He was a Freemason for the rest of his life, and in 1787, Francis Charteris, the Grand Master of Scotland, praised Brother Burns as “Caledonia’s bard.” (Caledonia is the Latin name for Scotland that was used by the Romans, which later took on poetic connotations.) 3.

In 1781, at the age of 22, Burns joined the Masonic Lodge St. In 1783 he described the composition as “puerile and silly,” but was nonetheless “pleased with it, as it recalls to my mind those happy days when my heart was yet honest, and my tongue was sincere.”īurns credited his initial interest in poetry to another woman, specifically “an old Maid of my Mother’s ” who told “tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, giants, inchanted towers, dragons and other trumpery.” These stories, he said, “cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy.” 2. John Moore, was penned in 1774 at Mount Oliphant farm, where the Burns family lived and worked as tenants. “ Handsome Nell,” which Burns called his first “sin of rhyme” in a 1787 letter to Dr. Robert Burns wrote his first poem when he was just 15.Īs might be expected of a teenager, Burns’s first composition was about a romantic crush. Here are nine facts about his short life and enduring poetry.

And though he was dubbed “the heaven-taught ploughman,” Burns was neither uneducated nor a ploughman. For many, Robert Burns (also known as Rabbie Burns) is synonymous with Scotland: Not only is he considered the country’s national poet, but in a 2009 STV poll, he was even voted the greatest Scot over iconic warrior William Wallace.īorn in Alloway, Ayrshire, on January 25, 1759, Burns wrote poetry about his life as a peasant farmer and his love of women, among other topics.

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