Celebrating auld Robert Burns
To Scots in the late 1700s, poet Robert Burns was as much of a celebrity as any rapper or songwriter of today who share their views on social issues.
Sometimes controversial, sometimes risque and other times a hopeful romantic,
Burns touched on themes that continue to resonate.
A group of Lehigh Valley musicians and actors will celebrate Burns’ life and work Saturday at Godfrey Daniels in Bethlehem. This is the second year the group has performed his works at the venue.
Irish music trio Piper’s Request will join members of Celtic music groups Blackwater and Banna Lach and actors from the local Selkie Theatre for the event.
Unlike traditional Robert Burns dinners later this month, which celebrate Scottish food as well as the poet’s birthday, Saturday’s event will focus on his writings.
“We didn’t want to take away from [those] events,” say Fred Gilmartin, a member of Piper’s Request.
In addition to Gilmartin, Piper’s Request performers include Gilmartin, Terry Hartzell and Rick Weaver. Joining them will be Pam Kalapay of Banna Lach and Alison and Tom Gillespie of both Banna Lach and Blackwater.
Each group will play a set and then join for a third set. Between sets, George Miller and Kate Scuffle of Selkie Theatre will perform poetry readings of Burns’ work, first in the original Scots dialect and then translated to English.
“We will try to talk about the songs a little bit and give a little history,” Gilmartin says. Audience members can expect to hear “Flow Gently Sweet Afton” and Burns’ most famous work, “Auld Lang Syne,” a poem set to the tune of a traditional folk song and traditionally sung on New
Year’s Eve. The groups will play traditional Scottish folk music, too, including, “Scotland the Brave” and “Skye Boat Song.” The “Skye Boat Song” has seen a bump in popularity because of the Starz TV series “Outlander,” which adapted the song for its theme.
“It’s going to be a great night of a lot of fun and music,” Gilmartin says.
He says the fascination with Burns continues because the poet led a colorful life in the public eye.
“He was a romantic, a bit of a rogue, but then not a rogue,” Gilmartin says, pointing to Burns having 12 children — nine with his wife – but then writing a love poem to a woman who he loved for 14 years, but hadn’t even kissed.
Fiddler Alison Gillespie agrees that Burns’ lifestyle as well as his writings prove him to be a multi-faceted enigma.
“Somehow this man was very lovable even though he wasn’t exactly faithful to his wife and he was a bit of a gad-about,” she says. “You wouldn’t have been wanted to be married to him, but you’d really enjoy him as a friend. He was the life of the party.”
The eldest of seven children, Burns was born on Jan. 25,
1759, into a family of tenant farmers in the small village of Alloway in Scotland. A prolific writer, he rose to fame after publishing his first collection of poems, “Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,” in 1786. The literary elite of Edinburgh embraced the work and Burns achieved celebrity status. He is now widely regarded as Scotland’s national poet.
In his writing, Burns was known for celebrating the ordinary and looking at the world around him with a humorous eye, even going as far as writing a poem to head lice, “Ode To a Louse.”
“In those days, getting lice was pretty common and he wrote this funny poem,” Gillespie says. “He decided to honor the louse because it was an ever-present part of life back then. It’s just funny. He saw the humor in life and I think that’s why we love him.”
Burns also saw the struggles of the less fortunate and wrote about issues affecting them, including calling for for social equality.
“He was such a brilliant man,” Gillespie says. “He had such a turn of phrase, kind of like Shakespeare. When he put pen to paper, he just had a way of expressing things that often was very funny, sometimes suggestive and lewd and sometimes just absolutely beautiful. When he wrote a love song, no one could write a love song like him.”
Burns, who died at age 37, also was known for traveling