Love Scotland podcast – 2026 season, part I

Transcript

6 speakers: male voiceover [MV]; Gerry Carruthers [GC]; Chris Waddell [CW]; Jackie Bird [JB]; female voiceover [FV]; David Purdie [DP]

[MV]
Love Scotland, brought to you from the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

[‘Auld lang syne’ plays on the violin]

[GC]
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, 
Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race! 

[CW]
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place, 
Painch, tripe, or thairm: 
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace 
As lang’s my arm. 

[JB]
Aaah. A poem to a pudding known around the world – the ‘Address to a Haggis’ by Robert Burns. I’m sure many of you know the National Trust for Scotland is a passionate protector of the legacy of Robert Burns. And one of the ways in which the world remembers the poet is through the Burns Supper, held in late January each year on or around his birthday on the 25th. It’s where that ‘Address to a Haggis’ usually takes the room by storm.

Now, I vividly recall my first Burns Supper where I was completely unprepared for the evening. And if that’s you, or if you’re a Burns Night veteran but would like to know more about its origins, then we couldn’t be in better company today. Joining me are the Burns double act you heard at the start of the programme, who are returning guests to the podcast.

Gerry Carruthers is Francis Hutchison Chair of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, who has forgotten more about Burns than most of us will ever know. And Chris Waddell is the Learning Manager at the National Trust for Scotland’s Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, who lives and breathes the Bard. Welcome to the podcast, gentlemen.

[GC]
Hello.

[CW]
Hello.

[JB]
Now, you sounded much-practised at the ‘Address to a Haggis’. It’s something you’ve done what, countless times?

[CW]
That certainly wasn’t my first time, Jackie, and I’m sure that’s the same for Gerry here.

[GC]
I’ve done it on a number of occasions, often to uncomprehending audiences firth of Scotland, Jackie, where they seem to enjoy it anyway, even if they do not understand the words.

[JB]
Well, it just so happens – now, you guys will have your head in your hands at this – I went on to Wiki and this is the translation. And you can tell me what you think of this translation of what you’ve just heard.

Good luck to you and your honest, plump face, 
Great Chieftain of the pudding race.
Above them all,
You take your place.
Stomach, tripe or bowels.
Well are you worthy of a grace
As long as my arm. 

Is that close enough? What do you think? 

[CW]
That’s not too bad. I mean, it doesn’t help the haggis’ image and encouraging people to get it when you place it in amongst all those other body parts that you’ve just described! But it’s not terribly far from the truth.

[GC]
It’s not beautiful poetry! No, no, it doesn’t have a certain ‘Je ne sais quoi’ in terms of rhythm, but it’s literalistic enough, probably.

[CW]
I think that’s why we stick with the original Scots; that’s why we stick with the Burns version when we’re trying to sell this inestimable dish to the people of the world.

[JB]
I think yes! I think the dialect hides the grim reality of what they are about to consume. Well, I presume you two do a lot of Burns Suppers. How many do you have this year, or the next or the next?

[GC]
I’m on only two in the forthcoming season. I’ve cut down in recent years, where we were averaging about 15 per year. That was more than enough. 

[JB]
Good grief! So, you’re booked well ahead as well, because I understand that they book you for this year and next year, whatever.

[CW]
Yes, I’m in a slightly different position from Gerry. I’m certainly not in as much demand as Gerry, but also my work commitments at the time mean that there’s many at Burns Clubs and stuff that I have to politely decline. But I’m only doing two this year as well … at the moment. It can sometimes build up, usually when people have dropped out and I get thought about as an afterthought! But in recent years, as I promised my long-suffering wife, I’ve promised to spend more time at home during the first two months of the year.

[JB]
It is a strange time of year because you’ve had Christmas and all the overindulgence at Christmas, and then you’re asked to fill your belly with haggis and everything else that comes along with it.

A Burns Supper, as you both know, generally includes lots of Burns music. So, to get us into the mood, we’re going to listen to a short montage of some of the songs that you might be treated to. Here they come.

