150 Year History of the St Andrews Burns Club

Wed, Jul 21st 2021 at 1:00 am - 2:00 am

Frank Quinault

150 Year History of the St Andrews Burns Club -

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Frank Quinault dashed home from South Street to deliver his talk, by Zoom, on the history of the St Andrews Burns Club. Provost Jim Leishman had just unveiled a plaque on Southgait Hall, formerly the Royal Hotel, identifying it as the place where the Burns Club was founded on 25 January 1869.

The Burns Club archive includes two bound minute books that are a detailed record of its activities and offer many insights into the social history of St Andrews. The fifteen founding members were drawn from the town’s businessmen and it is probable that all were, like Burns himself, masons. The splendid roast beef served at their first Supper was all the more enjoyable because it had actually been ordered by the Earl of Breadalbane, who had had to leave St Andrews in a hurry!

The earliest Supper programme in the archive dates from 1908. A comparison with the most recent shows that there were far more toasts back then, including several to different members of the Royal Family and to the armed forces, followed by the singing of ‘Rule Britannia’, and many solo renditions of Burns songs. Some fine Immortal Memories have been delivered over the years. Frank is eager to find that given by Hugh McDiarmid in 1960, not only because many regard him as Scotland’s finest poet since Burns but also because he was often scathing about Burns Clubs and “the sloppy rubbish they jaw oot”!

One toast that has stood the test of time is, of course, that to the Lasses. What was new in 2020 was that the reply was given by a lassie, Marilyn Rowan Rhind, who had just become one of the Club’s first female members – 125 years after Mr John Ritchie, replying to the same toast, suggested that some of “the lovely dears” should be invited to its next celebration.

Alan Macdonald thanked Frank for his most interesting presentation.