The Great National Anthem Debate

2 Dec 2004 in Music

Is There For Honest Wealth?

Robert Burns’s great song ‘A Man’s a Man for a’ That’ took centre stage at the installing of the Scottish Parliament, but should it be our new National Anthem? ROBERT DAVIDSON let’s his head rule his heart and rules it out of court in his contribution to the Great National Anthem Debate

Robert Burns

BESIDE ME THIS morning as I start the day’s darg there lies a tattered copy of the poems and songs of Robert Burns while, through the computer system, I am playing one of Linn Records great ‘Complete Songs’ disks. Both have travelled with me through a long stretch of my life, but especially the book. First published by Collins in 1955 it has cardboard covers and thin, almost tissue, pages. At least the print doesn’t come off on your fingers.

This copy of mine was issued in a 1975 reprint and it won’t have been many years after that I picked it up. Since then it’s been with me through relationship breakdowns, relocations, crises of faith, miscarriages, bereavements, failures and losses of various kinds, but enough happiness beside all those to keep me going. The fact is the work of Robert Burns is a touchstone of my life.

Oh, I’m a believer all right. Especially I am a believer in the songs. What a superb treasury of work to draw from. Actually I feel we could almost forget many of the poems by now, or at least see them mainly as historical items, redolent of the ideologies and aspirations of their age. Or like ‘Tam O’Shanter’, as an imaginative resource. It would make a good movie that one. By the way, ever notice how many great Scottish poets have the Christian name ‘Robert’? Burns, Tannahill, Ferguson. Ah well, dream on Bob.

But – those love songs. There’s no escaping the fact that they are rooted in genuine lived and observed experience. There is a lyric issuing from the speakers now. Janet Russell is singing ‘Wha’ll mow me now?’ Stopping typing for a moment I hear the arresting words ‘the soldier wi his bandolier has banged my belly fu’. They don’t write lyrics like that for the charts. Reality; and as relevant in these times as in Mister Burns’ own.

What prompts all this is the wave of hand ringing and holywillerie now accompanying the latest manifestation of the Great National Anthem Debate. Cynic that I am, when I hear these things I look round the corners and up the closes wondering what it is we’re being distracted from.

“But am I wrong in thinking that the call for ‘Is There For Honest Poverty’ as National Anthem comes from them and not from those who are actually poor?”

Begging to report, apart from the war in Iraq there’s not much new. There is still deprivation in the housing schemes, usage of illegal drugs increases with a concomitant increase in gun and other violent crime, alcoholism is rife as ever, housing problems don’t lessen and winter is coming on (no joke here in the Highlands), too many people can’t read and among those who can too few actually do. There is more, but really, this is only the usual stubborn litany of grief and misery that is rooted in, or at least exacerbated by, poverty.

Also as usual, it lives beside a strong middle class that continuously gathers wealth and passes it from generation to generation. Credit to them it’s not that they (perhaps I should write ‘we’) don’t care. They care right up to the point of paying their taxes and a bit more to charities. But am I wrong in thinking that the call for ‘Is There For Honest Poverty’ as National Anthem comes from them and not from those who are actually poor? The notion was originally articulated by, I think, Brian Wilson MP and, I see, has now been taken up by the Scottish Green Party.

Well, I listen carefully and, yes, it is mostly the teachers and social workers, the lawyers and economists, echoing the politicians. I must say it does my wee heart good to see them tapping their feet with such virtuous enthusiasm but you have to ask if this sort of guidance should come from ideology bearers of any stamp. Perhaps they know something I don’t, but what’s so great about poverty?

Before the decision is eventually made it might be worth looking over the lyrics we are being asked to adopt as our Great International Identity Statement, and look at them in terms of our own times rather than the times in which they were written. Here goes.

Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head an a’ that?
The coward slave, we pass him by –
We dare be free for a’ that!
For a’ that an a’ that,
Our toils obscure an a’ that,
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin grey an a’ that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine –
A man’s a man for a’ that.
For a’ that, an a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an a’ that,
The honest man, thoe e’er sae poor,
Is king o men for a’ that.

Ye see yon birkie ca’d ‘a lord’,
Wha struts an stares, an a’ that?

Enough! That’s enough to be going on with.

