Robert Burns.
You might know Scotland’s poet for his song of friendship and remembrance, Auld Lang Syne.
Perhaps you will know his love songs and poems, such as Ae Fond Kiss or My Love Is Lke a Red Red Rose.
Good poems and songs to recall, certainly, especially around the time of his birthday, 25 January, when Burns is celebrated in Scotland and across the world.
Burns, who lived from 1759 to 1796, wrote on a range fo subjects. love, to be sure; nature quite often, politics, friendship, turning of seasons, landscapes in parts of Scotland where he lived and where he traveled are some of the ideas he explored both through his own writing and through songs he collected to which he put his own adaptations and additions.
He left fragments of unfinished projects behind, too, as most artists do.
Musicians Eddi Reader and Boo Hewerdine took just such a fragment tp create the song Leezie Lindsay.
It’s a story of love, of nature, of, if you like change, and of hope. In this clip Eddi takes the stage at Celtic Connections a few years back to sing the song, She is backed by equally talented singer Emily Smith.
You will find the song on Eddi’s album Peacetime, and on the expanded edition of the album Eddi Reader sings Robert Burns.
Emily Smith and her musical partner and husband have recorded and album of Burns songs too. It is called Adoon Winding Nith.
You will find this Burns song Silver Tassie, there.
Many other artists continue to draw on the work of Robert Burns.
Matt and Shannon Heaton, who most often work in Irish tradition, chose to include a Birns song as part of their album Whirring Wings. You can hear ir as part of this story at Wandering Educators.
Cellist Su-s Lee offered an instrumental version of Ae Fond Kiss as part of her album Dialogues
Robyn Stapleton has a fine album of the songs of Robert Burns, too.
Other ways to explore the work of Robert Burns
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