Robert Burns

THE MAN

Robert Burns was born in Alloway, South Ayrshire, Scotland in 1759. He is known variously as Rabbie, Rantin’, Rovin’ Robbie, The Ploughman’s Poet, and The Bard of Ayrshire. He was born to a poor farming family but his father believed in education and did all that he could to teach his children at home. His family had very little money and his father’s death, when Robert was only 15, left the family bankrupt. It was these early struggles which inspired the egalitarian, anti-authority themes that would appear in Burns’ future works.

Robert was a handsome man and had it not been for his talent in poetry and song he might well have ended up as a rover and rover only since he had a lack of business sense and a fondness for the national drink.

He also had a literary gift that could not be denied and though he failed at every other profession he attempted, he succeeded in writing. Burns wrote in Lowland Scots, a dialect that looks familiar but confusing to modern English speakers. He took the stories and songs he heard as a child and rewrote them in his own words, preserving a culture that might otherwise have been lost. Indeed he gave Scotland a great gift, the revitalization of Scottish culture and pride at a time when it was badly needed.
In 1786, he published his first book of poems, the poems were catchy, sarcastic, and light; it was an instant success.

As Burns grew, so did his success with women. But 1786 brought it’s share of trouble as well; it was this year that the subject of his famous poem “Highland Mary” , Mary Campbell, died while giving birth to his child. It’s hard to feel too much sorrow for him though because the previous year he fathered a child with his family’s servant girl and shamed her further by refusing to marry her. Over the course of his life, the poet would father fourteen children by six different mothers. He only married once, to Jean Armour, who became pregnant before they were married. Her father refused to allow Burns to marry the girl until his poems were published and then he suddenly seemed respectable marriage material and they were married in 1788. Jean and Robert had four children together.

In order to support his family Robbie took a job as a tax inspector in addition to his writing and farming. He started writing songs, many of them set to traditional tunes, and lyrics reworked from the ones passed down in the oral tradition. Some of his better known are A Man’s a Man for A’ That,” “A Red, Red Rose,” and of course the New Year’s Eve ditty, something about remembering old acquaintances.

Burns died young at the age of 37 having misspent most of his life. Adding a bit of drama to his final farewell in 1796, ,his wife gave birth to their last child on the same day. He lives on through his works to an extent he could never have imagined, and his spirit is kept alive through those that honor him once a year at a dinner with a never changing menu.

Scotland mourned their loss; ten thousand people attended his funeral and he was later named the poet laureate of Scotland. The Scots refer to him as “The Bard,” others as “The Scottish Bard,” to distinguish his nickname from Shakespeare’s. And then of course, there’s Burns Night.

HOW HIS WORKS LIVE ON TODAY

Robert Burns believed in equality for all men, his poem a Mans a Man for That was cited by
Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General in a lecture:

“But it is one of Burns’ most famous lines – “a man’s a man for a’ that” – that I should like to serve as the touchstone. And his prayer, in the same poem, that “man to man, the world o’er, shall brothers be for a’ that”.

Let us admire the enduring resonance of the work of Robert Burns. And let us dream, as he did, of a true brotherhood – and sisterhood – that embraces humankind, and allows all people a chance to enjoy their inalienable rights, dignity and freedom. “

He saw the link between the trials of smallest of creatures with those of mankind in his poem To A Mouse which inspired an entire novel, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

If you think you have never heard any of Burn’s works, think again, have you ever sung Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve? Welcome to the works of Robert Burns!