Who was the greatest Scot of all time?
William Wallace, subject of Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart”, Alexander Graham Bell, scientist and inventor, David Livingstone, explorer and … there’s a pretty long list of candidates from the worlds of science, politics, literature and entertainment.
He who got the vote in a recent Scottish TeleVision survey was a chap known to Scots to this day simply as the Bard, Robert (“Rabbie”) Burns by name. Like Mozart, he lived only until his thirties, often pursued by a whiff of poverty, was much taken by the ladies (thirteen known offspring by five women according to some sources) and, in spite of all that, he managed to leave behind a large body of work, full of insight into his fellow man and woman. We all know some, at the least a ragged struggle through Auld Lang Syne’s chorus each New Year.
His most abiding achievement though was to inspire an annual worldwide party in his honour, still going strong over two-hundred and twenty odd years after his death. Yesterday was the day, and Scots all over the world, celebrate with a “Burns’ Supper” on the night of each 25th January. They generously extend the fun, the food, the whisky, the speeches, the poems and the dancing to other nationalities (yes even the English!).
Never mind wit, charm, ability and a devotion to hard work, such a celebrated memory takes a really serious dose of charisma. Absolutely no sign of an annual Shakespeare’s breakfast, a Newton’s lunch or even a Churchill’s dinner.
HM Ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, is an ex-pat Scot, an attentive hostess and an apparently indefatigable Scottish country dancer and she’d invited us to join her gathering for the evening. So there we were, my wife and I, fuelled on Cock a Leekie soup, haggis (yes haggis! heaven only knows how) and of course the Scottish national tipple, out on her floor, frantically trying to follow the twists and turns of the “Dashing White Sergeant”.
And it was really good fun as well as being a splendid antidote to the rather tense situation on the streets in the last few days.
Would Burns get my vote for the greatest Brit, should anyone ask me? Well, anyone who can engender that much entertainment and bonhomie for more than a couple of hundred years has to be in the running.
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