With an Introduction by
Donald McFarlan.
Robert Burns, the most celebrated of all Scottish poets, is remembered
with great devotion - his birthday on 25th January provokes fervour
and festivity among Scots and many others the world over. Born in 1759
into miserable rustic poverty, by the age of eighteen Burns had acquired
a good knowledge of both classical and English literature. In June
1786 his first collection of verse, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,
which included To a Mouse and The Cotter's Saturday Night, was greeted
with huge acclaim by all classes of society. His later poems and ballads
include Auld Lang Syne, the beautiful song My Love is like a Red Red
Rose, Highland Mary, Scots Wha Hae and his masterpiece, Tam O'Shanter.