Robert Burns Fraser University's Centre for Scottish Studies organized a marathon reading of Burns's poetry. Senator Heath Macquarrie quipped of Canada's first Prime Minister that "While the lovable [Robbie] Burns went in for wine, women and song, his fellow Scot, John A. did not chase women and was not musical!" 'Gung Haggis Fat Choy' is a hybrid of Chinese New Year and Robbie Burns Day, celebrated in Vancouver since the late 1990s. In January 1864, President Abraham Lincoln was invited to attend a Robert Burns celebration by Robert Crawford; and if unable to attend, send a toast. Lincoln composed a toast. An
Poetry of Scotland Scottishness. The main legacy of Burns were the conservative and anti-radical Burns clubs that sprang up around Scotland, filled with members that praised a sanitised version of Burns and poets who fixated on the "Burns stanza" as a form. William Tennant's (1784–1848) "Anster Fair" (1812) produced a more respectable version of folk revels. Standard critical narratives have seen the descent of Scottish poetry into infantalism as exemplified by the highly popular Whistle Binkie anthologies, which appeared 1830–90 and which notoriously included in one volume "Wee Willie Winkie" by William Miler (1810–72). This tendency has been seen as leading late nineteenth-century