A Man’s A Man for a’ That, Robert Burns, 1795
“A Man’s A Man for a’ That,” 1795, was important to my father as an expression of Robert Burns’ egalitarianism, so much that the poem, framed, hung in our family room. Burns was influenced, when writing his republican anthem to the tune of an older song (“For a’ that”), by Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (1791-92). In a letter, Burns called his lyrics “two or three pretty good prose thoughts, inverted into rhyme.” The publisher of many of Burns’ songs, George Thomson, fearing controversy, did not put the poem into print until 1805, though several magazines published it before Burns’ death, and it became well-known and popular in Scotland.
The poem emphasizes the humility, simplicity, and dignity of the common person, just as Burns does in poems like “A Cotter’s Saturday Night,” with such phrases as: Honest poverty; The man’s the gowd [gold]; The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,/ Is King; The man o’ independent mind; Gude faith; The pith o’ sense and pride o’ worth/ Are higher rank; Sense and Worth o’er all the earth,/ Shall bear the gree. This in contrast to rank, to coward slaves, to the guinea’s stamp, to silks and wines, to yon birkie ca’d a lord with His ribband star an’ a’ that. All ending with hope: It’s comin’ yet for a’ that,/ That Man to Man, the world o’er,/ Shall brothers be for a’ that. “A Man’s a Man” is a sterling republican anthem at a time when such thoughts were being expressed by political philosophers, revolutionaries and poets around the world. But more than that, being a poem composed just the year before his death, the poem expresses, at least for me, another sentiment echoed and amplified all through the poetry of Robert Burns, that “Scotland is Scotland, for a’ that!” Independent mind, hamely fare, the honest man, the pith o’ sense and pride o’ worth, and gude faith—these are the same things celebrated in so many clear, direct lines that celebrate all things Scottish: haggis, Scotch drink, honest religion, hard work, simplicity in life and art. Burns helped to create that sense of a rugged Scotland, without “airs.” He helped Scotland to see itself as others see it, and to take pride in that. Perhaps that’s why he knew his poetry would survive him in exactly the way it has.
Thomas Fox Averill is Professor Emeritus at Washburn University of Topeka, an O. Henry Award-winning short story writer, and an award-winning novelist. He is a collector of Kansas books, and created the Thomas Fox Averill Kansas Studies Collection at Mabee Library. He is a gardener, bagpiper, and frequent visitor to the Pecos Wilderness in New Mexico.
In 2002, his Secrets of the Tsil Café was a finalist in the Literary Food Category of the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Rode was named Outstanding Western Novel of 2011 as part of the Western Heritage Awards administered by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, and it was a Spur Finalist in the Western Novel category. A Carol Dickens Christmas won the Byron Caldwell Smith Award in 2015.