250th anniversary of Scotland's Bard

250 years ago - Robert Burns was born in Ayrshire. Around the world people are celebrating the bard's life from the Masons to the Marxists, it was reported that more people will attend a Burn's Suppoer or Burn's Reading this week than was alive at the time of Burns.

Robert Burns poetry, songs and letters tell of the social timeshe was born, in Scotland at the time there was still much upheavel as it was at the time of the Scots diaspora to the colonies, The Scottish Friends were organising against the government and many were tried for sedition and sent to Botany Bay - Thomas Muir being one of them . he escaped and manged to miss out on the misery of deportation. Robert Burn's penned Scots Wha Hae in memory of these famous trails.

If you haven't read Burns - do so now, try the Slave's Lament to start you off, its written in English and the poetry is clear and when you are fu o the drink try and recount what happened to the scallywag Tam O Shanter and his horse Meg who did nae bide by his wife's wishes.

Slave's Lament

It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthral, For the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O:

Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O:

Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more; And alas! I am weary, weary O.

All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost, Like the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O:

There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow, And alas! I am weary, weary O: There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow, And alas! I am weary, weary O: The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear, In the lands of Virginia,-ginia, O; And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear, And alas! I am weary, weary O: And I think on friends most dear, with the bitter, bitter tear, And alas! I am weary, weary O:

Enjoy a Parcel O Rouges in Nation by The Corries