St. Andrew’s Society, Portugal

Burns Night 2023
28 Jan 2023

Immortal Memory
by Carlos Oliveira Santos

(Playing Warmongerers by Name by Brina, a Jamaican version of

Burns’ Ye Jacobites by Name
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUt782ZT2IE )

Thank you, Our Honorable Chieftain,

My Dear Fellows, Lovers of The Poet,

I hope you know Hugh MacDiarmid. He is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest
20st-century Scottish poet. Some say the greatest poet that Scotland has produced since Robert
Burns. Well, as a modernist Hugh MacDiarmid hated all this, the Burns Nights, the Burns’
memorabilia, the kitsch, the constant repetition of all the common things about the Poet… I quote
him: “The horde of Burns imitators have … reduced Scots poetry to an abyss of worthless rubbish
unparalleled in any other European literature”.

Well, Mr. MacDiarmid, we are the horde of Burns but I am sure that you never saw a Burns
Night begin with reggae music. Yah, Man? It is a version of Burns’ Ye Jacobites by Name, they call
it Warmongerers by Name, a very appropriate to our times, Warmongerers by Name a song by
Brina, a Jamaican singer from the album Jamaica Sings Robert Burns produced by the Scottish
producer Kieran Murray in 2015. Right on!

Just imagine if Burns had really gone to Jamaica as he intended to do in 1786. Of course,
he would have been accused of being a slaver bookkeeper, and he would probably have died soon
after. Arthur Herman, the author of the popular book The Scots Invention of the Modern World
tells us about what happened with the Gordon Highlanders regiment, with their marvelous
headquarters and museum I have visited in Aberdeen. Listen to what Herman wrote:

“The Gordon Highlanders reached Jamaica in June of 1819. Over the next six months,
without a shot being fired, they lost ten officers, thirteen sergeants, eight drummers,
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and 254 other ranks. This was more than all the men the regiment had lost in battle
since its formation twenty-five years earlier.” (p. 333)

Without a simple shot being fired! Jamaica was, in Burns’ own words, those “torrid plains,
where rich ananas blow”, but an authentic “graveyard for the white men”. Luckily with the help of
his freemasons’ brothers, Burns succeeded with his first book printed in Kilmarnock, when he was
27 years old and chose not to go to Jamaica. But as you see there are a lot of Jamaicans who
consider him a real Bob Marley avant la lettre.

Well, Mr. MacDiarmid, the other thing that I am sure you never saw on a Burns Night was
a Portuguese reading of the Immortal Memory. Thank you for this, my dear friends of the Society,
it is a huge honor and, of course, quite a pleasure to have your friendship and respect. And it’s also
a pleasure to have here, today, our dear Dr. Luiza Lobo (Luiza, could you stand up, please?), from
Brazil. She has studied with one of the greatest Burns specialists, Professor Ross Roy, and she is
the most recognized translator of Burns into Portuguese. Thank you, Luiza. Let me also talk about
a Portuguese lady here with us today: Cláudia Mataloto (Cláudia, stand up, please?), she is the
heart and soul of the recently created Cascais Burns Club, an idea I had the honor to present a year
ago. Cláudia made everything to turn the idea into a reality. And I hope that all of you could
become members of this Club, the first created in Portugal, brother in arms, of course, with the
Lisbon St Andrew’s Society. Thank you, Cláudia.

Well, is it strange to have a Portuguese with a Black Watch kilt, talking about Burns? Of
course, it is. So, allow me to introduce myself a little. My relationship with Scotland began in 98
when I was invited to write the history of a Scottish-born company, Coats, even today the world's
leading industrial thread manufacturer. Coats was born in Paisley and when I went there it was a
quick coup de foudre with your country, your culture, and your symbols. And Burns appeared to
me in a very peculiar way: in Scotland, I said to my then girlfriend Luisa, today my lovely wife (she’s
over there), I said to her “let me give you a fond kiss”. And she said “that’s Burns”, “that is Burns”,
but I understood “that Burns”. Well, let’s try! And I can assure you it burned until today. After
that, I studied Burns, Burns, not To Burn, at the University of Glasgow with the marvelous Gerard
Carruthers, Rhona Brown, and others.
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Well, it is not a surprise either to see a Portuguese in a Scottish event. We have both a
common and important characteristic, my friends: we live next to lions. The English lion, and the
Spanish lion. But with the Atlantic Ocean in front of us, we don’t want to be lions. So, we have
developed, among other things, poetry, humor, feelings of equality, freedom, friendship, and a
special taste for life and happiness.

