What the Bard means to me

There was hardly a day when Burns wasn't with us. Then came the change. Throughout the sixties and seventies, Burns, the man of the people, the egalitarian republican with his sympathies for the French Revolution, seemed to be championed by some of the most conservative and narrow sections of Scottish life. We felt that, despite their love of his work, the last person they would have been at ease with would have been the complex and contradictory man himself.

Only John Cairney's passionate, charismatic portrayal of the bard, which came close to reincarnation, kept the flame alive for a lot of us. Time moved on, we grew up, and my generation came to realise how much we owed to Burns, not only for his own words but for his tireless collecting of our heritage. Truly a great man had lived in 18th century Scotland and today, singers like Dick Gaughan and Eddi Reader have helped bring him back to the very centre of our stage.

I've read his poems at the funerals of friends, I've addressed my fair share of Haggis and I've recorded the occasional CD. I've even made a misguided attempt to play the man on very late night television. The critic's words are still burned into my psyche. I was, he said, as feckless as a wither'd rash''. He was right.

Now we see in Burns all the contradictions and conflict of being Scots. The mist-shrouded romance of the Jacobite adventure and the clear new thinking of the enlightenment that would change Scotland and the world forever. The hard thankless labour in a beautiful but harsh landscape, and the late night carousing in Edinburgh over a pint o' wine''.

To be at the heart of Robert Burns is to be at the heart of what it is to be Scottish. Sheena Wellington Traditional Singer The songs and poetry of Robert Burns have been part of my life forever. I grew up in a singing home with a grandmother who did the washing up while singing The De'il's awa wi' the Exciseman, and made the soup to the tune of Ae Fond Kis'. My father was in high demand to sing at Burns suppers, smokers and private dinners, and could recite Tam o' Shanter or The Cottar's Saturday Night on demand.

The name and, to some extent, the fame of Robert Burns seeped into my heart unnoticed, but it was when I read James Barke's fictionalised biography The Immortal Memory that what was to be a lifetime love affair really started.

I was lucky enough to be in my early teens when the bicentenary of Robert Burns's birth was celebrated, and I revelled in the school concerts, the special radio programmes and the newspaper and magazine articles.

It was then, too, that I made my official Burns Supper debut. As the event was all stag, I was only allowed in to sing, then spent my time in the kitchen with the women who were kindness itself and who fed me royally. The Supper itself was a lively affair and it was an eye-opener to see local dignitaries making total fools of themselves in drink!

But Robert's poetry and Robert's songs have been with me every day. I don't think I have ever got through 24 hours without singing at least a snatch of My Luve's like a Red, Red Rose, Ye Banks and Braes or The Winter It Is Pas', or without quoting Rab - The best laid schemes passes my lips quite often!

Apart from the beauty and the cleverness of his words and the wonderful tunes he set them to, it is Robert's palpable humanity that draws me. From his Address Of Beelzebub Through Crookieden and A Man's A Man for A' That to A Poet's Welcome to his Love-Begotten Daughter, there breathes that warmth, that concern, that anger at cruelty, that rapscallion sense of humour that makes the fallible man and awe-inspiring genius that is Robert Burns. I love him - it's as simple as that. Alex Salmond First Minister of Scotland Robert Burns deserves the high regard in which he is held both at home and worldwide. He restored to Scots a pride in their country and culture, battered as that had been in the years following the Union contrived by the parcel o' rogues''.

Burns celebrated our countryside and our folkways, and satirised, mercilessly, the pretensions and hypocrisies to which we are all given, though few on the grand scale of Holy Willie. He either wrote or rescued from oblivion some of the finest love songs in the world, and he set in its classical form the worldwide hymn to friendship and the memory of good times past that is Auld Lang Syne. He wrote the great comic epic of Tam o' Shanter. He celebrated the brotherhood and sisterhood of all human beings, and showed that proper national pride goes hand in hand with a reverence for universal humanity.

My favourite Burns verse of all is from A Man's a Man for A' That. It is the one that expresses his deep-held regard for democratic equality and independence of mind: It is indeed from thoughts like these that auld Scotia's grandeur springs, and I try to act in their spirit in all that I do. Eddi Reader Singer and Songwriter My exploration of Rab Mossgiel was due, in part, to the Ayrshire writer of the song Wild Mountainside, John Douglas of the Trashcan Sinatras, only a mile to go . . .' The first time I met that song, I was living in London feeling homesick and needing to be nearer my culture, therefore closer to my roots and family. John wrote it as a request for me to make the journey home.

