I
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INTRODUCTION
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Robert
Burns (1759-1796), Scottish poet and writer of traditional
Scottish folk songs, whose works are known and loved wherever the English
language is read.
II
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EARLY
LIFE
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Burns was born in Alloway,
Ayrshire, January 25, 1759. He was the eldest of seven children born to William
Burness, a struggling tenant farmer, and his wife, Agnes Broun. Although
poverty limited his formal education, Burns read widely in English literature
and the Bible and learned to read French. He was encouraged in his
self-education by his father, and his mother acquainted him with Scottish folk
songs, legends, and proverbs. Arduous farm work and undernourishment in his
youth permanently injured his health, leading to the rheumatic heart disease
from which he eventually died. He went in 1781 to Irvine to learn flax
dressing, but when the shop burned down, he returned home penniless. He had,
meanwhile, composed his first poems. The poet's father died in 1784, leaving
him as head of the family. He and his brother Gilbert rented Mossgiel Farm,
near Mauchline, but the venture proved a failure.
III
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FIRST
VERNACULAR POEMS
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In 1784 Burns read the
works of the Edinburgh poet Robert Fergusson. Under his influence and that of
Scottish folk tradition and older Scottish poetry, he became aware of the
literary possibilities of the Scottish regional dialects. During the next two
years he produced most of his best-known poems, including “The Cotter's
Saturday Night,””Hallowe'en,””To a Daisy,” and “To a Mouse.” In addition, he
wrote “The Jolly Beggars,” a cantata chiefly in standard English, which is
considered one of his masterpieces. Several of his early poems, notably “Holy
Willie's Prayer,” satirized local ecclesiastical squabbles and attacked Calvinist
theology, bringing him into conflict with the church.
IV
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SOCIAL
NOTORIETY
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Burns further angered
church authorities by having several indiscreet love affairs. In 1785 he fell
in love with Jean Armour, the daughter of a Mauchline building contractor. Jean
soon became pregnant, and although Burns offered to make her his wife, her father
forbade their marriage. Thereupon (1786) he prepared to immigrate to the West
Indies. Before departing he arranged to issue by subscription a collection of
his poetry. Published on July 31 in Kilmarnock in an edition of 600 copies, Poems,
Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect was an immediate success. In September
Burns abandoned the West Indies plan; the same month Jean became the mother of
twins. He moved in the fall of 1786 to Edinburgh, where he was lionized by
fashionable society. Charmed by Burns, the literati mistakenly believed him to
be an untutored bard, a “Heavens-taught Plowman.” He resented their
condescension, and his bristling independence, blunt manner of speech, and
occasional social awkwardness alienated admirers.
While Burns was in Edinburgh,
he successfully published a second, 3000-copy edition of Poems (1787),
which earned him a considerable sum. From the proceeds he was able to tour
(1787) the English border region and the Highlands and finance another winter
in Edinburgh. In the meantime he had resumed his relationship with Jean Armour.
The next spring she bore him another set of twins, both of whom died, and in
April Burns and Armour were married.
In June 1788, Burns leased
a poorly equipped farm in Ellisland, but the land proved unproductive. Within a
year he was appointed to a position in the Excise Service, and in November 1791
he relinquished the farm.
V
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LATER
SONGS AND BALLADS
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Burns's later literary
output consisted almost entirely of songs, both original compositions and
adaptations of traditional Scottish ballads and folk songs. He contributed some
200 songs to Scots Musical Museum (6 volumes, 1783-1803), a project
initiated by the engraver and music publisher James Johnson. Beginning in 1792
Burns wrote about 100 songs and some humorous verse for Select Collection of
Original Scottish Airs, compiled by George Thomson. Among his songs in this
collection are such favorites as “Auld Lang Syne,””Comin' Thro' the Rye,””Scots
Wha Hae,””A Red, Red Rose,””The Banks o' Doon,” and “John Anderson, My Jo.”
After the outbreak of
the French Revolution, Burns became an outspoken champion of the Republican
cause. His enthusiasm for liberty and social justice dismayed many of his
admirers; some shunned or reviled him. After Franco-British relations began to
deteriorate, he curbed his radical sympathies, and in 1794, for patriotic
reasons, he joined the Dumfriesshire Volunteers. Burns died in Dumfries, July
21, 1796.
A memorial edition of
Burn's poems was published for the benefit of his wife and children. Its
editor, the physician James Currie, a man of narrow sympathies, represented the
poet as a drunkard and a reprobate, and his biased judgment did much to
perpetuate an unjustly harsh and distorted conception of the poet.
Burns touched with his
own genius the traditional folk songs of Scotland, transmuting them into great
poetry, and he immortalized its countryside and humble farm life. He was a keen
and discerning satirist who reserved his sharpest barbs for sham, hypocrisy,
and cruelty. His satirical verse, once little appreciated, has in recent
decades been recognized widely as his finest work. He was also a master of the
verse-narrative technique, as exemplified in “Tam o'Shanter.” Finally, his love
songs, perfectly fitted to the tunes for which he wrote them, are, at their
best, unsurpassed.
Collected By:-
M.H.Zafras Ahamed
B.A & H.N.D. in English
SEUSL & SLIATE
Website: -
http://explore-safras.blogspot.com
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