Rabbie Burns: well-versed in OneKind?

For millions of people around the world the 25th of January means one thing - the birthday of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns. It may be 251 years since he was born, but somehow his passion, his compassion and his humanity still give us cause to celebrate.

We at Advocates for Animals think that, instinctively, Burns would have ‘got’ OneKind - might even be claimed as the first of the OneKind poets (alongside Benjamin Zephaniah, the latest famous face in the OneKind campaign). We decided to analyse this a bit further; so on Saturday night we gathered with friends around a candlelit table, down by the Water of Leith in Edinburgh. My first ever Burns Supper! We had vegan haggis, a few drams and plenty of talk. There was a wee bit of singing too, which we think Rabbie would have enjoyed, once we’d introduced him to the karaoke machine…

This was a man who delighted in nature and in the animals that shared his world, whose verses were composed while he worked outdoors, and only committed to paper when he got home at night. One day when Rab was out at the plough with his brothers he learned that his pet sheep Mailie had taken a tumble over her tether, and was lying in the ditch. Mailie was set to rights and they went back to their work. But as he ploughed, Rab was imagining how Mailie might have died, and how she would have had to bid farewell to her lambs. By the end of the day, he had composed the wry Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, the Author’s Only Pet Yowe (ewe) – and taken a dig at himself for being so foolish as to leave a sheep tethered where she could get in difficulties. It was, as he said, an ‘unco mournful tale’.

To a Mouse – a OneKind poem if ever there was one – tells of the time when he turned up the nest of a field mouse with his plough. Long before ‘empathy’ was invented, Burns talks to the little creature in tones of exceptional sweetness – recognising the terror he has caused her, promising not to harm her, and accepting that she should have her tiny share of the crop. I was recently compiling a potted history of Advocates for Animals, and through my research I rediscovered that for many years, two lines of this poem- summing up the inequality between humans and animals- appeared on Advocates for Animals’ annual reports (or the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection, as it then was):

"I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion
Has broken Nature’s social union."

We so often wish there was a bit more acknowledgment of that ‘social union’ and the fact that we’re all ‘earth-born companions’ and ‘fellow mortals’. Burns’ compassion and understanding touched a chord then, as it does today.

But he could get angry too. In The Wounded Hare, he rails against ‘inhuman Man’ with his ‘barb’rous art’ and his ‘murder-aiming eye’ for shooting and maiming a hare. These were days when animals were killed without much thought, but Burns was tormented by the suffering of the wounded animal and the thought that, at that time of year, her young might be left to die without her. But, he promised, he would not forget her:

Oft as by winding Nith I, musing, wait
The sober eve, or hail the cheerful dawn
I’ll miss thee sporting o’er the dewy lawn,
And curse the ruffian’s aim, and mourn thy hapless fate.

I absolutely loved my first Burns Night. It was perhaps an alternative one, with colleagues and friends from all over the UK, from Poland, Spain and the United States. All brought together by the OneKind spirit of one man – thank you, Rabbie!