My father's death at the age of 60 with asbestos poisoning happened just before I heard that song. My years seemed to be getting shorter and to be home became a burning desire for me after running far and fast away 22 years earlier.

In the same year, I was asked by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to join with them in celebrating the work of Robert Burns. I was to sing three Burns songs in the garden of Culzean Castle in Ayr with them one day in May. This led to one of the biggest love affairs of my life, and I began exploring every bit of Burns history that I could find.

I became a bit obsessed; I began to see my dad in Robert Burns's Scottish humour. Robert seemed as much home'' to me as my own family. He allowed me to fall in love with Scottish masculinity, and I could see quite clearly, for the first time perhaps, a real connection to my own culture. I hadn't thought about it much before that time, but I began to feel I was missing even more than missing my father - I was missing experiencing my own life!

Celtic Connections festival asked me to repeat and expand my performance of Burns's work with the orchestra. They booked me to do a fuller set of Robert Burns's music over two nights at the Concert Hall in Glasgow. So, with the songs of Robert Burns guiding me across the Border and the song Wild Mountainside encouraging my heart, I left my London life behind me, came home, recorded an album of Robert's songs and included the new'' Ayrshire song of John Douglas.

I am like a newborn puppy in the middle of my brood. God bless Scotland! Andrew O'Hagan Writer and UNICEF Ambassador Someone rang the other day to tell me that my old school was being demolished. I don't mind telling you I felt a stab of grief, not because I loved school so terribly much at the time I was there, but for a Scottish person, or perhaps any kind of person, a loss of the past can be experienced like a certain draining of the blood. Not far from that Ayrshire school, maybe two or three miles, there was a house we lived in long ago. Last time I went to Scotland I decided on a whim to go and look at the house. My parents were never very happy there, but I realised, as I drove through the countryside, that the place had lived very vividly in my dreams. In some senses, I had never stopped thinking about it, and as the car drew closer I began to feel nervous - I hadn't been there in 25 years.

It was an empty field. The house was gone, and so were all the surrounding buildings. They must have been taken down some time ago, because the grass was grown over and the natural world - always so present in my childhood, though pressed into the background by breeze-blocks and migrant human troubles and urban planning - had recovered its former position, wild bushes and cows predominant, and suddenly like eternal ghosts in that memorial Ayrshire landscape. I walked over the grass plucking berries, and I took a plump, early bramble from one of the bushes and deliberately ate it, feeling good, almost relieved, to be able to ingest something of this place on a cold day, something natural and sustaining. And in that moment I thought of Robert Burns, the passage in Tam o' Shanter about fading time: But pleasures are like poppies spread: You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white - then melts for ever; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm. Nae man can tether time or tide, The hour approaches Tam maun ride. The person who caused me to fall in love with the poems and songs of Robert Burns was my headmistress, Mrs Ferguson. She played very nicely on an upright piano in the gym hall, and it was my job - being 10 or so, and hopelessly flamboyant - to sing beside her the song My Love She's But a Lassie Yet. I can still see the flush of pleasure in her cheek as I sang the words with an accent full of local innocence. The other boys were out playing football and she behaved as if we were co-conspirators in a secret legion of artlovers. From that day I have loved Robert Burns and all who sail in him, the words growing in my mind as I myself have grown away from that boy, feeling the lines only more keenly with the passing decades and the distance between that Ayrshire summer and me. It is Robert Burns who bridges the gap, and always will, creating a unity of selves and seasons, making a home for mice and men in the natural order. Dame Evelyn Glennie Percussionist Hogmanays are not what they used to be. As far back as I can remember, the farmhouse roof nearly lifted off with our yearly exuberant rendition of Auld Lang Syne - my introduction to Rabbie Burns, as we referred to him. I have since lost count of the number of times I have joined hands with a multitude of folks from around the globe, singing and swaggering to what must arguably be the most recognisable melody and lyrics ever to be written. It's also interesting to observe the subtlety in rhythmical interpretation of this song; the Scots Snap'' generally and understandably being more prevalent in Scotland than in other territories, and one never fails to experience the sheer passion that people from all over feel towards this big little gem.

