Robert Burns’ #MeToo moment

A year ago, I sang ‘Ye Banks and Braes’ by Robert Burns at the annual Scottish banquet at Manhattan’s University Club. Afterwards, my dinner partner, an American chap, asked me what it was about. Regret, I said. Just look at the last line.

But my false lover stole my rose [virginity]. And ah! He left the thorn [unwanted pregnancy] with me. 

The American is a feminist metropolitan, and so responded with due sensitivity. ‘Burns must have really understood women,’ he said. I agreed. From Burns’ love letters, it is evident that he used his way with words to climb inside their heads and, from there, into their beds. Burns fathered a number of illegitimate children. In 18th-century Scotland, a relationship with him could be truly ruinous. Burns’ misdemeanours earned him a bad reputation among many of his contemporaries. At one point, he tried to flee to Jamaica. But he was summoned back to sit publicly upon the solemn Kirk’s Stool of Repentance.