Burns ‘sex pest’ row
SUPPORTERS of Robert Burns defended Scotland’s National Bard yesterday after leading poet Liz Lochhead outed him as a “sex pest”.
Ms Lochhead, a former Scots Makar, claims the Ayrshire wordsmith was the Harvey Weinstein of his day, having written a letter in which he boasted of raping his pregnant girlfriend.
However, Wilson Ogilvie, a past president of the Burns Federation, said: “I think Ms Lochhead has gone a bit over the top.”
A RESPECTED poet has been accused of going “over the top” by fans of Scotland’s National Bard – by outing Rabbie Burns as a “sex pest”.
Liz Lochhead claims the Ayrshire wordsmith was the Harvey Weinstein of his day, boasting of raping his girlfriend on a horse manure-strewn floor while pregnant with his twins.
She plans to make the comparison with the Hollywood sex scandal when she speaks at a Burns function later this month.
Lothario Burns has always been well-known for his sexual exploits, but Ms Lochhead – a former Scots makar – claims he strayed into the territory of a rapist in a 1788 letter about an encounter with love of his life, Jean Armour.
In it, the poet bragged of jumping on a “destitute and friendless” Armour and giving her a “thundering scalade [military assault]” on a horse manure-strewn floor when she was pregnant with his twins. The couple later married.
However, Wilson Ogilvie, a past president of the Burns Federation, said Ms Lochhead is wrong to compare Burns to Weinstein.
Mr Ogilvie, 82, added: “There are huge differences in the worlds they lived in, separated between the 18th and the 21st centuries.
“Burns was not lily-white in his attitudes towards women. But at that time, I think a number of people right across the whole spectrum of society could have written a letter like that.
“I think Ms Lochhead has gone a bit over the top.”
Ms Lochhead, who is due to deliver a talk on Burns and Women at a dinner for the Scottish Hellenic Society in Glasgow this month, said the 1788 letter about the encounter with Armour contains a “disgraceful sexual boast”.
She added: “Burns is one of the greatest writers of love stories that has ever existed. But in his own words, he is an occasional sex pest.
“I am not the first person to quote this letter. It is infamous and notorious and Burns apologists like to ignore it.”
Ms Lochhead joked the comparison with today’s events has made her consider wearing black rather than tartan to the Burns function, in a show of solidarity with the female celebrities who wore black recently at The Golden Globe awards in protest at Weinstein.
She said: “As I was doing my research into what the hell I was going to say on ‘Burns and Women’, I looked up a notorious letter he sent to his friends, Bob Ainslie.
“I had to laugh as I thought ‘bloody hell, should I be ditching my usual tartan jacket and going in black?’”
Ms Lochhead added: “It’s very, very Weinsteinian, that little disgraceful letter. It is notorious and I am going to quote it.”
Since October, more than 80 women have gone public to make sex abuse allegations against Weinstein, a 65-year-old Hollywood producer.
Ms Lochhead said there other “shameful” aspects to the
Burns.
She added: “It is pretty shameful that someone who could write the Slave’s Lament should work in Jamaica as part of the administrative machinery that oversaw slavery.
“But 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 and who have idolised everything he did. He was anything but a saint.”
The sex pest link to Scotland’s most famous poet, who died in 1796, sparked a backlash on social media yesterday.
One commentator, J. Johnson, wrote: “Oh dear! Will the super leftists and PC fascists remove his statues in Scotland and around the world?” were life of