Robert Burns: Socialist hero or just a Scottish social climber?

Tonight is the night that the Scots behave oddly. They put on their tartan, stuff themselves with haggis, neeps and tatties, "sit bousing at the nappy getting an' getting fou and unco happy" and as things get completely out of hand, some clever idiot gets up to recite Tam O'Shanter, or sings A Man's a Man for a' That. Tonight is Burns Night.

In Vancouver, Canadians of Scottish descent will assemble in the Boneta restaurant, for a five-course meal including whisky-smoked cod brandade and wraps with Arran-scorched Scottish caramel, washed down with rare Scotch whiskies, for admission of just under £50 a head.

In Baker City, Oregon, the Highland Games Association is inviting everyone to a £10 a head dinner which will begin with a procession to present the haggis, and a reading of Burns's Address to the Haggis. In Rochester, New York state, there will be a five-hour Burns Day celebration party tomorrow at the McGregor Vineyard. Even in Shanghai, there was a Burns Night in a private house earlier this week, where each guest was required to bring a bottle of Scottish malt whisky and recite a Burns poem.

It is also a very big month for the Kilmarnock Burns Club, member number zero of the Robert Burns World Federation, which has a bicentenary to celebrate. The club first met in Begbie's Tavern on 29 January 1808.

There is, therefore, no disputing the enduring popularity of the Scottish bard, son of a poor Ayrshire farmer. A socialist icon, his poems are a hymn to the dignity and hopes of ordinary Scots. There are Scots who would take it as a personal insult if you suggested he was anything less.

Which is why we should salute the reckless courage of Gerard Carruthers, lecturer in Scottish literature at Glasgow, who argues that Robbie Burns is not quite the pure socialist some of us might like him to be. He has put his head over the parapet to suggest Burns had very dodgy ideas about slavery, hankered after the easy life of a plantation manager and was a shameless social climber.

Robert Burns's name did not crop up much during last year's celebration to commemorate campaigners such as William Wilberforce, who struggled to bring about the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. Burns was 28, and on his way to becoming Scotland's favourite poet, when the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed. He was also sufficiently aware of the agitation around the slave trade to write a short poem in 1792, entitled The Slave's Lament, describing the homesickness of a man snatched from Senegal and put to work on a Virginia plantation.

By contrast, his much better known poem, A Man's a Man for a' That, has what sounds uncomfortably like a sneering reference to slaves. "The coward slave, we pass him by; We dare be poor for a' that!" he wrote, as if implying that those who buckled under and accepted their condition as slaves deserved no better.

Another of his poems, On a Scotch Bard, Gone to the West Indies, describes the warm welcome awaiting an unnamed Scottish poet who fled to the Caribbean when his life was in a bit of a mess. "Jamaica bodies, use him weel, An' hap him in a cozie biel; Ye'll find him ay a dainty chiel, And fou o' glee." He must have known that the thousands of Africans forced to sail to the same island did not arrive "fou o' glee", even if they survived the journey.

These excerpts are evidence of a "humanitarian blind spot" in Burns, according to Dr Carruthers. They could also be an indication of something darker. Dr Carruthers believes that Burns had a private fantasy about emigrating to Jamaica, working as a slave driver and coming home rich, to avenge a slight by a skilled labourer who did think he was good enough son-in-law material.

In 1784, when Burns was 25, he met 17-year-old Jean Armour, one of 11 children of a master mason from Mauchline. Burns had been running wild since his father died in February of that year. He had seduced a servant named Elizabeth Paton, who gave birth, in May 1785, to Burns's first child, known as "Dear-bought Bess", his "bastard wean".

He wrote a poem about the child, pleading: "Lord grant that thou may ay inherit, Thy mither's person, grace and merit; An' thy poor, worthless daddie's spirit, Without his failins". Having decided not to marry Elizabeth, he wasted no time getting entangled with his new amour Jean, who confessed to her parents early in 1786 that she was pregnant. Her father was so horrified he fainted. Her mother then packed her off to Paisley, to stay with her uncle, apparently hoping to find a suitable husband for her quickly, someone from a better background than Burns. But the minister of the Mauchline kirk spotted her absence and called upon her to return. Jean sent a letter, apologising. "I am with child, and Robert Burns in Mossgiel is the father," she confessed. She gave birth to twins in September 1786.

