47 Facts About Robert Burns

Robert Burns, known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist.

Robert Burns is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide.

Robert Burns is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is in a "light Scots dialect" of English, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland.

Robert Burns wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.

Robert Burns is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world.

Robert Burns was born two miles south of Ayr, in Alloway, Ayrshire on the west coast of Scotland, the eldest of the seven children of William Burnes, a self-educated tenant farmer from Dunnottar in the Mearns, and Agnes Broun, the daughter of a Kirkoswald tenant farmer.

Robert Burns was born in a house built by his father, where he lived until Easter 1766, when he was seven years old.

Robert Burns was given irregular schooling and a lot of his education was with his father, who taught his children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history and wrote for them A Manual of Christian Belief.

Robert Burns was taught and tutored by the young teacher John Murdoch, who opened an "adventure school" in Alloway in 1763 and taught Latin, French, and mathematics to both Robert and his brother Gilbert from 1765 to 1768 until Murdoch left the parish.

Robert Burns continued to write poems and songs and began a commonplace book in 1783, while his father fought a legal dispute with his landlord.

In mid-1784 Robert Burns came to know a group of girls known collectively as The Belles of Mauchline, one of whom was Jean Armour, the daughter of a stonemason from Mauchline.

Robert Burns had encountered financial difficulties due to his lack of success as a farmer.

Robert Burns signed a paper attesting his marriage to Jean, but her father "was in the greatest distress, and fainted away".

Around the same time, Robert Burns fell in love with a woman named Mary Campbell, whom he had seen in church while he was still living in Tarbolton.

Robert Burns was born near Dunoon and had lived in Campbeltown before moving to work in Ayrshire.

Robert Burns's brother fell ill with typhus, which she caught while nursing him.

Robert Burns's features are presented in Mr Nasmyth's picture but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective.

Robert Burns's stay in the city resulted in some lifelong friendships, among which were those with Lord Glencairn, and Frances Anna Dunlop, who became his occasional sponsor and with whom he corresponded for many years until a rift developed.

Robert Burns embarked on a relationship with the separated Agnes "Nancy" McLehose, with whom he exchanged passionate letters under pseudonyms.

Robert Burns shared this interest and became an enthusiastic contributor to The Scots Musical Museum.

Robert Burns contributed 40 songs to volume two, and he ended up responsible for about a third of the 600 songs in the whole collection, as well as making a considerable editorial contribution.

Robert Burns took up a training position as an exciseman or gauger, which involved long rides and detailed bookkeeping.

Robert Burns was appointed to duties in Customs and Excise in 1789.

Robert Burns chose the land of Ellisland a few miles north of the town of Dumfries, from Patrick Miller's estate at Dalswinton, where he had a new farmhouse and byre built.

Robert Burns did however accept membership of the Royal Company of Archers in 1792.

Robert Burns made major contributions to George Thomson's A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice as well as to James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum.

Robert Burns put words to Scottish folk melodies and airs which he collected, and composed his own arrangements of the music including modifying tunes or recreating melodies on the basis of fragments.

Robert Burns described how he had to master singing the tune before he composed the words:.

Robert Burns worked to collect and preserve Scottish folk songs, sometimes revising, expanding, and adapting them.

Robert Burns sent the poem anonymously in 1795 to the Glasgow Magazine.

Robert Burns alienated some acquaintances by freely expressing sympathy with the French, and American Revolutions, for the advocates of democratic reform and votes for all men and the Society of the Friends of the People which advocated Parliamentary Reform.

Latterly Robert Burns lived in Dumfries in a two-storey red sandstone house on Mill Hole Brae, now Robert Burns Street.

Robert Burns went on long journeys on horseback, often in harsh weather conditions as an Excise Supervisor, and was kept very busy doing reports.

Robert Burns was at first buried in the far corner of St Michael's Churchyard in Dumfries; a simple "slab of freestone" was erected as his gravestone by Jean Armour, which some felt insulting to his memory.

Robert Burns's body was eventually moved to its final location in the same cemetery, the Burns Mausoleum, in September 1817.

Hogg records that fund-raising for Robert Burns's family was embarrassingly slow, and it took several years to accumulate significant funds through the efforts of John Syme and Alexander Cunningham.

Robert Burns was posthumously given the freedom of the town of Dumfries.

Robert Burns's poetry drew upon a substantial familiarity with and knowledge of Classical, Biblical, and English literature, as well as the Scottish Makar tradition.

Robert Burns was skilled in writing not only in the Scots language but in the Scottish English dialect of the English language.

Robert Burns himself referred to suffering from episodes of what he called "blue devilism".

Robert Burns is generally classified as a proto-Romantic poet, and he influenced William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley greatly.

Robert Burns influenced later Scottish writers, especially Hugh MacDiarmid, who fought to dismantle what he felt had become a sentimental cult that dominated Scottish literature.

In Imperial Russia Robert Burns was translated into Russian and became a source of inspiration for the ordinary, oppressed Russian people.

Robert Burns remains popular in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In November 2012, Robert Burns was awarded the title Honorary Chartered Surveyor by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the only posthumous membership so far granted by the institution.

The oldest statue of Robert Burns is in the town of Camperdown, Victoria.

In 1996, a musical about Robert Burns's life called Red Red Rose won third place at a competition for new musicals in Denmark.