Robert Burns

Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in a cottage in Alloway, Ayrshire, the eldest of seven children of tenant farmer William Burnes.

Despite poverty and heavy farm labour, Burns received a good grounding in English literature, French, and mathematics from his father and the young tutor John Murdoch.

After his father's death in 1784, Burns and his brother Gilbert leased the farm of Mossgiel near Mauchline, where he wrote much of his early poetry.

Burns's first collection, printed in Kilmarnock on 31 July 1786, was an immediate success and made him famous throughout Scotland.

In late 1786 Burns travelled to Edinburgh, where an expanded edition of his poems appeared in 1787 and he was celebrated by the capital's literati.

Burns formally married Jean Armour in 1788; the couple had nine children together.

In 1788 Burns set down 'Auld Lang Syne', adapting an old Scots song, and sent it to the Scots Musical Museum, for which he collected and wrote hundreds of songs.

In 1789 Burns took up a post as an exciseman to supplement his failing farm income at Ellisland, near Dumfries.

Burns completed his narrative masterpiece 'Tam o' Shanter' in 1790 and in 1791 gave up farming to settle in the town of Dumfries as a full-time excise officer.

Robert Burns died on 21 July 1796 in Dumfries at the age of 37, probably of rheumatic heart disease, and was buried with military honours; some ten thousand people attended his funeral.