The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
It’ s Burns Night, but did Rabbie speak with a Doric accent?
Robert Burns’ words are known and loved the world over… but did Rabbie speak with a Doric accent?
The idea our bard might have used the north-east tongue of his Mearns-born father certainly caught the imagination of early experts delving into Burns’ roots.
Writing in the Aberdeen Weekly Journal in January 1915, James Crabb Watt KC, author of a History Of The Mearns, described Burns’ father William as a man of culture and intelligence, although a “horny-handed son of toil”.
He added: “Old Burns carried the couthie Mearns tongue with him to Ayr and doubtless imparted a Mearns colouring to his son’s speech as well as thoroughness to his knowledge of Scotch customs.”
And in 1927, a treatise on the Mearns accent in the Press and Journal by an author, bylined only as RHC, added to the argument for a Doric Burns.
“The father of Robert Burns carried his Mearns accent with him when he went south to Ayrshire and possibly the poet himself spoke with a Mearns accent,” he stated.
It is certainly a possibility, said Douglas Samways, the president of the Stonehaven (Fatherland) Burns Club.
“I would definitely think he would have used Mearns and north-east words and phrases,” he said, adding Burns’ farming family had roots running deep in the rich land around Stonehaven and Glenbervie.
William Burnes was born at Clochnahill in the parish of Dunnottar in 1721, before leaving the family farm for Edinburgh in the 1740s and eventually to become a tenant farmer in Alloway in Ayrshire – where the story of Robert Burns begins after his father met and married Agnes Broun, whose family were Ayrshire farmers.
Whether he imparted his accent to his son will forever be uncertain, but Mr Samways is sure he passed on the rich cultural traditions of the Mearns, in songs and stories, to young Robert who would later go on to find and record traditional Scottish songs and ballads.
He said: “I have no doubt that round the fire in the cottage in Alloway there would have been songs from the past, sung by his dad. That would have given him an insight into the Scottish culture that certainly his father was brought up in, but his mother as well.
“And perhaps he thought it is time to record these sort of things. And if he hadn’t done, we would not have had Auld Lang Syne, for example.”
But more than folklore, William Burnes – he never dropped the “E” although Robert did – gave his son another invaluable gift rooted in the Mearns way of life, said Mr Samways.
“His father, certainly, was a great believer in education. It’s a myth Burns was the uneducated ploughman poet – he certainly promoted that myth himself, he was a bit of a self-publicist at times and did a pretty good job of it.
“He was well-educated. He did know the classics very well. If you read his works in English, he is clearly a well-read man. That could well have come from the influence of his father, who was influenced by his upbringing here, that strong sense of the importance of education, the sense of community and family, which are still alive in this part of the world.
“He also instilled that keen sense of fairness and equality that speaks loudly all through Burns’ works.”
Mr Samways said the Stonehaven (Fatherland) Club is fiercely proud of Burns’ strong links to the area, with his family having farmed there for generations, and with some accounts putting them back to the time of Robert the Bruce.
The club has a walking tour, with details online, to take in many of the spots linked with Burns. It includes farms, such as Clochnahill, marked with a cairn at the side of the A90, as well as cemeteries where Burns’ forebears and relatives are buried, such as Glenbervie and Kirkton of Fetterreso.
There is also a Burns Memorial Garden in the heart of Stonehaven.
While William Burnes never returned to the Mearns, his son did, as part of a tour taking in swathes of the north-east of Scotland in 1787. He was at the height of his fame and being lauded by the great and good as he made his way around the country in what some academics have called his “rock star” tour.
He spent a short time in Stonehaven – just a night, visiting a cousin who lived on the High Street, said Mr Samways.
Burns noted the meeting in his journal. He said. “Near Stonehive, the coast a good deal romantic. Meet my relations. Robert Burnes, writer in Stonehive, one of those who love fun, a gill, a punning joke, and have not a bad heart – his wife, a sweet, hospitable body, without any affectation of what is called town breeding.”
The poet never returned to the Mearns. He passed away at the age of just 37 on July 21 1796, but had been suffering from ill health for at least five years before that.
No doubt that will have been reflected in the Burns suppers taking place online across the globe over the weekend and in those being held today, when glasses are raised to the Immortal Memory of a man… one moulded by the Mearns.