They lived, loved and left a lasting – some say immortal – memory. Two national bards born two hundred years apart inspire similarly devoted followings and an excuse for revelry come the anniversaries of their birthdays: Burns Night in January, Bob Marley’s in February. Two poets, one love. But as always it’s complicated.
For Valentine’s Day, come with Sceptical Scot to the Caribbean where Auld Lang Syne is sung with as much feeling as One Love. We go via Jamaica Street, Glasgow where for several years both birthdays were celebrated at the splendid MacSorleys Music Bar in a ‘Reggae Burns’ fusion of food, music and poetry (Caribbean spice gravlax and jerk venison followed by Jamaican gingerbread and coconut icecream and a good deal of rum).
Perhaps Robert Burns would have followed this route to the Clyde if he had taken that job on a sugar plantation in 1786. Jamaica Street was named after the largest slave plantation in the Caribbean and by the 1780s the city merchants were growing very rich from shiploads of sugar and rum sailing up the river. He certainly visited the nearby Trongate some time in 1787. The instant success of his published works, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, enabled the impoverished poet to turn down the offer and pursue fortune in his homeland instead.
Burns’s near miss is not often mentioned over the haggis, though Clark McGinn, author of The Ultimate Burns Supper Book, provides fascinating detail of that part of the Scottish bard’s life. This after-dinner speaker grapples with the troubling facts in toasts to the Immortal Memory the world over. “Some commentators play the get out of gaol card free,” he writes here, “RB was only to be the bookkeeper.” McGinn does not shirk:
“It is true that the appellation sounds quite dull; but being ‘bookkeeper’ was as much about managing the assets as the numbers. He would have a daily interface with the truth of slavery – from assisting in purchases, through recording punishments and deaths and an ambitious young man might seek advancement by volunteering to be more ‘hands-on’. Certainly, in a letter, Burns described his role as ‘a poor Negro driver’ which puts him more on the executive than the administrative arm.
However, McGinn loves Burns “though he was no saint” and traces in the poet’s work a growing awareness of the iniquity of slavery, which can be linked to his life-long condemnation of injustice and oppression of the poor. By 1792, three years after William Wilberforce’s Abolition Speech, Burns had written the Slaves Lament
It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral,
For the lands of Virginia, – ginia, O:
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more;
And alas! I am weary, weary O:
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more;
And alas! I am weary, weary O.
A man’s a man, and it seems today’s Jamaicans bear no hard feelings. Indeed many know nothing about Burns. In an article in the Jamaican Gleaner, Jamaican poet and journalist Mel Cooke makes only brief mention that Burns, ‘Scotland’s treasure’, once planned to work on the sugar plantations. His main point is to inform readers who wrote the song they all sing, Auld Lang Syne (written in 1788), and he goes on to quote the song in full – it’s very much longer than the couple of verses we tend to sing round supper tables, not quite sure when to cross hands. How many tackle the penultimate two verses?
We two have run about the hills
And pulled the daisies fine
But we’ve wanderd manys the weary foot
Since long, long ago
[For auld lang syne..
We two have paddled in the stream
From morning sun till dine
But seas between us broad have roared
Since long, long ago
[for auld lang syne]
Two Roberts
In an article two years ago The Gleaner noted ‘uncanny parallels’ between the two ‘great Roberts’:
“Both born to humble circumstances in a small country with a few million inhabitants. Both were free spirits who praised the intoxicating pleasures of ganja and whisky respectively. Both fathered numerous children from multiple mothers – roughly nine from seven for Marley and 11 from six for Burns. Both penned world anthems, with One Love being arguably the closest modern equivalent to Auld Lang Syne. And both died young, Marley at 36 and Burns at 37.”
One Love! One Heart!
Let’s get together and feel all right.
Hear the children cryin’ (One Love!);
Hear the children cryin’ (One Heart!),
Sayin’: give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right;
Sayin’: let’s get together and feel all right. Wo wo-wo wo-wo!
The Slaves Lament reverberates through recent music and art. Not one of Burns’ best in McGill’s view, it certainly seems a pale thing compared with Marley’s Redemption
Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the ‘and of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Yet Glasgow artist Graham Fagen has used it to startling and moving effect many times, combining Burns and reggae in exhibitions and multi-media performances from Edinburgh to Venice. Ten years ago Fagen fulfilled a long ambition to take the route Burns never had to. He travelled through Jamaica’s sugar plantations with a copy of the Slaves Lament and a mission to record Jamaican voices singing the song. On the way he passed through plantation villages of Glasgow, Dundee, Cessnock, Kilmarnock. He returned with film of local musicians singing Burns. He had been worried, he told the Scotsman, about being seen as ‘some white boy’ turning up with a song by ‘one of my white brothers who wrote it more than 200 years ago…’
Instead he was greeted with Jamaican warmth and emotion. “They all said that the man who wrote these words was great and that it came from the heart.”
It’s worth searching for Fagen’s work on YouTube, perhaps starting with the Venice Biennale and a haunting glimpse of the Slaves Lament. Meanwhile, back in Jamaica Street, MacSorleys Music Bar is preparing for its Last Waltz – the bar is closing on Sunday 14 February and the annual celebration of the two Roberts has moved to the Rum Shack on the other side of the Clyde. This year they celebrated with an all-women cast in ‘A Toast Fae the Lassies’. True love is always complicated.
Main photo: Bob Marley and The Wailers, The Summer of ’80 Garden Party, Crystal Palace Concert Bowl CC By-SA 3.0
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