Named after Scottish poet Robert Burn, Burns Night is an evening beloved by Scots at home and abroad. It is a small comfort in the dark, dank January of the home country. The fact that the upper classes spurned and humiliated him, and his religious elders tormented him for having a libido, has also made him a minor hero of Socialists, atheists, and Libertines across the world, who can be convinced to a meal of haggis washed down with whiskey and poetry. Folk singer Nina Nesbitt prepared for her appearance on the BBC’s Burns Night festivities by giving her reading of “Caledonia.”
Dougie Maclean’s “Caledonia” is sometimes regarded as an unofficial national anthem of Scotland, alongside The Corries’ “Flower of Scotland.” Both songs are described as folk songs, but they are not deep-rooted tunes drawn from the times of the Highland Clearances of the 19th Century. They are both new folk creations of the ’70s. Playing their tunes to small audiences in provincial venues, Maclean and The Corries could not have imagined the adoption of their songs as singalongs for tens of thousands. “Caledonia” is especially a song for the Scots abroad, of which there are many, as wanderlust and economic necessities have driven many away from their home.
Nesbitt is one of those who is away from home a lot, touring but also absorbing the Americana that has infused her latest album. She gives a simple, profound reading, with her vocals isolated in such a way that she seems apart from the music around her, and her surroundings in general, as she wistfully contemplates the joys of home. Her version goes down a storm at her shows in Scotland. Perhaps she will, one day, emulate one of the most successful coverers of this song. Alan Cumming, star of international stage and screen, whose version with KT Tunstall is more expansive than Nesbitt’s, has found a way to spend more time in the land of his birth, which makes him, and us, very happy.
The poet’s name is Robert (Rabbie) Burns!