Ayrshire Alloway in
Alloway, South Ayrshire Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759, two miles (3 km) south of
Ayr in
Alloway,
Ayrshire, on the west coast of Scotland. He was the eldest of seven children of
William Burnes (1721–1784), a self-educated tenant farmer from
Dunnottar in the
Mearns, and
Agnes Broun (1732–1820), the daughter of a
Kirkoswald tenant farmer. He was born in a house built by his father (now the
Burns Cottage Museum). On January 26, 1759, the day after he was born, Robert Burns was baptised in the
Auld Kirk of Ayr by minister William Dalrymple. Burns went on to live in the cottage until
Easter 1766, when he was seven years old. William Burnes sold the house and took the tenancy of the Mount Oliphant farm, southeast of Alloway. Here Burns grew up in poverty and hardship, and the severe manual labour of the farm left its traces in a weakened constitution. He was given irregular schooling and a lot of his education was with his father, who taught his children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history and also wrote for them
A Manual of Christian Belief. He was also taught and tutored by the young teacher John Murdoch (1747–1824), who opened an "
adventure school" in Alloway in 1763 and taught Latin, French, and mathematics to both Robert and his brother
Gilbert (1760–1827) from 1765 to 1768 until Murdoch left the parish. After a few years of home education, Burns was sent to Dalrymple Parish School in mid-1772 before returning at harvest time to full-time farm labouring until 1773, when he was sent to lodge with Murdoch for three weeks to study grammar, French, and Latin. By the age of 15, Burns was the principal labourer at Mount Oliphant. During the harvest of 1774, he was assisted by
Nelly Kilpatrick (1759–1820), who inspired his first attempt at poetry, "
O, Once I Lov'd A Bonnie Lass". In 1775, he was sent to finish his education with a tutor at Kirkoswald, where he met
Peggy Thompson (born 1762), to whom he wrote two songs, "Now Westlin' Winds" and "
I Dream'd I Lay".
Tarbolton Despite his ability and character,
William Burnes was consistently unfortunate, and migrated with his large family from farm to farm without ever being able to improve his circumstances. At
Whitsun, 1777, he removed his large family from the unfavourable conditions of Mount Oliphant to the farm at
Lochlea, near
Tarbolton, where they stayed until William Burnes's death in 1784. Subsequently, the family became integrated into the community of Tarbolton. To his father's disapproval, Robert joined a country dancing school in 1779 and, with Gilbert, formed the
Tarbolton Bachelors' Club the following year. His earliest existing letters date from this time, when he began making romantic overtures to
Alison Begbie (b. 1762). In spite of four songs written for her and a suggestion that he was willing to marry her, she rejected him. Robert Burns was
initiated into the
Masonic lodge St David, Tarbolton, on 4 July 1781, when he was 22. In December 1781, Burns moved temporarily to
Irvine to learn to become a
flax-dresser, but during the workers' celebrations for
New Year 1781/1782 (which included Burns as a participant) the flax shop caught fire and was burnt to the ground. This venture accordingly came to an end, and Burns went home to Lochlea farm. During this time he met and befriended
Richard Brown, who encouraged him to become a poet. He continued to write poems and songs and began
a commonplace book in 1783, while his father fought a legal dispute with his landlord. The case went to the
Court of Session, and Burnes was upheld in January 1784, a fortnight before he died.
Mauchline ,
East Ayrshire Robert and Gilbert made an ineffectual struggle to keep on the farm, but after its failure they moved to
Mossgiel Farm, near
Mauchline, in March, which they maintained and resided in from 1785. In mid-1784 Burns came to know a group of girls known collectively as The Belles of Mauchline, one of whom was
Jean Armour, the daughter of a
stonemason from Mauchline.
