Robert Burns

, (1759-1796) beloved Scottish poet, born January 25, 1759.

He was born in Alloway, Ayrshire (45 minute drive from Glascow).  His father
was a gardener and tenant farmer, and the life he was brought up in made him acutely aware of society’s unfairness as he laboured hard yet lived in poverty.

In 1786 he published 612 copies of Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, the preface of which explains his early need to write to find ‘some kind of
counterpoise’ in his unhappy life.  The book’s success changed that life.  He
moved to Edinburgh and was welcomed into the literary circles.  With the earnings from an expanded volume of his book, Burns began to travel around his country, drawing inspiration from the environments and people.  As important to him as his own writing was the collecting of traditional works he came across.  In time he returned home to farming & trained to become a full-time excise officer in Dumfries.

As well as editing volumes of James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum from 1788 until his death on 21 July 1796, he wrote copiously and collected works with almost all his spare time.

With what remained of his spare time he socialised.  Whether the women in his life brought to him his romantic words or vice versa, he wrote often of love and loved many women.  His tolerant wife was Jean Armour.  With his eloquent identification of the injustices of society and his ability to describe the little sensations that make life bearable, such as the pleasure of drinking, the ‘Heaven-sent ploughman’ is held as a poet who belongs to the workers before the intellectuals, and his work still speaks for people all over the world today.

"[Burns] used to remark to me that he could not well conceive a more mortifying picture of human life than a man seeking work.  In casting about in his mind how this sentiment might be brought forward, the elegy, 'Man was Made to Mourn,' was composed"
--Gilbert Burns, Brother of Robert Burns

He died at the age of 37 from heart disease. More than 10,000 people are said to have attended his burial; and his popularity has not diminished.