Scotland should be doing more to celebrate the gift that was Rabbie Burns

The latest in this occasional series is a local project with national implications, for in this case it involves one of the homes of our National Bard, Robert Burns.

I have long considered it a national disgrace that we do not do more to promote Robert Burns as Scotland’s gift to the world. Given his connections to places across the country, it mystifies me why there is no nationally co-ordinated trail that would take you from his birthplace of Alloway in Ayrshire to his mausoleum in Dumfries via the many locations attached to Burns.

The trail could include, for example, Mossgiel Farm at Mauchline, the Bachelor’s Club at Tarbolton, the Eglinton estate at Kilwinning, Souter Johnnie’s Cottage in Kirkoswald, Burns House in Mauchline, the numerous galleries and museums and other institutions associated with him in Edinburgh – the heart-beaking manuscripts in the Writers’ Museum show how his writing deteriorated in his final months – and the many monuments to him across Scotland. My favourite is in Kilmarnock where the disastrous fire of 2004 led to its resurgence as the Burns Monument Centre.

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Glasgow’s Mitchell Library has one of the largest collections of Burnsiana, with more than 5000 items under its roof, while a personal favourite is the Globe Inn in Dumfries – nothing whatsoever to do with alcohol, you’ll understand.

Other venues well worth a visit are Rozelle House in Ayr, where Alexander Goudie’s magnificent and extraordinary Tam o’Shanter paintings are on display. And whatever you think of the National Trust for Scotland, they do a fine job at Alloway where the opening of the £23 million Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in 2009 has significantly developed the local economy.

According to the trust: “The best place to get close to Burns and his genius is his birthplace in the beautiful village of Alloway. Our flagship museum starts a journey that weaves through the village, taking you from historical buildings to landmarks known to Burns.”

Other Burns venues might argue with that verdict but the fact is that the National Trust for Scotland got the museum built and it’s generally doing well, though like every other venue in Scotland it has suffered from the catastrophic effects of the coronivarus pandemic.

There are so many more monuments and places associated with Burns. And though I know organisations like Burnsscotland are doing brilliant work to bring together the curator partnership of venues that host Burns’s items, I see precious little evidence of a national policy to promote Burns. This despite the research by Professor Murray Pittock and his Glasgow University team which showed that Burns-related tourism is worth more than £200m a year to Scotland.

I am still gobsmacked that Glasgow Prestwick Airport has not yet been renamed the Robert Burns International Airport. With all due respect to the people there, who have worked so hard to keep it open, along with the Scottish Government’s financial support, Prestwick has suffered what you might term an image problem. So why not rebrand it after Burns, a world-renowned figure?

I remember the Robert Burns World Federation’s argument back in 2014: “A specific name for an airport is not new and hundreds exist around the world which reflect the high esteem in which local personages are held. Named airports are a constant and continuing reminder of real people who have made significant contributions and serve as a memorial today and into the future.

“If George Best, Robin Hood and John Lennon are deemed worthy of being remembered the iconic Robert Burns should be remembered in Scotland as he is revered the world over.”

For goodness’ sake they renamed the airport in Madeira after footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, and he’s still a youngster. My favourite “name” of them all is Chinggis Khaan International Airport, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – a nation that reveres him as a hero rather than a bloodthirsty conqueror.

Burns has been voted the greatest ever Scot, he is genuinely loved and appreciated across the globe and the world sings Auld Lang Syne at New Year, so why not Robert Burns International for Prestwick?

Fans of the Bard will have noticed that I have left out one important place in my proposed list for a Burns National Trail – Ellisland, the place which Burns built for his family and where he composed some of his finest works.

Ellisland Museum and Farm is a little less than six miles north of Dumfries’s outskirts, just off the A76. It is probably the most unsung of all the locations associated with Burns and I have to confess I only visited it for the first time recently – travelling entirely within a level that allowed such a visit for work purposes.

Now I am not going to gild the lily here. Indeed I have to be very blunt in my criticism. Ellisland is not now fit for purpose, though it looks great in parts but needs a very large amount of money spent on it. Owned and run by a trust since 1922, I think that original trust just ran out of energy and money, and I’m afraid it shows at Ellisland – there are areas of the farm which frankly reek of under-investment.

