Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1896-09-10
ROBERT BURNS.

A hundred years have elapsed since
the death of Burns, and i'll 100 ways the
people of Scotland, England Ireland
! and America try to express their sense
of what he has been and has done for
the English speaking race.
1t would be safe TO say that his best
! poems-now, indeed an integral part of
English literature-are i'll the memories
and ON the lips of 100 times as many
men as had heard his name the day he
| died.
Take "Auld Lang Syne, " for instance,
and think that there was an hour when
| Robert Burns inclosed this song to Mrs.
Dunlop and expressed the hope that she
would not have to pay double postage
because he did so. Double postage ON
"Auld Lang Syner'
Naturally enough when the plowman
poet, only 26 years old, went to Edin-
burgh on his first timid visit to great
city, he went to the herald office, or
somebody took him there. Not to such
an office as that of the Boston Herald,
or the New York Herald, or the Chi
cago Herald, but to the Office where, for
failing memories, certain heralds pre-
| served the coats of arms of the famous
families. Happily, and probably to
Burns personal satisfaction, no name
of Burns or Burnes or Burmese or
Burnass was found on the records or i'll
the indexes.
So the sultan of Serendib voyages to
the farthost west to find as the oracle
bade him, the shirt of happy man.
He had to go to COnnaught, where he
surprised Pat, happily dancing on the
green in the last hours Of fair. The
sultan seized Pat and ordered his clothes
pulled off, that he might take and wear
the shirt, as his orders had hidden him.
And alus, Paddy had not a shirt to his back.
So Robert Burns went to find the
armorial bearings of his ancestors. And
SO far as the hcrald's Office knew he
had no ancestors Certainly they had
not coats of arms.
The mans a man for a that.
The rank is but the guineas stamp.
And that visit to the herald's office
gives in a rough way the key to the per-
petual charm by which the poet of the
people controls all sorts and conditions
of men.
The Poets Power.
The critics have not been successful
i'll analyzing Burns power nor i'll Civ
ing us any recipes by which we can
manufacture such poems. We laugh
when he wants us to laugh, we weep
when he want us to weep, we are brave
when he sings of Bannockburn, we are
devout when the cotter reads the Bible.
One touch of nature makes the world
akin. 1t was by divine power, it was
as child of God himself, that as he
plowed his ungrateful fields, or as he
sauntered by the side of brooks uncon-
scious, Burns rejected absolutely the
habits of scholastic poets and wrote of
what he saw and what he felt as he saw
and as he felt it. The passionate SYM
pathy with which men and women sing
his songs or repeat them to each other is
simple tribute to the majesty and beauty
of truth unadorned.
His Adaptability.
In any collection of democratic or
republican or popular poems some of
his songs and odes have the first place.
And yet there is no token in his own
life that he cared much, on the one side
or the other, for the petty intrigues of
the English government of the day, in
times when at London the wreck of the
court party, which rallied round half
crazy king, was trying to outmaneuver
the forces which We're not yet conscious
of the possibilities of England when
governed by her own people. Burns was
Jacobite with JacoSites, Hanoverian
so far as an CXciseman should be, and
he sent "a present of four little cannon
to the new republican government of
France. This is to say what is probably
true, that he knew little and cared little
for forms of government, and really
thought, perhaps, that none but fools
make contest about Them But he knew
more of men than most of the statesmen
of his time. He knew his own fathers
rugged and firm integrity. He knew his
own power, and he knew that this came
to him not from schoolbooks nor from
schoolteachers. He knew that he re-
ceived his patent of mobility "immedi-
ate from the Almighty God"
Knowing this he became the poet of
the people. And it is for such reasons
that the "People's Songbooks" or the
Peoples Broadsides" are for the men
of Great Britain and America all incom-
plete unless they contain such poems as
"Scots Wha Ha' p" or "For a That and
a. That" or ''My Hearts In the High
lands. :" EDWARD L. HALE.