| (Freddy Anderson) To our certain knowledge Robert Burns had never occasion to journey to Ireland, nor indeed out of Scotland save for a very brief visit to the northern tip of England in his tour of the Border Country following his splendid success with the Edinburgh edition of his poetry in 1787-88. Yet, with his acumen and knowledge of both British and international politics, he was well aware of the state of Ireland towards the end of the 18th century when the British government was conniving to introduce the Act of Union of 1800 by encouraging the Orange Order (founded in 1795) and aggravating conditions leading to the brave United Irishmen’s struggle of 1798. As early as 1786, Burns had written a couplet in his magnificent satire Death and Dr. Hornbook which gave a clue to his political thinking: “...Is just as true’s the Deil’s in Hell Or Dublin City: That e’re he nearer comes oursel ‘S muckle pity!...”
 And that the devil’, the poet would know very well from his own experience in his beloved Scotland, would be none other than the English ascendancy and their conspiratorial fortress, Dublin Castle.
Dr Moore, whose father was a minister from Co Armagh, was the recipient of the poet’s longest and most famous epistle, the autobiographical letter (August 1787). His son, Sir John Moore, later “hero of Corunna”, was sent as a senior officer to help crush the uprising of 1789 in Co Wexford. To his credit, Moore is recorded to have told Henry Grattan that, had he been an Irishman, he would have fought on the side of the rebels in their just cause. The pity was that he was a mere Scottish mercenary in the pay of the English. His father’s famous correspondent, Burns, was a different breed altogether. He fell out with Dr Moore and their rich patroness, Mrs Dunlop, on account of their hostility to the French revolution – she had two daughters married to wealthy French émigrés. Burns, espousing both the revolution and the Scottish Reform Movement, endangered not only his career but his very freedom. The leading advocate of Reform in Scotland was Thomas Muir of Huntershill, Glasgow, a man not unlike Robert Emmet in talent and temperament. For his noble efforts at Reform, he was sentenced to fourteen years transportation in the hulks to Australia, a fate later shared by John Mitchell and scores of Scottish, Irish and even English freedom fighters. Muir had links with the Directorship of the United Irishmen, including Thomas Addis Emmet and Wolfe Tone in Paris. Robert Burns knew well where his own political sympathies might land him: “The shrinking Bard adown the alley skulks And dreads a meeting worse than Greenwich hulks, Though there, his heresies in Church and State Might well award him Muir and Palmer’s fate...” (from Esopus to Maria)
ESSENCE REVEALED
The bard was one of those rare individuals who could penetrate the inner core of all political pretensions and reveal the foul essence of intrigue, national or international. He was the connecting chain of world events, which even today bewilder and deceive many of us. Take, for instance, the case of the flowery political ranter, the Irishman Edmund Burke, whose statue stands at the entrance to Trinity College, Dublin. The mouthpiece of English reaction, he also, like Dr Moore and Mrs Dunlop, was a high Tory opponent of the French revolution and Reform. Burns ably described him in a vicious but very honest quatrain: “Oft have I wondered that on Irish ground No poisonous Reptile ever has been found: Revealed the secret stands of Nature’s work: She preserved her poison to create a Burke!” (from On Mr Burke)
It was in the fairy fields of music that his deep love for things Irish is revealed. In writing accompanying notes for George Thomson’s A Select Collection of Original Scottish (sic) Airs, though warmly defending the wonderful Scottish tradition in music, the great enchantment of Irish airs does not elude him. “Sept 1793...Since you are so fond of Irish music, what say you to twenty five of them in an additional Number ? We could easily find the quantity of charming airs... I assure you that you would find it the most saleable of the whole...” Thomson may have shuddered at the notion, even from such a gifted genius as Burns tackling Irish lyrics. A similar muse most probably implanted the same idea in the mind of Thomas Moore, but such a transposition is really beyond any degree of genius. Songs and tunes cling hard to their own native roots, but, as Burns pointed out, there can be interchanges: “August 1793... What I shrewdly suspect to be the case, the wandering Minstrels, Harpers or Pipers, used to go frequently errant through the wilds both of Scotland and Ireland & so some favourite Airs might be common to both...” FAVOURITE TUNES In the letters sent to Thompson by Burns, there are about ten references to Irish songs and airs. Among the poet’s favourite Irish tunes were the following: The Cooleen, Grarnachree (The Banks of Banna), Captain O’Kean, Ballinamona and Ora, The Humours of Glen and Langolee. To the air of The Humours of Glen, he composed Their Groves o’ Sweet Myrtle, a tribute to Jean armour; the song Sae Flaxen were her Ringlets carries the tune Oonagh’s Waterfall, and Burn’s Yestreen I had a Pint O Wine is to the Irish air The Banks of Banna. His most successful handling of a Scottish-Irish theme is in the fine, plaintive song It Was A’ for Rightful King (James II, of Course!) telling an episode in the Williamite War in Ireland (1689-90). It was a’ for our rightfu’ King, We left fair Scotland’s strand; It was a’ for our rightfu’ King We e’er saw Irish land, my dear, We e’er saw Irish land. We turned him right and round about Upon the Irish shore, And gae his bridle reins a shake, With adieu for evermore, my dear, With adieu for evermore.
