January 25th 1759 was as stormy as it is today and Burns celebrated it by writing

Twas then a blast o’ Janwar’ win’
Blew hansel in on Robin.

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Burns Suppers are now held all over the world and here’s a bit from my book A Last Journey where we attend an unusual Australian Burns’ Supper.

The trouble was, we weren’t Scottish enough. We had only been in Penola a day when a man called round to ask Bill to join the local pipe band. His face registered incomprehension when Bill confessed to being unable to play the bagpipes. 

‘But I thought you were Scottish,’ he spluttered.

These inhabitants of the small South Australian town turned out to be more Scottish than us. Penola had been settled in the 1840’s by waves of English, Irish and Scots immigrants drawn to the offers of free land. Alexander Cameron from Lochaber was the first, setting up Penola Station in 1844. Another, John Riddoch from Turriff, had first gone to the goldfields to make his money. In 1861, he had come to the area where he had bought 35,000 acres. He had recognised the importance of the red earth, the terra rossa, for growing grapes and encouraged the settlers to plant vines. His foresight ensured the prosperity of the area, Coonawarra wines now being world class.

But there was a price the settlers had to pay. The older part of graveyard in Penola was filled with the graves of those first immigrants. Young men and women who had come from Tain and Aberfeldy, Dumfries and Lewis. Their infant children of whom there were many, and their older children who had managed to survive the difficult first five years only to die of some fever or snakebite or accident with the cattle. It made hard reading. Some names were still evident in the town – McLeod and MacKay, Meikle and Burns. Their descendants still lived in Penola, if perhaps not wealthy, then managing to live a reasonable life far beyond the dreams of their ancestors.

They kept up the old traditions too. Or at least, they had versions of them, passed down through generations and adapted and modified to meet the circumstances.

So it was that we found ourselves at a Burns Supper one November 30^th. It was early summer and already the temperature had risen into the nineties and stayed there well into the evening. Bill, despite his inabilities musically, had been asked to do the Address to the Haggis. He wasn’t keen. He had never been to a Burns Supper. He had never read much of Burns apart from having to learn To a Mouse for a school poetry competition in Primary 5. He had left Scotland to get away from the kitsch of tartan and shortbread. I had to dragoon him into accepting.

The evening began in the local Church of Scotland with communal singing. We started with On the Bonny Banks of Lock Lo-mont, followed by It’s a Long Way to Tipperary and climaxing with Danny Boy. Eclectic and surprisingly good fun given the setting. We then retired to the church hall where Bill was to do his piece. Dressed as he was in his best pale blue zoot suit, he was only slightly put out to see that he was the only male not in the kilt. He didn’t possess one. He had never even hired one. He had no intention of ever wearing one. 

However he did his part with remarkable aplomb. The piper led the procession in (was that the job they had hoped he’d fill?) and the haggis followed in tartan splendour. It was set in front of him and he recited the verses with the assistance of the crib cards I had prepared for him. (‘What on earth does it all mean? I don’t understand a word of it.’ ‘Just learn it, will you?’)

Bill stabbed the haggis with the kitchen knife provided (it went in with a satisfying splurch) and duly mangled the beast. It was then taken away and to our surprise, the buffet began. Sandwiches, chicken legs, sausage rolls, salad, all followed by the best Australian pavlovas, sickly sweet and soft and drenched with cream. 

Then came the haggis. On cocktail sticks. And mercifully in bite size pieces. After the tooth rotting pavlova, it tasted, well, out of place. Some of the guests refused to touch it, treating it like some outlandish foreign muck. As it is. In Australia at any rate. 

The night gave us many a laugh in the forthcoming months. How those daft Aussies didn’t know how or when to hold a Burns Supper. How they couldn’t tell the difference between the Scots and Irish heritage. Conveniently, we forgot our own ignorance and denial of Scotland.

Time, maturity, whatever, have lessened our ribaldry. Have given us an understanding of what it meant. It wasn’t a celebration of Burns, or of Scotland. It was an act of remembrance of all those names in the graveyard. Of James McLeod from Lewis, of Robina Meikle from Tain, of countless, nameless, infant children. Of all those brave souls who had set out from Scotland to face the unknown. Who had left behind family and friends, knowing that the chances of ever seeing them again were virtually nil. Who were prepared to face great hardship in order to attempt to forge a better life for their families.

They had a long hard struggle in a strange environment where nothing existed that they were familiar with. No identifiable trees or animals, save those they brought with them. No rains or mists or mountains or stretches of open sea or lochs. No blackbird song or gulls’ cry, no gaelic save their own speech, no tales but those they told themselves.

Is it any wonder they clung to the familiar traditions and habits? That they tried to keep burning that which identified them as Scottish? 

So on each Burns Night, I raise my glass to them, to those pioneers who showed such bravery and strength and resolution. I celebrate the character of those long dead Scots and the legacy they left behind. 

Slainte. Good on you, mate.

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