The most famous of Scottish poets, Robert Burns, whose birthday is celebrated each January 25th on 'Burns Night', was the son of an Ayrshire cotter. Popularly portrayed as the frisky 'heaven-taught ploughman', Burns was a sophisticated and gifted poet who ranges far beyond the songs in Scots dialect (Auld Lang Syne, O my lurve's like a red, red rose and Ye Banks and Braes) that he is chiefly remembered for today. He produced satires, love poems and epigrams and wrote with considerable fluency in the Standard English of the day. (In The Cotter's Saturday Night, he uses colloquial English and Scots to remarkable effect.)

As a child Burns was an avid reader and, while largely self-educated, he was schooled in literature, French and Mathematics. His experiences of farming made him a radical (he supported the French Revolution in its early days) and his political sensibilities and poetic technique were applauded by his near-contemporaries, the Romantics - Wordsworth visited Burns' grave in 1803 and paid tribute to the Scot in his Memorials of a Tour in Scotland.