Robert Burns Speaks to America

Robert Burns Speaks

to America:

Affirming the Scottish humanitarian values that helped make America great

Explore, and you will find here songs and music to entertain, uplift, and inform. Enjoy!

~ Read below about Robert Burns and Scottish values

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About

Robert Burns (25 January 1759 - 21 July 1796), Scotland’s national bard, came to prominence just as the Founding Fathers of the United States were drafting a Constitution. Burns’s passion for life, love, liberty, justice, nature (what we now call “the environment”) and honest expression, sometimes got him into trouble with authorities in the church, the government and the elites of British society.

An English officer once challenged him to a duel (fortunately it never took place!) because, after a toast to the health of the British prime minister, Burns raised a toast “to the health of a much better man – George Washington!”

Burns’s tribute to Washington’s birthday includes these lines about his own king:

See gathering thousands, while I sing,

A broken chain exulting bring,

And dash it in a tyrant's face,

And dare him to his very beard,

And tell him he no more is feared.

Burns collected traditional tunes and wrote lyrics to them; he said he could not write the words until he had a melody in mind for them. There are 323 songs by Burns, about 60% of his work. He was, like Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan, a songwriter first and foremost!

Robert Burns was the favorite poet of Abraham Lincoln, who gave an address about Burns on the centennial of his birthday, 25 January 1859, and later wrote, "I can say nothing worthy of his generous heart and transcending genius."

He risked his freedom and social standing to express his views. As you listen to Alan Reid sing the unofficial anthem of Scotland, Burns’s “Scots Wha Hae”, read Alan’s description of how Burns came to write the song to obliquely criticize events of his day without being charged and tried for sedition, like Thomas Paine was for writing The Rights of Man and selling a million and a half copies!

Burns both shaped and expressed the humanitarian impulses of the Scottish people, and that’s why he is considered their national bard. Many Scots of his generation came to the American colonies, including teachers of Thomas Jefferson and many others who built a country.

In 1999, the Scots re-opened their own Parliament for the first time since 1707, and included in ceremony was a song by Robert Burns (which the Royal Family tried to strike from the program!) – “A Man’s A Man”, about the basic humanity of all people.

While you hear Alasdair Fraser play it on fiddle, read his comments about myths and human rights.

--Ed Pearlman, January 2017 and 2025

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