The Letters of Robert Burns

**Bugbear** · 11th February 11, 01:12 AM

Have been looking through The Letters of Robert Burns over at Project Gutenberg, EBook #9863.
Gives me the chills sometimes to read through letters of people in past centuries, and these get pretty sad toward the end.

Also makes me consider that people might one day, in the distant future, be reading through our letters and even posts here on XMTS.
Here's the link:
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/8burn10h.htm

**Lallans** · 11th February 11, 07:28 AM

Hey Bugbear,

I remember Mark Twain recounting in a book written in his own later years that after Burns had died, they put up a big monument for him somewhere and took his mother to see it. Her comment was "Och, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and they ha' ga'en ye a stone!" I've never gotten that image out of my head even though I was never sure that Twain was actually talking about Burns or thinking of his own troubles at the time. Do you see any sign of starvation and so on in the later letters of Robert Burns? I guess I've always been sort of scared about looking into the truth of Burns' circumstances just before his death.

**castledangerous** · 11th February 11, 08:15 AM

Originally Posted by Canuck of NI

Hey Bugbear,

I remember Mark Twain recounting in a book written in his own later years that after Burns had died, they put up a big monument for him somewhere and took his mother to see it. Her comment was "Och, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and they ha' ga'en ye a stone!" I've never gotten that image out of my head even though I was never sure that Twain was actually talking about Burns or thinking of his own troubles at the time. Do you see any sign of starvation and so on in the later letters of Robert Burns? I guess I've always been sort of scared about looking into the truth of Burns' circumstances just before his death.

Hmmmm. Well, if was an actual quote...

**Lallans** · 11th February 11, 09:34 AM

Originally Posted by castledangerous

Hmmmm. Well, if was an actual quote...

Yes, but " if " - that's the thing. Twain was a writer, not an historian. I reckon he told a stretcher or two in his books, or so Huck said.

**MacBean** · 11th February 11, 10:06 AM

His last letter (in part)...

"BROW, on the Solway Firth, 12th July 1796.
After all my boasted independence, curst necessity compels me to implore you for five pounds. A cruel wretch of a haberdasher, to whom I owe an account, taking it into his head that I am dying, has commenced a process, and will infallibly put me into jail."

May that be a lesson to those of us who long for yet another kilt!

**Bugbear** · 14th February 11, 03:03 PM

Originally Posted by Canuck of NI

Hey Bugbear,

I remember Mark Twain recounting in a book written in his own later years that after Burns had died, they put up a big monument for him somewhere and took his mother to see it. Her comment was "Och, Robbie, ye asked them for bread and they ha' ga'en ye a stone!" I've never gotten that image out of my head even though I was never sure that Twain was actually talking about Burns or thinking of his own troubles at the time. Do you see any sign of starvation and so on in the later letters of Robert Burns? I guess I've always been sort of scared about looking into the truth of Burns' circumstances just before his death.

Ok, that quote was from, The Innocents Abroad, by Mark Twain, part 4,chapter XXXVI
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3176/3176-h/p4.htm#ch38
That should get you most of the way there at the Project Gutenberg site.

Twain is discussing the Potemkin Stairs and Duc de Richelieu Monument in Odessa, Ukraine; comparing Richelieu to Burns in his quote.
There is much too much Twain, letters and all, for me to go through right now, so I don't know if he had more to say about Burns; someone else will need to answer that.
I have not found the source for Twain's quote, yet.

MacBean has quoted a Burns letter, and there are other descriptions by Burns like that in the collection. He seemed to be very aware he was dying, but others should speak to how that should be interpreted.
I found this on a quick search:
"The Death of Robert Burns," from the Alexandria Burns Club

Twain's contemporaries, Whitman and Longfellow, as well as Lincoln, all wrote on Burns, which was pointed out in this thread:

Walt Whitman's "Robert Burns as Poet and Person"
Hope the links help a little bit, just thought they might be useful in the XMTS library.

**Lallans** · 15th February 11, 07:37 AM

Thanks Bugbear, I now do recall that is indeed the source of Twain's Burns quote. Innocents Abroad is one of his several books that is so funny that it hurts to read it, the proverbial aching sides being a result. But he did have some dark things to say as well. And from the other source I can see where Burns' mother got her angst; she was thinking of the bairns I'm sure.

**beloitpiper** · 15th February 11, 08:05 AM

I gotta say, these are WAY better than Joyce's letters....

**Lallans** · 16th February 11, 11:58 AM

Partly in reference to my earlier remark that he did not always follow the gospel truth, and partly because it's just a funny story, I've dug up another Burns anecdote from the works of Mark Twain; this one is from one of his later-life travel books, Following The Equator.

" WEDNESDAY, Sept. 11. In this world we often make mistakes of judgment. We do not as a rule get out of them sound and whole, but sometimes we do. At dinner yesterday evening-present, a mixture of Scotch, English, American, Canadian, and Australasian folk - a discussion broke out about the pronunciation of certain Scottish words. This was private ground, and the non-Scotch nationalities, with one exception, discreetly kept still. But I am not discreet, and I took a hand. I didn't know anything about the subject, but I took a hand just to have something to do. At that moment the word in dispute was the word three. One Scotchman was claiming that the peasantry of Scotland pronounced it three, his adversaries claimed that they didn't - that they pronounced it 'thraw'. The solitary Scot was having a sultry time of it, so I thought I would enrich him with my help. In my position I was necessarily quite impartial, and was equally as well and as ill equipped to fight on the one side as on the other. So I spoke up and said the peasantry pronounced the word three, not thraw. It was an error of judgment. There was a moment of astonished and ominous silence, then weather ensued. The storm rose and spread in a surprising way, and I was snowed under in a very few minutes. It was a bad defeat for me - a kind of Waterloo. It promised to remain so, and I wished I had had better sense than to enter upon such a forlorn enterprise. But just then I had a saving thought - at least a thought that offered a chance. While the storm was still raging, I made up a Scotch couplet, and then spoke up and said:

"Very well, don't say any more. I confess defeat. I thought I knew, but I see my mistake. I was deceived by one of your Scotch poets."

"A Scotch poet! O come! Name him."

"Robert Burns."

It is wonderful the power of that name. These men looked doubtful - but paralyzed, all the same. They were quite silent for a moment; then one of them said - with the reverence in his voice which is always present in a Scotchman's tone when he utters the name.

"Does Robbie Burns say - what does he say?"

"This is what he says:

'"There were nae bairns but only three -
Ane at the breast, twa at the knee."'

It ended the discussion. There was no man there profane enough, disloyal enough, to say any word against a thing which Robert Burns had settled. I shall always honor that great name for the salvation it brought me in this time of my sore need.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive. There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it. "