[A lady sings ‘A red rose’; a man sings ‘Ae fond kiss’; and then the lady sings ‘Ye banks and braes’]

[JB]
Those were lovely. For those of you scratching your heads or for those of you thinking, Oh, I can’t remember the middle one, the first one was ‘A red rose’. I know it better as ‘My love is like a red, red rose’. But you were telling me the official title is simply ‘A red rose’, Gerry.

[GC]
Largely all the titles are a wee bit awkward with Robert Burns because he’s not very precise, but we need some way of labelling them, so ‘A red rose’ works probably best as the most convenient title.

[JB]
After that, we had ‘Ae fond kiss’ – a perennial favourite – and then ‘Ye banks and braes’. So, we’re in the mood. We’ve got the music, we’ve chatted a little bit about the haggis and we’ll chat some more about that. Tell me: when and where was the first Burns Supper and was it even a supper?

[CW]
Well, this can be a contentious area, Jackie, because there are a number of rival claimants to it. I often think a good analogy or comparison with this is the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. Some people will say it was Nashville; some people will say it’s Chicago. The truth is it was a bit of a dead heat, and to a degree it’s a wee bit like that with the first Burns Supper, although it doesn’t stop the NTS claiming that it was in Alloway. I’m duty bound to have to stick with that! But 1801 – so a mere 5 years after the Bard passed and …

[JB]
Let’s recall, he died at the age of 37.

[CW]
Yes, yes, a young man to all intents and purposes. But of course, like so many great artists throughout history, he enjoyed a moderate amount of fame whilst alive, but his star goes on a very steep incline in the immediacy after his death and in almost an international scale. I’m sure Gerry would back me up in that.

[GC]
Yes, absolutely. And we’re talking about the first one being 21 July. Nine people get together in Alloway, including the Reverend Hamilton Paul, at least two men that he knew personally. And it’s not till the following year that we’ve got a shift to January, but even then they get the date wrong. They go for 29 January because they’ve been reading James Currie’s 1800 biography. It’s only really come 1803 that we begin to get Burns Suppers on 25 January because someone’s been and looked up the birth certificate basically.

[JB]
So, they get his birth date wrong.

[GC]

Yes. Well, they start with the death date. Then they get the birth date wrong.

[JB]
And think that’s a bit morose? Move to the birth date. Get that wrong, sort it out. So, who’s this Hamilton Paul?

[CW]
Well, he’s an acquaintance of Burns. He’s actually asked to arrange the first supper by a gentleman called John Ballantine. John Ballantine was a sort of mover and shaker in Ayr at the time. He’d been an early patron of Burns. He was a businessman, a bit of a go-getter. He’s involved in the construction of the New Brig in Ayr. And so, Burns dedicates the ‘Twa Brigs’ to him.

He essentially asks Reverend Hamilton Paul, can you put together this bash in memory of our mutual friend? And Hamilton Paul does precisely that. He invites nine people, including himself, to it. As Gerry points out, they all have connections to Burns in in one way or another. I’ve actually got a list of them here. For the sake of historical accuracy, I can go through it. And so, there’s John Ballantine himself. There’s William Crawford of Doonside. There’s Patrick Douglas of Garallan House; again, he’s a very early patron of Burns. And interestingly, when I was in the States this summer, I met a direct descendant of Patrick Douglas …

[GC]
And involved in the slave trade and plantations.

[CW]
Yes, yes. There’s Primrose Kennedy – Primrose William Kennedy.

[JB]
What a great name!

[CW]
It’s funny – a very eminent Burnsian and a good friend of mine, Hugh Farrow, says he reckons that’s where Johnny Cash got the idea for ‘A boy named Sue’! I can only imagine at that time in Scotland being called Primrose, but apparently it was a family tradition with the Kennedys.

There was Hugh Ferguson, who was a barrack master in Ayr, a military man. David Scott, a banker from Ayr. Thomas Jackson, a professor of natural philosophy at St Andrews University. Hamilton Paul himself, and Robert Aiken, a long-standing friend of Burns. And they foregather. 

