This weeks article is a guest submission by a good friend and colleague of mine, Michael Murray. Michael is a member of the Irvine Burns club and is a past president of that club. He also took this picture of the statue of Burns situated on Irvine Moor.

Robert Burns 25 Jan 1759 - 21 Jul 1796

The Myths

Because of the gross exaggerations in the first biography of Burns by a Dr. Currie, it was long believed that Burns spent the last few years of his life in a state of constant debauchery and drunkenness.

However, testimony from his superior officer at the excise indicate that he was good at his job, riding on horseback up to 200 miles per week and carrying out his duties with exemplary attention to detail.

The head master at his son's school (Dumfries Grammar School) wrote of Burns " He was a kind and attentive father, and took great delight in the cultivation of the minds of his children. Their education was the great object of his life and he did not, like other parents, think it sufficient to send them to public schools; he was their private instructor; and even at that early age, bestowed great pains in training their minds to habits of thought and reflection, and in keeping them pure from every form of vice."

However it is the confirmed opinion of the writer of this modest piece on Burns that, irrespective of what kind of person Robert Burns is judged to be, there is no doubt that his work is world class, and much of what he wrote more than 200 years ago is as fresh and meaningful now as it was then.

"Then let us pray that come it may
(as come it will for a' that)
That Sense and Worth o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gre an a' that.
For a' that, an a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brithers be for a' that."