heraldry
| Robert Burns
BURNS HERALDED Robert Burns wanted his own Coat of Arms so much, he planned out each detail. Now, 225 years after his death, his wish has come true
P
oet, writer, clairvoyant? Perhaps Robert Burns could foresee his future legacy and know that one day, his fame and significance in the hearts of Scotland would far outreach the achievements of his lifetime, or maybe, he was just a wishful thinker. Either way, when he wrote to Alexander Cunningham on 3 March 1794, detailing how he would like his Coat of Arms to appear, he was very specific: “I am a bit of a herald, and shall give you, secundum artem, my arms: On a field azure a holly-bushseeded, proper; in base a shepherd’s pipe and crook saltier-wise, also proper, in chief. “On a wreath of the colours a woodlark perching on a sprig of bay-tree, proper, for crest. Two mottoes-round the top of the crest, ‘Wood-notes wild’; at the bottom of the shield, in the usual place, ‘Better a wee bush-than nae bield.’ “By the shepherd’s pipe and crook, I do not mean the nonsense of painters of Arcadia, but a stock and horn and a Club, such as you see at the head of Allan Ramsay in Allan’s quarto edition of the Gentle Shepherd.” Sadly, in his lifetime, Burns never received his achievement, but now an official Coat of Arms has been granted, exactly as Burns envisaged it, with a few other elements added that show how his status has grown posthumously. The Coat of Arms is the result of a petition by the Robert Burns World Federation (RBWF), an international literary society, and it is the only official Burns Coat of Arms in the world granted to the Bard himself, ensuring he is now legally seen as an honourable gentleman in the Kingdom of Scotland. The petition was first made in May 2021, shortly after the Lord Lyon, Dr Joseph J Morrow, hosted a lecture over Zoom for the Greenock Burns Club – the oldest Burns’ club in the world – which was attended by the RBWF’s then president Marc Sherland and senior vice president Henry Cairney, as well as the junior vice president at the time – Alan Beck. Beck, now senior vice president, under Henry Cairney as the current president of RBWF, recalls: “It would be fair to say that Dr Morrow, himself a fervent Burnsian, dropped quite a few hints about the sad fact that not only had Burns died before he could petition the Lyon Court for a Grant of Arms, but also that no one had petitioned posthumously on his behalf.” A crowd-funding campaign was launched across Burns
52 Scotland
