We celebrate his birth, we don’t mark his death, because Burn’s work is all about life and living, it celebrates the common Man. Robert Burns was born in Alloway, Ayrshire, on January 25th, 1759 and died in Dumfries on the 21st July 1796. Findlater dispelled a number of the myths surrounding Burns, particularly the one about him being a prodigious drinker. But a Mr Findlater who was Burn’s superior officer in the Excise wrote only a few years after his death: “succeeding commentators, have, by the aid of their own fancies, amplified, exaggerated, and filled up the outlines he has sketched”. The truth rarely gets in the way of a legend. He is often described as a sort of 18th century rock star, always heroically drunk and chasing the ladies, but managing to turn out amazing riffs of poetry, perform in public, and then dying young due to all the excess.

This seems to me to be a good way of describing what has been done to Burns’ reputation over the last 200 years. “Mair nonsense has been uttered in the name of Robert Burns than ony’s, barrin liberty and Christ” But then he was Irish and prone to exaggeration.Ī lot has been said about Burns, but I rather like this trenchant comment by another Scottish writer - the late, great Hugh McDairmid. He claimed to be the guest speaker at Burns nights for a whole fortnight every January. I had an Edinburgh professor once who was a world famous speechifier and most eloquent on the subject of Burns. Such is the demand that many have to be held on adjacent nights, because the hotels and church halls cannot cope. On 25th of January each year there is not an hour in the day or night when a Burns Supper is not taking place somewhere on this earth.

This chain of friendship follows the setting sun westward, through Asia, the Middle East to Europe and Scotland, then over the Atlantic and across the Americas. And others will be sitting down in Singapore. When our Burns Supper in Nadi is finishing others will still be under way across Australia and New Zealand. There are no Shakespeare suppers nor Joyce Junkets. All are internationally known and respected but none of have an evening in their honour. The English have Shakespeare the Irish have Joyce the Americans have Longfellow the Germans have Goethe. We have other poets, other writer heroes, yet we do not afford them the veneration given to Robert Burns. So I want to talk about Burns means to me, illustrated with some lines from the man himself - so much more meaningful than anything I could write or say. But what could I say, a lad from Dundee, a bureaucrat, a stuffed shirt, about one of the most expressive poets in the English language. When I was asked to propose the toast to the Immortal Memory at our Burns Supper, I was flattered and honoured.

2013 eloquent evenings