My desire to learn the Great Highland Bagpipes was partly ignited by the wish to participate in a Burns night as the piper to accompany the entrance and cutting of the haggis. We are all aware of the popularity of Burns suppers throughout the world, which I must say would be an excellent event to replicate in schools to help ignite that spark of curiosity in our young people about the magnitude of Robert Burns and his work. I have spent hours trying to perfect the melody of A Man's A Man For A' That on my pipes - not easy, but thoroughly rewarding (my neighbours may have another opinion!).

It is all too easy to forget that Burns died whilst still a young man; the statues placed throughout the world and the universal cult-following belie the fact that his life was short, and one can only wonder how different things might be if extra years were at his disposal. This, in itself, is of influence, knowing that if one can find the key to what really makes each of us light up, we too can make a difference.

As I travel throughout the world, armed with my northeast brogue, I'm amazed to see how many people launch into Burns prose or song as a tribute to meeting a genuine Scot! The ice is broken as the words Robert Burns'' are uttered, and we know that relations are off to a healthy start. As a Doric speaker myself, I know the importance of reading, writing and speaking a dialect to keep it alive, and the fascination it can have for others. The accessibility of Burns's writing is shown by his awareness in acknowledging and respecting his local dialect, but yet making it accessible to a wider audience. As we live in what is becoming a more flat world, it is even more important to retain and share the richness of our local language.

I cannot imagine any youngster leaving school not being familiar with at least the name Robert Burns. Thanks to technology, if not an old fashioned Hogmanay, the legacy of Burns continues to burn brightly. Sir Alex Ferguson Manager of Manchester United FC and UNICEF Ambassador I, LIKE many Scottish people, didn't appreciate the values that Robbie Burns set down as a great Scotsman, simply because we never got it at school. Now that is a crime, considering that Scottish education in those times was recognised as one of the best in the world.

However, in my late teens, I was travelling with some friends in the north side of Glasgow one day when the subject of Burns came up, and although aware of this great poet, I was not versed enough in his work to enter the debate. Anyway, the view that provoked most anger from one of my friends, Walter Glen, was that Burns died a young man chiefly through his womanising.

Well, Walter, who was a great aficionado of Burns, tore that theory to shreds, and then enlightened us on the real Robbie Burns. He reminded us that, coming from a farming family, it was extremely unlikely that he or his brother Gilbert were allowed any great amount of freedom to be habitual drinkers or womanisers. No, he had to work that farm for long hours. It was here that he got the inspiration for many of his works, To A Mouse for example.

Close examination tells us clearly of a different and special man with a great social conscience, particularly about Scottish interests, and keen to put it into verse. A Man's a Man for A' That is recognised as one of the world's most influential poems in reminding us of our worth and humility and honesty. I know when thinking of Burns and trying to grasp where he got his inspiration, imagination and drive from, it reminds me of myself in times when I feel I need to escape and think. Sometimes I go into a sort of cocoon. I am happy in there and can think and clear my head.

At the height of his powers in 1787 he went on three different tours - the first with Robert Ainslie to the Borders for three weeks, the second, again for three weeks, to the Highlands and lastly with Dr Adair to Stirlingshire, and I wonder if that was where he got thinking time for his work or just to clear his head, but when you consider the transport of the day, then it was quite a journey.

I am glad I learned more about Robbie Burns and I'm now able to crystallise his life accurately, a hard-working genius who latterly combined working a farm in Dumfries with travelling 200 miles a week as an exciseman. When you read his works, you realise that in every one of his poems there is a message for us as human beings.

Last year, my local hotel had a Burns night dinner and asked me to say something or recite one of his poems; but I am not confident enough to recite, particularly in a room full of English people, but I did talk about his life and achievements. After the dinner it was amazing the number of people who came up to me and said they didn't realise what Burns was really about, and were amazed at how much he crammed into his short life.

So it is fair to say that maybe the Burns story is just starting, as there are more celebrations each January and more insight and study into his life, like that which I, myself, am doing at present. Tony Roper Writer In 1975, I was on a tour of the United States of America with a variety show about Scotland. It starred Alastair McDonald, Isla St Clair, a host of highly talented musicians, dancers and me. I was the actor, whose task it was to provide something different from the music side of the evening. This I did by means of a couple of comic monologues and two of Robert Burns' better known poems. The first was My Luve Is Like a Red, Red Rose, which, admittedly, is a song, but I recited it while a violin played the melody in the background. The second was A Man's a Man, which remains my favourite to this day.

