Robert Burns is credited with saving the folk music of Scotland. He was born just a few years after England conquered Scotland in 1746. England was intent upon destroying the clan system. Edicts of proscription were issued forbidding the remaining Scottish people from wearing tartan and speaking Gaelic upon removal or death. Scottish leaders and their families were hunted down. The lucky ones escaped, some to America. Not many decades passed before the old language, except in the darkest dales of Scotland, was lost.

Robert Burns was a poet farmer in Ayreshire, Scotland, but an accomplished poet.  He began to compose a collection of poems about familiar country characters and legends. To make the subjects more human, he wrote in the Old Scots dialect that was used in storytelling. He set many of these poems to old pub ballads. The tunes would be familiar to people but with new words.

He performed this repertoire in meeting halls and salons around Scotland, attracted mentors, and became famous. These songs and poems might not have become famous if England had not been the world power in the 19th century. As their armies moved all over the globe, Burns’ songs and poems went with them.  Although many artist and writers have been honored, Robert Burns is the only one who has an annual celebration named for him. Still over 250 years later, Robert Burns Night highlighting his poems and songs are still bringing people together around the world. And he did not live long to do it. He died at 37. 

The Taste of Scotland society will hold its annual Burns Night on Jan. 25 at Tartan Hall, First Presbyterian Church, Franklin. The evening will start with a roll call of the Clans, move to a five course dinner menu. Jacobites By Name will perform after dinner. We hope to have some Scottish country dancing, and we will end the night by gathering in a circle and singing, “Auld Lang Syne,” perhaps his most famous work.

Merrilee Bordeaux

Franklin