Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, was born in 1759 at Alloway, near Ayr, in a cottage which now is a Burn's museum.
Robert Burns grew up in the country and helped his father on the farm. The village schoolmaster, John Murdoch, helped him to the schooling he got. The family was always poor and so was Robert Burns all his life. To raise the fare for a passage to Jamaica to get a job as a book keeper he published "Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect" in 1786, which was an immediate success. This persuaded him to stay. Robert Burns collected and rearranged old Scottish songs and poems like "Auld Lang Syne". One of his very famous poems is "Tam O'Shanter". Every year on the 25th January, Robert Burn's date of birth, Scotsmen all over the world celebrate their national poet at a party called a Robbie Burn's Night.
Listen to Hamish reading Burns.
Read
more: go to
www.see-scotland.com
Click Introduction, click History and Heritage, click Heroes, click
Robert Burns.
Read more: go to www.bbc.co.uk, search
Robert +Burns.