The opening in 1999 of the first Scottish Parliament in nearly three hundred years was, for many, possibly most, Scots an emotionally charged occasion. But, being a stoical race with upper lips easily as stiff as those of their fellows south of the border, most of us kept our emotions in check. The point at which many of us either lost it, or came very close, was when Sheena Wellington, unaccompanied, sang Robert Burns' elegy to our common humanity, which ends, gloriously:

Then let us pray that come it may.
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth, o'er 'a the earth
Shall bear the gree, and a' that.
For 'a that, and a' that,
It's comin yet, for a' that,
That Man to Man the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

In that song and the reaction to it we have a way into the enduring appeal of Burns as poet, philosopher and social critic. For, gathered as we are tonight, in the splendour of an Oxford College, we should reflect on why it is that of all poets, Burns is the one whose birth is celebrated every year, everywhere, in every language. Burns might have been cynical enough to regard his reputation as a splendid excuse for a piss-up, for there is surely as much experience as description in his atmospheric introduction to his great narrative poem, Tam o'Shanter:

WHEN chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors, neebors meet;
As market-days are wearing late,
An folk begin to tak the gate;
While we sit bousing at the nappy,
An getting fou and unco happy,
We think na on the lang Scots miles,
The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles,
That lie between us and our hame,
Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame,
Gathering her brows like gathering storm,
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

But there is more to it than that. I shall come later to some of the targets at which Burns took unerring aim, and some of them remain worthy targets today. But first, some general judgments on his body of work. As well as the shrewd social observation and the vicious satirical comment, we find in the complete works some of the finest love songs ever written in the English language and, unlike the greatest popular lyricist of the twentieth century, Cole Porter, Burns seldom allowed his cynicism to infect his love songs, despite the cynicism he may be argued to have brought to the pursuit of love and sex. There is only romance and desolation in Burns' take on lost love:

AE fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee!

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu' twinkle lights me,
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy;
Naething could resist my Nancy;
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.

As this shows, he could write beautifully in English but, arguably, he was at his most powerful when he wrote, sometimes about the most mundane of things, in the dialect of his native Ayrshire, a part of Scotland not far from where I (in common with the Rector) was brought up in Glasgow but where as a boy I had some difficulty in attuning my ear to English as she was spoke by my relatives in Kilmarnock, a town only twenty miles south of what was then the second city of the Empire, where the first edition of Burns' poems was published in 1786. Listen, for example, to Burns' description first, of a louse, seen on a lady's hat in church and then, to his evocation of a mouse almost killed by a ploughshare:

First, the louse:

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her'
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it'
The verra tapmost, tow'rin height
O' Miss' bonnet.
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

And now, the mouse:

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

And note, too, how writing in his own dialect about his daily experience as a subsistence farmer in Ayrshire, Burns gives us phrases that remain, over two centuries later, in common currency:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

And:

The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men
Gang aft agley

That's another clue to his enduring, international appeal.

Proposing the toast to the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns presents the 'Oraytor', as I was called when I did it for the first time some forty years ago, with the challenge, difficult to meet after nearly two centuries, of being original. Faced with this, I decided that cop-out was the best option, and that I would not go down the road of 'Burns the Proto-Socialist', 'Burns the Crypto-Communist', 'Burns the Early Humanist', 'Burns and the Iraq War', 'Would Burns have gone on Celebrity Big Brother?, and so on.

Rather, on re-reading the poems, I thought I would identify some of the key targets of his barbs and his rhymes and, by so doing, give a flavour of his contribution to literature, life and civilisation.
So let me take a little time to consider Burns on;

INEQUALITY
RELIGIOSITY & POMPOSITY
And, of course...
WOMEN

It is possible, of course, to go overboard about Burns, the poet of the common man, and forget the extent to which he sometimes hobnobbed with the gentry, particularly the gentry of Edinburgh during the enlightenment. Still, throughout the collected works, in songs and poems, one is struck by the frequency with which he talks about the irrelevance of social distinctions. In an early song, for example, we find:

The Peer I don't envy, I give him his bow;
I scorn not the peasant, tho' ever so low;
But a club of good fellows, like those that are here,
And a bottle like this, are my glory and care.

I suppose the cynic would see here Burns finding a bit of social justification for some binge-drinking, but this is a sentiment that we find over and over again. There are times, though, when one sees signs of a certain chippiness, a slightly aggressive assertion that though he's poor, he's as good as the next man and the equal of his so- called betters:

I lo'e her myself, but darena weel tell,
My poverty keeps me in awe, man.
For makin' o rhymes,and working at times,
Does little or naething at a' man.

Though I canna ride in weel-booted pride.
And flee o'er the hills like a craw, man,
I can haud up ma head wi' the best o' the breed,
Though fluttering ever so braw, man.

