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Critical Praise for The Witching Voice: A Novel from the Life of Robert Burns

• Here is literary history served up in a surge of life, humor, poetry, and song. Johnston succeeds in giving us a life of Burns that is at once unsentimental and yet deeply felt. He convincingly conveys Burns as a man of his time, while opening up the lyrical beauty and energy of his work in a way wholly accessible to a contemporary reader.

  — Stuart Dybek, recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship; author of I Sailed With Magellan and The Coast of Chicago

• The Witching Voice conjures the sexy soul of an angelic rogue, a true poet who lived in the living moment, loving diffusely yet deeply. The Witching Voice gives us Burns' life as no mere biography can.

  — Richard Katrovas, founding director of the Prague Summer Program; author of The Years of Smashing Bricks and Prague Winter

• One of the least hysterical and most entertaining of novelistic treatments of Burns. It is a very well researched, judiciously paced, emotional, and intelligent re-imagining of the period of Burns.

  — Professor Gerard Carruthers, director The Centre for Robert Burns Studies, University of Glasgow

• Sharply observed and swiftly paced, The Witching Voice recounts Burns' rise from impoverished farmer to famous bard in an era when a poem from a ploughman was a revolutionary act. Johnston weaves Burns' poems, journals, and letters into deftly imagined scenes from his life, creating a full-blooded portrait of the poet, farmer, lover, and revolutionary Scotsman. Johnston's prose is musical to the ear and pleasing to the eye, his mastery of Burnsian Scots-English harmonizing with the poems and the language that gave them birth.

  — Robert Eversz, author of Shooting Elvis and Zero to the Bone

• Just in time for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns comes this celebration of his colorful life. Johnston (former head, English, Western Michigan Univ.) places his lusty tale in the noisy, smoke-filled taverns and the crowded, dirty streets of Ayr and Edinburgh, Scotland. Beginning with the early death of their father, Robbie and his brother, Gibby, struggle to maintain the family farm, but it is soon evident that Robbie's talents lie elsewhere and that there is money to be made from his "scribblings" of songs and poems, particularly in the form of patronage. It is also apparent that Robbie's devastating good looks and gift of gab prove irresistible to the women in his wake, as one after another fall victim to his charms and suffer the ignominious fate of pregnancy, illegitimate offspring, and community scorn. For those who know Burns only for "Auld Lang Syne," "To a Mouse," or a yearly excuse to raise a pint on January 25, this atmospheric, dialect-rich retelling of his life winningly fills in the blanks. Most libraries, especially those with readers of Scottish lineage, should purchase.

  — Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Reviews

• Murray (KY) Ledger & TimesFebruary 9, 2009

  Despite Robert Burns' connection to Murray, Ky., the 250th anniversary of his birth passed without much fanfare in this western Kentucky community with Scottish roots. The ice storm that plowed through the region at the end of January diverted attention from the poet's birthday on the 25th. As trees splintered and crashed and electricity flickered and died, most of us focused on the rudimentary, like keeping warm.

  Now that the power is back in, those interested in celebrating Burns should get hold of a new book by Arnold Johnston entitled The Witching Voice. The historical novel covers four years in the life of Burns, beginning with a letter by the poet to his cousin, James Burness, on the occasion of Burns' father's death.

  The first image presented in the book is the backsides of the two horses carrying the coffin of the elder Burns to its final rest. Oldest son Robert holds the lead pony's halter, as he glances at his brother, Gilbert.

  "His brother's eyes are red-rimmed with fatigue and grief," Robert Burns observes. "But something in that stare, a glaze of ice, a slight raising of the brows, recalls the father's frequent expression of doubt and disapproval."

  By the third paragraph on the first page, the unresolved conflict between father and son is evident. By page two, when a friend offers him a swig from a silver flask and Robert refuses, we get another glimmer into his character. Burns reflects that his friend and the rest of the funeral party would laugh out loud, "...at the notion of Rab Burns turning aside from the taste of Kilbagie..."

  As the burial comes to an end, Robert reads the epitaph he has written for his father. Unable to resist reference to the dearly departed's faults, Robert's tribute ends with the sentiment that even his father's failings "lean'd to virtue's side."

