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Scotland's Burns Wrote on Note, Now Seen on One
 | By Kerry Rodgers
December 27, 2007 |
Rabbie Burns: Scot, farmer, philogynist, excise officer and poet, appeared on an issue of the Bank of Scotland for the first time this past September. He provides the central vignette on the back of the new £5 issue.
The image used is that of the Robert Burns statue which stands in the center of Dumfries, the town where Burns was born, lived much of his life, died and is now buried. One of his favorite pubs, The Globe Inn, still plies it trade there.
Scotland's much-loved national bard - who is celebrated every Jan. 25, Burns Night, with a meal of haggis and readings of his works - had already featured on the Clydesdale Bank's £5 bank note starting in 1971: Standard Catalog of World Paper Money Nos. 205, 221, 218, 224. Yet his intimate association with paper money is far older.It dates back over 200 years. At some time around 1786 he sat and penned 12 lines of verse on the back of a Bank of Scotland one-guinea issue of 1780.
The circumstances and timing under which this brief poem was written are not precisely known. Readers may not be aware that Burns had a very hard life. Much of it was spent in poverty. Guinea notes would have not figured large in his existence. Each would have represented a considerable fortune.
Burns had been born in 1759 in Alloway, South Ayrshire, eldest of seven children. He had little regular schooling with much of his education coming from his father. Throughout his childhood and teen years he worked as a laborer on his father's farm, although with occasional time-outs for short-lived bursts of formal tutoring.
His first poems date from his teen years, already written in his distinctive style that blended English with the Scots' language. Many of these early works were directed to or about the numerous young women for whom he displayed an inordinate fondness. His first illegitimate child was born circa 1784 to his mother's servant - just as he was undertaking a more serious relationship with Jean Armour. She would eventually bear him nine children, only three of whom would survive infancy.
During one rift in his relationship with Jean, he took up with Mary (Highland) Campbell. His attempts to scratch a living by faming the land had never been successful and about 1786 his life went pear-shaped. Burns and Mary considered emigrating to Jamaica where he hoped to find work as a bookkeeper on a plantation.
It was about now that he sat one day, presumably in a pub, and pondered a guinea note in his possession, "Fell source of a' my woe and grief!" On its back he tempestuously scrawled a record of his decision to leave. His choice had not been easy. He reflects on his life and the inequities of the society in which he lived. He vents his frustrations, yet despite everything maintains his sense of humor .... and all that in just 12 short lines.
Wae worth thy power, thou cursed leaf!
Fell source o' a' my woe and grief!
For lack o' thee I've lost my lass;
For lack o' thee I scrimp my glass.
I see the children of affliction
Unaided, thro' thy curst restriction:
I've seen the oppressor's cruel smile
Amid his hapless victim's spoil;
And for thy potence vainly wished,
To crush the villain in the dust:
For lack o' thee, I leave this much-lov'd shore,
Never, perhaps, to greet old Scotland more!
When Mary suddenly died, Burns still needed money. His particular need of the nine-guinea fare to Jamaica had led him to publish a collection of his poetry. The result changed the course of Burns' life and of Scottish literature.
His works in the Scottish dialect created a sensation. He was invited to Edinburgh to meet men of learning. While there made a lasting impression on 16-year-old Walter Scott, who now fronts Bank of Scotland issues.
Burns returned to Ayrshire and made his peace with Jean Armour, now the mother of twins, although declining to marry her - immediately. He trained as an excise officer and was appointed to Customs and Excise in 1789 where he achieved some modest success. It was at this time that he produced some of his best poetry, including the epic "Tam O' Shanter," whose Brig o' Doon appears alongside Burns on the back of that 2007 £5 note.
Burns was spectacularly unsuccessful at most endeavors other than his writing. But along with his affection for Scotswomen went a fondness for the whisky, another subject that appears frequently in his poems. The doctors warned him to cut down on his intake of scotch but he scorned their advice. His excesses caught up with him. He aged prematurely and became subject to fits of depression and despondency. A long-standing rheumatic heart condition was aggravated and he collapsed and died on July 21, 1796, aged just 37.
Acknowledgment: Bank Note Reporter wishes to thank the Trustees of the Burns Cottage, www.burnsheritagepark.com, for providing images of their celebrated one-guinea note.
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