We toured the States north, south, east and west, and always we were received enthusiastically. It is, however, one night in particular that stands out in my memory. We were in a small town in Alabama, and the night was going as well as ever, so I did not envisage any untoward reaction when I stepped on stage and gave an intro to A Man's A Man.

This went along the lines of: Robert Burns never bowed the knee to anyone. It was his firm conviction that we were all brothers and sisters, no matter their race, creed or colour.'' As I uttered that last word, there was an audible intake of breath from the audience, and I could not only feel, but almost touch the tension that my words had evoked. I was, I don't mind admitting, more than a bit unnerved.

Then I thought to myself, this is precisely the type of gathering that made Burns write this poem, and I launched into it with all the fervour I could muster. I would like to say that when I finished it the audience rose as one and gave thunderous applause. Alas, no!

The approval, however, no longer mattered to me. I had been offered the opportunity to really live what the poet felt, and I revelled doing the poem more that night, at that time in Alabama's history, than on any other, and my pride in being a kinsman of Robert Burns has remained with me until the present. Sir Tom Hunter Businessman and Philanthropist What can you say about an Ayrshire man who even had Abe Lincoln stumped? When asked about the Bard, Lincoln is said to have responded: I cannot frame a toast to Burns. I can say nothing worthy of his generous heart, and transcendent genius.'' Burns to me sums us Scots up in the main - witty, generous, often incisive and only occasionally drunk! Like Carnegie, he is another Scot who has left an indelible mark on the world, a mark to make all us Scots proud ... My close friend Rab Wilson, poet, takes much of his inspiration from Burns, as do I and many other Scots, and he constantly reminds me of our crucial role in delivering the Enlightenment to the world.

As Scots, we should be very proud of our heritage, but also remind ourselves that we too are creating the heritage today for future generations to enjoy - let's hope we make them equally proud, after all Wha's like us?'' Brian Cox Actor Robert Burns was the quintessential Scotsman - charming, rebellious, inspiring and inspired. His maverick spirit has been a vital source of inspiration to me - I love that he found artistic inspiration through the history and politics (not to mention the lovely women) of Scotland.

Our history is a rich one, and is where I find a lot of my own ambition and drive. And Burns' own legend is a great part of that. That he spoke to and for Scots, working-class Scots, not the nobility, is where I draw perhaps the greatest nostalgia for him.

The Americans may have Robert Frost, but we have Robert Burns, and I'll take his sensational bawdy lyrics, filled with such spirit and passion, over Frost's tame pastoral meditations any day. Charles Kennedy Former Leader of the Liberal Democrats Being born and bred in the west Highlands, there was always, growing up as a youngster, a certain feeling that Burns didn't touch us in quite the same way as elsewhere in Scotland. Certainly, there were the obligatory annual suppers, and the melodies and songs always featured in local ceilidhs; it was just that we were more influenced by being part of Gaeldom.

Over the decades there is no doubt that the steady influx of southern Scots into the area has moved us in a more Burns-orientated direction. Yet, the irony here is that Burns himself had rather pronounced views about the Highlands, as he remarked upon visiting the Duke of Argyll at Inveraray in June 1787. When he arrived the Duke was having a large house party. The landlord was too busy attending to the Duke's guests to have time for passing travellers. Burns responded: There's naething here but Highland pride, And Highland scab and hunger; If Providence has sent me here 'Twas surely in an anger.'' In subsequent centuries, mercifully, the Highland condition has been transformed for the better; meanwhile the universal appeal of Burns continues undiminished. And, of course, it is that very universality which enables practising politicians the world over to extract a particular quotation - often out of context - to help imply that if Burns was with us today he would in all likelihood be one of us'' party politically. Best to add a pinch of salt to your haggis and neeps next time you hear a politician proposing The Immortal Memory.

He does send such politically mixed messages that it is little wonder he can be open to widely varying interpretations. On one level, we're all liable to be dismissed as no more than a parcel of rogues'', yet throughout his work runs a passionate concern about the lot of his fellow man.

For myself, I have always considered Burns - given his interest in ideas as well as his impatience over social progress - in fact to be more understanding of the necessity for politics and public representation, whatever the constraints involved. A thinker and a doer are led inexorably towards public policy enactment - ie politics. I think Burns understood that only too well, even if he was your quintessential example of today's floating voter. He would, in our contemporary technological age, be a supreme polemicist on his Burns blog; pity someone trying to be his local MP!

