Burns - My Heart's in the Highlands
Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North,
The birth-place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.
My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer;
Chasing the wild-deer, and following the roe,
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.
Farewell to the mountains, high-cover'd with snow,
Farewell to the straths and green vallies below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods,
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.
It is often said that the past is another country.
Certainly as Burns was growing up in the late 18th century, the Highlands of Scotland were very distant to the lowlanders and not just in geography or distance in that time of horse transport. In historical and political terms, there was a wide gulf recently fuelled by the Jacobite rebellions. (Don't forget that the last Jacobite leader was executed less than six years before Robert's birth in the auld clay cottage of Alloway, so the scars were very real and tender).
Add these varied factors together and the northern part of our nation was certainly another country in the eyes of our poet's Ayrshire neighbours. Different, but of course, equally Scottish. This was a puzzle Burns wanted to resolve!
Robert Burns was a poet of genius – and the more I listen to his poems (the best way, by the way, to understand – even if some of the words are difficult now) the more I hear three special threads:
- The respect for every human being, based not on their external values, but on who they are and how they fulfil their unique, human potential;
- The gift of love between man and woman in its simplicity and its complexity; and
- The comprehension that mankind is part of nature, not its master.
It was this third insight that sparked his desire to see this country within a country and to experience its people, culture and above all the wildness of Nature beyond the farms and pastures tended by the lowland man.
This theme means an increasing amount to us: his study of man's position in nature – neither Rabbie nor his mouse would have known what an 'ecosystem' was but both were 'truly sorry Man's dominion/ Had broken Nature's social union'. So it must have been an overwhelming temptation to leave the farms and cities to seek the rugged grandeur of the ancient Highlands with its gnarled forests, gushing streams and heather clad mountains – to stand there closer than ever to the primal forces of Nature and to move from being the farmer of the land to being at the mercy of the wilderness.
This was an inspiration to Burns and he put it into practice in two journeys to the Highlands in 1787 – leading to an output of poems on these themes.
The first tour, to the West Highlands on horseback, is less well recorded. Perhaps this was because of a desire on Robert's part to see where Highland Mary lived her brief life. Like the whole story of that doomed love affair, the truth was buried close in Burns' heart and so we will never know (though so many love to speculate!), but here we can see his first contact with the old Highland life and its magnificent scenery.
It wasn't uniformly good! Rabbie hated being bossed – or worse – outranked by 'high society', so when he couldn't get a meal in Inveraray because the nearby Duke of Argyll had commandeered everything in the inn he shot out one of his stinging epigrams
There's naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger:
If Providence has sent me here,
'Twas surely in his anger.
Fortunately, a rather amusing early incident of road rage on the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond (where he upskittled a highlander boy racing on horses around a tight corner) returned him to good temper and a desire to see not just the West but the heart of the North.
'In a week, if whim and weather serve, I set out for the north, a tour of the Highland.' wrote Robert and he set off in August 1787'. In his letters and journals we can follow him (in a carriage this time with a bit of a pain of a friend, Willy Nicol) from Edinburgh first, to the gateway of Stirling and thence into the Highlands themselves. He spent time with famous Scots (such as Neil Gow the greatest of fiddlers), nobles (the Dukes of Athole and of Gordon), ordinary folk and happily his father's kin. But the real companion on the tour was the scenery.
Scott would call this 'the land of the mountain and the flood' and both of these natural features captured Robert's imagination. The lofty peaks and the uncultivated grandeur were a real awakening. One of his first poems written on this tour still sees the twinning of the beauty of a girl and a location, in the cheerful song, 'The Birks of Aberfeldie' written standing under the waterfall there:
The hoary cliffs are crown'd wi' flowers,
White o'er the linns the burnie pours,
And rising, weets wi' misty showers
The birks of Aberfeldie.
Bonie lassie, will ye go,
Will ye go, will ye go,
Bonie lassie, will ye go
To the birks of Aberfeldie!
But the real awakening came in the countryside beyond Blair Atholl. The poems lose interest in all but the power and force of Nature. The underlying theme, the force that caught Robert, the experience that put the wild into wilderness for him was the gushing of burns and waterfalls – I think he felt a personal metaphor in experiencing a force of nature which was as strong, powerful, relentless and awe inspiring as his own restless genius:
"Here, foaming down the skelvy rocks,
In twisting strength I rin;
There, high my boiling torrent smokes,
Wild-roaring o'er a linn:
Enjoying each large spring and well,
As Nature gave them me,
I am, altho' I say't mysel',
Worth gaun a mile to see."
While at times all this must have seemed exotic and mythic, Burns felt in touch with part of the wellspring of our national psyche. He was an early captor of the romantic view of man and nature – often more closely associated with fans of his work such as Wordsworth or Keats. It was entirely in keeping with his natural genius to make such an early connection with the romantic ideal of the wilderness and to build on his own philosophy.
At this time of year, as we toast the Immortal Memory, let us not forget that he wasn't just the plowman poet, nor the literary lion of Edinburgh, but like Scotland herself, he is a phenomenon which is broader, deeper and less easy to pigeonhole.
His response to the Highlands, the rugged wild terrain and its people was captured forever in this group of poems – which had a wider effect. After Burns' too early death, the wars against Napoleon kept people from visiting the Continent and it was on the foundation of the Highland poems written by Burns (and especially the traditional songs he captured on the tours), that Walter Scott built a view of our nation which attracted increasing numbers of tourists: every one trying to touch the essence of the power of wilderness which they had read in Robert's powerful words. One day, even Queen Victoria succumbed and the rest, as they say, is history.
WHEN Death's dark stream I ferry o'er,
(A time that surely shall come,)
In Heav'n itself I'll ask no more,
Than just a Highland welcome.
Clark McGinn
Clark is a banker in London by trade but speaks and writes extensively on Scotland, with a particular emphasis on Robert Burns. This January sees him proposing The Immortal Memory 17 times, literally round the world. His book 'The Ultimate Burns Supper Book'' is published by Luath Press and is available on amazon or in bookshops
