Robert Burns, the man whom none other than Seamus Heaney labelled as one of the greatest ever poets was honoured at a 259th birthday celebration at Belfast’s Black Box Theatre.
For the second year running “The Out to Lunch Festival” played host to an eclectic event removed from the more elevated stations of black tie dinners more often associated with the bard’s birthday. It was an offering ‘Rabbi’ Burns would likely have felt very much at home in.
Given that Belfast was one of the first places to publish Burns’ poetry outside his native Ayrshire before he headed to Edinburgh, the Black Box in the heart of the city’s old quarter was indeed the place to be.
Much enjoyment and cause for reflection on Burns life and work was packed into the traditional one-hour frame work for one of the final events of the month-long schedule for the Out to Lunch Festival’s thirteenth year running.
The show was opened by Piper Ian Burrows, a local piper with some rousing tunes mixed with a haunting lament.
Burrows who informed the packed house spanning all ages that Burns himself had also been a piper. Local actor Paddy Scully who took the stage afterwards, added a unique reading of Burns’ much love poem known also well in song 'My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose.'
A blend of mirth, mischief and refection befitting Burn’s life and work was delivered by singer song writer Hugh Jordan with songs backed up skilfully by the mandolin.
The singer’s interest in Burns was kindled as child by an aunt in his native Glasgow who had left Jordan to find out for himself that the poet had fathered some thirteen children by five different women.
Combining such beloved romantic ballads by Burns as ‘Green Grow the Rushes O’ and ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, with one of Burns earliest most provocative songs ‘McPhersons Rant’ about the public hanging of a wandering traveller he had witnessed as a youth he also held the audience’s rapt attention by a poignant rendition of “The Land of the Leal”.
Jordan concluded his set with the Jacobite Burns’s ‘Parcel of Rogues’, which bitterly condemning the treachery he saw of the 31 Scottish MPs who apparently, driven by bribery, made possible the 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England.
‘Out to Lunch Festival’ founder Sean Kelly stressed the importance of making Robert Burns's birthday celebration more accessible to ordinary people given “‘the depth of his humanity” and the fact that he needs to be understood as so much more than a figure on a poster.
With an hour of provocative entertainment, a taste of haggis and dram of whiskey also provided on a cold winter’s day, the Black Box was indeed a good place to mark the Poet’s birthday.