Read on Twitter
Today Scotland celebrates #BurnsNight - the anniversary of the birth of Scotland’s National Bard.
Robert Burns was born in 1759 in this cottage in Alloway, Ayrshire. He died in Dumfries at the early age of 37. Yet in that short time he took the Scottish literary world by storm, and secured a place for himself in history.
(Image: James Valentine / 1870s / MacKinnon Coll.)
(Image: James Valentine / 1870s / MacKinnon Coll.)
The 19th-century scholar and educationalist J S Blackie summed up Burns's legacy to Scotland and the Scots with the words: 'When Scotland forgets Burns, then history will forget Scotland.'
Today, his legacy is seen not only in Scotland but around the world, on packaging, in advertising and merchandise, as well as through continued scholarship and academic study.
Burns’s life attracted public scrutiny, including his relationships with women. He also accepted a job on a Jamaican sugar cane plantation as a bookkeeper, overseeing enslaved people (later declined). More on this unpalatable detail (via @GlasgowBurns) > https://burnsc21.glasgow.ac.uk/robert-burns-slavery-and-abolition-contextualising-the-abandoned-jamaica-sojourn-in-1786-part-1-of-2/
The National Library of Scotland holds one of the largest collections of Burns material in the world, including the single largest collection of manuscripts, the Glenriddell manuscripts. These include the poem ‘Holy Willie’s Prayer’ (pictured).
We also hold two copies of Burns’s ‘Poems Chiefly in The Scottish Dialect’ (1786), more commonly known as ‘The Kilmarnock Edition’, as well as numerous letters to his friends and family. Read The Kilmarnock Edition online at > https://digital.nls.uk/poems-chiefly-in-the-scottish-dialect/archive/
The Library still acquires Burns material, and thanks to help from @FNL313 and the Soutar Trust, we obtained several Burns items in 2020 including this sonnet written on the death of Robert Riddell of Glenriddell, to whom the Glenriddell manuscripts were originally presented.
Thanks for reading our #BurnsNight thread. Take a look at our Robert Burns learning resource, which explores his life and work > https://digital.nls.uk/robert-burns/
