Before Reading Meet Robert Burns (1759-1796)

A handsome and charismatic figure, Robert Burns achieved considerable fame during his lifetime. After his death, he was elevated to the status of national hero. His unparalleled ability to speak for his people, along with the simple beauty of his verse, helped make him Scotland’s “favorite son.”

FYI Did you know that Robert Burns . . . • composed “Auld Lang Syne” to an old Scottish melody? • alienated many by supporting the French Revolution?

Childhood HardshipBorn in the village of Alloway to an unsuccessful tenant farmer, Burns endured extreme poverty and hard labor as a child. This experience left him in poor health and fueled his hatred of Scotland’s rigid class system. Though poor, Burns’s father managed to provide his son with something of an education. Burns showed an early flair and passion for literature. One of the works that especially fired his imagination was the 15^th-century Scottish poem “Wallace.” The poem, Burns later wrote, “poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there till the floodgates of life shut in natural rest.” His discovery of this and other works written in a Scottish vernacular inspired Burns to use the Scots dialect, spoken primarily by the country’s peasant class.

Charming RebelAfter his father’s death in 1784, Burns, along with his brother, struggled to farm independently. Burns became involved with a servant girl at the farm, the first of several liaisons that resulted in illegitimate offspring. In 1786, he fell in love with Jean Armour, but her father, disturbed by Burns’s radical ideas and personal behavior, sent Armour away. Hurt and incensed, Burns resolved to emigrate to Jamaica. To raise the necessary money, he published Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786), a collection that showed his love for Scottish peasant life. Its immense success induced Burns to move to Edinburgh, where he captivated the city’s literary society with his keen wit, rough-hewn charm, and controversial

views on class and religion.

Scotland’s Greatest SongwriterIn Edinburgh, Burns began to compile several volumes of Scottish folk songs. Collecting, adapting, and writing songs engaged him for the rest of his life. In his later years, Burns finally married Jean Armour and began working as a tax collector while still maintaining a farm. The arduous farm work undermined Burns’s already weak constitution. At age 37, Burns contracted rheumatic fever and died soon after.

While Reading

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 817

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