Burns Night
Image via Wikipedia My late father, Charlie was a Scot. Whenever I say that it always raises a question in my mind. Do you stop being a Scot when you die? Although we had plenty of Scottish relatives, we never celebrated Burns Night in our house, probably because my mother was English. However, Burns was a constant literary hero of my father and two poems in particular attracted his attention because, with his interest in family history research, he wondered how much they reflected his ancestors' lives. Tam O'Shanter tells the tale of the demise of Tam despite the warnings of his wife Kate that his drinking will be the death of him. My father used to love this line in particular, "Where sits our sulky sullen dame. Gathering her brows like gathering storm, nursing her wrath to keep it warm". The second poem paints a completely different picture. The Cotter's Saturday Night tells how the cotter (a peasant who lived in a cottage in exchange for working for the...