Writer says he has 40 poems Burns the Exciseman
could not acknowledge for fear of a hanging Riddle of auld lang unsigned
By CAMERON SIMPSON and ALLAN LAING
A SCOTS writer detonated the equivalent of
a literary timebomb yesterday when he claimed to have discovered 40 unattributed
poems by Robert Burns. The only injuries will be to the pride of Burns academics
and enthusiasts as they debate the veracity of his claim.
Mr Patrick Hogg, 35, who is writing a book called
The Patriot Bard, claims he may ultimately have found 80 poems which could stand
up to the vigour of a four-fold verification process he described as his ``Rabbie
riddle''.
Mr Hogg said he had discovered the unattributed
Burns poems in two newspapers of the time, the Morning Chronicle, and the Edinburgh
Gazetteer.
He said: ``When Burns joined the Excise, the political
atmosphere got very heavy indeed, so that he used various synonyms. In searching
for the prose essays, I found poems. One of them had the Latin name `Aritus',
which reaching for my Latin dictionary I assumed to mean `from the ploughman'.
``So I thought, the ploughman? Who was the ploughman
poet? Robert Burns was. I just couldn't believe it. Various poems seemed to just
jump out of the page. Having read Burns's entire collected works and his letters
many, many times over to try to put together his world view, they just seemed
to jump out of the page, saying this is the hidden work of Robert Burns. Had Burns
been caught writing controversial poetry, he was not going to be shipped to Botany
Bay. He would have been charged with high treason. He was a servant of the Hanovarian
government - an Exciseman - and would have been hanged.''
Mr Hogg's claims, however, have left academics
divided.
He is supported by Dr Andrew Noble, a Strathclyde
University lecturer who co-edited a collection of essays on Burns.
Dr Noble said: ``My view is that it is possible,
more than possible, that these are authentic. I do think that there is a very
strong case that has to be followed up. Most of them are not important in poetical
terms but, historically and politically, they are.
"Burns had relationships with two newspapers,
the Edinburgh Gazetteer and the Morning Chronicle in London. And he was in correspondence
with both editors and they were both extreme radical newspapers. The fact of the
matter is that there is no question that he was contributing anonymously to the
papers.
``There was a major spy scare on at this time
and there was this revolutionary psychosis around the country. In a certain sense,
he had to write these things anonymously. He had to consider his professional
life.
``Stylistically, these poems are very anglicised
but that would be partly hiding himself, journalistically. They are very much
radical, political poems: the political aspirations of the coming democratic revolution
- which didn't,
of course, come.'' Dr Ken Simpson, an eminent
Burns critic who is organising this week's three-day conference at Strathclyde
University, was more cautious.
He said: ``It is possible that they may be by
Burns, because as an Exciseman he had to be circumspect about what appeared in
print under his name. In the absence of manuscripts, the case would seem to be
difficult to prove.''
However, Dr James Mackay, author of Burns: A Biography,
published in 1993, was sceptical.
He said: ``Mr Hogg had been looking through these
newspapers from the 1790s and found two dozens poems he says were written by Burns.
They are anonymous. I have seen about six of them. I was called in to examine
them and, to be quite honest, I didn't think any of them held up.
``One of the poems he had actually tagged on at
the end four lines, known to be actually written by Burns, because he thought
they fitted. It seemed to boost its provenance by tagging on these four lines
which are probably by Burns.
``All of this is a bit of a grey area. Scholars
have been looking at Burns's work for 200 years. I have counted 116 works which
were supposed to have been written by Burns and, for various reasons, they were
not written by Burns.
``There is a style to his work that is difficult
to define but, if you have been studying it for a lifetime, you can spot a Burns
poem a mile away. And these are definitely inferior in every respect.
``Newspapers of the time published a lot of works
which were in the Burns genre but that doesn't mean to say that Burns wrote them.''
Some of them were more McGonagle than Burns, he added.
``It would need a panel of scholars to decide
in the end if they are genuine. Experts can now examine word patterns on computers
and come up with what is effectively a DNA fingerprint of the writer. A writer's
style doesn't change in terms of word pattern.''
His scepticism was shared by Douglas Gifford,
professor of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University. ``This sort of thing arises
constantly because of anonymous publications. It is a wee bit suspect that this
is a year of huge hype for Burns. Mr Hogg may be quite genuine. He is perfectly
entitled to say what he says. When one really admires an author, there is a real
desire to add one's contribution to the study.''
A spokesman for the Mitchell Library, which houses
Burns's manuscripts and letters, said the fact that the poems had not already
been uncovered by 200 years of Burns scholarship suggested that they had not been
written by the Bard. The four lines which Mr Hogg ``tagged on'' were:
Grant me, indulgent Heaven, that I may
live,
To see the miscreants feel the pains they give!,
Deal Freedom's sacred treasures free as air,
Till Slave and despot be but things that were!
These lines, written in Burns's hand, were first
discovered in a lady's pocket almanac (the woman, a fan, had presumably asked
the poet to sign his name in her diary).
He later repeated them in a book, the Della Crustan
British Album, which Burns had borrowed from his friend John Syme in 1793. When
the book was returned to Syme, the inscription was in it. Though Burns certainly
wrote the words in his own hand, there is no absolute certainty that he composed
them himself. He often had a habit of quoting other poets of the day if he liked
their lines.
Mr Hogg said he had added the Burns quatrain to
a poem he had discovered to show that what had gone before was indeed a piece
of Burns's work. The poetic metre was finished off perfectly by them, he said.
``According to one Burns expert, they fit like a seamless dress.''
The controversy forms part of a BBC Omnibus documentary,
The Ploughboy of the Western World, on Monday, January 22.
Tue 09-Jan-1996
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