The number nine is very significant from a Freemasonic point of view. And indeed, the structure of the Supper draws very heavily on a Freemasonic ritual and the tradition of supper clubs among gentlemen in the 18th century. So, they meet together. Upon breaking of that particular one, they unanimously decide to foregather the following year, moving it to what they thought was his birthday. And that’s the start of it really.

But it has, as part of its structure, an ode composed to the immortal memory of Burns by Hamilton Paul. And they decide to do that on an annual basis. So, from day one there is an Immortal Memory there.

[JB]
OK, well, we’ll get into the Immortal Memory later. I’d like to find out more about this original Burns Supper. Firstly, why did it take five years?

[GC]
It takes five years because Burns’s reputation is only slowly becoming a bit more popular. Hamilton Paul fancies himself as a poet. He’s on the moderate side of the Kirk. Down to about the 1820s, Robert Burns is not popular with the hardline Calvinists. So, this is a concerted effort to remember Robert Burns, following the first edition in 1800s, and a conscious attempt to rehabilitate his memory, including among Freemasonic acquaintances, because they regarded Burns as their own. Also, they were part of Enlightenment clubbable society that, again, the Kirk was a bit suspicious of.

So, there’s a number of things going on, where this is a late-Enlightenment thing where let’s bring Burns centre stage because he deserves it. We want his reputation as a poet and as a songwriter to begin to take off properly after Burns’s death. And that is kind of what’s happening.

Hamilton Paul is really enjoying it because he does fancy himself as a poet and he is self-selecting, as it were, as the Supper Bard himself. And we’ve got the beginnings of performativity there, as Chris says, with the Immortal Memory effectively being an ode, but not anything like the performativity that we get later in the Burns Supper, especially from about the 1840s. So, there’s a slow burn.

[JB]
Do we know what the format of that evening was?

[GC]
To some extent. We don’t entirely have all the detail we might like. We know that haggis certainly plays a part, so the sheep’s heid. We know that we get the ode, but we don’t have a lot of detail about other songs and other poems.

[JB]
And haggis plays a part because it was part of the diet then, yes?

[CW]
It’s part of the diet, but it was known to have had this association with Burns. He writes the ‘Address to a Haggis’ and purportedly it’s his favourite meal. In the very food that they consume, they’re setting out to pay tribute to Burns.

[JB]
And did they recite the ‘Address to a Haggis’?

[GC]
Later on.

[CW]
Not at the first one.

[GC]
Not at the first one.

[JB]
That was one of his first published poems.

[GC]
It’s one of his early greatest hits. It comes out in his second book, the Edinburgh edition that follows the Kilmarnock edition. And it’s something that attracts a lot of attention because it helps cement his reputation as this earthy peasant poet, the man who was himself a spicy dish, or as his reputation was beginning to unfold.

[JB]
So, in terms of the format, there was this Immortal Memory, which is – translate this to anyone listening who doesn’t quite know what an Immortal Memory is.

[GC]
It was an ode that celebrated, narrated something of the life and achievements of Robert Burns.

[JB]
Like a eulogy almost again, was it?

[GC]
To some degree, but certainly to begin with, it was conceived as, let’s do this in poetic form. In early Burns Clubs like Paisley, which had another songwriter and poet as its club bard Robert Tannahill, he writes a series of pretty good odes that reflect on Robert Burns’s life.

Within a few years, we’re moving more towards the prose commemoration. And the water gets quite muddy in some ways because it’s somewhat modelled on commendations of tributes to the likes of William Pitt. You get Pitt Suppers earlier on; you get dinners that commemorate his great poetic predecessor, James Thompson. So, like a lot of these things, there’s lots of wee diffuse elements that flow in.

Some of it is individual choice. Hamilton Paul is very much the individual architect in some ways. And there are other things that are accidentally coming together to make this a thing.

