Robert Burns

Robert Burns 1759-96, Scottish poet.

Life

The son of a hard-working and intelligent farmer, Burns was the oldest of seven children, all of whom had to help in the work on the farm. Although always hard pressed financially, the elder Burns, until his death in 1784, encouraged his sons with their education. As a result, Burns as a boy not only read the Scottish poetry of Ramsay and the collections compiled by Hailes and Herd, but also the works of Pope, Locke, and Shakespeare. By 1781, Burns had tried his hand at several agricultural jobs without success. Although he had begun writing, and his poems were circulated widely in manuscript, none were published until 1786. At this time he had already begun a life of dissipation, and he was not only discouraged but poor and was involved simultaneously with several women.

Burns decided to marry Mary Campbell and migrate to Jamaica. To help finance the journey, he published at Kilmarnock Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), which was an immediate success. Mary Campbell died before she and Burns could marry, and Burns changed his mind about migration. He toured the Highlands, brought out a second edition of his poems at Edinburgh in 1787, and for two winters was socially prominent in the Scottish city. In 1788 he married Jean Armour, who had borne him four children, and retired to a farm at Ellisland. By 1791 Burns had failed as a farmer, and he moved to nearby Dumfries, where he held a position as an exciseman. He died at 37 after a severe attack of rheumatic fever.

Verse

Burns's art is at its best in songs such as "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton," "My Heart's in the Highlands," and "John Anderson My Jo." Two collections contain 268 of his songs—George Thomson's Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice (6 vol., 1793-1811) and James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum (5 vol., 1787-1803). Some of these, such as "Auld Lang Syne" and "Comin' thro' the Rye," are among the most familiar and best-loved poems in the English language. But his talent was not confined to song; two descriptive pieces, "Tam o' Shanter" and "The Jolly Beggars," are among his masterpieces.

Burns had a fine sense of humor, which was reflected in his satirical, descriptive, and playful verse. His great popularity with the Scots lies in his ability to depict with loving accuracy the life of his fellow rural Scots, as he did in "The Cotter's Saturday Night." His use of dialect brought a stimulating, much-needed freshness and raciness into English poetry, but Burns's greatness extends beyond the limits of dialect. His poems are written about Scots, but, in tune with the rising humanitarianism of his day, they apply to a multitude of universal problems.

Bibliography

See his poems (ed. by J. L. Robertson, 1953); letters (ed. by D. Ferguson and G. Ross Roy, 2 vol., 1985); biographies by M. Lindsay (2d ed. 1968) and R. T. Fitzhugh (1970); studies by D. Daiches (1978), H. Hecht (1985), and C. McGuirk (1985).

Burns, Robert (1759–96). Poet, son of an Ayrshire tenant farmer. Well educated by an enlightened parish schoolmaster, Burns grew up with an appetite for literature which constantly jostled with his love of the vernacular culture of his region and country. His first creative period coincided with his father's death in 1784, his own unsuccessful attempts at farming, and a passionate affair with Jean Armour. It culminated in the publication of the so-called Kilmarnock edition of his Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786). This carefully crafted selection of poems, which was designed to show that Scots could be used as a vehicle of polite literature, was a literary sensation and marks the beginning of a Burns cult that has survived and prospered until the present day. It earned Burns the quite unwarranted reputation for being an untaught natural genius and quickly established him as Scotland's national bard, the man whose loyalties to the refined polite conventions of the English neo-classical literary tradition and to the simplicities of vernacular verse seemed to typify the cultural dilemmas of educated and ambitious post-Union Scots. Being lionized in Edinburgh proved an unnerving and complicated experience for Burns, who was on the point of emigrating to Jamaica when marriage, the offer of a farm, and an appointment in the excise in 1789 made him decide to stay in Scotland. The second creative period of his career was marked by his contributions to James Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1789–1803). These took the form of more than 100 brilliantly and delicately reworked vernacular songs and lyrics which some modern critics think are the ultimate vindication of his claim that he had transformed the literary potential of Scots and, indeed, of vernacular literature generally. He died in poverty in Dumfries in 1796 at the age of 37.

Nicholas Phillipson

Burns, Robert (1759–96) Scottish poet. The success of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), which includes “The Holy Fair” and “To a Mouse”, enabled Burns to move to Edinburgh, where he was admired as “the heaven-taught ploughman”. Although popular, he could not support himself from his poetry and so became an excise officer. Scotland's unofficial national poet, his works include “Tam o'Shanter” (1790) and the song “Auld Lang Syne”. An annual Burns Night is held on his birthday, January 25.