A Son of the Rock

A Novel of the Life and Loves of Robert Burns.

Collins, 1946, 382 p including 2 p Note.

This is the first in Barke’s series of books covering the life of Robert Burns, known collectively as The Immortal Memory. I gather Burns scholars did not look kindly upon them.

This one is a strange concoction, seemingly well researched – in a foreword Barke says he did not want to get anything wrong – yet in parts it does not read like a novel. But it is also not a biography, containing scenes that must be imagined, with dialogue certainly so, and larded with a wheen of Scots words and usages that might be off-putting to those furth of Scotland.

I assume Barke has evidence for his family calling their eldest child Robin unofficially – as do some of his intimates – but it was an odd decision to render throughout the town of Mauchline as Machlin.

The young Robert very early in his life becomes aware that the well-off have it their way and there is little to no justice in the world. This is particularly so in the case of his father, William Burns, a staunch Presbyterian – of the Auld Licht persuasion – passionately opposed to fornication, whose position as tenant farmer on successive poor soils which he did much to improve is taken advantage of by unfeeling (or downright criminal) lessors. William recognizes in Robert an innate potential to make a mark but a tendency to passion which he fears will undo him but strives mightily to ensure his two elder sons, Robert and Gilbert, both gain a good education for themselves.

There is a divagation to Irvine where Robert is set to learn heckling as a prelude to growing linen and entering that trade. It is here he gains his first sexual experience with one of the many Jeans – not to mention other lasses – with whom he will be associated but his sojourn is cut short when the linen shop burns down and it is back to the plough and the land. Robert of course imagines himself in love with all the girls with whom he dallies but does not consider any of them marriageable. Not that he has much to offer them anyway beyond a glad eye and the odd verse.

This first instalment goes up to the point of William Burns’s vindication in the eyes of the law, and final death, worn out by a life of toil; toil which has already taken its toll on Robert.

Barke is not a fine novelist. His prose gets the job done but lacks sparkle and there are occasional passages of purple prose. And at the end I did not feel the text had inhabited Robert as a person. Then again, rendering a fictional account of a real person is the hardest job in writing.

Pedant’s corner:- “Jock Richards’ back room” (x 4, Richards’s,) riccochetted (ricocheted,) “vocal chords” (vocal cords.)