Remember

Robert Burns, loved a drink and loved women. It has been said of Burns that he was a drunkard and a blaggered but lets face facts, so what! Look at the body of work he produced from being such a man! Unfortunately what gets pushed into the background is the sensitivity that the man had for his fellow human beings.

He loved every woman he ever slept with and that is more than can be said for relationships that either last a night or some relationships that last years and years.

Charlie Parker used heroin to create what he did and most Jazz-Heads would say he's a genius, Jimmy Hendrix also used drugs of various strengths and degrees of harm but people would say, and still do, that he was also a genius - so what is the beef about a man who likes a drink and loves women. Look at what he wrote and read the words he spoke, actually do it.

Like Shakespeare it is never the same unless spoken out loud. You must hear the words in the air to understand their meaning and so it is with Burns. OK he writes in Scots-tongue but you can google Burns World and actually see the words translated into English so go ahead and do it.

A whole new world will appear before your eyes and once you speak the words he wrote you will come to understand the many unusual angles that he viewed the world of his day - far beyond the narrow minded and ignorant ways of his fellow humans... that is why he was termed a genius.

The Ploughman Poet, this was a phrease coined by the first novelist, Sir Walter Scot, it was he who introduced Burns to high society in Edinburgh and of course from there Robert Burns fortune esculated beyond his wildest dreams. Unfortunately it was also his downfall. He became a "Friend of the People" a society promoting the values of the French Revelution and many of the freedoms and rights that we today take very much for granted. These freedoms and rights were not in excistence back in Robert Burns day.

To speech of such ideas was to harbour instant rebuke and dislike from your peers and so it was for Burns.

He was scorned by Edinburgh high society and when he was in need of patronage to get a job when he left farming the most the nobilty and high society could do for the Scottish Poet Laurete was give him a job as an excise man. How disgusting is that for such a man to be shunned for his believes and his forward thinking. He must have terrified those higher up the food chain for Burns to be so treated.

So as you lift that beverage to your lips and suck on that cigarette or cigar while pondering the intricate vagaries of the English language could you write the why The Bard wrote ..... well there in lies your answer why you are not a genius and he was. His day is celebrated each year around the world his deeds are set to music and song across the planet even a dish and drink are named after him ... will this be so for you when you have departed this mortal coil ......