” Is there another country anywhere where actually teaching your own language in your own schools to your own people would be seen as somehow controversial and politically divisive?”
Normal People
O, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast
“My plaidie to the angry airt,/I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee:”
Of Independent Mind
The pandemic enforced absence of Burns suppers has given me a chance to revisit my thoughts on Scotland’s most famous son, and has forced me to ask a really important fundamental question.
Weather Forecast: Rain at times today. Windy with showers tonight.
Fresh southwesterly winds veering westerly later. Maximum temperature 9 °C.
John Anderson my jo, John
We celebrate the work of Robert Burns with this beautiful poem and song
Address to a Haggis by Robert Burns
“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!”
Tam O’ Shanter By Robert Burns
“When chapman billies leave the street,
And drouthy neebors, neebors meet,”
The Bravery
“I have often said to myself what are the boasted advantages which my country reaps from a certain Union that counterbalance the annihilation of her Independence, and even her very name!” Robert Burns
To A Mouse #RobertBurns
To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough was written by Burns in November 1785, and was featured in the Kilmarnock volume.
Even heroes have heroes.
“At the end of a turbulent, desperate and – let’s be honest – hellish year, this week was proof positive that Scotland is increasingly comfortable in its own very distinct political culture and worldview. Support for normal democracy amongst Scots nudges sixty percent. And it will only grow.”