So, leaving aside party political praying-in-aid, the best way in which all politicians should be touched by Burns is to look in the mirror regularly and think, not vanity, but instead check yourself constantly against the charge of hypocrisy. Hold consistent ideals, fairly applied, with a constant focus on the social realities round about you. If you stick to that approach, it seems to me, then you are more likely to navigate the occasionally treacherous waters which can surround you. Richard Thompson Singer/Songwriter My father was the classic exile. Recruited from the Scottish Borders by the London police a few years before world war two, his roots soon became precious to him, and there was no possible way that he was going to dilute his heritage by being in a foreign'' country. His shelves were lined with Walter Scott, his turntable hummed to Jimmy Shand, and he never missed a Burns Night.

For me, growing up in post-war, pre-satire London was pretty dull in terms of entertainment - one TV channel (two eventually), and dread holes in the radio scheduling (The Sunday Teatime Of The Soul). Out of boredom, I'd pick books off the shelf, and soon found myself reading the Waverley novels, books of Border ballads, and the collected works of Burns. This was, of course, a great way to atone for my various sins in the eyes of my father who, if he caught me taking a peek at anything of the Bard's, would regale me with a twenty-stanza party piece from Tam O' Shanter and give me an approving pat on the head.

None of this seemed very relevant as The Beatles and Brigitte Bardot and Private Eye changed my world, and Howlin' Wolf and John Coltrane were on the front burner. But as I began to write songs, it was instinctively the old Scottish bones that I tried to put new flesh on, and when my band, Fairport Convention, decided to ditch the transatlantic influences and to play music built on British roots, it was like a homecoming, and I had new appreciation of Burns the songwriter.

Why was he a great songwriter? He was a lyrics-only man - as far as I know, he always used existing traditional tunes - but his words are eminently singable. There is no pretension in his songs; there is none of the artifice of a WH Auden writing for Stravinsky's Rake's Progress, none of the intellectual and artistic sense of superiority that a poet sometimes feels he has to thrust insensitively upon the singer and the listener. Burns wrote in a natural language that sat easily upon the music and the tongue, and the proof of his art is the body of work - hundreds of fine songs - that are sung every day around the world. He would be in my all-time UK top ten of songwriters - up there with Lennon and McCartney, Ewan McColl, Lady Nairn, Elvis Costello, Lal Waterson, George Bruce Thompson My father remained a Burns devotee. During the whole later part of his life, he only missed one Burns supper - he died on January 25th, 1992. Sir Malcolm Rifkind Former Foreign Secretary and Secretary of State for Scotland Robert Burns is an extraordinary phenomenon. I say is'', not was''. Every year, Scots, both at home and abroad, remember him with Burns suppers, and have done so since he died around 200 years ago. Why? The English don't have annual Shakespeare dinners. The Russians don't have Tolstoy lunches. And the French, so far as I am aware, don't have Voltaire breakfasts.

What's so special about Burns? Perhaps the answer can be found in the fact that he is remembered by suppers, by nature a modest and rather informal meal.

Burns was a people's poet, both with the material he used and the audience to whom his poems were addressed. He rescued many of the traditional songs and rhymes of rural Scotland from oblivion just in the nick of time.

So I enjoy either reading Burns or hearing him being recited because it happens naturally, with neither a great mental effort being required nor with the feeling that one has moved from the ordinary world into some intellectual salon.

But I am also touched by Burns because he remains so highly relevant to the threats, problems and opportunities of modern life, including those of the political world.

We live, we are told, in an age of spin when wicked governments and politicians try to hide their misdeeds and exaggerate their achievements in order to retain their power and their privileges. Burns understood this very well. Remember these splendid lines: Here's freedom to him that wad read, Here's freedom to him that wad write! There's nane ever fear'd that the Truth should be heard, But they whom the truth would indite.' So Burns championed freedom of speech. He punctured the pompous. He reminded the mighty that they had feet of clay like almost everyone else. And he tore away the veil of hypocrisy from both self-satisfied clergymen and sycophantic fellow travellers with such gentle but penetrating humour that his words still resonate today.

Of course he touches us still. I wouldn't be writing this article about him if he didn't!