Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1899-01-24
the BARD OF AYR
His Butte COuntrymen Will
Honor Him
ON TOMORROW WITH FEAST
And Dane. ard Song--The Beauty
of His Love Songs and Influ-
ence of His Writings
ON TOMORROW WITH FEAST

tlCt tOIlO LOW HlSlI ~ IN ~AA
Scotia's national bard-the beloved
Bobbie Burns, the poet of the plough.
Through the hundred or SO years that
have sunk into oblivion since this most
remarkable singer gave to the world a
series OF lyrics and poems which have
made his fame an eternal endurance
and his personality beloved beyond that
of any other in the worlds history, his
influence has grown to such an extent
that in every hamlet of America where
Scotchmen dwell they meet on his birth
day anniversary to pay universal hon.
age to his genius and do him honor in
feast and dance and song.
But here's to rhyming ROBBIE Burns
Whose sun of fame shall never set;
And ever, as the day returns,
The cry be Burns and Scotland yet
The anniversary of the birth of Robert
Burns is the red-letter day in the Scottish
calendar at home and abroad. What
would have been the thoughts OF the
brilliant, happy-dispositioned, sensitive
minded, intensely emotional, mirth-lOV-
ing honest and Independent young Scots
man of the "auld tOon O Ayr who
brought his countrymen of culture and
of care to his feet by his great ambi-
ton,
For puir auld Scotland's sake,
To sing a sang at least.
had he dreamed that, a century after his
death, his name would be sounded with
praise akin to worship in almost every
hamlet on the globe? Little did he think,
although he himself prophesied that he
would 'be better appreciated a hundred
years hence" that on the wings of the
four winds of the earth his name and
fame would be borne over the seas to the
uttermost ends; and that the tributes of
his own loved native land would be
echoed in the depths of the African for
est, from the plains of Australia, on
India's coral strand, and would ring
back with a wild enthusiasm from the
. hills and valleys of the western world,
to which at one time he almost came,
ever to the confines of the pole, where
the miners in the Klondike will gather
round the campfire and make the frozen
regions of the great and solemn north
west ring with the melodies of the songs
which sprang from his mind and heart?
Stately mausolcums have been erected
in many places to commemorate his life
] and work and personality, n innumer-
able statues, the finest examples of the
sculptor's art, have been set up all over
the world, but this constantly swelling
paean of the universal admiration and
z love of his countrymen and of the world
! is the greatest monument of them all.
|: Perhaps the fact that the life of Burns
was full of harships and disappcintments,
and that his genius and personality were
triumphant over the GOODNESS of a local
|. world that, with a most remarkable agil-
; ity, recognized his talent, but at the same
time turned a frigid shoulder towards his
efforts to lift himself into a better ma
terlal state, is a reason for this remark
able alteration. He had been kicked and
cuffed, and keenly did his ultra-sensitive
nature suffer from the plots and attacks
|, of his enemies, towards whom he rarely
II ever turned the spirit Of compromise.
} To suffer and to smile-to grin and bear
it's one of the sure ways for a Scot to
win the admiration of his fellows. Burns
kept on smiling amid his misfortunes,
!: and, more, he kept on singing. And it did
not come to him in any literal way to
practice the injunction regarding the
turning of the other cheek. Instead, he
employed his pen in the making of some
! of the most scathing examples of sarcas-
tic verse which the language has ever
y been employed to build. Who can tell how
much the terrible satire which Burns
Y penned under the title Of "Holy Willie's
J Prayer" helped to lift the Scottish kirk
J from its old-time n~arrowness?
} This fearfully literal exposition of the
I doctrine of election in the first verse
makes the flesh creep:
, 0 Thou, wha in the heavens dost dwell,
. Wha, as it pleases best thysel,
: Sends ane to heaven an ten to hell,
A for they glory,
And no for ony guild or i'll
They've done afore thee.
1 bless and praise thy matchless might,
y Whan thousands thou hast left in night,
That l am here, afore thy sight,
For gifts and grace,
A burnin' and a shinin' light
} To a this place.
The beauty of the love songs which
I Burns gave to the world is of a grade
! which has been surpassed by no writer
in any age. "Afton Water" an apos-
D trophe to that beautiful river, written
4 upon the Coilsfield dairy maid, the dearly
: beloved and long-remembered Highland
, Mary, saddens with it's wonderful
cadence the most prosaic of mortals, and
3 with it's Incompatible gentle sorrowine
) soothes the surgings of the stormiest
, heart:
= NJ, -z- A.