Portugal is a kind of Scotland with Sun, a sunny Scotland. That’s why you love so much to
live here and enjoy this country, and I am so happy about that. Today, we can have the same
country. It is called Burns. I am sorry Scotland, but Burns’ true country is our hearts. That’s the
place!

Well, in order to prevent more critics from Hugh McDiarmid (I know that he’s already dead
but) let’s only ask ourselves about what is new about Burns. What is new about Burns?… Well, no
good news, I must say, and I hope not to disturb you.

I think the main thing about Burns today is related to what is called on our days political
correctness or better said its perversion. No doubt that today we have achieved a better
understanding of human rights and human respect in all the diversity of human life. That is
something very, very good. We need to identify and confront all the concepts and attitudes which
don’t respect the human condition and their right to difference. No doubt that we need to confront
slavery, racism, colonialism, aggression, and discrimination against women, gays, transsexuals, and
so on. But in the name of this, there are certain people that use this to promote lies and false
accusations using, for instance, a very 21st-century presentist vocabulary and sellotaping it on top
of Burns.

Our Poet was recently a victim of this kind of people. A British institution called the National
Trust for Scotland created a list of people and institutions related to slavery. And they have
included the Robert Burns Museum, in Alloway, they have included it as 'deeply connected' with
slavery. 'Deeply connected' with slavery?! The Man didn’t even go to Jamaica, he didn’t receive a
penny from slavery, he was broke, his life was in complete disarray, and, most important, he was
one of few in those times to confront slavery and to write, for instance, The Slave’s Lament, the
poem featuring the mental pain of a slave in his own voice:

It was in sweet Senegal…

Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more,
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All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost,

Like the lands of Virginia-ginia O:
There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow,
And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear

O, National Trust for Scotland! And is he 'deeply connected' with slavery?! O, O, O… Like
Amy Winehouse sang Oh, No, No, No… Burns was always very clear about his firm convictions and
support for equality, freedom, and friendship for all mankind, of all sexes, of all colors, and of all
conditions.

Another recent scoundrel against Burns, also very politically correct, in the bad sense I must
say. Liz Lochhead, the poet, Liz Lochhead, the famous Scottish Makar in recent talks and papers
accused Burns to be a Weinstein sex pest. A Weinstein sex pest! You know Harvey Weinstein, the
dirty sex abuser charged in trials with raping and sexually assaulting several women. Well, Liz
Lochhead! there is no way you could compare this man with Robert Burns. No way. Yours is a false
accusation, my dear poet! There is no evidence in Burns’ work, in all the documents about him, in
History that shows any kind of things like rape or violence against women by Burns.
Liz Lochhead invokes a letter that Burns sent to his great friend the lawyer Robert Ainslie
in 1788 describing an encounter with Jean Armour, his future wife. Well, let’s check the letter - I
quote:
«Jean I found banished, like a martyr - forlorn destitute and friendless: … I have reconciled
her to her fate… I have taken her a room. I have taken her to my arms. I have given her a
mahogany bed. … and I have (excuse the crude words of Burns; there is always some kind
of bawdry on Burns) I have fucked her till she rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of
glory.»

Well, Hard feelings, hard sex, between a man and a woman, no doubt, expressed in a
private conversation, in a letter, between men, but my dear Lochhead, this cannot be considered
rape by all means. Jean Armour, the lady in that situation, loved Burns, they married just after this,
and Jean loved and cared for Burns all his life. This is not rape, Mrs. Lochhead. No way!
So, National Trust for Scotland or Liz Lochhead, hold your tongue about Burns, please!
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My main point is this, my friends: we don’t love Burns because he was an angel, because
he was a saint. We love Burns because he was a human being, imperfect like all of us, but always
in search of great and good values, values that touch our hearts. As Edwin Muir, another honorable
Scottish poet wrote, Burns is not simply a poet, he is more a communal poetic creation. A great
man who by some miracle has been transformed into an ordinary man, and is greater because of
it. Legendary because he was uniquely ordinary. The ordinary man for whom Scotland had been
looking. Not as a king because kings are more common. So,
Fare-thee-weel, my only Poet!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, I’ll do it,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!

So, stand up my fellows, stand up and raise your cups to this Man in search of something inside us
all, this Man we love. A toast to the immortal Burns! To you, my dear Robert Burns!