In his Epistle to Davie, a Brother Poet, he is very explicit about how ill-divided the world sometimes is:

It's hardly in a body's pow'r.
To keep, at times, frae being sour,
To see how things are shar'd:
How best o'chiels are whyles in want,
While Coofs on countless thousands rant,
And ken na how to wair't:
But DAVIE lad, ne'er fash your head,
Tho' we hae little gear,
We're fit to win our daily bread,
As lang's we're hale and fier.

And again, in the same poem:

It's no in titles, nor in rank;
It's no in wealth like Lon'on Bank,
To purchase peace and rest;
It's no in makin' muckle, mair;
It's no in books; it' no in Lear,
To make us truly blest.

In his dirge, Man Was Made to Mourn, he really lets himself go:

If I'm designed that lordling's slave,
By Nature's law design'd,
Why was an independent wish
E'er planted in my mind?
If not, why am I subject to
His cruelty, or scorn?
Or why has Man the will and pow'r
To make his fellow mourn?

O Death! The poor man's dearest friend,
The kindest and the best!
Welcome the hour, my aged limbs
Are laid with thee at rest!
The Great, the Wealthy fear thy blow
From pomp and pleasure torn;
But oh! A blest relief to those
That weary-laden mourn!

Burns was about twenty-five when he wrote that, and while it clearly shows his concern about social divisions, you feel that he wasn't having a good day!

Perhaps his fullest account of the honest toil of the poor comes in his long poem, mainly in English, The Cotter's Saturday Night, but I can't, I'm afraid, bring myself to quote from it. I remember thinking, when I first had to read it as a schoolboy, that it was mawkish, sententious, cloying and patronising and I have come to dislike it more and more over the years. Even Burns had his off days, and I leave you all to judge, at your leisure, what this much read and often quoted poem says about equality and inequality.

Sometimes when re-reading Burns, one comes across his continuing concerns in the smallest fragments, like this one, On being asked why GOD made Miss D...so little and Mrs A...so big:

Ask why God made the GEM so small,
And why so huge the granite?
Because God meant, mankind should set
That higher value on it.

Last, and best, I return to A Man's a Man for a' That:

Is there, for honest poverty
That hings his head, and a' that;
The coward-slave, we pass him by,
We dare be poor for a' that;
Our toils obscure,and a'that,
The rank is but the guinea stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a'that.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, and stares, and a'that,
Though hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a'that.

Burns wrote that very late in his short life. His eye for inequality and its injustices got sharper and sharper the more he saw of both.

It's a short step from some of these reflections on equality and inequality to Burns' sharp eye for pomposity and the pleasure he took in puncturing it. He lived - who hasn't, in the last five centuries or so - in a time of religious schism, but the continuing skirmishing between the Auld Lichts and the New Lichts diminished neither the talent for hypocrisy shown by the clergy and laity of the Scottish church nor Burns withering scorn for it.

Let me start, as many before me have, with the Address to he Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous, for it epitomises the amused and satirical contempt the poet felt for some of those who anathematised his drinking and womanising. It's quite a long poem, and one could choose almost any of its stanzas to illustrate the point. Here are three:

O ye wha are sae guid yoursel',
Sae pious and sae holy,
Ye've nought to do but mark and tell
Your neibours' fauts and folly!
Whase life is like a weel-gaun mill,
Supplied wi' store o' water;
The heaped happer's ebbing still,
An' still the clap plays clatter.

Ye high, exalted, virtuous dames,
Tied up in godly laces,
Before ye gie poor Frailty names,
Suppose a change o' cases;
A dear-lov'd lad, convenience snug,
A treach'rous inclination-
But let me whisper i' your lug,
Ye're aiblins nae temptation.

Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman;
Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang,
To step aside is human:
One point must still be greatly dark, -
The moving Why they do it;
And just as lamely can ye mark,
How far perhaps they rue it.

In The Twa Herds, or the Holy Tulzie, Burns satirises the two sects into which the church had divided, and ends with a withering comment on how religiosity can drive reason out the window:

Then Orthodoxy yet may prance,
An Learning in a woody dance,
An' that fell cur ca'd Common-sense,
That bites sae sair,
Be banished o'er the sea to France-
Let him bark there!

And then there's Holy Willie's Prayer, possibly my second favourite of Burns' poems (after Tam o' Shanter), where the poet exposes both the pomposity of the righteous and his contempt for their double standards. Again, I could read you the whole thing, but we would be here all night, so let me give you a flavour of Burns excoriation of a Church elder who had lost at a hearing before the Presbytery of Ayr on the behaviour of one of his fellow parishioners. His muse hears Holy Willie at prayer and imagines him confessing his lapses but demanding forgiveness:

O Thou, that in the heavens does dwell,
As it pleases best Thysel',
Sends ane to Heaven an' ten to Hell,
For Thy glory,
And no for onie gude or ill
They've done afore Thee!

