Welcome to the World’s Oldest Burns Club
On the 21st July 1801, the anniversary of Burns' death - the Greenock Burns Club and Ayrshire Society was founded at the Henry Bell Tavern, managed by a Mrs Cottar. The club's earliest meetings were held on alternate Saturday nights and came to be called jocularly, Cottar's Saturday nights. The purpose of the club was to honour the memory of Robert Burns and encourage the reading and understanding of his works.
Unfortunately, the first minute book was discovered to have been lost in 1927 - apart from two important inscribed fly-leaves. For details of these first 10 years, therefore, we depend on writings of those who had read the book before it disappeared.
Fortunately, among such writers was Mr A. Kerr Bruce, who was the author of a little booklet about the club's 1902 centenary celebrations.
"Those early Burns Clubs are to be envied, for they were established so soon after Burns's death that the air of their meetings was warm with the words of those who had known and loved the poet, and who spoke familiarly of him. The Greenock Burns Club was no exception, as we shall show, but one specially noteworthy fact in this connection is that the Minutes of the Club from its establishment in 1801 to 1810 are written in an Excise Book which actually belonged to the poet and which was found in his house at his death, and presented to the Greenock Burns Club by Adam Pearson, Esq., an officer of Excise.
"To handle this book is in itself to link oneself with the poet, but to read over the quaintly sprawling writing in those stained and dim pages and to see how lovingly those men, now so long dead, spoke of our poet, is to get a new breath of admiration for one who could so wind himself round the hearts of his contemporaries."
On the first leaf, under the top cover of the minute book was the following inscription: 'This book was found in the house of the late Mr Robert Burns at his demise, and presented to the Burns Club of Greenock by Adam Pearson, Esq., of His Majesty's Excise, Edinburgh, AD. 1801.' On the second page was the following in large and legible handwriting, "Greenock Burns Club and Ayrshire Society."
These two leaves are all that remain of that first minute book and are amongst the most prized and carefully-guarded possessions of the Club.
Bruce concludes:
"On 29th January, 1802, the club held its first anniversary dinner in the White Hart Hotel. It was recorded that about 40 members sat down to a sumptuous repast under the presidency of exciseman John Wright, who had known the bard intimately for three years.”
Thus began an annual celebration which continues in Greenock to this day.
(*Extracted and edited from ‘Greenock Burns Club (The Mother Club)’ by Angus MacDonald.)
