CULTURE’S HERITAGE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 81, 29 December 1934, Page 12

CULTURE’S HERITAGE

Robert Burns, Lowlander "Burns was not the product of a sudden unearthly outburst, but he was the final tower of the age-old wall, built by the culture peculiar to the Scottish Lowlands,” said Mr. O. N. Gillespie in an address to the St. Andrew Burns Club held in Wellington last week, presided over by Mr. Robert Hogg. "Carlyle has stated that men are .■Superior to history, but the slowlyevolving lesson of history is that greatness is just a part of general progress.' Scotland for cultural purposes is largely represented by the south.

x “There the extraordinary culture of the Latins, through the French, came into Britain. For 400 years the Scots literary output was far larger and more valuable tha.n that produced by the rest of the British Isles.” Air. Gillespie explained that to add to this was the potent factor that an English dialect —Lowland Sgots—had become decorated and enriched by many words from the French, and enshrined in homely verse. At home, the Scot had learned to quarrel about money and religion only, but in Europe they quarrelled about anything. The state of Europe during this period had been one of continual unrest, Poland, France and Spain all striving for the lion’s share. The middle class did not exist, and there were only the owners and the owned. In consequence, during the 206 years immediately prior to Burns, Scotland had been the repository of a general culture, and the love of poetry and recorded literature was in the hearts of the people themselves. No analogy could be reached between the home conversation of Scotland and that of any other part of Europe, including England. The young Scot had. opportunity, and if he could rhyme he was welcomed in a hundred homes, an impossibility elsewhere. “To the ordinary ploughman in Scotland, a cultural education was possible which the wealthiest Eng-’ lishman could not purchase for his son,” had said a prominent Frenchman. Bearing this in mind, it was seen that Burns had a heritage of culture. ■ “Lowland Scots was. 150 years before, a Court language; but it had this blessed difference from Pope’s and Dryden’s tongue: it was diffused among a people who knew what it was to go without blankets. It was'the language of the ordinary people.” he continued “It is very precious to realise that the Scot’s gift of words, which makes people realise the homely truths, was the work of wonderful scholarship. Burns had a better education than Keats or Shelly. During the evening songs were sung by Mr. D. Hogg. Mrs. Angus Mackay and Mr. Bennett, and pipe selections and elocutionary items by Pipe-Major MacCallum. The secretary reported that the club’s application for affiliation with the Burns Federation. Kilmarnock. Scotland, had been unanimously accepted by the committee. The meeting closed with the singing of “Scots Wha Hac” and “Auld Lang Syne.”