The Scottish poet Robert Burns has been idolised and eulogised. He has been sainted, painted, tarted up and toasted. He is famous as the author of Auld Lang Syne, and he has long since become the patron saint of the heart-sore and the hung-over. But what about the poems? Beneath the cult of Burns Nights and patriotic yawps, there is the work itself, among the purest and most truthful created in any age. This is a Burns collection like no other: a readers edition, made for the pleasure of reading. Novelist and Scottish essayist Andrew OHagan comes into company with the poet who has mattered most to him in his writing life. He selects the poems for the reader, and converses with the work, offering fragments and distilled commentary of his own. The effect is explosive, giving us Robert Burns at his very best a political Burns, a poet who can name hypocrisy and intolerance, and point directly to the human heart.
Robert Burns (25 January 1759 21 July 1796), also known as Robbie Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire, the Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the greatest Scot by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well known across the world today include "A Red, Red Rose", "A Mans a Man for A That", "To a Louse", "To a Mouse", "The Battle of Sherramuir", "Tam o Shanter" and "Ae Fond Kiss".
The educated son of a poor cotter, Burns became known for his rustic background, his fraternity with the working man, his Jacobite loyalty and his amorous entanglements. Yet his contribution to literature is immense. His use of dialogue and colloquial speech is comparable to that of Chaucer and Byron, but is also uniquely his own. He liberated the language, allowing freedom to the Romantic movement, and his use of old folk tunes enormously enhanced the Scottish musical tradition.
Treasury of 43 works: "The Cotter's Saturday Night," "To a Mountain Daisy," "To a Mouse," "To a Louse," "Tam o' Shanter," "Comin' Thro' the Rye," many more. Lists of titles and first lines. Extensive
This selection gives equal weight to the two aspects of Robert Burns's reputation, as a lyricist and as a much-loved Scottish poet. Placing works in probable order of composition, it includes lyrics to his most well known songs, such as the nostalgic Auld Lang Syne, the romantic A Red, Red Rose, and the patriotic Scots What Hae. As a poet, Burns wrote with deceptive simplicity and imaginative sympathy, and demonstrated enormous range - from comic dramatic monologues such as Holy Willie's Prayer, which mocks hypocrisy, to narratives including the celebrated Tam O' Shanter, about the ghostly visions of a drunk.
Robert Burns (1759-96) was born into a farming family in Ayrshire, Scotland. The publication in 1786 of his first book, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect, made him famous overnight, and saw him feted by Edinburgh society. But Burns made no money from his writing and quickly fell on hard times, returning to farming in Dumfries and, when that failed, to work as an excise officer. He devoted his final years to poetry and the writing of Scottish songs.
