To a louse... Now Burns is caught up in sex pest row
FROM Ae Fond Kiss to A Red, Red Rose, Scotland’s national bard is lauded for penning some of the most moving and tender lines about matters of the heart.
But one of Robert Burns’s lesser known writings – a letter in which the notorious womaniser appears to brag about raping his pregnant fiancée – threatens to colour this month’s annual celebrations in his memory.
Former Makar Liz Lochhead has suggested the ‘disgraceful sexual boast’ marked Burns out as the Harvey Weinstein of his day because it displayed a lack of respect for women on a par with the shamed American movie producer.
Miss Lochhead, one of Scotland’s most popular modern poets, said the letter from Burns to a friend in 1788 purported to detail a sexual encounter with Jean Armour.
Burns boasts of giving ‘destitute
‘Disgraceful boast seems like rape’
and friendless’ Armour a ‘thundering scalade’ [military assault] on a manure-strewn floor while she was pregnant with his twins.
Burns, who died in 1796 aged 37, was well-known for his sexual exploits, but Miss Lochhead believes the letter shows he strayed beyond what was acceptable, then and now, and intends to make the comparison with the Hollywood sex scandal at a Burns function this month.
She said: ‘The disgraceful sexual boast to his friend seemed very like a rape of his heavily pregnant girlfriend. It’s very, very Weinsteinian, that little disgraceful letter.’
Since October, more than 80 women have made allegations of abuse against Weinstein. The scandal spawned the #MeToo movement and stars wore black at last week’s Golden Globe awards in solidarity with victims.
Miss Lochhead, who will deliver a talk on ‘Burns and Women’ at a dinner for the Scottish Hellenic Society in Glasgow, said: ‘I looked up a notorious letter he sent to his friend, Bob Ainslie. I had to laugh as I thought, “Bloody hell, should I be ditching my usual tartan jacket and going in black?”.’
She will also read from Ae Fond Kiss, the apogee of Burns’s unconsummated love for Agnes Maclehose, whom he named Clarinda.
Miss Lochhead said: ‘The more one reads about [Burns], the more one is faced with what a contradictory character he was. He was a genuine romantic, easily flamed to passionate love. He was a sex pest as well, I think. Does that mean he isn’t worth reading? It’s not relevant. Why should we look to artists to be good people?’
Of Ae Fond Kiss and the letter, Miss Lochhead, said: ‘He’s just as sincere in his romantic love for Clarinda as he is for the horrible sexual braggart that he makes himself sound in his letter.
‘For all we know his reconnection with Jean Armour... was not experienced by either as other than passionate and loving.’
Miss Lochhead, who will take part in the Burns Unbroke festival in Edinburgh’s Summerhall, added: ‘I have an interest in the life of Burns far less than I have of his work. Who I am criticising are the people who would turn Burns into a saint.’
Wilson Ogilvie, a past president of the Burns Federation, said: ‘Burns cannot be compared to Weinstein. There are also huge differences in the worlds they lived in... at that time, a number of people across the spectrum of society could’ve written a letter like that.’