Summertime is here, and Soundyngs is beginning to get a wee bit itinerant. This post finds us in Belfast’s Linen Hall Library, which has a major collection of books by Robert Burns in fine shelves in the ‘Governors’ Room’.
Belfast’s interest in Scotland’s national bard attests to an interest in Scots-Irish culture that spans the water between Ayrshire and Antrim. The Linen Hall Library also sponsors writing competition in Ulster Scots, and clearly, Burns is one of the tributaries running into this particular river.
The Gibson Collection (see photograph below for a snapshot of part of the whole) was originally owned by one of the Governors of the Linen Hall, Andrew Gibson. It was acquired by public subscription in 1901, and placed in the Linen Hall for the people of Belfast to read and enjoy. Its contents include material from Burns’s granddaughter about her illustrious ancestor, and also early editions of Burns’s works made in Belfast. Access needs to be arranged in advance; contact the Linen Hall to make your arrangements before you go.
The Linen Hall Library was founded as the Belfast Reading Society in 1788, later becoming the Belfast Library and Society for Promoting Knowledge. The ethos of self-directed reading and learning would have been familiar to Burns. Governors were drawn from the ranks of professional and skilled tradespeople. Today, the library is the only subscription library left in Ireland, although its reading spaces and resources are freely available to the general public. When we were visiting, it was also encouraging to see quite a number of younger readers sitting at desks studying hard for summer exams. Burns is, of course, only a part of the collections, which represent more widely material of local and Irish interest.
Robert Burns’s relationship with linen was famously none too happy. He and his brother Gilbert had tried growing flax on their farm at Lochlea around 1780, but the crop did not flourish, and Robert rather desperately tried for a short time to assist in developing a flax factory in Irvine. In 1781, when Burns was there, Irvine’s harbour trade was mostly with Ireland, although ships did pass by from more distant Atlantic trading (Crawford, p,114). According to Robert Crawford, it was in this relatively bustling town that Burns may first have dared to think that his poetry might be published. His day job was certainly not the stuff of dreams: working in a “heckling shed”, dressing and learning about flax, he seems to have succumbed to a profound depression. Heckling flax involves combing the fibre across wooden boards studded with nails. The air was thick with flammable dust. Burns was inexperienced, and his partner in the business seems to have been at best incompetent, at worst, a rogue. During a New Year party, somehow the shop went on fire, burning down, and all the investment of cash, time, and labour was lost. Even before the fire, Burns’s mental health seems to have been fragile; the disaster saw him returning home, with a bundle of rather melancholic poems about ruin and death.
However unhappy Burns was in Irvine’s linen sheds, his later poems include several about the Scottish textile industry: not just linen, but also wool. It is connections such as these that must have particularly resonated with the Belfast readers.
- “To the weaver’s gin ye go” – a song about a lass whose visit to the weaver’s shed seems to have led to her ruination.
- “The Gallant Weaver” – another lass, despite her father’s misgivings, gives her heart to a weaver lad. The first line references Paisley’s river, the Cart.
- “Bessy and her spinnin wheel” – sung in the persona of a working woman who uses spinning to maintain a poor but proudly independent life. Go, Bessy. Maybe stay away from those weaver lads….
Burns is cherished in Belfast. Visit the Linen Hall Library and even before you access the Burns collection, you will see a stained-glass window with his face, a striking statue of the Bard (below), and when we visited, a display of printed material associated with the Belfast Burns Club and the Gibson Collection. Unexpectedly, a wee bit of Ayrshire in the heart of Belfast.
Further Reading
- Linen Hall Belfast website – https://www.linenhall.com/
- Robert Crawford, The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography (Pimlico, 2010)
- Scottish Poetry Library website https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/