Girvan?
By WILLIAM HUNTER
GIRVAN is a word that Robert Burns could not sing.
He found it ''horridly prosaic''. When he used it in a poem, he later changed
Girvan to another Ayrshire name that more pleased his ear. Nor did his poet's
eye lift unto Ailsa Craig, 10 miles off Girvan. Excited by haggis, a plain pudding,
he stayed blind to a phenomenal dumpling.
While Burns used quills from the rock (he bought
its seabird feathers by weight), he gave it just one line.
Meg, whom Duncan Gray wooed,
was deaf as Ailsa Craig.
Although he treated Girvan scantily, no huff was
taken. On Saturday the town's Carrick Burns club at a supper will celebrate its
centenary. It will be a rare feast for how the Immortal Memory will be given by
Anonymous.
Reaching 100 years leaves the club a stripling,
along with the Gourock Jolly Beggars and the Sandyford, Glasgow, club, who are
also enjoying their centuries. Truly venerable associations are cracking on for
twice that age. But the Carrick's achievement calls for at least two cheers. Sturdy
loyalty
First, it is always a pleasure to salute the sturdy
loyalty of any January neep-eaters. They suffer much for their enthusiasm, especially
in the papers. Once upon a time Burns nights gobbled acres of newsprint. Their
speakers were reported verbatim. Journalism's fickle fashions have changed so
that now much of the attention that once-a-year-Burnsians receive is in the neck.
They are accused of having their mouths fuller
than their hearts for Burns. Ridicule for not knowing the words of his songs is
heaped upon them by literary chaps, who, of course, imbibe many bardic stanzas
every day before breakfast.
A second reason for hurrahing the Carrick club
is how they have kept an honest note of their doings. In one battered ledger they
have retained the minutes of their century.
In the hand-written chronicle occur sundry blots
which douce Burnsites (as the poet's fans were once called) might rather erase.
According to town folklore, there was a January when the chairman of the night
arrived so stotious that even other committee members noticed.
When in Girvan, Burns himself was not best behaved.
He is said to have spent his time in the Ship Inn with smuggler cronies. ''He
got fou and is supposed to have been lifted and put in the town jail overnight,''
Denis Reid, the club secretary, said. ''But it may only be a local story.''
Saturday night's centenary programme celebrates
dramming. A boastful paragraph of biblical purity is reprinted from the bill of
fare for 1913:
And it came to pass that as they rose to depart,
there were strange sights in the heavens and they lamented and took no food that
morning, but men brought unto them cunningly devised drinks, yea even pick-me-ups,
and they were comforted.
Yet Girvan nights have ever been about strict
order and earnest scholarship. Carrick pioneers of 1893 were substantial. They
were rich farmers, professional gents, and shopkeepers. Their aim was to encourage
all Scotch literature as well as to cherish Burns's name, while they sooked up
to the local landed gentry.
The burghers who ruled the Burns club also ran
the town. The chairmen have included nine provosts. Formal attire has been the
rule from the start. From as early as 1907 women were invited to share the supper.
Yet six years later at their feast of Saint Robin,
as they were pleased to call it, those Girvanites who were Burnsites were still
robustly boasting: ''Each man ate and drank mightily for the space of two hours
for they were mighty Men of Valour.''
How small measures of the soul juice of poetry
are always associated with thumpers of barley bree, whether it is true or not,
embodies the split psyche of a small nation. It is the conundrum that has fooled
the literary lot who sulk when even a brief flow of verse gets out of the control
of their closed-shop arts industry.
A clear understanding of the cocktail could lie
in the frank pages of the Carrick's old minute-book. It details the club's continuing
story between the January forgaithers in a baronial dining-room at the town cross.
And, true enough, committee meetings were seldom permitted to begin without a
refresher of whisky nor to scale without a dram.
Here is a stray entry with which a stalwart club
secretary described the ongoings as they sat bletherin' about Burns: ''The auld
provost in replying ask'd tae be excused frae sayin' muckle as a dentist buddy
had been playin' the mischief wae his mooth.''
From scenes like that the lasting mystery of Burns's
popular celebration may be explained, but not here. For all their inky neatness,
the historic notes of the Carrick club are as tough to decipher as the graffiti
on a pharoah's tomb. For somebody else there is a Ph.D. degree thesis in there
somewhere. I should also be revealing why Saturday's proposer of Girvan's Immortal
Memory is nameless, but there is an old Carrick curse on who tells.
Thu 21-Jan-1993
| 