O Lord, Thou kens what zeal I bear,
When drinkers drink, an' swearers swear,
An' singing here, an' dancin there,
Wi' great and sma';
For I am keepit by Thy fear
Free frae them a'.

O Lord! yestreen, Thou kens, wi' Meg
Thy pardon I sincerely beg;
O may't ne'er be a livin' plague
To my dishonour,
An' I'll ne'er lift a lawless leg
Again upon her.

Besides, I farther maun avow,
Wi' Leezie's lass, three times I trow -
But Lord, that Friday I was fou,
When I cam near her;
Or else, Thou kens, Thy servant true
Wad never steer her.

But, Lord, remember me an' mine
Wi' mercies temporal and divine,
That I for grace an' gear may shine,
Excell'd by nane,
And a' the glory shall be Thine,
Amen, Amen!

As I suggested earlier, when Burns got something in his sights he could really let himself go. Here is the start of his Epistle to John Goldie, Author of the Gospel Recovered:

O Gowdie, terror o' the whigs,
Dread o' blackcoats and rev'rend wigs!
Sour Bigotry, on her last legs,
Girns an' looks back,
Wishing the ten Egyptian plagues
May seize you quick.

Poor gapin', glowrin' Superstition!
Wae's me, she's in a sad condition:
Fye: bring Black Jock her state physician,
To see her water;
Alas, there's ground for great suspicion
She'll ne'er get better.

Burns may have been a bit of a lad, putting it about a bit wherever he went, but he was seldom hypocritical about it, That is one of his enduring strengths and it licensed him to write as he did about those whose behaviour belied their expressed beliefs.

Which brings us, neatly and finally to Burns and women. The tradition of the Burns Supper requires a Toast to the Lassies and a reply, so I will try not to trespass on that territory. But an Immortal Memory is hardly complete without a brief reference to Burns love affairs, love poems and love songs, for they are so much part of his personality and his legacy.

Sometimes, his approach can best be described as in your face:

Ye jovial boys who love the joys,
The blissful joys of Lovers;
Yet dare avow with dauntless brow,
When th' bony lass discovers;
I pray draw near and lend an ear,
And welcome in a Frater,
For I've lately been on quarantine,
A proven Fornicator.

Before the Congregation wide
I pass'd the muster fairly,
My handsome Betsey by my side,
We gat our ditty rarely;
But my downcast eye by chance did spy
What made my lips to water,
Those limbs so clean where I, between,
Commenc'd a Fornicator.

At others, as can be seen in the lines I quoted earlier from Ae Fond Kiss, he can be as tender and subtle as any other of the Romantic Poets.

Sometimes he mixes his love of women with his concern about equality, as in this song about his first love, Jean Armour:

In Mauchline there dwells six proper young Belles,
The pride of the place and its neighbourhood a',
Their carriage and dress a stranger would guess,
In Lon'on or Paris they'd gotten it a',
Miss Miller is fine, Miss Murkland's divine,
Miss Smith she has wit and Miss Betty is braw;
There's beauty and fortune to get wi' Miss Morton,
But ARMOUR's the jewel for me o' them a'.

And listen to how his pride and love comes through in his Welcome To His Love-Begotten Daughter:

Tho' now they ca' me fornicator,
An' tease my name in kintry clatter,
The mair they talk, I'm kent the better,
E'en let them clash;
An auld wife's tongue's a feckless matter
To gie ane fash.

Welcome! my bonie, sweet, wee dochter,
Tho' ye come here a wee unsought for,
And tho' your comin' I hae fought for,
Baith kirk and queir;
Yet, by my faith, ye're no unwrought for,
That I shall swear!

Lord grant that thou may aye inherit
Thy mither's person, grace, an' merit,
An' thy poor, worthless daddy's spirit,
Without his failins,
'Twill please me mair to see thee heir it,
Than stockit mailens.

And it's difficult to think how the object of his desire could resist this:

O Mary, at thy window be!
It is the wish'd, the trysted hour.
Those smiles and glances let me see,
That make the miser's treasure poor.
How blythely wad I bide the stoure,
A weary slave frae sun to sun,
Could I the rich reward secure-
The lovely Mary Morison!

One of his Burns' finest love songs shows his power as a romantic lyricist:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands of life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve,
And fare thee well awhile!
And I will come again, my luve.
Tho' it were ten thousand mile.

The timelessness of that lyric helps to explain why we are here tonight.

So I come to the toast! I shall be drinking it in Scotch whisky, for Burns in his Earnest Cry and Prayer said that:

Freedom and Whisky gang thegither!

How could one do other when he could write like this of Scotch Drink:

O Whisky ! soul o' plays an' pranks !
Accept a bardie's gratefu' thanks !
When wanting thee, what tuneless cranks
Are my poor verses !
Thou comes-they rattle i' their ranks
At ither's arses !

So please rise with me and drink to Immortal Memory of Scotland's greatest poet and her greatest gift to the world:

ROBERT BURNS.