[JB]
Because we’ve all had dinners with our chums and said, ‘This was so good; we’re going to do this every year’, and you never see them again! Why did this have legs? Because nowadays, as far as I know, there isn’t a William Pitt Supper, is there?

[CW]
No. In many ways, the Burns Supper is the remnant of that phenomenon that Gerry’s just described. I mean, the Nelson Suppers were a thing as well; I believe they still occasionally happen. And uniquely, or not uniquely as it transpires, they also have an Immortal Memory to Nelson. There’s only two people to whom this particular memory is offered up, this immortal one – one being Burns, the other being Nelson.

I think the thing with Burns is he resonates so much still at that time. You said, Jackie, why does it take five years? But you could equally say it’s only five years. There’s still lots of people about for whom Burns had played a huge and significant part in their life. That star is on the incline at that time.

I think – I mean, there’s nothing really to back this up – I often think, well, if I’d been there and we’d had it on the death day and we thought, well, let’s have it on his birthday. So, you’d make a point of doing that. And then if you all sat about at the end and someone said, wait a minute, I’m not sure this was his birthday. Let’s check out. You’d be determined to get it right at the third sitting! I’m not sure there’s any accidental element, but I just think there was a desire to absolutely get it right for Burns and for his memory. 

And of course, these early suppers are held up until 1809 in the cottage itself. So, that’s another huge part of the story that we have down in Alloway. And indeed, the date did fluctuate in that first ten years or so because it was noted that the company expanded year on year, and many of them were elderly. So, they decided to shift it to different times of the year before, about 10 years later, absolutely fixing it on the date of Burns’s birthday: 25 January. So, there was a degree of fluidity at first.

[JB]
And you’ve given us the guest list, and, as you say, it grew. I’d take a guess there weren’t any women there, not just because of the culture of the time but also because it was Masonic.

[GC]
Yes, there is a phenomenon of women being allowed into the gallery to observe big Burns Suppers by the 1820s. One of the nicest ironies is that Agnes McLehose, for whom ‘Ae fond kiss’ is written, isn’t able to attend a Burns Supper in 1825 I think it is, and she writes about that saying, I wish I could have been there, but as a woman I can’t be there.

Through history that changes a bit, so that especially by the 1920s, quite late on, we’ve got women’s Burns Clubs. And of course this is not unrelated to the suffrage movement, etc, etc. As late as 1976 we get one of our finest Burns Clubs, the Irvine Lassies, that do their own thing. But women have a rather distant relationship with the Burns Supper for its first 120-odd years.

[JB]
Oh, absolutely. I recall in the 1990s filming a programme about Burns and I was only allowed into the room – it was some sort of working men’s club – if I served, if I was a waitress. Shocking, gentlemen. Shocking!

[CW]
That’s uncomfortable, it really is.

[JB]
1990s, not 1890s.

[CW]
In the time that I’ve worked in Alloway, I attended the first Bachelors’ Club Supper that allowed a woman to attend. It was a colleague of Gerry’s – it was Professor Kirsteen McCue, a person who is absolutely pre-eminent in her field. And of course, without putting it too mildly, by the end of the supper she had the tweedy old buzzards eating out of her hand. Sorry, guys, if you’re listening.

But of course, as an organisation, we couldn’t in all consciousness allow that to carry on – this male-only supper that we were involved with. But it shows you that that was a slow, almost a process of attrition over centuries and decades to fully assimilate women into the Burns movement through its greatest celebration, the Burns Supper.

[GC]
By and large, women have slowly become included with the likes of the Reply from the Lassies, but that’s a late thing too.

[JB]
Ah, we will get on to that. But before we leave the early days, when did Sir Walter Scott, the purveyor of all things Scottish, when did he get involved?

[GC]
Well, he’s involved from at least 1819. There’s a very famous … John Gibson Lockhart, his son-in-law has a description of that. Scott’s involved in various of these through legal circles, through even Masonic circles, although he wasn’t that keen a mason. He, like others, likes the ritual, likes the liturgy. 

