On January 25, 1759, Scottish poet Robert Burns was born in Alloway,
Scotland. The day is still celebrated by Burns fans across the English-speaking
world, with high-spirited "Robert Burns Night" feasts, featuring
haggis and other Scottish delicacies, as well as enthusiastic drinking,
toasting, and speechmaking. Burns, the son of a poor farmer, received little
formal schooling but read extensively. A restless, dissatisfied spirit, he fell
in love with a young woman named Jean Armour in the mid-1780s but refused to
marry her when she became pregnant. The pair endured a legal struggle, at the
end of which the courts declared Burns legally single-but he later married
Armour anyway. Eventually, the couple had nine children, the last one born on
the day of Burns' funeral. Burns published his first poetry collection, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect,
in 1786, and he quickly became the darling of elite Edinburgh intellectuals. Perhaps
more famous for his lively lyrics in the Scottish dialect than for his longer, more
literary poems, Burns is still beloved and celebrated today as the author of
the New Year’s anthem, "For Auld Lang Syne." Burns died on July 21,
1796 in Dumfries, Scotland.
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