Jamaica job offer Burns had encountered financial difficulties due to his lack of success as a farmer. In order to make enough money to support a family, he accepted a job offer from Patrick Douglas, an
absentee plantation owner who lived in
Cumnock, to work on his
sugar plantations near
Port Antonio,
Jamaica. Douglas' plantations were managed by his brother Charles, and the job offer, which had a salary of £30 per annum, entailed working in Jamaica as a "book-keeper", whose duties included serving as an
assistant overseer to the
Black slaves on the plantations (Burns himself described the position as being "a poor Negro driver"). The position, which was for a single man, would entail Burns living on a plantation in rustic conditions, as it was unlikely a book keeper would be housed in the plantation's
great house. Some historians have argued in Burns's defence that in 1786, the
Scottish abolitionist movement was just beginning to be broadly active. Burns's authorship of "
The Slave's Lament", a 1792 poem argued as an example of his abolitionist views, is disputed. His name is absent from any abolitionist petition written in Scotland during the period, and according to academic Lisa Williams, Burns "is strangely silent on the question of chattel slavery compared to other contemporary poets. Perhaps this was due to his government position, severe limitations on free speech at the time or his association with beneficiaries of the slave trade system".
Love affairs Burns's first child,
Elizabeth "Bess" Burns, was born to his mother's servant,
Elizabeth Paton, while he was embarking on a relationship with
Jean Armour, who became pregnant with twins in March 1786. It is likely that Burns gave Jean a courting ring in 1786. Burns signed a paper attesting his marriage to Jean, but her father "was in the greatest distress, and fainted away". To avoid disgrace, her parents sent her to live with her uncle in
Paisley. Although Armour's father initially forbade it, they were married in 1788. They had nine children together, three of whom survived infancy. Around the same time, Burns fell in love with a woman named
Mary Campbell, whom he had seen in church while he was still living in Tarbolton. She was born near
Dunoon and had lived in
Campbeltown before moving to work in Ayrshire. He dedicated the poems "The Highland Lassie O", "Highland Mary", and "To Mary in Heaven" to her. His song "Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, And leave auld Scotia's shore?" suggests that they planned to emigrate to Jamaica together. Their relationship has been the subject of much conjecture, and it has been suggested that on 14 May 1786 they exchanged Bibles and
plighted their troth over the
Water of Fail in a traditional form of marriage. Soon afterwards Mary Campbell left her work in Ayrshire, went to the seaport of
Greenock, and sailed home to her parents in Campbeltown. On 31 July 1786 John Wilson published the volume of works by Robert Burns,
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect. Known as the
Kilmarnock volume, it sold for 3 shillings and contained much of his best writing, including "The Twa Dogs" (which features Luath, his
Border Collie), "
Address to the Deil", "
Halloween", "
The Cotter's Saturday Night", "
To a Mouse", "
Epitaph for James Smith", and "
To a Mountain Daisy", many of which had been written at Mossgiel farm. The success of the work was immediate, and soon he was known across the country. Burns postponed his planned emigration to Jamaica on 1 September, and was at Mossgiel two days later when he learnt that Jean Armour had given birth to twins. On 4 September
Thomas Blacklock wrote a letter expressing admiration for the poetry in the Kilmarnock volume, and suggesting an enlarged second edition.
Edinburgh On 27 November 1786 Burns borrowed a pony and set out for
Edinburgh. On 14 December William Creech issued subscription bills for the first Edinburgh edition of
Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect, which was published on 17 April 1787. Within a week of this event, Burns had sold his copyright to Creech for 100 guineas. In Edinburgh, he was received as an equal by the city's men of letters—including Dugald Stewart, Robertson, Blair and others—and was a guest at aristocratic gatherings, where he bore himself with unaffected dignity. Here he encountered, and made a lasting impression on, the 16-year-old
Walter Scott, who described him later with great admiration: The new edition of his poems brought Burns £400. His stay in the city also resulted in some lifelong friendships, among which were those with
Lord Glencairn, and
Frances Anna Dunlop (1730–1815), who became his occasional sponsor and with whom he corresponded for many years until a rift developed. He embarked on a relationship with the separated
Agnes "Nancy" McLehose (1758–1841), with whom he exchanged passionate letters under pseudonyms (Burns called himself "Sylvander" and Nancy "Clarinda"). When it became clear that Nancy would not be easily seduced into a physical relationship, Burns moved on to
Jenny Clow (1766–1792), Nancy's domestic servant, who bore him a son, Robert Burns Clow, in 1788. He also had an affair with a servant girl,
Margaret "May" Cameron. His relationship with Nancy concluded in 1791 with a final meeting in Edinburgh before she sailed to Jamaica for what turned out to be a short-lived reconciliation with her estranged husband. Before she left, he sent her the manuscript of "
Ae Fond Kiss" as a farewell. In Edinburgh, in early 1787, he met
James Johnson, a struggling music engraver and music seller with a love of old Scots songs and a determination to preserve them. Burns shared this interest and became an enthusiastic contributor to
The Scots Musical Museum. The first volume was published in 1787 and included three songs by Burns. He contributed 40 songs to volume two, and he ended up responsible for about a third of the 600 songs in the whole collection, as well as making a considerable editorial contribution. The final volume was published in 1803.