On this occasion, Burns was willing and even keen to do the right thing. He had given Jean a piece of paper, which is thought to have been a written promise that he would marry her. In Scotland, at the time, that would have had the legal force of a marriage certificate. But once old man Armour had recovered from his fainting fit, he resolved that nothing would make him accept Burns into his family, and he went to see a lawyer in Ayr, who had the names cut out of the document, invalidating the marriage.

To Burns, this was a personal slight. He felt Jean had let him down, and that her father had treated him very unfairly. He went before the Kirk Session, admitted to being the father of the child, and sought a certificate that would confirm he was single, and therefore free to marry Jean. But, meanwhile, his wandering eye caused more trouble. He started an affair with another servant, Mary Campbell, known as "Highland Mary", who may also have become pregnant by him. It was then that he toyed with the idea of flight to Jamaica. When old man Armour got wind of his plan, he was straight back to his lawyer, obtaining obtain a warrant against Burns with the idea of getting hold of the money he made from writing. Burns response was to take out a deed making over all his property and profits to his brother, Gilbert, who used them to bring up "Dear-bought Bess".

Burns may have been planning to take Highland Mary with him overseas, but in October 1786, she died in Greenock. The cause was said to have been "malignant fever", but some suspect she died in childbirth.

"Although the reason often given by biographers for Burns aborting his Jamaican plan is the death of his lover and a delay in winding up his affairs, I think Burns had taken cold feet about his proposed voyage long before this. In fact I believe it was a fantasy he harboured based purely on his injured class pride," Dr Carruthers told the Sunday Herald.

"Burns sets up a pose, makes inquiries and carries on the fantasy aspiring to be in a higher class and lord it over those who had previously snubbed him. He may not have been seriously contemplating going to the slave plantations, but even to pose as a potential slave manager doesn't cast him in a very good light.

"Even supposedly right-wing contemporary Scottish poets wrote more against slavery. For instance, the Glasgow poet William Campbell, who was against the French Revolution, published poems in Glasgow newspapers passionately protesting against the crimes against humanity that Britons were committing on a daily basis both in their own country and overseas against black people. Burns only writes one mediocre song, The Slave's Lament, which has very little to say about the plight of the slaves. And in the poem, On a Scotch Bard, Gone to the West Indies, he projects a happier life among people who will care about him. Well, these presumably white people may care about Burns, but in this poem he is completely devoid of compassion for the human traffic all around him."

As events turned out, Burns did not need to be a Jamaican slave driver to win Jean's hand. His first book of poems was published in Kilmarnock in 1786, and as his fame spread, and with it his earning power, his prospective father-in-law's hostility softened. In November, Burns set off – not for Jamaica, but for Edinburgh, and Jean was allowed to go with him. To their horror, the Armours soon learnt that their daughter was pregnant again. Burns, by contrast, was delighted, especially when she produced yet more twins. However, both infants died after a few weeks.

It is assumed that they did now marry. Certainly, Jean had nine children by Robbie Burns, sticking by him even when he had yet another affair that produced yet another "bastard wean". She is supposed to have remarked, with hard-headed logic, "our Robbie should have had twa wives". Their last child, a boy named Maxwell, was born on 25 July 1796. On that day, 10,000 people lined the streets of Dumfries for the funeral of a man they had come to love because he made poetry out of their lives. Burns had died four days earlier, aged 37.

Dr Carruthers's essay on Burns is to be published in the Scottish literary magazine, Drouth. Its editor, Johnny Roger, can expect a hostile reaction.

Listen to songs by Robert Burns...

Scots Wha Hae

Yestreen I had A Pint O Wine

The Slave's Lament

From The Complete Songs Of Robert Burns, 12 Volume Set

© Linn Records

Available at www.linnrecords.com