But even Scott’s a wee bit too early, because what we really know about the Burns Supper in its classic form is from the early Victorian period. That’s when we get most information. That’s when it really comes together with the kind of imperial confidence that Britain has, to help it spread even further around the world. Although it’s happening before the Victorian period, that’s when it becomes a piece of intangible cultural heritage, with Britain stamped on its backside. In some ways, this is very much, as I say, about imperial confidence.

[JB]
So, it’s part of empire-building, empire propaganda, publicity – call it what you like – and also the diaspora.

[GC]
Yes, quite clearly lots of Scottish expats get into the Burns Supper. We’ve got Burns Suppers in America probably from about 1806, certainly by the late noughties, the 1820s – New York, Philadelphia, etc. We’ve also, around about 1810, got them in the Indian subcontinent, etc. Often the involvement of Scottish expats, but actually the thing about the Burns Supper is that non-Scots people know Scottish heritage, find it attractive. It’s a format that seems to work, and that’s a pattern again down to the present day.

[JB]
When did the format that we know today emerge? Was it in the 1800s?

[GC]
Yes, but it happens very slowly. Tam o’ Shanter, for instance, is recited early on but not performed the way it is in the 20th century. Folk songs like ‘John Anderson, my Jo’ are early on performed. We know this from newspaper accounts. We don’t have precise detail, but in some ways more solemnly performed than the way they are today.

At some point the haggis, which is probably addressed not necessarily in the Burns Supper but in other places in Caledonia Clubs, is imported into the Burns Supper. All of these elements form very slowly, and it’s really around about 1859, the centenary of the birth, where we can look at the Burns Supper and say there’s a kind of worldwide pattern here. It’s been coming for some time, but it’s quite slow in that formation.

[JB]
So, Chris, take us through the format for the Burns Supper.

[CW]
Well, goodness, it varies. There’s several that I go to and there’s still to this day a significant variance, and that’s often to do with a particular agenda of who’s holding it. It will tend to start off with the guests being piped in, which is a great fun element of it. It’s huge, it’s loud, it’s colourful.

[JB]
It’s performative, as Gerry says.

[CW]
And it really sets the tone. And then there’s often thereafter a welcoming speech by the master of ceremonies, which makes sure everybody’s sitting down and in the right place. He will then often go into the ‘Selkirk Grace’, that traditional prayer which is so beloved by people through tea towels and coasters the world over.

[GC]
Might just be worth saying that, as Chris says, that has become a staple. But in the early days, there seems to have been other forms of graces. So, it takes a while for that element to be the grace that’s used.

[JB]
But what I found surprising, and you can shoot me down if I’m wrong, Burns didn’t write the ‘Selkirk Grace’?

[CW]
No, absolutely not.

[JB]
I assumed he did.

[CW]
He hears it. He’s probably the first person to, if not write it, write it down. And interestingly, if you look at any book of Burns works, it’s in English the version that he writes down. And yet, almost by default, it’s performed, if you like, in Scots.

[JB]
Who would like to give us a ‘Selkirk Grace’ for those who might be scratching their heads?

[CW]
Some hae meat and canna eat 
Some wad eat that want it

[GC and CW]
But we hae meat and we can eat
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

[JB]
The double act are back in town! We’ve got the band back together again. OK, so you’ve got the ‘Selkirk Grace’.

[CW]
Then one of my favourite parts: piping in of the haggis. This is a real centrepiece of the meal. It’s carried in so often with a procession, including the chef, and then someone will address the haggis, obviously performing that particular poem. And it can be done very theatrically, with people waving dirks around and stabbing it and slaughtering it and so very barbaric.

And it’s huge, great fun! That’s something that goes down really well I’ve found with people from beyond these shores. They seem to really love that element. I think it ties it back to what their notions of Scotland actually are.

[JB]
Yes, it does!

[CW]
Kilted people waving swords about and chopping things up. In fact, we’re actually generally rather more civilised than that.