Dumfriesshire Ellisland Farm On his return from Edinburgh in February 1788, he resumed his relationship with Jean Armour and they married in March 1788. He took out a lease on Ellisland Farm, Dumfriesshire, settling there in June. He also took up a training position as an
exciseman or gauger, which involved long rides and detailed bookkeeping. He was appointed to duties in Customs and Excise in 1789. Burns chose the land of Ellisland a few miles north of the town of
Dumfries, from Patrick Miller's estate at Dalswinton, where he had a new farmhouse and byre built. He and Jean moved in the following summer 1789 to the new farmhouse at Ellisland. In November 1790, he had written his masterpiece, the narrative poem "
Tam O' Shanter". (The Ellisland farm, beside the river Nith, now holds a unique collection of Burns's books, artifacts, and
manuscripts. It is mostly preserved as when Burns and his young family lived there.) Burns gave up the farm in 1791 to move to Dumfries. About this time he was offered and declined an appointment in London on the staff of
The Star newspaper, and refused to become a candidate for a newly created Chair of Agriculture in the
University of Edinburgh,
Lyricist , Robert Burns (1828)|right After giving up his farm, he removed to Dumfries. It was at this time that, being requested to write lyrics for
The Melodies of Scotland, he responded by contributing over 100 songs. He made major contributions to
George Thomson's
A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice as well as to James Johnson's
Scots Musical Museum. Arguably his claim to immortality chiefly rests on these volumes, which placed him in the front rank of
lyric poets. As a songwriter he provided his own lyrics, sometimes adapted from traditional words. He put words to Scottish folk melodies and airs which he collected, and composed his own arrangements of the music including modifying tunes or recreating melodies on the basis of fragments. In letters he explained that he preferred simplicity, relating songs to spoken language which should be sung in traditional ways. The original instruments would be
fiddle and the guitar of the period which was akin to a
cittern, but the transcription of songs for piano has resulted in them usually being performed in classical concert or music hall styles. At the 3 week
Celtic Connections festival
Glasgow each January, Burns songs are often performed with both fiddle and guitar. Thomson as a publisher commissioned arrangements of "Scottish, Welsh and Irish Airs" by such eminent composers of the day as
Joseph Haydn and
Ludwig van Beethoven, with new lyrics. The contributors of lyrics included Burns. While such arrangements had wide popular appeal, Beethoven's music was more advanced and difficult to play than Thomson intended. Burns described how he had to master singing the tune before he composed the words: Burns also worked to collect and preserve Scottish
folk songs, sometimes revising, expanding, and adapting them. One of the better known of these collections is
The Merry Muses of Caledonia (the title is not Burns's), a collection of bawdy lyrics that were popular in the
music halls of Scotland as late as the 20th century. At Dumfries, he wrote his world famous song "
A Man's a Man for A' That", which was based on the writings in
The Rights of Man by
Thomas Paine, one of the chief political theoreticians of the
American Revolution. Burns sent the poem anonymously in 1795 to the
Glasgow Magazine. He was also a radical for reform and wrote poems for democracy, such as – "Parcel of Rogues to the Nation" and the "Rights of Women". Many of Burns's most famous poems are songs with the music based upon older traditional songs. For example, "
Auld Lang Syne" is set to the traditional tune "Can Ye Labour Lea", "
A Red, Red Rose" is set to the tune of "Major Graham" and "
The Battle of Sherramuir" is set to the "Cameronian Rant".
