Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in the parish of Alloway, near Ayr, in southwestern Scotland, and died in Dumfries on 21 July 1796. In the relatively brief span of thirty-seven years, he became Scotland’s best-loved poet, a major maker and remaker of song, an incisive satirist, and an emblem of democratic fellow feeling. His reputation has sometimes obscured the complicated human being beneath it. Burns was…
“I have ever looked upon the independence of the peasantry of Scotland as one of the most valuable parts of the constitution of the country.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Poet-Musicians, Political Poets, Scottish Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Longing, Joy
Carolina Oliphant, later Lady Nairne, was born on 16 August 1766 at Gask House in Perthshire, into a family whose private memories were inseparable from one of Scotland’s most public historical wounds. She died on 26 October 1845, also at Gask, after a life of seventy-nine years in which she became one of the most accomplished and widely loved writers of Scottish song. For much of that life, however, the public did n…
“I delight in seeing all merely human anticipations contradicted by the high and gracious power that overrules all. What is to come we know not, but surely much praise is due for the present.”
Neighbourhood:
Folk & Ballad Poets, Political Poets, Scottish Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Sorrow, Tenderness