[GC]
Clark McGinn, who writes the very good history of the Burns Supper, he is one of the best addressers of the haggis. And his wife, who always accompanies him, has a bag full of Elastoplasts because inevitably he will cut himself! Every one that he does, he will self-inflict an injury – not deliberately – such is his enthusiasm. And he’s not alone in that. That can happen.

[CW]
Well, my wife – she’s a lawyer – was at a legal supper of important lawyers in Glasgow, had something to do with the Bar, a number of years ago. And her partner in the firm she was in at the time was addressing the haggis, a chap called Paul Hannah. Paul was really enthusiastically swinging this dirk about, and by sheer accident he sliced the top off a crystal decanter, the stopper, which went sailing over the heads of the crowd.

And he received a massive amount of applause, and they were all saying, how many times … And it was a complete accident. But it added to the general theatre of the whole thing, and he said I could never do that again. So yeah, things can happen when you’re waving that blade around.

[JB]
It is indeed a sight to behold. What I’ll do is we’ll take a quick break just now and when we come back, we will continue with all things Burns Suppers.

[FV]
18 feet. The Soldier’s Leap at Killiecrankie. My heart leapt when my other half brought me here years ago. I still feel it today. The waterfall, the wildlife, the history – really stirs the senses. We jumped at the chance to sign up and help care for it, so others could fall in love with it too.

[MV]
Since 1931, the National Trust for Scotland, a charity supported by you, has been looking after Scotland’s treasured places so we can all share in them. Support us at nts.org.uk

[JB]
Welcome back to Love Scotland, where we’re settling into our Burns Supper. Here’s a taste of some more of the music you’re likely to hear.

[A man sings ‘A man’s a man; a lady sings ‘Leezie Lindsay’ and ‘John Anderson, my Jo’]

[JB]
And you heard there ‘A man’s a man’, ‘Leezie Lindsay’ and ‘John Anderson, my Jo’. Gentlemen, when was music incorporated into Burns Suppers?

[GC]
Although we don’t have a lot of precise detail, Jackie, we do know that from the earliest Burns Suppers songs are introduced and performed. The songs we just heard there encompass those broad themes – brotherhood and love. Those have been staples throughout the Burns Supper.

[JB]
Of all the songs that he wrote, and there were many, there seems to be a sort of greatest hits that are used in Burns Suppers. Is that correct?

[CW]
I would say so. I think that’s something to do with it, the sheer familiarity of it.

[JB]
Its accessibility.

[CW]
Yeah. And, I think when people go to a Burns Supper, there’s certain expectations that they have that certain things will happen, certain things will be performed in a certain way and at a certain time.

So, the meal is served, then we’ll go into perhaps some entertainments, and then you’ll get the Immortal Memory. You’ll get the Toast to the Lassies, thereafter the Reply to the Toast to the Lassies, some more entertainment, some more songs, the vote of thanks, and of course, the most important song in the night: ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to round things off.

[JB]
Let’s talk about the Immortal Memory. How important is this as a feature of the entire evening? This is the meat, isn’t it? 

[GC]
Well, it’s at the centre of the speeches, and it may be that many people are three sheets to the wind by the time we get there. [Heavens no!] The usual instruction these days to your Immortal Memory giver, who won’t be usually reciting poetry but giving a speech, will be anywhere between 15 and 35 minutes. And of course, the brief supposedly is that you will educate – you will tell people about Burns’s life and work – and that usually happens. But there’s huge variance between educational, comical and indeed boring content, depending on what speaker and what Supper you are listening to and attending.

[JB]
I’ve been to some that went over the hour, and let’s just say it didn’t enhance the evening, Chris.

[CW]
Yeah.

[JB]
Chris, I’m not accusing you!

[CW]
On the subject of boring, let’s go back to Chris, our boring correspondent! I’ve been to some where it tends to go on too long. Also, there was a feature in 18th-century kirks whereby an hourglass would be there, so that people would get an ample portion of preaching from the minister. It’s the most Calvinist idea you can imagine.

And that hangs on almost, to a degree, with the demands that some real Burnsians will place on whoever’s the giver of the Immortal Memory. Could you do 30 minutes? Could you do 40 minutes? Well, I could, but I’d probably bore myself if I did that.

