Beloved Bard

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES —  You may not think you’re familiar with Robert Burns, but if you sang his composition, “Auld Lang Syne,” this past New Year’s Eve, you’ve already quoted him.

Or, maybe you’ve used the phrase, “The best laid plans of mice and men,” which is not originally from a John Steinbeck novel, but from the Burns poem, “To a Mouse.” (But you knew that, didn’t you?)

And remember playing musical chairs to “Comin’ Through the Rye?”

To Americans, Burns is one of those poets everyone “sort of” knows. But Scots don’t have to think twice about their beloved national bard, who lived over 200 years ago, dying in 1796 at age 37, leaving a body of work still echoing through the culture, from narrative poems like “Tam o’ Shanter” to the Scots national anthem, “Scots, Wha Hae,” and including folk ballads like “My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose” and “Green Grow the Rashes, O.”

“In Scotland, most people own two books--the Bible and Burns,” said John Hannah of Ojai. Hannah, a writer for People magazine, was born in Stanley, Scotland, County of Perth. He has made a lifelong study of Burns and has a library of his works.

“We are unsure about who Shakespeare was, but if you read Burns, you very quickly get a sense of his character,” said Hannah. “We know Burns better than our own family. We still hear his voice so clearly.”

By all accounts, the Lowlands poet, a romantic rogue who loved his women and his whiskey (too well, say his detractors), but who championed the common man, is revered for who he was as well as what he wrote.

“He put into words ideas that reached out and grabbed everybody at the time, and he’s still grabbing them,” said Santa Barbaran Norm White, an American-born Scot with a clan background of McNeil and McGregor.

“The fact is, he is the most celebrated poet in the world,” said Hannah.

And possibly the only poet to have his own holiday.

Indeed, the biggest celebration of the year for expatriate Scots all over the world comes on or about Jan. 25, on Burns’ birthday, when “Burns Suppers” are held from Scotland to America, Australia to China.

“There’s an old saying: ‘Anywhere in the world that two Scots get together, they’ll do one of three things--they’ll find a bottle of whiskey to drink, they’ll form a St. Andrew’s Society, and they’ll have a Burns dinner,” said Joe MacClure Swindle, a retired Ventura County fire chief whose maternal family comes from the Isle of Skye.

As a member of the Scottish Society of Santa Barbara, Swindle will take part in one of dozens of local events planned over the next 10 days. There will be events in local pubs, fancy Burns balls, and, the queen of them all--the 500-seat formal ball hosted by the United Scottish Society on the Queen Mary, which abounds with dignitaries toasting the queen, the (U.S.) president and the “Immortal Memory” of the Scots’ bard.

As might be expected, the events vary as much as plaids among tartans.

Burns clubs, for instance, pride themselves on academic orations and Burns in-jokes that might make a visitor think he’s landed on a different planet. The Scottish country dance societies host balls that stress the mother country as much as Burns.

The Celtic Arts Center’s Burns dinner at the Buchanan Arms, an unpretentious Scottish restaurant in Burbank, unabashedly titles itself, “A Celebration of Burns Poetry and Music.”

“If there’s any toasts, there’ll be on-the-spot,” said David McNabb, the producer. “This is not high class, but it’s a true Scottish setting.”

Somewhere in between is the event thrown by the venerable, 75-member Scottish Society of Santa Barbara, which will hold its 34th Annual Burns Supper at the Doubletree Inn.

‘It’s our most formal celebration of the year, except Christmas,” said chieftain Norm White, who expects anywhere from 250 to 400 people.

“You look around the room and you see cutaway jackets, pleated or ruffled shirts and black bow ties, and kilts with the clan tartan of their choice, down to the Ghillie brogues.” The women, said White, wear long tartan skirts.

According to 28-year society secretary Margaret Chisholm, who joined when “everyone was a Scots native,” the event goes by the book: the one called “A Guide to Burns Suppers,” which is published in Alloway, near Burns’ hometown.

The evening starts with the guests being “piped in” from the cocktail hour by the Los Angeles and District Pipe Band of Camarillo playing “Scotland the Brave,” as the Scottish and American flags are set by an honor guard and the chieftain is piped in. Then the “Selkirk Grace” is said.

After dinner, there’s Highland and Scottish country dancing as well as the “Toast to the Immortal Memory of the Bard” and such charming customs as a “Toast to the Lassies,” a traditional nod to Burns’ noted fondness for the ladies, which includes a tart, tongue-in-cheek “Reply to the Laddies.”

Even so, it sounds like too much protocol for Allan Wilson, a Newbury Park software executive, born in Kilmarnock--the Ayrshire town where the first edition of Burns’ poems was published.

“In Ayrshire, you can’t get away from Burns,” said Wilson, who won a Burns competition as a child, and “was exposed to Burns suppers before I was legally old enough to consume alcohol.”

“We had it covered--the haggis [cooked innards] and neeps [mashed turnips], and Johnny Walker to wash it down,” said Wilson, in a soft brogue. “In Scotland, it’s a very boozy affair.”

And one, he went on, that involves only men. “So when they get to the ‘Toast to the Lassies,’ ” he said, “it can get very interesting.”

Wilson likes the celebration at the Crown and Anchor, a family-run British pub and restaurant in Thousand Oaks, which caters to a friendly English, Irish and Scottish clientele. If less formal, he finds the event more festive than many he’s heard about in America.

