Dr. Leffingwell’s perplexity is the perplexity of the scientific person. That Burns should have anything to do with illegitimacy of Scotia would probably seem ridiculous to the scientific mind, but I believe that Burns, and the spirit of loose living for which he stands, have been to no little extent responsible for bringing Scotland to the discreditable and degrading pass indicated by Dr. Leffingwell’s figures.
In Ireland the rate of illegitimacy is 4.4, in Scotland, 21.5 to each thousand unmarried women. Now, the poet who stands in the same relation to the Irish people as Burns does to the Scotch is Thomas Moore. He has given Ireland quite as considerable a body of songs as Burns has given to Scotland. He is just as essentially Irish as Burns is Scotch; but compare the tone of the two men. One of them gives you _The lass who made the bed to me_, the other, _Rich and rare were the gems she wore_. In reading Burns you find that quite two thirds of what he has written is marred by unpleasant and libidinous suggestion, but there is not a line of Moore which would not pass muster in a ladies’ school. To the rantin’ roarin’ Billies of Scotland the difference may form material for a sneer, but in the long run, clearly, the advantage is with the women of Ireland. If Scotland wishes to get rid of her drunkenness and to lessen the crime which arises out of it, and if she wishes to bring herself into line with the ordinary standards of decency, she will, I am afraid, have to put a little less trust in that mighty performer before the Flesh—Robert Burns.
I have been told that there are two kinds of Scotchmen, and that it would be a mistake to confound them, or to suggest that they have any characteristics in common. One kind, and the best kind, I am assured, is the Highlander. The other—and the more disreputable kind—is the Scotchman of the Lowlands. I have met both sorts, and I have not been able to discover that there is much to choose between them. For all practical purposes the blood is identical. It may at one time have been of two distinct strains, but these appear to have become in a great measure fused, and the blend is not beautiful. I think it was Dr. Cunninghame Graham who said of a certain Scotch peddler that he looked like a cross between a low-class Indian and an ourang-outang that had somehow got itself baptised. This, no doubt, is a little severe. But a Scotchman does certainly make one feel that underneath his unsatisfactory and obviously imperfect civilisation the hairy simian sits and grins. Rouse him, thwart him, disappoint him, rally him, and suddenly your cross-eyed, sandy-haired, bandy-legged, but withal sleek, smug, moralising man suddenly “bleezes,” and you perceive in him the ten thousand devils of an ancient and arboreal barbarity. Whether he be Highlander or Lowlander or mongrel, as he mostly is, it is just the same. He is Scotch and compounded for the most part of savage. Like the converted Kroo-boy, he may at any time revert into his immemorial primalism and you can never be sure of him. Whether he hail from the Isles or from the Lothians, the Scot is just the Scot, and there is nothing more to be said for him.