 The composer of the lovely air Rory Dall’s Port, to which Burns set the most poignant love-song in the language, Ae Fond Kiss, Was Rory Dall or Blind Rory O’Cahan from Co Derry, one of those wandering Gaelic minstrels before Burns’ time and to whom he referred in his notes to Thomson. Rory Dall had many a long sojourn and was made most welcome in Highland clachans where the Gaelic language and music made such a warm bond inevitable between the scattered Celts. Blind Rory O’Cahan died in 1653.
In his life-time, brief through it was, Burns received quite a few congratulatory letters from folk in Ireland. The first came from John Fowler, residing in a small remote market town called Ballybay, Co Monaghan. The letter was sent on February 15, 1798 and Fowler offered his services in obtaining subscribers for the poet’s works. Others sent him gifts. Samuel Thompson of Belfast sent him a pound of snuff and it is probably the same stuff that Buns tell George Thompson he is using while pacing his room and composing a lyric. Miss Bruntins, also of Belfast, beat Sam Thompson to it with two pounds of Dublin snuff and in 1792 a letter was sent by Henry Joy, a printer in Belfast. This could well have been the famous 1798 United Irishman, Henry Joy McCracken, who led the men of the Antrim glens in the great uprising, and was executed for his patriotism. A Trinity College Dublin, student or teacher, W Stokes, sent the poet a book of poems by somebody named Preston and mentions in his letter that “the pleasant hours of his life were spent in Burns’ company...” And there were other Irish connections. The best known of Burns’ relations and descendants in Ireland is Agnes Burns, the poet’s oldest sister. She married a man from Dundalk, Co Louth, adjacent to the Mourne Mountains. She died in Dundalk in 1834 at the venerable age of seventy-two and her monument is in the little graveyard in the north-east of the town. This Burns connection with Dundalk was probably responsible for Carroll’s tobacco factory labelling one of their products Sweet Afton, after the Burns song of that title. Apart from his sister’s long abode in Co Louth a direct descendent of the poet’s lived in Ireland, a Mrs Martha Thomas, bonny grand-daughter of the poet’s eldest son, Robert (junior). Her mother was Eliza Burns who had married Dr Everitt, the owner of a large estate in Co Wexford. Martha married Mr Thomas, the Everitt estate manager, and resided at Martinstown, Killinick, Co Wexford. The poet’s third son, William Nicol Burns, married Catherine Crone, the daughter of a Dublin man. OTHER LINKSIn conclusion, two other links in the chain of Burnsiana in Ireland deserve a brief mention, Captain Francis Grose, the antiquarian, who encouraged Burns to write the great narrative masterpiece Tam O’ Shanter, proceeded to Ireland to collect material there in 1791 for a book of Irish folklore. Unfortunately he took seriously ill in Dublin and died there in 1792. His research was continued to some degree by Dr and Mrs Hall in the 19th century and more recently by the Irish Renaissance group and the Folklore Commission. Dublin was also the home of Mr Findlater, a wealthy merchant and descendant of Alexander Findlater, Excise Supervisor and on of the poet’s truest friends in Dumfries. It will be observed from all this that the great bard’s links with Ireland were neither scanty nor trival. (This article first appeared in Cencrastus Summer 1990)
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