ToBec Burns Supper

ToBec Tribute to Poets and Poetry

Here's a bottle and an honest friend!

What wad ye wish for mair man?

Burns night, 25^th January, is the night Robert Burns is celebrated by Scots and non-Scots around the world.  While Burns is said to have never left his native Scotland, he was very aware of the world, the French Revolution and the American movement for independence.

In 2000 a newspaper described Burns as the man of the Millennium.  He not only wrote poetry, but also restored and recorded poetry and songs that had been passed down from generation to generation.  At ToBec we have adopted Burns as an ambassador of all poets and poetry.  Behind me on a bookshelf are six volumes of the ToBec Newsletter.  Browsing, I came across Burns’ “On Scaring Some Water-Fowl in Loch Turit.”   The last verse I think reminds us of the moderating, even auditing role literature should have over science.

Or, if man’s superior might

Dare invade your native right,

On the lofty ether borne,

Man with all his pow’rs you scorn;

Swiftly seek, on clanging wings,

Other lakes and other springs;

And the foe you cannot brave,

Scorn at least to be his slave.

Burns urges the waterfowl to fly away to other safe places, but what do they do when there is nowhere to go?  Today, “man’s superior might” has reached the nuclear age, and it is not only the birds that must find other places to live!

Robert Burns

25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796

Chronology

25 January 1759      Born

1759 – 1766            Alloway, Ayrshire

1766 – 1777            Mount Oliphant

1771 – 1796            Completed over 550 poems, ballads and songs

1777 – 1784            Lochlea, between Tarbolton and Mauchline

February 1784         William Burnes died

1784                      Met Jean Armour of Mauchline

1784 – 1796            Mossgiel Gilbert and Robert started the farm together, but Gilbert  continued the farm alone

1786                      Secretly married Jean Armour who gave birth to twins

1786                      Published ‘Kilmarnock Poems'

1786 – 1788            Gained celebrity in Edinburgh as the ‘ploughman poet’

4^th May 1788          Formalized marriage to Jean Armour

June 1788 – 1791    Ellisland, Dumfrieshire farming and working in excise

Nov 1791 1796        Dumfries. Officer in the Dumfries Port Division of the Excise

21 July 1796           Passed away

At ToBec Burns Night we welcome readings from all poets, including original poetry, so; 

Bring a poem, and a dram or dish

We’ll raise our glasses and make a wish,

For family, friends and neighbours, too

For all the world, and for you.

Songs and ditties in humour and fun,

In riddles and rhyme a truth may run.

Thoughts shared, ideas sown,

Dreams to prosper in the year to come.

Below is a simple Chronology of Poetry in English Literature compiled from “Love Through the Ages”.  This chronology gives some indication of how poets and their poetry have responded to the issues of the times.  The website above is a good place to explore the role and influence of poetry.

PERIODS OF LITERATURE

THE CLASSICAL PERIOD (1200 BC - 455 AD)

The Classical (Homeric) Age

Extracts from The Odyssey

The Classical Roman Age

Extracts from Ovid's Metamorphoses

THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD (455 AD-1485 AD)

The Medieval Age

THE RENAISSANCE AND REFORMATION (1485-1660 AD)

The Renaissance and Elizabethan Age

Hero and Leander by Christopher Marlowe

THE ENLIGHTENMENT (NEOCLASSICAL) PERIOD (1660-1790)

The Neoclassical Age

The Restoration (c. 1660-1700)

The Augustan Age (c. 1700-1750)

The Age of Johnson (c. 1750-1790)

THE ROMANTIC PERIOD (c. 1790-1830)

THE VICTORIAN PERIOD and the 19th Century (c. 1819-1901) 

MODERN PERIOD (c. 1914-1945)

The Age of Modernism

The Lost Generation (also called the writers of The Jazz Age, 1914-1929)

THE POSTMODERN PERIOD (c. 1945 onward) (1950-2001)

Multiculturalism

The Beat poets

CONTEMPORARY POETRY (2001- )