ROBERT BURNS’ COTTAGE, SCOTLAND
SCOTLAND
Robert Burns’ Cottage
ONE
Few poets singing in dialect become world famous. This is true for the simple reason that a dialect poet is likely to be local—to write of local things—to avoid the universal. But Robert Burns—“poor Burns,” as we think of him—was the exception. Who does not know “Auld Lang Syne” and all that it means? Or who has not said to himself in his own way, “A man’s a man for a’ that?”
Robert Burns could not help but be a poet of the people—the “peasant poet.” He was born close to the soil of Scotland. On January 25, 1759, he opened his eyes in a small cottage about two miles from Ayr, in Scotland. His father was only a small farmer, and Robert got very little education, but lots of hard work.
However, he managed to learn to read, and used to carry his books into the fields with him to snatch a few moments’ reading during the day. At meal times he sat with a spoon in one hand and a book in the other. He liked best the ballads of Scotland—the old songs of the minstrels.
But in 1781 he went to Irvine to learn the trade of a flax-dresser. And it was here that he indulged two habits that clung to him all the rest of his life—drinking and falling in love. For the poet was a boon companion at a feast and a great heartbreaker—but his own heart was broken also many times.