Robert Burns
He was days from sailing to Jamaica when his first book sold out and changed his mind. Burns went on to write the song the world sings at midnight on New Year's Eve.
Published
Quick Facts
- Born
- 25 January 1759, Alloway, Ayrshire
- Died
- 21 July 1796, Dumfries, aged 37
- Known as
- The Ploughman Poet, Rabbie Burns, the Bard
- Breakthrough
- The Kilmarnock edition, 1786, printed in a run of 612 copies
- Day job
- Farmer, then exciseman in Dumfries from 1789
- Best-known works
- Auld Lang Syne, To a Mouse, Tam o' Shanter, A Man's a Man for A' That, Address to a Haggis
- Wife
- Jean Armour, married 1788
- Annual tribute
- Burns Night suppers on or around 25 January
The poet who nearly emigrated
By 1786 Robert Burns was a struggling Ayrshire farmer in trouble. His family's farming was failing, and his love life had caused a scandal over Jean Armour's pregnancy. He booked a passage to Jamaica to work on a plantation. To raise the fare, he published a volume of his poems in Kilmarnock. Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect appeared in July 1786 and was a hit. He abandoned the voyage and headed for Edinburgh, where the city's literary society was eager to meet a farmer who wrote like this. That teenage Walter Scott glimpsed him at a gathering in Edinburgh is one of the nicest footnotes of the winter of 1786–87.
Why a mouse changed American literature
Burns wrote in Scots and in English, and often slid between the two. He wrote about field mice and lice, about drink and sex, and about the idea that a man's worth has nothing to do with his rank. To a Mouse, written after he turned up a nest with his plough, gave John Steinbeck the title Of Mice and Men. The line about the best-laid schemes going astray comes straight from it. J. D. Salinger took The Catcher in the Rye from Burns too, from a misremembered line of Comin' Thro' the Rye. Few poets have lent so much to the shelves of other writers.
The man who gave songs away
Burns's greatest labour was not his own book but the saving of Scotland's folk songs. He spent his last years collecting old tunes and lyrics, mending them and writing new words for them, for James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum and later George Thomson's collections. He refused payment. He saw it as a patriotic duty. Auld Lang Syne is the best example. In December 1788 he shared a version with Frances Dunlop. Years later, in a September 1793 letter to George Thomson, he said he had taken it down from an old man's singing. It appeared in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum in 1796, after his death, and it now closes Hogmanay parties around the world. In 1999, A Man's a Man for A' That was sung at the opening of the modern Scottish Parliament.
Tam o' Shanter, the ride of his life
In 1791 Burns published Tam o' Shanter, a long comic poem about a drunk farmer who rides home past Alloway's ruined kirk and sees witches dancing, led by a girl in a short shirt, or cutty sark. He escapes across the Brig o' Doon, but his horse Meg loses her tail to the nearest witch. It began as a favour. The antiquarian Francis Grose wanted a story to go with his drawing of Alloway Kirk in a book on Scottish antiquities. Burns obliged with perhaps his finest narrative poem. He wrote it while working as an exciseman, checking duty on spirits and travelling hundreds of miles on horseback every week.
A short life with a long supper
Burns died in Dumfries in 1796 at 37. Worn down by years of hard physical work, he is believed to have had a heart condition. Jean Armour gave birth to their son Maxwell on the day of his funeral. Within five years his friends were meeting at his birthplace in Alloway to mark the anniversary of his death. That first Burns supper, in July 1801, became the template for the annual dinner: a haggis piped in, the Address to a Haggis recited, toasts, songs and a lot of whisky. The date later moved to his birthday on 25 January. Today Burns suppers take place everywhere from Glasgow to Moscow, where the poet was hugely popular in Soviet times thanks to Samuil Marshak's Russian translations.
Where to find him today
Start in Alloway, where the thatched cottage his father built still stands, with the Burns Monument and the Brig o' Doon nearby. In Mauchline you can see the world of his early love affairs and tavern nights. In Dumfries, Burns House is where he spent his last years, and the Globe Inn was one of his favourite pubs. His mausoleum stands in St Michael's churchyard. Statues of him stand in cities across the world. But the real memorial is the line sung by crowds at midnight each New Year, hand in hand, most of them not knowing all the words.
Notable people
- Robert Burns
- Jean Armour
- William Burnes
- Walter Scott
- James Johnson
- George Thomson
- Francis Grose
- Samuil Marshak
- John Steinbeck
- Frances Dunlop
Keep exploring
Burns Night
Published
The first Burns supper was held by nine friends in Ayrshire, probably in 1801, and it was meant to be a one-off. Now it's a global night of haggis and verse.
Haggis
Published
Scotland's national dish is a sheep's stomach stuffed with its own offal, oats and spice, and it gets a poem, a supper and a ban on US shelves.
Hogmanay
Published
In Scotland, New Year's Eve once mattered more than Christmas, and it still involves flaming fireballs, a dip in the Forth and a stranger with coal at your door.