But here’s the excellent news – a new body, the Robert Burns Ellisland Trust, took over the running of the farm in the summer and the new chairperson is Joan McAlpine MSP, with Professor Gerard Carruthers of Glasgow University’s Centre for Robert Burns Studies also a new trustee. They have been held back by the pandemic, but McAlpine and co are not people who do failure. Their long-term plans are ambitious and could see Ellisland given its rightful place as one of the most important locations in the life of Burns.

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Their mission statement is simple, saying the trust is “committed to conserving and promoting Ellisland Farm at Auldgirth in Dumfries and Galloway as one of the most significant locations in the life of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. We are ambitious to increase understanding of Ellisland as central to Burns’s artistic development”.

Was Ellisland really that important to Burns? And why should lovers of Burns commit money and time to saving it?

If you only learn that Burns finally managed to set up a marital home with Jean Armour here, and that he composed Auld Lang Syne and Tam o’Shanter at Ellisland, that might be enough to convince people to take an interest or even make a donation to help the work.

Ellisland is so much more, however. It could well be argued that after the publication of the Kilmarnock Edition itself, moving to Ellisland was the biggest turning point of the poet’s life.

After his triumph and his carousing in Edinburgh, Burns returned to Ayrshire in early 1788 and resumed his relationship with Jean Armour whose family had effectively expelled her for getting pregnant to Burns again. She gave birth to twins in March of that year but both of the girls died within weeks.

One of Burns’s greatest friends and supporters, the wealthy Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, one of the men who pioneered steam travel in boats, offered the poet the lease of one of three farms on the banks of the River Nith. He did so in response to a letter from Burns which is still preserved.

“I want to be a farmer in a small farm, about a plough-gang, in a pleasant country, under the auspices of a good landlord. I have no foolish notion of being a tenant on easier terms than another.

“To find a farm where one can live at all is not easy – I only mean living soberly, like an old-style farmer, and joining personal industry.

“The banks of the Nith are as sweet poetic ground as any I ever saw; and besides, Sir, ‘tis but justice to the feelings of my own heart and the opinion of my best friends, to say that I would wish to call you landlord sooner than any landed gentleman I know.”

Burns chose Ellisland, the least developed of the three farms but one located right beside the Nith. It was backbreaking work removing stones from the farmland, but Burns worked at it all day, often composing poetry in his head and transcribing it at night. Miller also gave Burns £300 to build a proper farmhouse and it is that preserved building which is the centrepiece of Ellisland to this day.

Burns had the family home designed by architect Thomas Boyd and while the building work was going on, he and Jean stayed at the country home of Burns’s admirer the lawyer David Newall. They moved permanently into Ellisland in June 1789 and Burns began arable and then dairy farming at which he had some success being noted as the man who introduced more milk-productive Ayrshire cattle into Dumfriesshire.

With four servants employed and good furniture sourced in Dumfries, Burns made satisfactory progress on both the farm and his poems, which are some of the earliest European Romantic poems of their type. You can walk along the path where Burns would go to write some of his best works, including Tam o’Shanter – Ellisland is worth the visit for that inspirational walk alone.

Then a great dilemma faced Burns. Through his highly placed friends in Edinburgh he began to train as an exciseman which became an ever more burdensome activity for him after he gained his commission in 1788. He was also writing himself into an early grave – no less than 230 letters, a quarter of his total output, were written in a little more than three years at Ellisland, as well as 130 songs and poems of which Auld Lang Syne was one of the first.

He had to choose – farming or the Excise and the latter won out because it gave him more time to write. The family left Ellisland in November, 1791, and moved to Dumfries.

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Professor Carruthers is in no doubt about the importance of Burns’s stay at Ellisland which “speaks deeply to the psyche of Scotland’s national poet and once we grasp this history we begin also to realise the potential for Ellisland as a major heritage site for the future”.

One of Ellisland’s emblems is a hare. Burns wrote to his friend Mrs Dunlop on April 21, 1789: “... while sowing in the fields, I heard a shot, and presently a poor little hare limped by me, apparently very much hurt. ... this set my humanity in tears..”

It also produced a wonderful poem, On Seeing A Wounded Hare.

Inhuman man! curse on thy barb’rous art,

And blasted be thy murder-aiming eye;

May never pity soothe thee with a sigh,

Nor ever pleasure glad thy cruel heart!

Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait

The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn,

I’ll miss thee sporting o’er the dewy lawn,

And curse the ruffian’s aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.

At Ellisland you can visit the exact spot where Burns witnessed the hare being shot. This farm and museum must be saved and preserved for all humanity, but especially Scotland.