  The scene opens and closes with cinematic flair. As graveside services end, an icy squall moves in from the sea. The last sound heard before the mourners head toward Simson's Inn is the "chunk, thump and clatter of the gravedigger's spade at their backs and the cold pelt of rain in their faces."

  Johnston's fast-paced, first person narrative is enhanced by sensory descriptions and homely details of 18th century Scottish life. The author uses these techniques to attract modern readers likely to know little of Burns, except for the words of "Auld Lang Syne."

  Those interested in knowing more about Burns will find Johnston's The Witching Voice.an informative and entertaining romp. The novel covers four crucial years of Burns' life, from 1784 to 1788. During this time, he was gaining fame for his writing and for collecting and documenting Scottish lyrics to folk songs. In addition, he found time for drinking and carousing, rubbing elbows with Edinburgh's upper crust and fathering six "bairns" by three different women.

  By the end of the book, Burns has settled down and married. The final scene has him sitting on a broad and grassy plateau, writing a new song and admiring the acreage that holds his farm and his new home. He finishes by rising to his feet and singing his new song:

  "I am naebody's Lord,
  I'll be a slave to naebody;
  I ha'e a gude braid sword,
  I'll take dunts frae naebody."

  Johnston includes a glossary in the back of the book to help readers navigate the Scottish dialect. He also provides a listing of the many characters — six pages of them — and a bibliography.

  The Witching Voice is available from Wings Press in a quality paperback edition at $18.95. With 15 period engravings, it is a handsome book and a great gift for lovers of history, poetry and Scottish heritage.

  Read Main Street online at www.murrayledger.com.

• MyShelf.com2009

  The Witching Voice, though a work of fiction, follows the life of Scottish poet Robert Burns through the early years of his career as a poet. It wasn't easy in the 1780s for an impoverished young farmer to gain recognition in any of the arts. Fortunately, Burns had the kind of talent that stood out from the ordinary and could not be ignored. But he didn't help matters any getting into trouble with the "Auld Lights" faction of the church.

  Young Rab Burns had a thing for beautiful women — and a flair for getting them pregnant. The first was Betty Paton, a young servant hired to help his mother. But she wasn't the kind of woman he wanted to marry. When her family sent for her, saying her mother was ill and she was needed at home, Betty didn't want to go. Rab, on the other hand, was glad to end the affair. By then, he'd met Jean Armour, daughter of a wealthy mason. There was also Mary Campbell, governess of his landlord's children.

  It was too late to save him from the wrath of Reverend Auld, for Betty was already pregnant. Rab and Betty were subjected to a punishment called the cutty stool. They were forced to sit on uncomfortably short stools at the front of the church, while they listened to sermons and rebukes about why they had been brought before the church. Rab was expected to marry Betty to atone for wronging her. Instead, he paid Betty and her family off and took the baby to raise.

  Besides Burns' sexual exploits, the story also tells of the family's financial struggles on an infertile farm he'd inherited. The story, though well constructed, was slow reading because much of it, especially the poetry, was written in a Scottish dialect that had me flipping over to the glossary frequently. Other than that and too much detail in the sex scenes, the story is worth reading. Give it a chance. You'll be glad you did.

• San Antonio Express-NewsJan. 25, 2009

  Had he lived — and many of his numerous disciples would argue that Robert Burns still shanks the meids (roughly, walks the meadows) of his native Ayrshire — the iconic Scottish poet would have been 250 years old today. Born Jan. 25, 1759, "Rabbie" Burns remains the national poet of Scotland, the epitome of the red-blooded, raw-boned country lad touched by God's promise, creator of verse and sangs in the Scottish dialect that could be potently pastoral, lustily bawdy and persuasively political. And, clever lad, he took great pleasure in lobbing bombs at the kirk, or church. More precisely, Burns attacked — with mock solemnity, in some of the most notable stanzas in the English canon, "Holy Willie's Prayer" — the hypocrisy of holier-than-thou church elders.