I’m with Gerry on this. I think 20 to 25 minutes. That’s the ones that I normally do, will go that long. There has to be a few jokes in there. I’m not too keen on them being too irreverent. And I keep the … I’m no prude, God knows, but some of the ones that you perhaps hear perform nowadays, especially by stand-up comedians and folks that aren’t necessarily Burnsians, have very little to do with Burns and more to do with a wee bit of grandstanding and taking centre stage.

I’m old-fashioned. I prefer it to be about Burns, but I actually like it when it’s very personal as well. I think a good Immortal Memory reflects the speaker. So, whenever I do one, I talk about how I first encountered Burns, what it was that drove me towards Burns … and I was almost driven towards him. So, you put a bit of yourself into it, so the listeners hear about the person as well as the Bard. And I think that’s what constructs a good Immortal Memory. I don’t know if Gerry would agree?

[GC]
I did Toronto Rugby Club a few years ago and they took me to this suite where we had a private bar and then they took me in the bus, which also had a private bar. And then we stopped off at a bar en route and eventually we got there and it’s 600 blocks. I was briefed on the way that last year it had been a baseball commentator who’d taken it too seriously. So, slowly things were falling into place for me – I’d been brought 3,500 miles across the Atlantic; I had plenty of serious things to say about Burns. But I realised they wanted two other things. They wanted sentiment about Canada, and they wanted some dirty jokes. And cravenly, I supplied all of that on the night.

[CW]
Gerry!

[JB]
As I said, I’ve been bored by an Immortal Memory or two, but I’ve also been moved to tears, and I think that is … for the uninitiated, if you go to a Burns Supper knowing nothing about Burns, it’s at that point in the evening where you should be educated and go away knowing more.

[GC]
Yes. I mean, every year I try and do a different type of Immortal Memory. In fact, if I do several in the one year, they’re all a bit different. And the advantage to my profession is I usually know quite sexy stuff. I don’t mean to do with sex necessarily, but to do with facts about his life and about his manuscripts and his work. I always try and give them something they’re not going to get anywhere else.

And I deliver that with quite a lot of conviction. Usually, I’m quite good now at hitting the sweet spot and knowing that I’ve got some talking points that will hit the mark and folk will go away thinking, I didn’t know that about Burns or I didn’t know anything about Burns. I now know something that’s a wee bit remarkable and will stay in my mind. That’s the hope anyway. And it seems to work.

[JB]
Tell me, when did the Toast to the Lassies emerge? That can’t have been part of the early ones, was it?

[CW]
No, I wouldn’t have thought so, because they were all-male affairs for quite some time.

[GC]
Although you can still toast the lassies in absentia, of course, because they’re an ideal and you don’t need to deal with them if you’re just idealising them.

So, this is a feature that does seem to creep into the early Victorian period, and certainly again, by 1859, which is our central point of reference, we know that some of that is going on. We don’t know when the first one was done for certain, but we know that by the early Victorian period that is happening. And it’s a long time again until we get the reply.

But the Toast to the Lassies, in the spirit of what did Burns like – he liked the drink; he liked haggis and other stuff like that; he liked the lassies. These are all obvious staples in a sense. Again, it all just falls into place, bit by bit.

And things like toasting the royal family fall into place very much in the early Victorian period along with the lassies. Again, lots of dinners provide models for who you’re going to toast. You’re going to toast your country, your monarchy, your fellow Masons perhaps, the women in the company or not in the company. And in a way, there’s obvious riffs, obvious hooks where we’ve just had a love song about women or whatever. Let’s now turn to the lassies and toast them. So, all of these things form, or coagulate in a sense, over time.

[JB]
But, the Toast to the Lassies is generally about giving women pelters … in a nice way.

[CW]
I think that there’s a way of doing that as well and making it work really well. So, someone, a gentleman, in the company will toast the lassies, and then there’ll be a reply offered up by one of the women in the company. That tends to be the format nowadays.