Burns asks, is there for honest poverty that hings his heid ? Good question, it deserves an answer. No, I don’t think there is. It’s despair that brings the head down, hopelessness and the impossibility of escape. Escape from what? Poverty actually.

“Is it so hard to accept that independence for the individual, the family, the country, might have something to do with having enough wealth?”

Honest poverty? Right now I am going through a period of low income and I have to accept it may never end. This is the result of open-eyed choice so I don’t complain. In fact, I’m a pretty lucky guy because I’m doing things I want to do and have enough to get by. Just the same I can report from recent experience that poverty isn’t so great. Real poverty, honest or dishonest, actually stinks. Come to think of it, what is dishonest poverty? Fiddling your benefits?

‘The coward slave we pass him by. ’ Really, that’s a remarkably ungenerous thought because ‘coward’ isn’t a word that sits easily with ‘slave’. The point about being a slave, or developing a slave mentality, is lack of choice. Worse, it is being at the beck and call of an owner who might be an individual or an international conglomerate or the State. Slaves are neither cowards nor heroes since they have no choice. The aspiration for any slave, bonded or waged, is not heroics but independence. Ah yes, independence, the aspiration that dare not speak its name. Is it so hard to accept that independence for the individual, the family, the country, might have something to do with having enough wealth?

There is more to rank than the guinea stamp . I’ve still to hear of a social system without hierarchies and I suspect the robe-rending advocates of this song would think twice about giving up their place in society if push actually came to shove. Inequality and unfairness are built in to both inherited wealth and the redistribution of wealth. But hey, I’m coming round to seeing that inequality isn’t necessarily so bad. It allows for movement and change.

‘What though on hamely fare we dine ?’ Here is one of the big differences between Mr Burns’ times and these. Hamely fare isn’t what it used to be and high in the list of deprivations suffered today is the loss of the opportunity, or ability, to cook. I have a friend who has gone through some bad experiences over the past few years. What he uses to heat his food, in the house he is fortunate to have been provided with (he’s one of the few), is a microwave. No hob. No oven. This is to say he eats only expensive ready meals. Actually, he doesn’t see this as a deprivation. He thinks planning and buying and cooking are a waste of time and, sheez, it doesn’t taste as good.

The cost to us all of the fast food culture may not be apparent for a generation. The preservatives, the colourings, the taste enhancers, aren’t these poisons? My friend, you will have noticed, is male but the position these days isn’t much better among young poor women.

“Of course it is perfectly possible to look the other way and assume that all wealth must be ‘dishonest’. Well, it’s not.”

And are we really to believe that silk wearers and wine drinkers are fools and knaves by definition? I can’t imagine the champions of this song wearing all that much acrylic and polyester and most, like me, will enjoy the occasional bottle of wine.

Ask me if I ‘see thon birkie ca’d a lord ’ and I’ll tell you, yes, but it doesn’t matter what he’s called. It’s just the same if he’s called doctor, or teacher, or plumber, to name some pretty big earners. Numbered among the comfortably off are plenty willing to smirk along their noses at others and many of them are no more than a generation removed from poverty themselves. We all have to look at ourselves on this from time to time because it is an easy trap to fall into, and only human to do so.

Of course it is perfectly possible to look the other way and assume that all wealth must be ‘dishonest’. Well, it’s not. Mostly it is hard won over a long period of time and there should be no surprise or wonder when people pass it on to their children. They are not really interested in being poor. In reality, when they sit down after singing this great song, they forget all about it and get on with the various businesses that wealth, or at least sufficiency, obliges and allows.

I love this song almost as much for its woolly idealism as its great tune and, of course, Robert Burns never wrote a dead lyric. If you have feet to stand on and a heart that beats it will have you up. It should not be our National Anthem though. Yes, I know ‘honest’ means ‘admitted’ or ‘visible’ but, please, the only thing to be celebrated about poverty is the overcoming of it.

We should have an anthem, sure, but not this one. A Burns lyric would be great to use, because he is great, and international as much as national, but the point in this case is ‘national’. The word ‘Scotland’ should appear in the song. Lets accept this; the song should be about Scotland. It should be aspirational, constructive and forward looking, although there is nothing wrong with glancing back at national origins. It should defy tyranny of all kinds, tyranny from our own State as much as tyranny from larger neighbours, and it should perform a song’s righteous work in helping to make us free.

Robert Davidson is the Managing Editor of Sandstone Press