Robert Burns

Robert Burns (1759 – 1796), popularly known as Robbie or sometimes Rabbie Burns was a poet who wrote largely Scots and Scottish dialect. Born in Alloway, Ayrshire January the 25th, 1759 , he died 37 years later in Dumfries, Dumfriesshire. He has come to be regarded as Scotland's national poet, with his birth observed worldwide as "Robbie Burns Day" and celebrated with Burns Suppers. Often sentimentalized, his life was one of contradictions, his life was one of contradictions. An ardent nationalist, he worked for a time as an excise collector for the British Government; a champion of freedom, he almost emigrated to Jamaica to work as the bookkeeper on a friends estate, one built on the labour of slaves.

The Poems

And Man, whose heav'n-erected face

The smiles of love adorn,--

Man's inhumanity to man

Makes countless thousands mourn!

(From "Man Was Made To Mourn" Burns' dirge on the plight of the working man)

O ye, wha are sae guid yoursel,

Sae pious and sae holy,

Ye've nought to do but mark and tell

Your neebours' fauts and folly,

(From "Address to the Unco Guid,

Or the Rigidly Righteous." A caustic attack on the judgemental attitudes of the comfortably off.)

A prince can mak a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an' a' that;

But an honest man's abon his might,

Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!

For a' that, an' a' that,

Their dignities an' a' that;

The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,

Are higher rank than a' that

(From "Is There For Honest Poverty." These lines are thought to have been inspired by the trial of William Brodie, showing Burns' contempt for the judicial view that accepting a reward for turning King's evidence somehow made an honest man.)

My luve is like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June.

My luve is like the melodie,

That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,

So deep in luve am I,

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a' the seas gang dry.

(First verse of his best known love song)