And if they’re smart about it, they’ll talk beforehand so that they know, so that there’s rapport and counters from the lassies. And if you do that really well, it can be one of the most entertaining parts of the night. We should get to the end of a Burns Supper and think, you know what, I’ve been moved tonight. I’ve been moved thinking about Robert Burns but also thinking about those who surrounded them – those important people, male or female, in his life.

[GC]
It comes in for a lot of unfair flack, the Burns Supper in general, because it’s sexist, it’s too macho, it’s sentimental. To some extent, these criticisms can be validated, justified, but actually the key is: go to a Burns Supper. Most Burns Suppers will do something to inform you, to educate you, to bring you together, because it is built as a piece of celebration, a piece of commemoration and community fun.

And the best ones have always worked like that. And the biggest critics of the Burns Supper probably have never been to one. Every year we get press stories about, let’s take a pot shot at Burns Suppers. It’s time to end them; it’s time to change them.

And the other thing actually is that the Burns Supper, across its slow but determined evolution, and especially in the last 30-40 years, we’ve had lots of alternative Burns Suppers. The alternative Burns Supper isn’t all that alternative anymore, and I enjoy those as well. But we should stop being so uptight and thinking that there’s something there to be attacked because it’s reactionary and conservative, etc. Actually, more often than not, it’s a good communal gathering and to be enjoyed.

[JB]
And to conclude, in terms of the future of the Burns Supper, taking into account our changing 21st-century sensibilities, what is its future? What would you like its future to be?

[CW]
I would like it to be what anyone attending wants it to be, if I’m being honest with you, Jackie. I’m a great supporter of people having a Burns Supper at home. I’m also a great supporter of people attending organised ones. It’s whatever suits you. There were nine guys at that first Burns Supper. A few years ago I read a figure in Christopher Whatley’s wee book. He pointed out that there was then 9 million people …

[GC]
9 million in 2009 across the world.

[CW]
A 1,000,000% markup; that’s not bad! That’s something that’s going from strength to strength. It’s now clicked by 10 million, according to Clark McGinn last year.

[GC]
It can be. We may be talking about anywhere – depending on how you count these – between 9 and 90,000. 1859, we’ve got 1,200 Burn Suppers across the world. Then 2009, we’ve got 9,000 Burns Suppers and it’s gone north of that again. So, it continues to thrive, it continues to spread. And as Chris says, it will be whatever anyone wants it to be. I would personally be sad if that traditional format, as it’s become, were to die out because people like that – and leave people to enjoy the stuff that they like.

[JB]
Well, from a tiny cottage in Ayrshire to a 10 million global phenomenon, gentlemen, thank you very much. Professor Gerry Carruthers and Chris Waddell, thank you for joining us.

[‘Auld lang syne’ plays]

And if we’ve whetted your appetite, why not visit Burns Birthplace Museum, which has more than 5,000 Burns artefacts, including handwritten manuscripts and, of course, Chris’s expert knowledge. Opening times are on the National Trust for Scotland website. The Trust is able to maintain the memory of Burns and the legacy of other great Scots because of your support and your donations. So, thank you.

That’s all from us for now. If you don’t want to miss an episode of Love Scotland, all you have to do is hit the follow button on whichever platform you’re listening on and our fortnightly podcasts will be delivered to your inbox. Until next time, goodbye.

And if you’d like to hear more about Robert Burns, you can search our archives for other podcasts, including an episode called ‘What really killed Robert Burns?’

[DP]
The evening newspaper here in the city of Edinburgh saying that he had died a hopeless alcoholic, ‘useless to himself and to his family, being perpetually stimulated by alcohol’. This, as I say, was unsigned, and many of us have tried very hard to find out who actually wrote these words because they are simply fake news.

[MV]
Love Scotland is brought to you by Think and Demus Productions on behalf of the National Trust for Scotland; presented by Jackie Bird.

For show notes and more information, go to nts.org.uk and don’t forget to like, subscribe, review and share.