Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Robert Burns

Posted by scotaholic

January 16, 2008

With the Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations behind us, it’s time to celebrate the life of Scotland’s best loved poet, Mr Robert Burns.

On 25 January Scots all over the world will be gathering together to honour the great bard’s short, yet prolific career. But did you know…

1. Burns’ Suppers were first held on 29 January, because his friends got his birthday wrong. It was only after double checking the church register that the 25th became the definitive date!

2. There is much speculation about how many children he fathered. Most believe it is twelve, from four by different women, while others believe it could be fourteen children and by six mothers. His last son, Maxwell, was born on the day Burns was buried.

3. Many refer to him as Rabbie but Burns signed himself Robert, Rob’t, Rab, Rob, and or just R. He used either ‘Robbie’ and ‘Rabbie’.

4. Though a humble ploughman, he was well educated. He read Shakespeare and included French and Latin in his letters. He was also a competent fiddler and could sight-read music. He became a theatre enthusiast and was planning to write a play when he died.

5. The first recorded Burns supper was in 1801 in Alloway when a group of his friends gathered, not in January but in July, to mark the fifth anniversary of his death.

6. He was not a heavy drinker as his poems might suggest. Neither his health nor his wallet allowed it.

7. He was a hard worker as a farmer and exciseman as well as a poet. The 224-line poem Tam O’Shanter was drafted in a single day while occupied on his day job.

8. Burns’s poems are published into more than 24 languages, including Esperanto (an artificial language based on words common to all the European languages).

9. It is estimated that Robert Burns is worth £100 million in tourist revenue alone. That’s not including £5.5 million in high street sales and £1.2 million in traditional food.

10. More people will take part in a Burns’ Supper this year than the total population of Scotland at the time of Burns’s birth.

Arts

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