A day late, but...

[Margarita]

The Queen of England was being shown around an Edinburg hospital by the head doctor. At one point, she is escorted into a ward with a number of patients who show no obvious signs of injury. She goes up to a man sitting alone in a chair and inquires after his health. To her surprise, the man answers,

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

The queen blinks a couple of times and tells the man she hopes he'll feel well soon. She shakes off the experience and approaches an older woman who is looking out a window. She mentions the lovely day to the patient who immediately says,

Ye banks and braes o' bonie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary fu' o' care!

"Um, quite," murmurs the queen and walks to the end of the hall where a good-looking young man is standing next to the exit door. She says, "And you, sir, how are you today?" The young man strikes a pose and immediately declaims,

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to Victorie!

"Ah, yes," says the queen politely, "Do have a good day."
As she walked through the ward doors, she murmured to the doctor, "That was the psychiatric ward, was it?"

"No, ma'am," he answered, "That was the Burns Unit."


In honor of Robert Burns, born on January 25, 1759

[stoney]

[Scabbydoo]

Twas a braw bricht moon licht nicht...

[Fe Butte]

[Ol Mike]

O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!

[Dinero]

One ‘myth’ that may have more of a foundation in fact is Burns’ famed weakness for the opposite sex. Burns fathered some 13 children to at least 5 different women. The majority of these children were born out of wedlock, although some were legitimised when Burns finally made Jean Armour his wife. His famous affair with Agnes McLehose, or ‘Clarinda’, produced a renowned series of love letters as well as one of the finest love songs ever written, ‘Ae Fond Kiss’. However, in this case his love didn’t stop him from seducing McLehose’s maid, Jenny Clow, who had a child to the poet in 1788.


A number of Burns’s poems and songs were suppressed during his lifetime, and not just for their political content. These include songs on more risqué topics. Burns wrote a considerable number of ‘bawdy’ or obscene verses which were not published while he was alive, and which had a less than straightforward route to publication. Earlier editors such as James Currie, for example, tried to distance the poet from his pornographic poems, while obscenity laws (which were not relaxed until the late-20th century) prevented their widespread publication. Even though standards may be relatively lax today, Burns’s bawdy poems still have the power to shock with their explicit language and frank description of sex. One important collection of the bard’s bawdry was The Merry Muses of Caledonia, penned by the poet for the Crochallan Fencibles, a male drinking club to which Burns belonged and which met at a tavern in Anchor Close in Edinburgh. Containing titles such as ‘The Fornicator’ and ‘Nine Inch Will Please a Lady’, The Merry Muses was not published in Burns’s lifetime and for a long time only appeared in privately published volumes to be circulated among a “discreet” male audience.


Although most closely associated with Scotland (and even the stereotypical trappings of Scottish identity), Burns’s reputation is international. There are statues of Burns all over the world, in places as far afield as North America and New Zealand. His likeness has appeared on bank notes, postage stamps, and Coca Cola bottles, and an edition of his poems has even been sent into space. Burns has had many admirers, from other poets and writers through to world leaders. For example, US president Abraham Lincoln was a big fan of Burns and could recite lines of his poems by heart. He has had many poetic imitators, while novels have been named after his work, most famously the modern American classics Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck, which takes its title from ‘To a Mouse’, and JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1951), after a line in ‘Comin thro the Rye’.

[Margarita]

Why, Jim, I had no idea you were a Burns aficionado. The interesting things one learns about one's friends as the years drift by.

[Dinero]

Originally Posted by Margarita

Why, Jim, I had no idea you were a Burns aficionado. The interesting things one learns about one's friends as the years drift by.

I was an aficionado once, but then the bulls got faster and I got slower.

[Margarita]

So now you kinda do a slow Burns, huh?

[Dinero]