As Burns Night approaches, Scotland's national bard Robert Burns has come under fire from former makar Liz Lochhead, who has labelled him a 'sex pest' and compared him to Harvey Weinstein. Lochhead's comments, made ahead of a talk on Burns and women, have sparked a fierce debate in the Scottish press.
Lochhead highlighted a 1788 letter in which Burns boasted of giving his lover Jean Armour a 'thundering scalade' and claimed he 'fucked her until she rejoiced'. Lochhead described this as a 'disgraceful sexual boast' that 'seemed very like a rape of his heavily pregnant girlfriend'. She received support from biographer Robert Crawford, who argued that 'what he presents as exclamations of pleasure may well have been cries of pain'.
However, other Burns scholars have criticised Lochhead's remarks. Gerard Carruthers said there was 'no good evidence' that Burns was a rapist, accusing her of 'refracting everything through our 21st-century presentism'. Wilson Ogilvie agreed that while Burns was 'not lily-white', comparing him to Weinstein was 'a bit over the top'. Novelist Catherine Czerkawska called the comparison 'invidious' and said it oversimplified a complex relationship.
Ironically, Lochhead defended Burns in 2009 against charges of being a 'racist, misogynist drunk', calling such arguments 'complete rubbish' and insisting that his personal life was irrelevant to his poetry. She reiterated this point recently, stating that whether Burns was a sex pest 'doesn't mean he isn't worth reading'. However, critics argue that when politicians like Nicola Sturgeon praise Burns's 'values of equality', his treatment of women becomes relevant.
