Scotland's most famous poet almost relocated to the Caribbean
Credit: Getty
If Robert Burns had got his way we might celebrate Burns Night by eating rice and peas and jerk chicken – perhaps with a ginger beer or a Red Stripe – rather than haggis, neaps and a dram. The tough lot of a farmer’s son and, later, as a tenant farmer, and the birth of no fewer than three illegitimate daughters in the space of a year, led Burns to seriously contemplate voyaging to the Caribbean to try his luck over there.
Chances are, if he’d made the break and lived a colonial’s life in the sultry tropics, he’d not have produced such memorable poems and songs. Influenced by the Scottish makar tradition and espousing republicanism and traditional Scottish values, Burns is known as the “national poet of Scotland”. Sometimes dubbed a pre-Romantic, he wrote about farm life, local experiences, traditional culture and religious practices; his poems, rich in vernacular and full of emotion, influenced Coleridge and Wordsworth.