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Who was Robert “Robbie” Burns? He has long been revered as the national poet of Scotland and the country’s favourite son. Each 25th January, his birthdate is celebrated with traditional Burns Night suppers and events which end with the singing of Old Lang Syne, which he wrote as a poem in 1788.
You probably sang some version this weekend, but do you know the background behind Auld Lang Syne? Are you even close to singing the original lyrics or melody?
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Life Burns’s father had come to Ayrshire from Kincardineshire in an endeavour to improve his fortunes, but, though he worked immensely hard first on the farm of Mount Oliphant, which he leased in 1766, and then on that of Lochlea, which he took in 1777, ill luck dogged him, and he died in 1784, worn out and bankrupt. It was watching his father being thus beaten down that helped to make Robert both a rebel against the social order of his day and a bitter satirist of all forms of religious and political thought that condoned or perpetuated inhumanity. He received some formal schooling from a ...