This was not my original post for the day, but as many of us are either poets and Scottish [ancestrally], or, poets or Scottish, how can I not give a nod to Burns’ Day. I was helped in this decision, by Chris Goan’s post on his blog site: this fragile tent, a blog I have followed for some time.
This is my first reblog, therefore I have no idea of what is about to happen [like Alice and the rabbit hole, rather]. Enjoy the post and maybe do some wandering of your own through Burns’ poems and songs.
See you tomorrow on the Friday Freeforall. Happy wandering and writing, all.
Today is Burns day.
For the uninitiated, this is a big day up here in Scotland. There will be many a haggis piped in and much raising of whisky glasses along with ceremonial readings of Burns poetry. It is possible that somewhere in this wonderful world that there are other great poets whose memory is celebrated by a national day all of their own – the poets of ancient Persia perhaps – but if so, I do not know of it. This fact alone singles out Burns as special.
(There is an interesting article in the Guardian today about William Barnes, a Dorset poet, also a farmers son who wrote in his own dialect.)
Burns was a man who packed an awful lot into his 37 years of life. Before he died in 1796 he had been a farmer, a book keeper on a Jamaican slave plantation, a…
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Margo Roby: Wordgathering 
viv blake
26/01/2012 at 8:20 am
Yesterday – 25th January. My daughter’s and Robert Burns’s birthday ( see my yesterday’s Small Stone). It is a wonderful thing that a poet’s life is celebrated the world over.
Last night, though we were only three for supper, Jock recited The Ode to the Haggis and stabbed the tasty beast, and a good time was had by all. Last year we did a Burns lunch for 22 puzzled French friends!
margo roby
26/01/2012 at 8:25 am
ViV, I laughed at the image of a room full of puzzled French people watching the goings on. The Burns phenomenon is quite a special thing, isn’t it? I celebrated/am celebrating by listening to all my Corries cds [I have about ten]. I’ll tell Skip about your haggis stabbing. He may have to go out and find one. We can do a post-Burns recitation.
I shall come visit to read your stone.
The Happy Amateur
26/01/2012 at 5:17 pm
My school back in Moscow was friends with another school in Scotland, or something like that, for every year we had visitors from Scotland (cannot remember any kids though, just grownups.) It was a big deal, a lot of preparation, and of course a lot of poetry by Burns. I’m probably driving you crazy with my nostalgia thing, but I often come back to Burns’ ‘My heart’s in the Highlands,’ one of those poems I learned as a kid, that has a special meaning now.
margo roby
27/01/2012 at 7:34 am
Sasha, nostalgia is storytelling. It’s what we do, right? So, I won’t get tired of hearing it and who knows when an idea for a poem will strike you as you recall.
margo
The Happy Amateur
27/01/2012 at 11:43 am
🙂