Scotland launches this weekend into a year of events to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, whose poems capture the essence of home for Scots far and wide.
Born on Jan. 25, 1759, Burns died when he was just 37, but filled his life with travels through the picturesque heather-flecked hills of Ayrshire and Dumfries which provided the inspiration for much of his work.
PHOTO: AP
Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, has recorded two of his favorite Burns poems — A Red, Red Rose and My Heart’s In The Highlands — for a BBC audio project to mark the anniversary year.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a Scot, is also among the poet’s fans.
HAGGIS
Many Scots will, as every year, be sitting down to a traditional Burns Night Supper of haggis, the dish of minced sheep’s heart, liver and lungs mixed with onion, oatmeal, suet, stock and salt, and boiled in the animal’s stomach.
It is normally accompanied by “neeps and tatties,” or turnips and potatoes.
At formal Burns suppers, a bagpiper plays as the haggis is brought to the table and a guest recites Burns’s poem Address To A Haggis, which hails the dish as the “great chieftain o’ the puddin-race.”
Burns’ birthplace of Alloway in Ayrshire will be the focus of events today, opening a Scotland-wide program of poetry readings, music and dance to celebrate the life of the prolific farmer-turned-poet.
The Iconic Burns festival in Alloway will feature a tour of the humble cottage where he was born, while some of Britain’s top lighting designers have helped to illuminate sites in the town for performances of his finest work.
Tomorrow, the Celtic Connections music festival in Glasgow will hold a Jamaican Burns Night, highlighting the fact that the poet was set to emigrate to Jamaica before his first book of poems published in 1786 became a success.
Veteran Jamaican reggae and funk musicians Sly and Robbie are the star attractions at an event where revellers can feast on an alternative Burns supper of jerk chicken and goat curry.
Burns’ face also adorns a set of postage stamps created by the Royal Mail to commemorate the 250th anniversary, with one featuring the words of one of his best-known poems, A Man’s A Man For A’ That.
ABOLITIONISTS
The poem, written in 1795, became an anthem of the slavery abolitionists. Two centuries later, it was sung at the opening of the Scottish parliament in 1999.
Prince Charles joined Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond in reading poems for the Burns archive plan, which is aimed to ensure that his poems are available to future generations.
BBC Scotland’s head of radio, Jeff Zycinski, said: “Burns still resonates hugely more than two centuries after he penned over 600 poems and songs, both here in Scotland and beyond.”
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
RSS