Almanac of Story Tellers: Robert Burns

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 25th.

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     It is the 25th day of the year, leaving 340 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1759, the man who became the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, was born.

    One of his greatest narrative poems is Tam 'o Shanter, aabout a farmer who likes to get drunk with his friends. Like many of his poems, it is written in a combination of Scots and English. It begins thusly: 

        When chapman billies leave the street,

        And droughy neibors, neibors meet,

        As market days are wearing late,

        And folk begin to tak the gate,

        While we sit bousing at the nappy,

        An' getting fou and unco happy,

        We think na on the lang Scots miles,

        The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,

        That lie between us and our hame,

        Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,

        Gathering her brows like gathering storm,

        Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

     Burns was brought up in a tenant-farming family, and the life of hardship and hard manual labor had an effect on both his physical abilities and his writing sensitivities. In the class-ridden society of the late 18th Century Scotland, he could never rise above his raising and poor education, and his poetry shows his distaste for the wealthy elite and their religion and Calvinistic morals.

    It also showed his unique technical capabilities in language, his satire and his wit, and his hold on the people of Scotland.

    He wrote in a "light" Scots dialect, a combination of Scots and English. 

    Burns was also a song writer and song collector, best known for his version of Auld Lang Syne. The song now is considered a traditional tune for New Year's Eve, although it says nothing about the anniversary and instead is is a song about two old friends remembering times past. Burns never claimed authorship of the song, and denied he had written it, but scholars insist it is his. The Scottish air in which he wrote the words is not how it is traditionally sung today.

    He is considered a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and his influence on Scottish literature is pronounced. He is a cultural icon in his country, and the Scottish television station STV ran a poll in 2009 that named him the greatest Scot. 

    He died in 1796.