Debra Ann McKinney, age 16, of Burlington, Vt., for her question:
WAS ROBERT BURNS A GREAT POET?
Robert Burns is a poet whose works are known and loved wherever the English language is read. He is called the national poet of Scotland and is honored by scholars for his brilliant narrative poems and his clever satires. He is definitely regarded as a great poet.
Burns is perhaps best known today for his songs which include the classics "Auld Lang Syne" and "Comin Thro' the Rye."
Burns was born in 1759, the eldest of seven children. His father was a struggling tenant farmer. Although poverty limited his formal education, Burns read widely in English literature and even learn to read French. He was encouraged in his self education by his family.
When he was about 20 Burns wrote his first poems.
In 1784, when he was 25 years old, Burns read the works of the Edinburgh poet Robert Fergusson. Under his influence and that of Scottish folk tradition and older Scottish poetry, Burns became aware of the literary possibilities of the Scottish regional dialects. During the next two years he produced most of his best known poems.
In 1786, when he was 27, he decided to move to Jamaica because of setbacks in farming. But the success of his first volume of poems, published that year, caused him to change his mind. He went instead to Edinburgh where, for over a year, he was very popular with fashionable society. In 1788 he marries a young Scottish girl named Jean Armour and they had nine children.
Burns' literary achievements helped him get an appointment as exciseman (tax and customs official). This position gave Burns a steady income for the rest of his life.
In 1791 he gave up farming and moved to Dumfries. He died there in 1796 at the age of 37. The heavy labor on poor farmland in Burns' youth had weakened his health and helped cause his early death.
During Burns' final years, his literary output consisted almost entirely of songs.
A memorial edition of Burns' poems was published for the benefit of his wife and children. Its editor, a doctor named James Currie, was a man of narrow sympathies. He represented Burns as a drunkard and a reprobate, and his biased judgment did much to perpetuate an unjustly harsh and distorted conception of the poet.
Burns touched with his own genius the traditional folk songs of Scotland, transmuting them into great poetry, and he immortalizes its country side and humble farm life.
The scholars agree that Burns was a keen and discerning satirist who reserved his sharpest barbs for sham, hypocrisy and cruelty.
Burns' satirical verse, once little appreciated, has in recent decades been recognized widely as his finest work. He was also a master of the verse narrative techniques, as exemplified in "Tam o'Shanter."
Finally, Burns' love songs, perfectly fitted to the tunes for which he wrote them, are, at their best, unsurpassed.