“Our evening is probably more down to earth than a lot of ‘em you’ll find in the States,” said owner Jed Peel, a Yorkshire native.

It starts at 8 p.m., when the Scottish Pipes and Drums, a band from Woodland Hills, begins its procession from the patio.

“I tell you, it puts goose bumps on you,” said Peel. “Last year it was misty and raining, like a typical British night, and the pipes and drums were set up around the corner and you could hear them in the distance as they marched in. And when they came in, with the shrill of the bagpipers and the drums, you couldn’t stop your heart from pounding.”

At that point, Wilson, “in full Gun-clan Prince Charlie regalia” will conduct the “Haggis Ceremony” common to Burns suppers everywhere in the world.

“It’s part and parcel of the evening celebration. If you didn’t have the haggis ceremony, you really wouldn’t have a Burns dinner,” says Joe Swindle, who will take part in the Scottish Society event in Santa Barbara.

It starts, of course, with haggis. You know, the infamous Scottish national dish, traditionally made of “minced offal of mutton,” (literally, heart, lung, kidneys and other sheep innards), blended with oatmeal and spices, and, says an original recipe, “boiled in a sheep’s stomach, therein” (that last part is illegal in the States).

“It’s a peasant food, leftovers from what the wealthy don’t want,” said Swindle, who admits that while “it can be tasty, it’s an acquired taste.”

At the Doubletree for the Scottish Society, the haggis will be a chef’s “special concoction of beef shanks and oatmeal,” for Americanized tastes.

But at the Crown and Anchor, said Jed Peel, it will be “the real thing,” made by two ladies from Glasgow, and served with chappit tatties and neeps (mashed potatoes and turnips). The restaurant will also serve cockaleekie soup plus prime rib and oven-roasted chicken.

In time-honored tradition, the humble fare is ceremoniously “piped in” by a lone piper, as a chef carries it on a silver platter with a waiter bearing a tray of Scotch behind him. Then a chosen person recites Burns’ famous poem, “Address to a Haggis,” before it is cut and served.

According to David McNabb, who cites the Edinburgh Literary Journal of 1829, Burns composed the poem on the spot after “feasting liberally” on the lip-smacking dish at the home of his crony, a cabinetmaker named Martin Morrison.

The poem has thus been a part of Burns celebrations since they were started in 1802, several years after Burns’ death, reportedly by other Burns cronies, at the Tarbolton Bachelors Club.

“It’s tongue-in-cheek, a humorous attempt to honor the haggis,” said Joe Swindle of the flowery eight-stanza ode, which he will recite for the Burns Club.

“Burns uses grandiloquent language to comic effect, praising the haggis as ‘that great chieftain of puddings, the greatest of the tribe of foodstuffs made of innards.’ He then goes on to attribute the great ferocity and physical resilience of the Scots to the haggis, comparing the rustic, haggis-fed Scot to the Frenchman and his effete ragout,” said John Hannah who will address the haggis with a “tautened-up brogue” for the Celtic Arts Center.

“Making a high-flown ode to the haggis is a bit like any of us writing fine verse to a Big Mac.”

Novel as the haggis ceremony is, it’s not the most important element of a Burns Supper. That would be the “Toast to the Immortal Memory,” a tribute to the poet by a well-known expert (it’s been said that somewhere in the world, Sean Connery will be giving an “Immortal Memory”).

“Ideally, it’s like stand-up, a very high form of theater, funny and affecting emotionally, dealing with a literary figure that you don’t have to be Scotch to appreciate,” said Hannah, who will give the “Immortal Memory” at both the Queen Mary and the Buchanan Arms.

His “generic brand” speech, he said, tries to find the level between “those who think Robbie Burns is a cigar and those who have made in-depth studies of him.

“I always like to point out that many of the trappings of a Burns Supper, such as the kilts and the pipes, have nothing to do with Burns at all. Burns was a Lowlander. It’s always amusing to me that people are looking for their Highland ancestry.”

Over at the Crown and Anchor, Allan Wilson will certainly be looking for his, and he’ll be honoring Burns at the same time--singing “The Star of Robbie Burns.” It’s a song, said Wilson, sung only by Ayrshire men.

And Burns, said Hannah, shall be present at the closing of every Burns supper around the world, with the singing of “Auld Lang Syne.”

“It’s about bosom friendship that lasts a lifetime, art and poetry and music and conviviality. Life is short, so enjoy what you have. And, of course, a little alcohol will not kill you.

“He’s done an extraordinary thing. He’s managed to assure his own immortality by making people come out of their houses every 25th of January. We don’t do it for Shakespeare, but we do it for Burns.”

BE THERE

Crown and Anchor--2891 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks; Saturday, 8 p.m., $5 cover. Haggis with mashed potatoes and turnips, $9.95; prime-rib dinner, $12.95, plus regular menu. Reservations recommended. (805) 497-0070.

Scottish Society of Santa Barbara Burns Supper, Doubletree Inn, 633 E. Cabrillo Blvd., Santa Barbara. Jan. 31, 6 p.m. cocktails; 7 p.m. dinner. $40. Call Marjorie Boyle for reservations: (805) 967-6764 by Jan. 28.