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". 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.