  A pioneer of the Romantic movement, Burns' plain-spokenness brought poetry to the masses. His was verse of the people, by the people and for the people. Known as the other "Bard" of the British Isles, Burns forsook the classical themes of accepted poetic conventions to "scribble" about a louse on a lassie's neck in the next pew, or an unearthed mouse discombobulated by a plowshare.

  As a fictional Burns remarks in a new novel just published by San Antonio's Wings Press to commemorate the poet's birth and remarkable achievements: "I look about me at the hills and fields, as bonnie as they may be, and I wonder how sic (such) beauty can hide sic misery."

  Burns' scholar and longtime Western Michigan University faculty member Arnold Johnston manages to both puncture and perpetuate "the Ploughman Poet's" myth in "The Witching Hour." Based on his play of the same title, Johnston focuses his efforts in the novel on the years 1784 to 1788, when Burns' lyrical words just began to echo about the countryside and eventually caught the attention of the Edinburgh cultural elite. Johnston paints the somewhat stereotypical portrait of Burns as a raffish rogue whom the lassies can't resist and the lads stand for drinks if he'll only sing them a song, hot off the presses, so to speak. Burns' prodigious promiscuity produces no less than six bairns in these years, including two sets of twins, by three different women. (The one "bonnie lassie" who doesn't get pregnant dies.) At one point, the disconsolate poet curses the poor soil he toils over, wishing it as fertile as himself. ...

  Women in Burns' world were good for three things: taking care of their hard-working man, breeding and inspiring sonnets devoted to love or lust. Censured by the Catholic church for serial houghmagandie, Burns pens "The Fornicator," which becomes as popular in the pubs as a wee dram of Kilbagie:

  Ye jovial boys who love the joys, / The blissful joys of Lovers, / Yet dare avow, with dauntless brow, / When the bony lass discovers, / I pray draw near, and lend an ear, / And welcome in a Frater, / For I've lately been on quarantine, / A proven Fornicator.

  Despite its flaws, Johnston's novel is immensely readable and entertaining, if you have a high tolerance for scalawags and rapscallions, of which Burns apparently broke his own mold. (All right, he does have a few attacks of conscience, and he does do the right thing in the end, however grudgingly.)

  If Johnston leads at least a few of us back to the source material — Burns' wonderful, wooly poetry — by quoting and excerpting some 40 works, including "To a Louse," "To a Mouse, "Holy Willie's Prayer" and "John Barleycorn: A Ballad," then his debt to his Scottish hero is paid in full.

  From "A Prayer on the Prospect of Death": Thou know'st that thou hast formed me / With passions wild and strong / And list'ning to their witching voice / Has often led me wrong

  ---

  Link to the Steve Bennett, Book Page Editor, review: http://www.mysanantonio.com/entertainment/books/Review_The_Witching_Voice.html

• "A wonderful introduction to Robert Burns"

  Historical Novels ReviewMay 2009

  The date of publication for this novel of Robert Burns's life and work was the 250th anniversary of poet's birth. Since the 25th of January is already celebrated as a national holiday by Scottish sons and daughters everywhere, it should be plain the sense of esteem with which he is regarded. The novel is written in "Scots" (as were most of Burns's best works), which I found easy to slip into, although a glossary is included as an appendix to assist the reader.

  The many snippets of poetry and song arise naturally as we follow Rab in his early adulthood at home on the struggling farm or with his friends and lady friends, and they become seamless in their setting of 18th-century Scotland. This is quite deliberate on the part of both Burns and Mr. Johnston; in fact, more than once, one of the upper classes advises Burns to drop the dialect and write about subjects of refinement. Burns's reply is that the dialect and his life experience is how the Muse speaks to him.

  Mr. Johnston writes plays as well as novels, and The Witching Voice was first a play which brought Robert Burns to life on the stage. Here on the printed page the same happens, illuminating this formative period in the life of the poet; the allure of the wealthier classes, which he matched in education if not birth; the tyranny and hypocrisy of the church elders; the hounds of poverty that pursued him always; and what a real gentleman he was in his pursuit of the ladies. A wonderful introduction to Robert Burns or a treat for his many admirers.

  Mary K. Bird-Guilliams