Wednesday 13 January 2016

BURNS Night 25th

Burns, Scotland’s national bard, was known as Robin. ‘Robin was a rovin boy, Rantin Rovin Robin..’
Each January the life, poems and songs of Robert Burns are celebrated across the world on Burns night 25th January to celebrate his birthday.  He is the only poet that has a day to celebrate his writings.    
 ‘Address to a Haggis’
`The Immortal Memory’
‘Toast to the Lassie’

Burns wrote some of the best loved songs and poems Ye Banks and Braes, Ae Fond Kiss, Red Red Rose, Auld Lang Syne, A Mans a Man, and more) and he was a leading Romantic Poet.
Oddly Burns was hardly mentioned in the Romantic Poets book I bought at the National Portrait galleries or on Wikipedia. He was not a Heaven Taught Ploughman poet and he was not simply the son of a poor tenant farmer – but – in fact he knew four languages - Scots, English, Latin and French and he was a great reader. His father was highly articulate and taught his sons and daughters a great deal. His mother and aunt taught them about local songs and stories. They also had a young teacher for several years who encouraged reading, writing, French, Latin.Mathematics, Geography and more. 

Burn’s father’s family had fallen on hard times in Aberdeenshire west of Stonehaven, after the Earl of Marischal lost his estates after the Jacobites 45. These were also difficult times for many in Scotland during the American revolutionary wars.

BURNS wrote some of the best loved poems and songs of our kinship with nature, love and on radical politics.


THE BURNS SUPPER
The nervous first entertainer follows immediately after the meal. Often it will be a singer or musician performing Burns songs such as:-
                        My Luve is Like a Red Red Rose;
                        Rantin', Rovin' Robin;
                        John Anderson, my jo; or
                        Ae Fond Kiss, and Then We Sever.
Alternatively it could be a moving recital of a Burns poem, with perennial preference for:-
                        Tam o' Shanter;
                        Holy Willie's Prayer;
                        To a Louse;
                        Address to the Unco Guid; or
                        For a' that and a' that.
                                    The immortal memory
The keynote speaker takes the stage to deliver a spell-binding oratoration on the life of Robert Burns: his literary genius, his politics, his highs and lows, his human frailty and - most importantly - his nationalism. The speech must bridge the dangerous chasm between serious intent and sparkling wit, painting a colourful picture of Scotland's beloved Bard.
The speaker concludes with a heart-felt toast: “To the Immortal Memory of Robert Burns!”