Robert Burns Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known as Rabbie Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire, Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its
Classical music in Scotland In the 1790s Robert Burns embarked on an attempt to produce a corpus of Scottish national song contributing about a third of the songs of "The Scots Musical Museum". Burns also collaborated with George Thomson in "A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs", which adapted Scottish folk songs with "classical" arrangements. However, Burns' championing of Scottish music may have prevented the establishment of a tradition of European concert music in Scotland, which faltered towards the end of the eighteenth century. From the mid-nineteenth century classical music began a revival in Scotland, aided by the visits of Chopin and Mendelssohn in