Did Robert Burns grow up speaking Doric?
Sunrise over the Robert Burns statue at Union Terrace in Aberdeen.
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Robert Burns’ words are known and loved the world over… but did Rabbie speak with a Doric accent?
The idea our Bard might have used the north-east tongue of his Mearns-born father certainly caught the imagination of early experts delving into Burns’ roots.
Writing in the Aberdeen Weekly Journal in January 1915, James Crabb Watt KC, author of a History of the Mearns, described Burns’ father, William, as a man of culture and intelligence, although a “horny-handed son of toil”.