Political views Burns alienated some acquaintances by freely expressing sympathy with the French, and American Revolutions, for the advocates of democratic reform and votes for all men and the
Society of the Friends of the People which advocated Parliamentary Reform. His political views came to the notice of his employers, to which he pleaded his innocence. Burns met other radicals at the Globe Inn Dumfries. As an Exciseman he felt compelled to join the
British Volunteer Corps's
Royal Dumfries Volunteers in March 1795.
Failing health and death Latterly Burns lived in Dumfries in a two-storey red sandstone house on Mill Hole Brae, now Burns Street. The home is now a museum. He went on long journeys on horseback, often in harsh weather conditions as an
Excise Supervisor, and was kept very busy doing reports. The father of four young children, he was also frequently occupied as a song collector and
songwriter. As his health began to give way, he aged prematurely and fell into fits of despondency. Rumours of intemperance (alleged mainly by temperance activist
James Currie) may have been overstated. Hard manual farm labour earlier in his life may have damaged Burns's health. Burns possibly had a long-standing rheumatic heart condition, perhaps beginning when he was 21, and a bacterial infection, possibly arising from a tooth abscess, may have exacerbated this. On the morning of 21 July 1796, Burns died in Dumfries, at the age of 37. The funeral took place on Monday 25 July 1796, the day that his son Maxwell was born. He was at first buried in the far corner of St. Michael's Churchyard in Dumfries; a simple "slab of freestone" was erected as his gravestone by Jean Armour, which some felt insulting to his memory. His body was eventually moved to its final location in the same cemetery, the Burns Mausoleum, in September 1817. The body of his widow Jean Armour was buried with his in 1834. The family went to the Court of Session in 1798 with a plan to support his surviving children by publishing a four-volume edition of his complete works and a biography written by James Currie. Subscriptions were raised to meet the initial cost of publication, which was in the hands of Thomas Cadell and William Davies in London and William Creech, bookseller in Edinburgh. Hogg records that fund-raising for Burns's family was embarrassingly slow, and it took several years to accumulate significant funds through the efforts of
John Syme and
Alexander Cunningham. Through his five surviving children (of 12 born), Burns has over 900 living descendants as of 2019.
Removal of Burns' skull Armour died on 26 March 1834 and was interred into the Burns Mausoleum on 31 March 1834. The temporary reopening of the mausoleum provided an opportunity to exhume Burns body by a local group who believed in
phrenology, a pseudo-science whose practitioners believed an individual's personality could be predicted by measuring the skulls. The night before Armour's funeral, the group was supposedly granted permission to exhume Burns's body by her brother, Robert Armour. They were led by Archibald Blacklock, a surgeon, and John McDiarmid,
Dumfries Courier editor and phrenologist. Other group members included Adam Rankine, James Kerr, James Bogie, Andrew Crombie and their assistants. The group attempted to enter the mausoleum at 7 pm, but there were many people present in the graveyard and they decided to try again later that evening. The skull was removed and taken to James Fraser, a local plasterer of Queensbury Street, Dumfries. The skull was later returned to the tomb. A plaster cast was sent to
George Combe, a Scottish lawyer and practitioner of phrenology based in Edinburgh. Combe published a report about his findings, entitled 'Phrenological development of Robert Burns. From a cast on his skull moulded at Dumfries, the 31st day of March, 1834'.
Number of plaster casts It is unknown how many casts were made by Fraser, with some sources reporting three were made. Six casts are known though some may be copies of the original cast. • Anatomical Museum,
University of Edinburgh •
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow •
Writers' Museum, a museum in Edinburgh •
Dumfries Museum • East Ayrshire Museums • National Trust for Scotland's
Robert Burns Birthplace Museum ==Literary style==